Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) was a Hungarian Biochemist who discovered Vitamin C and won the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Szent-Gyorgi offered this summary of the research process: discovery is seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what noone else has thought. Mathematicians and poets join research scientists in that quest to see and say something new. I was reminded of Szent-Gyorgyi's view when I read this little poem, "The Roasted Swan Sings," by Mark Baechtel in the anthology, Cabin Fever (WordWorks, 2003):
The Roasted Swan Sings
after the Carmina Burana
The arrow in its flight
becomes the turning spit;
the axis of the world
if we but thought of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment