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Perhaps surprising to you \u2013 it was surprising to me \u2013 is finding out that thinking like a poet was also one of the intellectual tools used by six scientists whilst in pursuit of their discoveries. That\u2019s the premise underlying Sam Illingworth<\/a>\u2019s A Sonnet to Science: Scientists and their Poetry<\/em><\/a> (Manchester University Press). Illingworth, a poet as well as a lecturer in science communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, sets out to try and answer the question \u2018How has poetry expanded scientists\u2019 understanding of the world in which we live?\u2019<\/p>\nWhich is not the most straightforward of investigations, not least the question of why<\/em> they might also be penning poems in between carrying out experiments; as Illingworth puts it, \u201cDid writing poetry help them to make better sense of the world in which they lived? Did they consider themselves to be talented polymaths? Was it purely a private pursuit of pleasure?\u201d<\/p>\n Illingworth surveys of the careers of Humphrey Davy, Ada Lovelace, James Clerk Maxwell, Ronald Ross, Miroslav Holub and Rebecca Elson, and through a combination of close reading of their poetry and an overview of their research, breakthroughs and achievements, attempts to show if and how poetry influenced their science. (Illingworth notes in his introduction that most investigations into the links between science and poetry examine how the former has influenced the latter rather than the other way round.)<\/p>\n Take Davy for example, who Illingworth argues had a credible chance of becoming a poet, and whose poetic skills were rated highly enough by Wordsworth to ask him to proofread the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads<\/em>. Davy used verse to record the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide, both as a way of judging how the gas affected his linguistic skills, and also to see whether the high could be described imaginatively:<\/p>\n Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire Illingworth calls this a piece of scientific data, a thought jarring at first, but fair on reflection, the equivalent of a more worked up version of a prose fragment of observation, perhaps.<\/p>\n Some of the value of these biographies comes from the revealing of poetic hinterlands previously glossed over or underplayed in the lives of these scientists. I certainly had no idea that James Clerk Maxwell, who formulated the theory of electromagnetic radiation, wrote poetry as a way of working out his frustrations when his experiments or scientific career was faltering; it\u2019s also moving to see that Ada Lovelace spent some time wrestling with her identity as a mathematician or poet, in particular writing a striking ode to Florence Nightingale.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll note that I haven\u2019t mentioned the quality<\/em> of the poetry; not that A Sonnet to Science<\/em> goes as far as to try and claim the earlier of his scientists as first rank writers. But it is clear that there is an obvious and genuine step up in what the poems achieve when Illingworth discusses Holub and Elson. His chapter on the former is a useful reminder of what he sacrificed under communist rule; Illingworth is particularly good at showing how Holub\u2019s style shifted between a directness of language and a surreal approach in response to the twists of repression in Czechoslovakia, while also tracing his ambivalence about whether he was going to be remembered as a celebrated scientist or celebrated poet.<\/p>\n Elson\u2019s story is perhaps the saddest, a writing and an astronomical career cut short by her death at the age of 39 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Illingworth suggests that, of all his subjects, she was the one for whom the personas of scientist and poet were indivisible \u2013 \u201cthey were all part of her one life\u2026 To Elson, science was poetry and poetry was science; they were not mutually exclusive entities but rather small facets of existence that helped to fill in the bigger picture of the universe and her place within it.\u201d<\/p>\n Illingworth also notes that The Rialto<\/em> was one of the places that spotted her poetic talent early on. Here is \u2018Aberration\u2019, from issue 22, Spring 1992:<\/p>\n ABERRATION<\/strong> The way they tell it As Michael says, \u201cHer poems were deceptively slight looking but worked such a lot of feeling into them.\u201d<\/p>\n Feelings, poetry and science. There\u2019s a joined up approach to thinking about the world in those three big ideas\u2026 somewhere.<\/p>\n With thanks to Michael Mackmin for delving into the archives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the last few weeks I\u2019ve found myself using the phrase \u2018think like a poet\u2019 a lot, especially as the final idea I want to leave people with, at the end of beginning to write workshops. It sounds sufficiently exhortatory (especially if I\u2019m windmilling my arms while saying it) while at the same time a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":722,"featured_media":8292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8294,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8289\/revisions\/8294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHave I behld a rapture wakening form
\nMy bosom burns with no hallowed fire
\nYet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm<\/p>\n
\n(after the Hubble Telescope)<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAll the stars have wings
\nThe sky so full of wings
\nThere is no sky, and just
\nFor a moment you forget
\nThe error and the crimped
\nPaths of light
\nAnd you see it
\nThe immense migration
\nAnd you hear the rush
\nThe beating<\/p>\n