Life's work misunderstood

Sometimes it happens that a scientist's work is understood wrong, or otherwise gets twisted and turned upside down. Here some examples.

Edison's chair

Edison studied electricity, we all know that. At his time there was an active debate between direct and alternate current. Now Edison was in favor of direct current, because of its safety. He saw alternate current very dangerous to all living creatures, and therefore tried to lob political decision-makers for choosing direct current when building the power grid. In order to make a point, he invented the electric chair, wishing it would turn everybody's mind. It did not. Instead, the elecrtic chair was an immediate sales hit, and one was ordered to almost every prison in the US, and alternate current was still selected, for performance reasons.

Big Bang
During early discussionsof cosmology, the term "Big Bang" was invented by Fred Hoyle, who's purpose was to show how ridiculous the idea was. Instead the term became popular. Today the theory is widely accepted, and has a cool name.

Shrödinger's cat

Erwin Schrödinger, yes, he belongs in this list! He developed the basis of quantum physics as they are used today. He proposed that the state of a particle is not constant, but actually a probability function, which changes when the state is measured. Now when he wanted to discuss some paradoxes with his colleagues (for instance Einstein) he used an example, nowadays called the "Schrödinger's Cat". The paradox was of course then explained and the problem solved nicely, but the cat thingy was a little bit too catchy for an example. What do we remember from Shrödinger today? His equasion? His commitment to forming the basis of quantum physics? No, the damn cat...

Einstein failed tobe wrong
After a succesful publication of his relativity theory, Einstein studied cosmology. Now he did not believe in the "Big Bang" theory or the growing universe. Instead, using his relativity theory, he started to calculate how the universe, as we see it using our telescopes, can exist and stay static. Now Einstein found soon out that it could not. Had the galaxies just been statically in their places, they would start collapsing and soon crash into a black hole. Now einstein, having gone through his calculations over and over again, got tired and added an extra parameter into his equation, which made it stable. He called the cosmological constant. The constant was some kind of pressure, coming from inside the universe itself, that would hold the universe still and keep it from collapsing. After some time, when it had become quite clear that the cosmos does not stay still, but is in fact expanding, he realised the mistake called this shortcut his life's biggest mistake.

But this is not the end of the story. Long after Einstein had died, other people realised that when you look really carefully, the universe is not only expanding, but actually expanding at an increasing speed. Now what is causing the exponential expansion? A kind of pressure that comes from inside the universe itself. Amount of the pressure is called the cosmological constant. Einstein was right after all, although he never came to know it himself.