axed. "Sorry. I'm afraid I get carried away. Self, to get
back to your original question, is a great intuitive scientist.
Unfortunately for him, society being what it is today, he fits into few
grooves. Our educational system was little more than an irritation to him
and consequently he holds no degrees. Needless to say, this interfered
with his gaining employment with the universities and the large
corporations which dominate our country's research, not to mention
governmental agencies.

"Ernest Self holds none of the status labels that count. The fact that he
is a genius means nothing. He is supposedly qualified no more than to hold
a janitor's position in laboratories where his inferiors conduct
experiments in fields where he is a dozenfold more capable than they. No
one is interested in his genius, they want to know what status labels are
pinned to him. Ernest has no respect for labels."

-------------------------------------

Larry Woolford figured he was picking up background and didn't force a
change of subject. "Just what do you mean by intuitive scientist?"

"It's a term I have used loosely," the Professor admitted. "Possibly a
scientist who makes a break-through in his field, destroying formerly held
positions--in Self's case, without the math, without the accepted theories
to back him. He finds something that works, possibly without knowing why
or how and by using unorthodox analytical techniques. An intuitive
scientist, if I may use the term, is a thorn in the side of our
theoretical physicists laden down with their burden of a status label but
who are themselves short of the makings of a Leonardo, a Newton, a
Galileo, or even a Nicholas Christofilos."

"I'm afraid that last name escapes me," Larry said.

"Similar to Self's case and Robert Goddard's," Voss said, his voice
bitter. "Although his story has a better ending. Christofilos invented the
strong-focusing principle that made possible the multi-billion-volt
particle accelerators currently so widely used in nuclear physics
experimentation. However, he was nothing but a Greek elevator electrical
system engineer and the supposed experts turned him down on the grounds
that his math was faulty. It seems that he submitted the idea in
straight-algebra terms instead of differential equations. He finally won
through after patenting the discovery and rubbing their noses in it.
Previously, none of the physics journals would publish his paper