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AUGUST 14, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 6
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ALSO IN TIME
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COVER:
In a League of His Own
Tiger Woods, the golfing sensation, has owned his sport this year.
With six tournaments in the bag, he's the all-time money winner, and
his only competition comes not from peers but from himself
INDONESIA: Unrelenting Pressure
Indonesia's Wahid faces up to his political friends and foes. At least
he won't be impeached
KASHMIR: Give Peace a Chance
The Indian government opens negotiations with Kashmiri separatists
even as militant groups unleash a new wave of lethal violence in the
disputed territory
CRIME: Reel Life, Real Life
In a caper right out of a movie script, India's most wanted criminal
kidnaps one of its most famous actors
HONG KONG: Fight of Abode
Arsonor was it self-immolation?in the immigration office
sparks new fears about would-be residents from the mainland
KOREA: Unsporting Behavior
A female basketball player's injury highlights the problem of coaches
who go overboard on physical punishment
JAPAN: Splash Down
Swimming star Suzu Chiba is left off the national Olympic team. Is
it simply because the authorities don't like her?
BEAUTY: About Face
Online and in stores, Chinese-American Susan Yee is selling cosmetics
designed specifically for Asian complexions
INNOVATORS: Edgy Science
Six up-and-coming researchers who are pushing the limits and setting
the scientific agenda for the new century
SPOTLIGHT
MILESTONES
TRAVEL WATCH:
Singapore, the United Nations of Food
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INNOVATORS:
SCIENCE
Postcards
From the Edge
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
The public face of scientific genius tends to be old and graying. We think
of Albert Einstein's disheveled mop, Charles Darwin's majestic beard, Isaac
Newton's wrinkled visagenot to mention the balding luminaries who
accept their Nobel Prizes in Stockholm each December. Yet the truth is that
the breakthroughs that fire our imagination and change our lives are usually
made by men and women who are still in their 30s or 40sand that includes
Einstein, Newton and Darwin. It's no surprise, really; younger scientists
are less invested than their elders in the intellectual dogma of the day.
They question authority instinctively. They don't believe it when they're
told a new idea is crazy, so they're free to do the impossible.
To
get a preview of the unsettling truths science will be uncovering in this
new century, then, it makes sense to look at young researchers in the most
creative phase of their careers, when formal education is complete but eminence
still hovers indistinctly in the future. Scientific insiders already know
who the edgiest young thinkers are, and now you can meet some of them as
well: a biologist looking in scalding-hot springs for clues to the origin
of life; an astrophysicist searching for evidence of the "antigravity" force
that Einstein once dismissed; a neuroscientist studying how the brain, despite
what all the textbooks said, can grow new cells. The impact of their work
may not be fully appreciated for decades, if not longer. But then you could
have said the same about an obscure patent clerk and his crackpot theory
of relativity almost exactly a century ago.
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