Carl Zeiss trained for four years as an apprentice mechanic. In his time, microscopes were made by Pröbeln, by trial and error. Zeiss wanted to build microscope optics from calculations instead. A first collaboration with a scientist produced no result. On 3 July 1866 the 50-year-old Zeiss began to work with Ernst Abbe, a 26-year-old lecturer in mathematical physics at the University of Jena. Abbe’s task was to put the workshop’s microscope production on a secure scientific foundation. The first microscope built from his calculations performed worse than the old ones. The work was finally completed in 1872. After that, no competing product surpassed the quality of their microscopes.
The Country Doctor in Breslau
Robert Koch was the district medical officer in Wollstein, a small town in the Prussian province of Posen. He also ran a private practice as a country doctor. In 1873 he set up a private laboratory in part of his consulting room. There he studied bacteria, above all the anthrax bacillus. He sent the first version of his article on anthrax to the botanist Ferdinand Cohn in Breslau. Cohn reacted with enthusiasm and invited Koch to present his work in Breslau over several days. A student named Paul Ehrlich met Koch for the first time on this occasion. The article was published in 1876. Today Koch is regarded as a founder of modern bacteriology.
A Dissertation Nobody Could Judge
In 1922 the University of Heidelberg rejected Hermann Oberth’s doctoral dissertation on space travel. According to German Wikipedia, the reason was that there was no recognized expert on the subject. Oberth submitted the same manuscript as a diploma thesis in Klausenburg, today Cluj in Romania, and passed the state examination in 1923. In the same year the Munich publisher Oldenbourg printed it. Oberth had to pay the printing costs himself. The book became a success. From 1923 to 1938, with interruptions, he worked as a secondary school teacher in Transylvania.
The Doctor, the Teacher and the Editor
In June 1841 the physician Julius Robert Mayer sent a paper on the conservation of energy to Johann Christian Poggendorff. Poggendorff edited the Annalen der Physik und Chemie, a major German journal of physics. He ignored the manuscript. It also contained basic errors in physics. A revised version appeared in 1842 in a journal of chemistry. Physicists of the time rejected Mayer’s principle and doubted his competence in questions of physics. A standard German biography calls him ein Außenseiter in der Wissenschaft, an outsider in science. In 1871 the Royal Society awarded him its Copley Medal.
Philipp Reis was a schoolteacher in Friedrichsdorf near Frankfurt. In 1860 the same journal refused to print his paper on the telephone. A later article about his invention also found no response, because he had no scientific reputation. In 1864 Reis demonstrated his telephone to the assembly of German natural scientists in Giessen. Now the journal had to take notice of him. This time Reis declined to write an article for it.
The Vocabulary of Expertise
Schuster, bleib bei deinem Leisten!
Shoemaker, stay with your last. The dictionary DWDS explains: do only what you understand something about.
Das Ei will klüger sein als die Henne.
The egg wants to be cleverer than the hen. It is said of a young person who wants to teach older and more experienced people.
Sind Sie vom Fach?
Are you from the field? The question asks whether someone is a trained specialist.
Er versteht sein Handwerk.
He understands his craft. It is praise for anyone who has mastered the work, not only for craftsmen.
der Quereinsteiger
The lateral entrant. Someone who enters a profession without its usual training.
Earning the Right to Edit
On German Wikipedia, changes made by newcomers do not appear to readers at once. An experienced author first checks them and marks the new version as gesichtet, sighted. A user earns the right to have his own edits appear at once after at least 30 days and 150 edits, together with some further conditions. The right to approve the edits of others comes after 60 days and at least 300 edits. Both rights can also be granted on request.