Historians of science have demonstrated that almost all scientific discoveries can be assigned to one of just three scenarios. The first, the Archimedes scenario, is the most common and involves discoveries made in bathtubs or showers. Practicing scientists generally spend five to six hours each day in the bathtub (or Jacuzzi, in laboratories with particularly large grants from the National Institutes of Health), in the hopes of making a breakthrough akin to Archimedes’ discovery regarding the displacement of water. Upon such a discovery, the scientist typically leaps from the tub and runs through the lab, arms upraised, shouting in Greek.
The second, the It came to me in a dream scenario, also has a long pedigree, harking back to Friedrich Kekule’s discovery of the benzene ring after he dreamed of a snake swallowing its tail and dancing in a circle. Dreaming has been a fruitful route to scientific enlightenment and a major rationale for the frequent naps that scientists take when not splashing in bathtubs.
The third breakthrough scenario has the overworked scientist taking a night off from grappling with a vexing problem (or, more often, being forced to take a night off by a significant other) to attend the opera or symphony. During a quiet interlude (typically a flute solo), sudden insight dawns. Equations are hastily scribbled on program notes, and the person rushes to the exit while saying, My darling, I must return immediately to the laboratory (emphasis on second syllable, à la Anthony Hopkins). This is in reality the rarest of the major modes of discovery, but its frequency has been much inflated in movies, for several reasons: scenes of scientists sleeping lack cinematic potential; scantily clad scientists leaping from bathtubs are generally hard to market (the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Liv Tyler keep turning down the roles of Einstein and Curie); and the breakthrough-at-the-symphony scene comes with its own soundtrack.
