Overview

At the end of the presentation, when the speaker asked for questions, Professor Sigmar Wittig rose and said flatly, Sir, I have been listening to your talk for the past fifteen minutes, and I don't believe a word that you have said. In two minutes, using the First Law of Thermodynamics, I can prove that everything you have presented is nonsense. The speaker turned pale. But I turned paler, because the next day I was to give my presentation, the first of my career, and Professor Wittig was sure to be in attendance. ^[1]

Karen Thole

In 1860, James Clerk Maxwell, who is considered the father of electrodynamics and one of the greatest physicists of the last two centuries, applied for a chaired professorship at the University of Edinburgh. He did not get the job. Instead, it went to Peter Guthrie Tait. According to an article in the Edinburgh Courant, the reason for Maxwell not getting the position was his lack of skill at speaking. ^[2] The reasoning of those who made the selection was that whoever taught had to be able to communicate to an audience (the students) that would not know the subject. What made people consider Maxwell a weak speaker? According to one of his students, C.W.F. Everitt, ^[3] Maxwell prepared lectures that were well organized. He wrote them out in a form that Everitt claimed was "fit for printing." ^[4] However, soon after beginning to lecture, Maxwell would digress onto a...