Scientific Work and Creativity: Advice from the Masters

How do the great discoverers of science really work? Biographers, psychologists, and philosophers have written much on the phenomenon of scientific creativity. This collection of essays takes you into the minds of some of the world’s greatest scientists. You can read in their own words how they worked, thought, and discovered crucial insights. Hermann von Helmholtz, Hideki Yukawa, Ernst Mach, J.B.S. Haldane, Steven Weinberg, Peter Doherty, C.V. Raman, Sylvester James Gates, and many more deliver witty, irreverent, thoughtful, and profound advice to scientists of all kinds and abilities. Whether you are a science hobbyist, an undergraduate doing your first lab work, a postdoc, or a seasoned professional, these essays will help point you in the direction of insight and discovery.

The Citizen Scientists League promotes responsible scientific observation, experimentation, discovery, and invention. We encourage active participation, networking and publishing by science enthusiasts at all levels of education and experience. Editor: Reginald Smith has been active in the amateur science community for over ten years with both the Society for Amateur Scientists and the Citizen Scientists League. His research focus over the years has been mainly in physics including plasma physics, complex networks, and the physics of complex systems such as the Internet, finance, and biology. He has published over 12 peer reviewed scientific papers and wrote extensively on amateur science topics. He studied physics at the University of Virginia and business at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.