(no subject)

[webofevil]

[Fritz Zwicky's discovery was ignored] for the worst of scientific reasons. Comb the internet for references to Zwicky and you'll find brilliant next to maverick, genius next to insufferable... he doesn't figure large in the astronomy textbooks, despite his many important discoveries. He was the first to see that galaxies form clusters, he coined the term supernova. He was certainly one of a kind... But it was his interpersonal skills that needed most attention. He was a prickly, difficult man, convinced of his own genius, and convinced that he never got the recognition he deserved. He had a tendency to refer to all his colleagues as “spherical bastards”: bastards whichever way you looked at them. Small wonder, then, that his colleagues turned a blind eye to his discovery.

Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense