Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology: Individuals, Institutions, and Innovations

In the evolution of science and technology, laws governing exceptional creativity and innovation have yet to be discovered. In his influential study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the historian Thomas Kuhn noted that the final stage in a scientific breakthrough such as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity—the most crucial step—was “inscrutable.” The same is still true half a century later.

 

Yet, there has been considerable progress in understanding many stages and facets of exceptional creativity and innovation. In Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology, editor Andrew Robinson gathers diverse contributors to explore this progress. This new collection arises from a symposium with the same title held at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. Organized by the John Templeton Foundation, the symposium had the late distinguished doctor and geneticist Baruch S. Blumberg as its chair. At the same time, its IAS host was the well-known physicist Freeman J. Dyson—both of whom have contributed chapters to the book. In addition to scientists, engineers, and an inventor, the book’s fifteen contributors include an economist, entrepreneurs, historians, and sociologists, all working at leading institutions, including Bell Laboratories, Microsoft Research, Oxford University, Princeton University, and Stanford University. Each contributor brings a unique perspective to the relationships between exceptional scientific creativity and innovation by individuals and institutions.

 

The diverse list of disciplines covered, the high-profile contributors (including two Nobel laureates), and their fascinating insights into this overarching question—how exactly do we make breakthroughs?—will make this collection of interest to anyone involved with the creative process in any context. Still, it will especially appeal to readers in scientific and technological fields.

Andrew Robinson is a former literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement in London. He is the author of some twenty-five books in the arts and sciences published by trade and academic publishers, which have been translated into fifteen languages. They include the biographies The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris and Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity; and two studies of exceptional creativity in the arts and sciences: Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs and Genius: A Very Short Introduction. His latest books are Cracking the Egyptian Code: The Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion and, The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery, with contributions from scientists, historians of science, and science writers. A King’s Scholar of Eton College, he holds degrees from Oxford University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and was a visiting fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, from 2006–10.