visual thinkers and nobel prizes
Recognition in the Old Tradition "1 didn't expect" a Nobel Prize "at al l" he said, "in part because of the nature of the work.There was less science [and more engineering] in it than the things customarily honored by the prizes:' This was the observation of Jack S. Kilby (Texas Instruments), co-inventor of the integrated circuit, on being notified of his award in October 2000. The Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded at the same time to Alan J. Heeger (UC-Santa Barbara) and Hideki Shirakawa (University of Tsukuba) for their work on conductive polymers also reflected the recognition of broad effects rather than pure science. "We're very excited" said Daryle H. Busch of the American Chemical Society, "because this award is in the old tradition. That is, it was given for work that has a very substantial impact on society:' [2] The shift back to an earlier tradition by the Nobel prize committee may reflect a growing recognition in the larger world of the deep value of applied work of broad impact, as opposed to the highly theoretical work of relatively low impact which has traditionally commanded such high prestige over the past decades. These changes might be read as the small beginnings of a larger and more gradual swing back toward a greater respect for hand and eye and image building in the brain. For some time the major contributions of visual thinkers have been eclipsed in many fields by theoretical approaches that did not lend themselves to pictures or images or imagined models or hands-on manipulation. For a long time, we have been told with confidence that visual approaches were old fashioned and somehow primitive. Modern scientists and mathematicians, we have been told, did not need images. Pictures and diagrams were mainly for non-professionals and lay persons. But we now see that things may be going back in the opposite direction. With new visualization technologies and an emerging sense of the missed opportunities using the old narrow methods researchers in many fields are becoming aware that in order to do really creative work, they may need to go back to visual approaches once again. Perhaps we are traveling back in spirit to an earlier time, a time where much of the most advanced and creative work is done by visual thinkers using visual methods and technologies. Once again, pictures may not only be for children!