CU plate in Nobel Prize exhibits symbolizes role of playfulness in creativity

Two official Cornell plates like this one are part of two exhibits marking the centennial of the Nobel Prize. Provided

By Susan S. Lang

Students goofing around shouldn't necessarily be discouraged, even if they're spinning and throwing plates, because you just never know when the horseplay could inspire a future Nobel Prize winner. That's why a Cornell plate is in an exhibit at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, and its world-traveling sister exhibit, "Cultures of Creativity: The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize," which made its New York City debut at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, N.Y., March 12.

Roald Hoffmann, Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology and the winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry, spoke at the exhibit opening on "The Real Dream Machine." "The essential role of prizes may be a focusing of our own aspirations. By recognizing excellence, the Nobel Prize evokes aspiration, especially for young people," said Hoffmann. "Listen to the young people in the hall -- they press buttons, scream, learn or do not learn, as they try things out. They learn the joy of understanding. They see science as fun."

For Richard Feynman, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, the fun and games were in a Cornell cafeteria shortly after World War II. Feynman was teaching at Cornell and working on the quantum mechanical description of the interaction between light and matter.

"But his research creativity seemed to be dried up -- he was probably a bit depressed after the bomb and after having lost his first wife," said physicist Anders Bárány, deputy museum director and senior curator at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. He says Feynman mentioned the plate story both in a film at the New York exhibit as well as in one of his books.

"In the cafeteria he saw a student set a plate with a Cornell emblem on it spinning and then throwing it up in the air," Bárány said. "The plate started wobbling in a way that caught Feynman's interest, and he succeeded in explaining the motion by the classical mechanical equations. This made him feel so elated that he went on to his quantum mechanical problem of spinning electrons and, lo and behold, solved the problem that he had been working on for a long time. This led him to the research that eventually resulted in his Nobel Prize. We used Feynman in our exhibition as an example of how playfulness can be regarded as one type of creativity."

Four years ago, Bárány asked former Cornell physicist Wilson Ho, now at the University of California-Irvine, to bring two Cornell plates with him when he came to lecture in Stockholm. Ho said he bought them at the Cornell Store. The plate in the traveling exhibit has already been around the world in the traveling exhibit to Japan, Malaysia, Italy, Norway and Korea, as well as to various American cities.

"What a place to find a piece of Cornelliana," says Hoffmann, who notes that the exhibit also contains an ear of Indian corn to illustrate Barbara McClintock's groundbreaking work in corn genetics that won her a Nobel Prize in 1983. "It goes to show what a great place Cornell is, inspiring scientists to think in new ways."

The exhibit will be at the New York Hall of Science until May 30.