Vaclav Smil Quotes
Most scientific or engineering discoveries would never become successful products without contributions from other scientists or engineers. Every major invention is the child of far-flung parents who may never meet.
Smil, Vaclav. Transforming the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences. Oxford University Press, 2006.
While this is generally true, from the scientific point of view, it is not quite right. The layman and most engineers believe that scientists discover things that exist. Although they do most of the time, breakthrough’s of the last century have for example discovered new chemical elements, but there are a few that science has CREATED—they exist nowhere in nature. Scientists are beginning to develop new life forms as well as discovering already existing ones. For over a century now the science of metallurgy has created thousands of alloys that did not previously exist.
Václav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies. He has also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.
