Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology

This volume derives from a conference held at the Institute for Advanced Study and supported by the John Templeton Foundation. It addresses creativity in individuals, institutions and innovations, and is dedicated to Baruch S Blumberg of NASA, who died since the symposium. The first chapter gives an overview of the scientific dominance of different cultures in different historical periods, related to their position in the world. This covers France until the mid-19th century, Germany in the late 19th century, Britain in the early 20th century and the United States after the war. For British readers, the extraordinary output of the Cavendish Laboratory makes inspiring reading, and a later chapter highlights the informality of its structures as a key component in creativity. There are case studies of Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Institute and in Enrico Fermi's Rome Institute, and it is striking to read about Bohr's exceptional vision and commitment to bringing a community of scholars together, starting from nothing.

There is little correlation between formal education and creativity, which does not come as a surprise, and a good analysis of the enabling conditions of technically creative environments. Other institutions covered include the Bell Labs, NASA and the Institute of Advanced Study itself. Freeman Dyson contributes an afterword, in which he identifies four different types of creativity pursued by different kinds of people and therefore requiring different kinds of organisation. To these he adds the ideas of Peter Diamandis of the X-Prize Foundation, remarking that prizes can also act as a driver of creativity. He ends by speculating that future brain science will be based on analogue rather than digital metaphors, and that this will open up new vistas as creative and disruptive as the effects of digital technology today. An informative and stimulating volume.