Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
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Clarke's first law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he/she is almost certainly right. When he/she states that something is impossible, he/she is very probably wrong.
I am proud to be a named victim of Clarke's first law.
Clarke's last novel, "The Last Theorem", was actually written by Frederik Pohl, based on a twelve(?) page extended outline written by Sir Arthur. On page 55:
- But there Dr. Vorhulst began to rein in the class’s speculation. “Friction,” he said succinctly. “Don’t forget friction. Remember what reentry did to a lot of the early spacecraft. If you used a Lofstrom loop, you’d need to accelerate your capsule to that seven miles a second of escape velocity that I was talking about the other day before you let go of it, and then the air friction would burn it right up.”
Fred completed the draft of "The Last Theorem" just in time for Sir Arthur to read it before died. Fred knew that Vorhulst described a ground level launcher, not a launch loop, but in a future with launch loops, why bother with space elevators?
Fred sent an apologetic letter (typed on the same manual typewriter he used for decades). I wrote back that I was THRILLED to be a Clarke's first law victim, that the miscreant was Sir Arthur himself. What brag rights! Fred wrote a best seller, and earned far more than his sole-authorship novels earned.
One of pre-Sir Arthur C. Clarke's first published First Law violations was an article in the March 1948 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, "Electronics and Space-Flight" ( a paper read before the British Interplanetary Society in London on 8th November 1947 ). Clarke computed CW (continuous wave) power levels for 10 cm (30 GHz) microwaves, using archaic signalling methods and faulty math to "prove" that interplanetary communication was impractical with vacuum tubes.
While he was presenting that paper in 1947, Bell Labs scientists Walter Brattain and John Bardeen were experimenting with point contacts on germanium, and would produce the first bipolar transistor with gain on 23 December 1947 (their boss William Shockley wanted them to work on a silicon field effect transistor instead. By the time Clarke's article was published in JBIS, Bell Labs and Western Electric.