ROBERT S. MORISON 



squares and analyses of variance, show us to be completely 

 wrong in our intuitive conclusions. Nevertheless, history re- 

 veals that the founders of modern astronomy and physics alone 

 cover all the categories. 



Tycho Brahe was born to independent means but also 

 enjoyed a large pension from the king of Denmark. Copernicus 

 was a physician who held a court appointment from his uncle, 

 the Bishop of Ermland. Kepler tried almost every possible 

 means of support; having originally studied for the church, he 

 held a university chair for a short time, married a rich wife, 

 and finally came to be court astrologer to Rudolph the Second in 

 Prague. Indeed, his experience there led him to make an im- 

 portant contribution to our informal investigation into the care 

 and feeding of basic researchers. "Nature," he wrote, "which 

 has conferred upon every animal the means of subsistence, has 

 given astrology as an adjunct and ally to astronomy." Of all 

 these men, Newton probably comes closest to being a good 

 example of the university professor, but as is well known, he 

 spent the later years of his life as Master of the Mint in Lon- 

 don. 



The fathers of chemistry present an equally varied picture. 

 Sir Robert Boyle, the son of a duke, gives us an outstanding 

 example of the gentleman amateur of private means. Priestley 

 was a clergyman and also received a modest lifelong pension 

 from Lord Shelburne. Lavoisier held a research appointment 

 in the French Academy, but is probably most accurately de- 

 scribed as a man of affairs with his experimental farm and his 

 responsibilities for collecting taxes and overseeing the manufac- 

 ture of gunpowder. 



By the nineteenth century, science has become pretty well 

 institutionalized, and the university professor assumes a domi- 

 nating role in the pursuit of basic science with an occasional 

 Darwin of independent means or an Einstein with his job in 



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