Productive rivalries

Suffering can ennoble man. But it is rivalry that drives him. Like Marlowe to Shakespeare, Da Vinci to Michelangelo, and Salieri to Mozart, competition acts as a lever for evolution, a primal stew of boiling ideas, waiting only for a duel to choose its mode of expression. In Productive Rivalries, Michael White, a Discovery Channel consultant and author of Newton, the Sorcerer's Apprentice and Leonardo, the First Scientist—also published by Editora Record and frequenting the bestseller lists of various publications—analyzes eight intellectual conflicts that marked the history of science and technological progress: Newton vs. Leibniz; Lavoisier vs. Priestley; Darwin vs. Owen; Edison vs. Tesla; Heisenberg vs. Szilard; Crick and Watson vs. Pauling; the USA vs. the USSR; Bill Gates vs. Larry Ellison. These disputes gain depth through White's agile narrative. With his own distinctive style, the author brings to life those responsible for the major discoveries of recent centuries and their respective rivals. When egos of this caliber collide, personal revenge and scientific conviction combine. The result is more explosive than many discoveries, and the resentment becomes limitless. White also points out that sometimes scientific disputes are not the exclusive domain of isolated scientists, citing as an example the race between the Allies and the Germans to build the atomic bomb. Productive Rivalries shows how, often, the struggle to be first is not the key to every discussion. In some cases, what appears to be a professional conflict stems from unspoken animosities and secret motives. Newton felt threatened by the mere presence of Leibniz, who worked with equal ingenuity in the fields Newton dominated. Lavoisier and Priestley had distinct religious and political views, as well as fundamentally incompatible scientific opinions. The English mathematician John Wallis violently fought the philosopher and mathematician Thomas Hobbes not only because he disagreed with his theories, but because, as a staunch Christian, he felt compelled to invalidate the other's atheistic notions. The disputes presented were chosen by White to cover the period from Newton to the present day. The choice was made to illustrate the different forms of rivalry: personal, national, and industrial. Rivalry exists in every laboratory, at any time.