What a dead parrot from Monty Python’s sketch has to do with the business rules, Józef Piłsudski with e-government, and the invention of vodka by Dmitry Mendeleev with a modern sewage treatment plants? You will learn about that from the book “Kot Einsteina – 128 opowieści o nauce” [“Einstein’s Cat. 128 Stories of Science” – available in Polish only].
You will also notice a link that connects a fatal stroke of a haunted Parisian tailor from the Eiffel tower a hundred years ago and the today’s activities of scientists from the Warsaw Institute of Aviation, and discover that trumpets of Jericho have little in common with bumpkins yet a lot – with compressors. You will learn the reasons why scientists from the Lublin Institute of Agrophysics should respect Onufry Zagłoba, and those that would make Franz Kafka respect scientists from the Gdańsk University of Technology (if he lived to our times). And reading about research of scientists from Skierniewice you will be able to settle whether Jesus used to eat carrots or not.
“Kot Einsteina – 128 opowieści o nauce” is a journey into the world of science. Not the kind of science that is closed in a hermetic world of formulas understandable only to people who deal with it every day – it is a story about passions, titanic work, the hunger to learn, the desire to look at the lining of what we know, what is obvious and simple. It is about the efforts and passions of hundreds of smart people. People whose knowledge and ingenuity are already quietly changing our lives, making them better and more interesting, although most of us don’t have a clue about it.
The common idea of all these studies is to broaden knowledge, so that their benefits are practical. The 128 science projects described were possible to implement thanks to the financial support of the Innovative Economy Programme provided under the Measure 1.3.1. Among them there are 84 technical-engineering projects, 10 agricultural projects, 20 life science projects, 13 medical projects and 1 social project. And all of them share the principle of usefulness.
The story of these endeavors is one with an Einsteinian key and image. Each of the 128 episodes is opened by an anecdote which will make it easier to understand that life is not divided into fields, disciplines, sectors or specializations; that our commonness (and uncommonness) does not constitute locked drawers whose contents do not penetrate to others.
The publisher of the book is the National Information Processing Institute, and its premiere took place on 10 December 2014 at the conference “Go Innovative, or how?”.