Imagine That!

From two of my very favorite creativity researchers. Keep up the informative and important posts.

Scott

Does anyone know if among the nobel prize winning physicists worldwide, past and present there is a significant percentage who consistently wrote/write poetry?

I have done a formal study of the writing avocations of Nobel laureates (as yet unpublished). The following Nobel prizewinning physicists all wrote serious poetry:

Marie Curie; Erwin Schroedinger; Max Born; Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Born also translated poetry from German into English (e.g., Wilhelm Busch's Klecksel the Painter (1965).

Einstein and various of his fellow laureates wrote humorous rhymes as part of celebrations and in their correspondence, but it's not clear that such word play would necessarily qualify as "poetry".

In sum, the percentage of Nobel prizewinning physicist-poets is about 2% -- certainly not "significant" compared to the general public, but actually quite significant compared with the general population of scientists, among whom only about 0.3% write poetry.

I've completed an (as yet unpublished) study on the avocations of Nobel Laureates. The following Nobel prizewinners in Physics wrote serious poetry:

Marie Curie; Erwin Schroedinger; Erwin Heisenberg; Maria Goeppert-Mayer; Max Born. Born also translated German poetry into English, e.g., Wilhelm Busch's Klecksel the Painter (1965).

Other Nobel laureates such as Einstein and lots of his colleagues wrote humorous rhymes as part of celebrations and in their correspondence with each other, but I'm not sure one could consider this "poetry".

So perhaps 2-3% of Physics Nobel prizewinners wrote poetry -- not a significant proportion compared with the general public, but very significant compared with the average population of scientists, among whom only 0.3% write poetry.

Thank you very much for this.
Patricia