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Science advances through correspondence – ideas shared between brilliant minds, observations recorded in letters home, and theories debated across continents. These letters document humanity’s greatest intellectual leaps forward.
From Darwin’s excited reports from the Beagle voyage to Marie and Pierre Curie’s passionate partnership in discovery, from Einstein’s grave warnings to Roosevelt about atomic energy to Tesla’s visionary dreams of electrical power – these letters show us science as a deeply human endeavor, driven by curiosity, wonder, and the desire to understand our universe.
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future.
In the case of every liquid so far examined, the scattered light contains modified radiations which are not present in the incident beam.
I am aware that the conclusion at which I have arrived will be denounced by many as highly irreligious, but he who denounces it is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from other forms.
I know that you will be prepared to listen with that candor which I have ever found in you. I am quite conscious that my work will be assailed from all quarters, but I believe the truth will eventually prevail.
I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my manuscript sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract!
I am almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
A few days ago I witnessed an astonishing sight - men floating through the air in a silk bag filled with inflammable air. What use may this discovery be put to? Perhaps making lift of human bodies, so as to facilitate the carriage of burdens?
What signifies Philosophy that does not apply to some Use? But if you had never studied the Nature of Air... we should never have enjoyed the immense Advantage of breathing dephlogisticated Air, as a Remedy for putrid Diseases.
I rise almost every morning and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.
I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers — whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the other with blind experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures — hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries.