On the one hand to make progress in science you need to focus, work hard, and build your expertise. This leads some to think that it best that they not pursue outside interests and hobbies such as art, music, craft, puzzles, games, ...
However, scientific discoveries, particularly big ones, often involve creativity, serendipity, or thinking outside the box.
I noticed two examples of this recently.
The first was how fascination with a cheap child's toy led to the key idea behind the development of extremely cheap centrifuge [paperfuge] for health diagnostics in the Majority World.
The second example was a New York Times article about a recent paper that argues that key to Pasteur's discovery of molecular chirality was his interest in art.
Another example, is Harry Kroto who shared The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of buckyballs. He credited playing with Meccano as a child as very important in his scientific development.
Can you think of other examples?
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