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Among the extraordinary people of the world, there are those whose works or beliefs were ridiculed. They held fast in the face of strong opposition, and ultimately were acknowledged as right. We call these 'unreasonable people', and we're very fond of them. Over time, we will add to this list, and add more material about each person. If you have a favorite unreasonable person you'd like us to add, or you disagree with the inclusion of one of the following, write to us.
The other way to be an unreasonable person is to speak the unspeakable. To declare that the Emperor Has No Clothes. Or that it's spinach, and I won't eat it. Click here to see them.
For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church relied on a document called the Donation of Constantine to justify their claims of secular dominion over western Europe. Lorenzo concluded that it was a fraud. He was declared a heretic and sentenced to death by the Inquisition. After a powerful protector saved his life, he risked death again by publishing his proof. The Church eventually admitted that he was right.
Carl Sagan writes in The Demon-Haunted World:
A controversialist, crusty, critical, arrogant, a pedant, he was attacked by his contemporaries for sacrilege, impudence, temerity and presumption — among other imperfections.
Dr. Margulis is serially unreasonable.
In the face of conventional wisdom, Dr. Margulis looked for DNA outside the nucleus of the cell. And found it.
Her most successful heresy so far is arguing that nucleated cells evolved through bacterial symbiosis. She braved years of criticism before her views were accepted. But they are.
Dr. Margulis is also a well-known champion of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. This is the idea that it is useful to view the biosphere as if it were a single organism. She has faced strong opposition and ridicule for promoting this theory but has not backed down. The jury is still out on its validity.
Dr. Pauling was serially unreasonable.
First, he dared to apply the rigor of mathematics and recent insights of physics to chemistry. This was ridiculed: "It is essential to cast out from our midst, root and branch, this physical element and return to our laboratories.
" He persisted. In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He transformed chemistry so fundamentally that even a junior high school class is built on his work.
Then he became concerned about the health hazards of radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing. He was castigated as a Communist sympathizer. He persisted. In 1963, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. signed a treaty banning all above-ground nuclear testing. Later that year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the only person to ever win two solo Nobel prizes.
For the last decades of his life, Pauling argued that large doses of vitamin C are therapeutic for a wide variety of conditions. He was roundly attacked by the medical establishment. There is now growing acceptance that he was, once again, right. Since he has died, it's too late for a third Nobel Prize....
Semmelweiss was a doctor who noticed that one women in eight died of puerperal fever when they gave birth in his hospital in Vienna, and never got this fever when they had their babies at home, cared for by midwives. He looked into this further and concluded that doctors were carrying this disease with them from corpses they had recently dissected.
He insisted that they wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime. Within a year, the death rate dropped to 1.5%.
Despite this, his fellow doctors were offended by the implication that they had killed their patients and didn't like having to wash their hands. They booted him out of the hospital.
Semmelweiss moved to Budapest, where they were receptive to his ideas. Back in Vienna, the death rate rose again. It took them ten years to finally agree that he was right.
In his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only two paintings out of hundreds.
Van Gogh's paintings are now considered masterpieces. At auction, they have fetched the highest prices ever paid for art.
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