Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Top 5 failed chemists

Studied chemistry at the German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague for two weeks. He switched to sudy law and became a writer.


2) Cindy Crawford

Studied chemical engineering at Northwestern University for three months.

3) Isaac Newton

Filled his days with alchemical experiments. The only substantial achievement in this area was causing mental illness by mercury poisoning.

4) Oliver Sacks

Wrote one of the most popular book about chemistry (Uncle Tungsten) but never studied chemistry. Grew up in a chemistry-minded family. As a boy he was fascinated by chemistry, but he became a neurologist.

5) Knute Rockne
Worked as a chemistry research assistant under Julius Nieuwland at the Notre Dame University but stopped doing science to dedicate his life to football.

9 comments:

Chemgeek said...

What a bunch of losers!!

Wavefunction said...

crawford was probably asked to leave because she was distracting the other students too much.
how about this; edward teller! he got his degree in chemistry, but switched to physics.

Anonymous said...

Crawford and Newton have more or less the same hairstyle. Bud Spencer (I hope you all know who he is!) studied chemistry, but then switched to law school and went on becoming the fabolous actor we all (...!) know and enjoy.

Wavefunction said...

margaret thatcher...studied chemistry under nobelist dorothy hodgkin before switching to the ugly world of politics.

Anonymous said...

You forgot Robert Oppenheimer - he started as a chemistry major.

flopp said...

Jennifer Garner started as a Chem major at Denison University.

Wavefunction said...

yes, i forgot about him. synenv, a theme for you just came to my mind; top 5 chemists who committed scientific fraud.

synthetic environment said...

Already did something like the top 5 chemists who committed scientific fraud: the Top 5 scandals in medicine and chemistry

IrishPanther said...

I came across this blog from another chem one and I'm adding it to my list! Some interesting posts from what I've read so far...

Anyway, consider this a pet peeve and one of those futile battles, but Notre Dame University doesn't exist...it's the University of Notre Dame. Not all that big a deal but you wouldn't call the University of Illinois by Illinois University...