[Ads-l] Quote: An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid

[James A. Landau]

On Sun, 20 Oct 2019 04:11:11 Zone - 0400 ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>The QI website now has an article about the saying in the subject line.
>https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/10/19/barmaid/
>
>The Yale Book of Quotations has a somewhat recent citation. Wikiquote
>has a 1973 citation. Nigel Rees (in his October 2019 newsletter) says
>the saying was attributed to Ernest Rutherford by 1965. The QI article
>gives a 1955 citation.
>
>[ref] 1955 November, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
>Society, Volume 1, Albert Einstein 1879-1955 by Edmund Whittaker,
>Start Page 37, Quote Page 54, Published by Royal Society, United
>Kingdom. (JSTOR) link [/ref]
>
>https://www.jstor.org/stable/769242
>
>[Begin excerpt]
>Some of it may have been due to the popular principle attributed to
>Rutherford, that an alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless
>it can be explained to a barmaid.
>[End excerpt]

https://books.google.com/books?id=EXkYAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA336&dq=number+theory%2Bcan+be+explained+to&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQloqRnK7lAhVhUt8KHbRKDvUQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=number%20theory%2Bcan%20be%20explained%20to&f=false

The Telegrapic Journal August 15, 1878 page 336 column 1 top paragraph 
from "Address of William Spottiswoode, Esq."
"Considering, however, our limitations of time, and the varied nature of our audience, it would seem not inappropriate to suspend, mentally if not materially, over the doors of our section rooms, the Frenchman's dictum, that so scientific theory "can be considered complete until it is so clear that it can be explained to the first man you meet in the street."

somewhat similar
https://books.google.com/books?id=M0pVAAAAMAAJ&q=theory%2B%22man+in+the+street%22&dq=theory%2B%22man+in+the+street%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0ucmkoK7lAhVsc98KHSrNCXMQ6AEwAnoECAAQAg

_Nature_ Volume 308
snippet view only, Google Books claims 1869 and author is Sir Norman Lockyet
page 801
"if some of the subject matter of biology lends itself to elegant mathematical treatment, then why should not the numerate man in the street be given the pleasure of enjoying it?"

These are the two earliest usages of "main in the street" to mean "a randomly selected person" that Google Books has.  The 1869 cite is the earliest usage of "numerate man" (presumably coined to complement "literate man") in Google Books.

I do not know who the "Frenchman" was.  I have a suspicion it was the French mathematician Henri Poincare.

- Jim Landau




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