Fundamental technology and science advances can touch a lot of people, and even tech-savvy people may be ignorant of the inventors. This is perhaps too bad, but totally understandable. It's a big world.
I'm specifically thinking about Nobel prizewinners in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine since, say, 1950. That's over 200 people and I'll bet most tech-savvy people know only a small fraction. Yet, those discoveries are hugely influential. (As one specific example, say, Lauterbur and Mansfield who won the 2003 Nobel for their work in the 1980s on magnetic resonance imaging.)
It can be very humbling to speak with a person who knows some of this history. I sat in on a class in the physics of sensing technologies, and at the beginning, the professor listed the Nobel prizes pertinent to MRI, PET, CT, radar, spectroscopy, etc. It was a long list of people unknown to the public, and, alas, unknown to me as well. It's always going to be this way.
Fundamental technology and science advances can touch a lot of people, and even tech-savvy people may be ignorant of the inventors. This is perhaps too bad, but totally understandable. It's a big world.
I'm specifically thinking about Nobel prizewinners in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine since, say, 1950. That's over 200 people and I'll bet most tech-savvy people know only a small fraction. Yet, those discoveries are hugely influential. (As one specific example, say, Lauterbur and Mansfield who won the 2003 Nobel for their work in the 1980s on magnetic resonance imaging.)
It can be very humbling to speak with a person who knows some of this history. I sat in on a class in the physics of sensing technologies, and at the beginning, the professor listed the Nobel prizes pertinent to MRI, PET, CT, radar, spectroscopy, etc. It was a long list of people unknown to the public, and, alas, unknown to me as well. It's always going to be this way.