A research scientist may make himself unhappy by his insistence that the only worthwhile goal in life for him is making new discoveries and new developments. If his ability does not measure up to his research expectations, he must make painful adjustments. Advancing age only compounds the risk of failure. One of my acquaintances in England, a distinguished aerodynamicist, committed suicide around 1960 because, it is believed, he could not face the decline in his intellectual abilities that comes with increasing age. Batchelor knows of three other scientists who committed or attempted suicide for the same reason.
Originality is an ability to think independently and imaginatively.
It is an elusive quality which cannot be taught or learned, at least not directly. The greatest scientists have an uncanny ability to identify and understand the essential charactistics of a phenomenon or problem, which everyone will see later to be significant, with wide applications. He also cited the importance of like-minded colleagues, institutions like universities, the peer review system for scientific journals, and hot baths. Batchelor's lecture was presented by the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics as a tribute to the late McGill engineering professor Raymond G. Cox, who died in August of cancer. Cox was a leader in the field of fluid mechanics.