Letter from Cyril Stanley Smith to Kertesz, April 6 1976

Authors

Cyril Stanley Smith

Document Type

Archival Material

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

Dated April 6th, 1976, a typed three-page letter from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Professor Cyril Stanley Smith to Louise Kertesz, in response to her inquiries about Muriel Rukeyser’s Willard Gibbs and The Traces of Thomas Hariot: “You ask about scientists' views on W.G. Frankly, I have never met one who liked it. Most of them think that it is not the biography of a scientist. For all of its studies of incoming and outreaching influences, it fails to catch the intellectual experience of the scientist in finding and clarifying his problem and doesn't distinguish between the moments of insight and the hard work of verification and transmission." Stanley himself, though he often argued in favor of the book, thinks these criticisms are justified. Nevertheless, he "was both moved and puzzled by it" when it first came out. He points out that in both books is a "strong admixture of imagination; starting off from a factual script of information and extending it imaginatively."

EMU Archives Collection Identifier

018.LK, Louise Kertesz papers

Comments

April 12th, 1976

Recommended Citation

Smith, Cyril Stanley, "Letter from Cyril Stanley Smith to Kertesz, April 6 1976" (2025). Archival Materials. 81.
https://commons.emich.edu/rukeyser_archives/81