Arrhenius remarked concerning those who developed the law of the indestructibility of energy: “It is very significant that not one of these men was a scientist by profession.” A draper first saw bacteria under a microscope. A Unitarian minister first isolated oxygen. Mendel, a monastic school teacher, discovered the laws of heredity. In mathematics, “analytical geometry was the independent invention to two men - Fermi, a lawyer; and Descartes, a philosopher - neither of whom was a professional mathematician.”
