......Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam......
(This is a Speech at 16th National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC), Dimapur, Nagaland...)
I would like to assert that “No youth today need to fear about the future”. How? The ignited mind of the youth is the most powerful resource on the earth, under the earth and above the earth. If you have an aim in life, continuously acquire the knowledge, work hard with confidence to win and have the confidence to defeat problems and succeed with righteous heart, you will definitely succeed in all your missions. It does not matter who you are.
Today, I would like to talk about the life of three great scientific minds that have made a difference to the society. You will see what type of challenges they had to face during their childhood, what type of life they were blessed with, their struggle and how they achieved their goal and the inspiring story behind their lives. Hence, I will be discussing on the topic “It does not matter who you are”.
Birth of Creativity in a difficult situation
Mario Capecchi had a difficult and challenging childhood when his mother was imprisoned during to World War II. He began four years of wandering when he was four and a half years old. He sometimes lived in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry. He spent the last year in the city of Reggio Emelia, hospitalized for malnutrition that would never be cured, since he, like the other children, was given only one cup of coffee and a small crust of bread every day. He wanted desperately to escape. Scores of beds lined the rooms and corridors of the hospital, one bed touching the next. No sheets, no blankets. That was where his mother found him on his ninth birthday after a year of searching. Within weeks, the Capecchi and his mother sailed to America to join his uncle and aunt. The day after he arrived, his uncle and aunt sent him to the third grade, although he'd never before been to school. Nor did he speak English. Capecchi became very active in sports, playing on four varsity teams: football, baseball, soccer and wrestling, where he was team captain. Capecchi says that sports are important from a psychological point of view which enables you to learn about human psychology, things that you later transfer to relationships: perseverance, pushing yourself beyond certain limits. The sense of social responsibility permeating the atmosphere at school also influenced him. First Capecchi started with political science, but after one political science class, he found there wasn't anything to bite on. He switched to science and math, graduating in 1961 with a double major in Physics and Chemistry. Physics lacked the excitement in his time that Capecchi sensed in a new science being developed: molecular biology. He knew he would switch to molecular biology in graduate school, on the advice of James D Watson. Watson taught him that he should not be bothered about small things, since such pursuits are likely to produce only small answers.
After earning his doctorate in biophysics in 1967, he spent on the Biochemistry faculty at the Harvard School of Medicine, and then his objective was to do gene targeting. The experiments started in 1980, despite NIH's refusal to fund the work. By 1984, Capecchi had clear success. Three years later, he applied the technology to mice. In 1989, he developed the first mice with targeted mutations. The technology created by Doctor Capecchi allows researchers to create specific gene mutations anywhere they choose in the genetic code of a mouse which was considered not worthy of pursuit by National Institute of Health. It may seem like science fiction, but by manipulating gene sequences in this way, researchers are able to mimic human disease conditions on animal subjects. What the research of Mario Capecchi means for human health is nothing short of amazing, his work with mice could lead to cures for Alzheimer’s disease or even Cancer. The innovations in genetics that Mario Capecchi achieved won him the Nobel Prize. What the message? The message here is:
“When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you”
Now let me talk about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius well ahead of time.
A genius well ahead of time: Failure did not deter him
Ramanujan, born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, first encountered formal mathematics at the age of ten. He demonstrated a natural ability at mathematics, and was given books on advanced trigonometry by S. L. Loney. He mastered this book by age thirteen, and even discovered theorems of his own. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning many awards. By the age of seventeen, Ramanujan was conducting his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the Euler–Mascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam. He failed his non-mathematical coursework, and lost his scholarship. Srinivasa Ramanujan lived only for 33 years and did not have formal higher education or means of living. Yet, his inexhaustible spirit and love for his subject made him contribute to the treasure houses of mathematical research – some of which are still under serious study and engaging all-available world mathematicians’ efforts to establish formal proofs. Ramanujan was a unique Indian genius who could melt the heart of the most hardened and outstanding Cambridge mathematician Prof G H Hardy. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was Prof. Hardy who discovered Ramanujan for the world. Professor Hardy rated various geniuses on a scale of 100. While most of the mathematicians got a rating of around 30 with rare exceptions reaching to 60, Ramanujan got a rating of 100. There cannot be any better tribute to either Ramanujan or to Indian heritage. His works cover vast areas including Prime Numbers, Hyper geometric Series, Modular Functions, Elliptic Functions, Mock Theta Functions, even magic squares, apart from serious side works on geometry of ellipses, squaring the circle etc. One of the tributes to Ramanujan says that, ‘every Integer is a personal friend of Ramanujan’. He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society (F R S) in 1918.
Ramanujan used to say “An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God”. For him the understanding of numbers was a process of spiritual revelation and connection. In his investigations into pure mathematics, he drew extraordinary conclusions that mystified his colleagues, but were usually proven, eventually, to be right. He opened a universe of theory that still today is reaping applications. The landscape of the infinite was to Ramanujan a reality of both mathematics and spirit. His love for numbers led Ramanujan to number theory. Despite being affected by chronic health problems, he was breathing Mathematics throughout his short life and his genius was recognized internationally. So friends you saw, how great creative minds, gave problem to the problems to succeed through the instrument of knowledge.
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