Breakthrough with STEM

Smart minds have shaped our existence; past, present, and future. Often they are surrounded by controversy because of their breakthroughs.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, once said, "Dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.” When Alfred's brother died, a newspaper accidentally thought it was Alfred who had passed. They wrote his obituary branding him the "merchant of death." Alfred never made public comment about why he dedicated most of his fortune to creating the Nobel Peace Prize, but some believe it was the way he would have been perceived after his death. This famous award is given to the person who in the previous year "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

J. Robert Oppenheimer helped in organizing the Manhattan Project, the research and development undertaking that created the first nuclear weapons. The timeline of WW2 was altered, as well as the future of nearly every large-scale military conflict to come. Oppenheimer said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

Speaking of WW2, Alan Turing was a mathematician widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He played a primary role in the breaking of German ciphers or the encryption methods used to send messages to communicate war plans. His genius helped, what some say, end the war years sooner than otherwise. I'll leave you with his quote, "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."