Max Action brought this story to our attention. It’s another case of simultaneous and independent discoveries, in other words, scientific synchronicities. In 1868, French astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen spotted an unknown element in the spectrum of the sun during a total eclipse.
A few weeks later, an English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer succeeded in seeing the same element in regular daylight. Both wrote papers on this unknown element, and in a stunning synchronicity, both papers arrived at the French Academy of Sciences on the same day. Both men were attributed with first sighting of what became known as helium.
You can read the details here: https://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0818/
Simultaneous scientific discoveries are more common that we might imagine. According to the technium:
Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution
Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions
Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier
Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France
Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland.
“There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England.
As fiction writers, we’ve experienced this same sort of phenomenon. In the mid 1990s, we started a novel about Amelia Earhart’s last flight, but never finished the book, which was probably a good thing. In 1996, Jane Mendelsohn’s I Was Amelia Earhart was published.
We suspect we all have the ability to tap into his primal soup of ideas – and it doesn’t matter if it’s logarithms or Amelia Earhart!
Jim – didn't realize that!
It's interesting that both Charles Darwin and Abe Lincoln evolved into this gaseous world on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809.
I forgot about that one, Jeff! Thanks. It seems that Tesla invented many things in the known universe for which other people got credit.
Wilhelm Rontgen and Nikola Tesla discovered X-Rays around about the same time…Rontgen usually gets credit for it though.
I can see Hilary Swank as Amelia. Can't wait to see this one!
i love hearing about the magnificent discoveries of yesteryear! very neat post! as usual!
Very interesting!!
"Amelia" and it stars Hilary Swank as Earhart. Its supposedly one of the big releases this fall for the Academy Award consideration.
I didn't realize there was a bipic coming out on her. I'll definitely see it. What's it called?
Are you going to see the biopic about her later on this year? She's the most famous person to have come from my dad's hometown of Atchison, Kansas. I was just back there for my grandfather's funeral in May. I loved visiting that town growing up…but with both grandparents passed on, the memories are too painful. I'll always associate that town with my grandparents…but in all the times I've been there, I never made it to Amelia Earhart's home, which is a museum. I've been outside of it and there is a great view of the Missouri River down below the hill. There's also a statue of her in the downtown shopping district.