you’re not one of these people who is
written a zillion books you’ve only
written a few books but they have such
presence on the lists on the bestseller
list in our awareness its shapes
conversation that people have and the
beautiful thing about them is they all
have something in common they have sort
of it’s an anatomy of innovation and
genius but this particular set are
people who have have a have connected in
their own lives and in their own
creativity lines of science with lines
of art and so if I can just understand
from you what motivated you to make this
kind of your latter day mission in life
to explore these characters for our
benefit well you do that as well and I
think one of the important things is you
know if you’re at the 92nd Street Y or
Time magazine you meet a lot of smart
people and if you’ve realised smart
people are a dime a dozen they don’t
usually amount to much it’s creative
people and so I wanted to do what is
creativity and how do you achieve it and
to me the essence of it is being able to
love all disciplines like you know you
with science and art and so I look at
people who stand at that intersection
which obviously Ben Franklin did but
especially when I did Steve Jobs he
would always end his product
presentation with that slide of the arts
connecting to the sciences and say
that’s what creativity occurs and then
the ultimate of that and the real symbol
of that is Vitruvian Man which is a
great work of science and a great work
of art and so I decided to the capstone
of these books would be the self-taught
guy I mean you know you talk about
Einstein a lot in your latest book I did
it
whenever maybe you will but we’re never
quite gonna be like Einstein I mean he
had a processing power that was almost
as if touch by lightning Leonardo
was born out of wedlock didn’t go to
school had trouble with math but he’s so
observant and so curious that’s what
made him a genius so I let me reaffirm a
statement you just made that however
rare a smart person might be in your
life in the world smart people are
actually not uncommon and it takes an
extra spark beyond that to shape the
world and to innovate the world because
the person should get straight A’s
they’re not necessarily and in fact I
would say most of the time are not the
people who actually make the difference
in this world it’s a curious interesting
they’re the ones who write the
biographies and the people
[Laughter]
[Music]
so just to just to reiterate that we’ve
got of your biographies you’ve got Ben
Franklin one of my favorite characters
who’s under celebrated as a scientist we
think of him as a doddering old dude
flying a kite in the rain yeah those
electricity experiments as you know but
most the audience may not are the most
important experimental and then
theoretical when it comes to the single
fluid theory of electricity he would
have thought you were a Luddite or you
know a Philistine if you didn’t know
science but nowadays as you’ve done with
your books people who know the Arts and
Humanities often feel intimidated by
science and Ben Franklin was somebody
who thought that was crazy
you’re supposed to combine science with
humanities and he was as famous if not
more famous as a scientist across Europe
than he was a diplomat lightning from
the skies as courtesan when he goes to
France you know they turn out on the
streets to watch him make the
progression as the Ambassador not
because he’s a famous diplomat but
because he has snatched lightning from
the gods he is discovered lightning rod
now my mic my only regret about him no
it’s not a grant I’m just something I’m
pissed off about yeah so we’ve got them
on our money all right so if you didn’t
know he’s on our currency you just have
to work harder because your dollar bill
right okay he’s on the hundred dollar
bill and you look on both sides and
there is no iconography of his
scientific interest as there would be
for any other scientist that’s on a bill
historically throughout Europe before
the the Euro came in yet science as you
know the first euro what it was on it
because they kept fighting they could of
course vitruvian man Oh first yes very
nice so Leonardo
yeah Leonardo yes the one thing they can
all agree oh you’ve got it yeah there we
go
uh-huh that’s not a euro that’s actually
his notebook
so let’s let’s get to let’s get to
Leonardo so so he was and I’m Casco give
me the the list of things that the total
misfit misfit you know and you remember
Steve Jobs is wonderful line here’s to
The Misfits the rebels the round pegs in
the square holes
Leonardo was born out-of-wedlock didn’t
go to school was gay left-handed
somewhat heretical vegetarian and yet in
Florence
he’s totally embraced and this is
something a lesson we have to learn is
that at that time in the fourteen 70s in
Florence with the Medici running things
it was a republic that was so tolerant
of people coming from the Arab world
after the fall of Constantinople people
from Africa people from all over people
of different religious as well you know
the Reformation is a starting to bubble
up in a way and so Leonardo wearing pink
and purple short tunics which is a good
looking I have to process this
everything you listed about his misfit
ax tude could have gotten him burned at
the stake in some place in the world in
some time throughout history he did get
arrested for sodomy
fortunately among the four people
arrested it was a member of the Medici
family so boom things are slightly
corrupt then if you listen if you get
arrested get arrested with someone rich
right does it I think people already
know you’re preaching to the choir but I
will say to not get political on it but
you put it was a time of great tolerance
was why you have great creativity but
sometimes you backslide and Savonarola
comes in in the 1490s with the bonfire
of the vanities and they start burning
at the stake gays and others the good
news is it lasted less than four years
and he was and gotten rid of but we all
know what it’s like to backslide
from an era of Tolerance so I as an
educator and people who have kids in
school or anyone who’s thought about it
at all one of the deep questions we
Harbor is are you born innovative or is
it something that can be taught or
something that we don’t know how to
teach and we still need to figure it out
and so do you you must have insights
yeah I believe and the theme of this
book is mainly that you don’t have to be
born that way
Leonardo by not having been sent to
school and then you know infused with
the scholastic you know medieval stuff
they were teaching in schools makes a
list every week in his notebook of
things he wants to learn and he does it
out of pure curiosity as a little kid in
the village of Vinci and he just teaches
himself and he’ll say you know find out
why water swirls when it goes from a
larger to a smaller Channel why is the
sky blue
he does experiments with vapor and light
hey you know describe the tongue of a
woodpecker
who on earth wakes up in the morning
other than you and says I want to know
what the tongue of a woodpecker looks
like but it’s pure curiosity and then
observant he’d say look at the wings of
birds as they move up faster or down
faster when they take off these are all
things we can teach ourselves or at
least pledge not to hammer out of our
children which is curiosity for its own
sake daydream imagine fantasize and
observe so something I’ve said for a
while is you know we spend the first
years of our children’s lives teaching
them to walk and talk yeah and we spend
the rest of the lives telling to shut up
and sit down
and so this is not commensurate with the
absolutely but it’s true which is we
sometimes like you’ll quit asking
questions and Leonardo to his deathbed
to his last page you know you would know
the classical mathematical challenge of
squaring the circle you can’t do it yeah
yeah but as a little kid it’s coz pie is
a very irrational number and Neil can
explain it to you at some point but he
tries in his notebook as a young kid and
his last notebook paid he’s still using
right triangles shading things to trying
to square the circle because nobody ever
said hey you know quit asking questions
so I so there are two elements of this
that I want to make sure people
recognize there’s being curious but the
combination of being curious and being
observant oh man oh my god that’s that’s
where you take off so what you’re saying
is his his mind was nurtured so you
can’t say it was just born doing this he
was simply curious and observant and
that that recipe age can drive and if
it’s insatiable oh my gosh there is no
limit and we have 7,000 pages or more of
his note I thought you described in the
length of this book no no no sorry
actually sure I died heavy stock paper
because I I want to give a plug to Simon
& Schuster okay which was I said look
this is a big one to finally put it on a
tee pound stock pure white coded we can
afford it and keep it the same price and
now the book weighs 80 pounds yeah you
have cut you have color imagery
throughout yes it’s not one of the and
so every now and then it was like
learning from Leonardo how do you just
try to make it perfect now I know the
books not perfect but even the fonts and
the paper
so Simon Shuster deserves
one of the editors Stuart Roberts is in
the audience you Madame Arlena so I want
to make sure they get their shout out
but going back to your observant thing
on these notebook pages you just watch a
mine dancing across nature well he’s
trying to figure out okay how does a
bubble set of bubbles affect the swirl
when something comes up let me observe
it he says one of his notebook entries
is go down to the moat near the castle
and looked at four winged dragon flies
to see if their wings alternate or go up
and down in unison and he observes it
now the cool thing about it is every one
of these things is something you and I
can observe so when I’m walking here I
try now to do that little pause as if we
were still in our Wonder Years before
people beat it out of us to say why does
the light hitting a shiny object have a
glitter and a Glen but it moves
differently than the shadow moves when
you move your head this is something
Leonardo observed he observed when he’s
discectomy human face to do the Mona
Lisa smile well at the bottom the fact
that that’s even a thing to think to do
he dissected 30s women face so to draw
face so let me deceptive urse face every
muscle thinks this because he drilled
down and did it partly because it was
useful he needed to smile but then he’d
rose down and he’s like doing the spinal
cord and the nervous system and
everything you don’t need that to paint
the Mona Lisa smile but you do need it
if you’re Leonardo so how does he gain
access to dead bodies there was a
tolerance as I said both in Florence and
later in Milan with the church which it
banned autopsies in two sections the
church is not as strict then I mean the
Pope has a son Caesar Borgia so you can
tell they’re not exactly strict the way
it was and so they start for a period
those Jews in the audience
folks are supposed to be celibate hope
is should be the most celibate
Catholic in yeah and the Medici Pope
were not popes were not and so they do
allow two sections both in the hospital
the hospital in Florence and then in
Milan he works every night in the
basement and he does something that you
would really appreciate which is the
visual display of information he’s a
person who not only figures out how the
heart valve works but I mean here’s just
one I mean this is not a bad visual
display of information the fetus in the
womb and so he does deceptions but he
also combines them with art so up till
now we’ve only really been describing
what in modern times we might call a
naturalist someone who observes nature
is curious about it they might sketch it
but that alone doesn’t make you an
artist so what came first or did what
did they both develop
yeah in tandem the art in him and the
science in him and the engineer right
all right science and engineering all
the brushstrokes of the beauties of
nature and at a certain point when I’m
at Windsor Castle where some of his
notebooks are looking at the swirls he
does called the deluge drawing I said to
the curator there do you think he did
that initially as a work of art or is
the work of science the same question
you ask as only a curator at Windsor
Castle can do he raised himself until
his full glory of five feet four and
looked down upon me and said I do not
think that Leonardo would have made that
distinction and that’s what sort of
occurred to me is that nature in all of
its forms is Vitruvian Man a work of
science a work of art or work of man
Leonardo felt it was all together so it
is our
dare I say frailty of mind to even ask
that question presuming everything was
compartmentalized and then he physically
connects them when he makes no
distinction whatsoever right we silo
things we have departments in university
you get in the Department of
astrophysics and unlike Einstein you
don’t also get taught music at the same
time or maybe you know most people dumb
and it’s the people who do not silo
knowledge and you see the patterns
across nature that’s another part of
creativity I in my field we were one of
the earliest out-of-the-box to try to
cross pollinate not so much art in
science but one silo of science to
another silo science so NASA in the
1990s created the origins project which
was not here’s this science we have
funding for that science its origins
so because the question area how do how
was earth formed well you need the
astrophysicist the geologists there’s
the biologists where life is making its
footprint and so that forced
collaborations that created whole new
journals journals of sort of
astrobiology journals of astrogeology
and so that’s that’s an attempt to
accomplish what we really have to be
more cross-disciplinary and not thinking
let’s talk let’s talk about Leonardo’s
sort of engineering because this is a
under-recognized
element of his background in his
notebooks they’re drawings of all kinds
of machines and I don’t did they make
these did somebody now a lot of them of
fantasy and one of the things I
discovered them the notebooks is that
his early main job was as a theater and
spectacle producer for the Medici in
other words he did the mechanics the
scenery the art because this was a
like joseph papp was a big deal when we
were growing up to have public
spectacles
so that helicopter that you know that
aerial screw that’s very famous i
discovered it wasn’t initially to
transport humans it was to bring angels
down from the rafters in a performance
of don i you a play that they were
putting oh but then being leonardo it’s
like let me blur the line between
imagination and reality let me indulge
fantasy until he says okay let me try to
make human powered flying machines and
so that’s another secret of leonardo
another thing we hammer out of our kids
which is indulge fantasy yeah and i
don’t know who has not seen that image
it’s a it has it’s a corkscrew spinning
not so much propellers but imagine a
corkscrew made large and this if it
spins you knew air would be shifted down
or up depending on which way you turned
it and that’s covers a lot on
aerodynamics because of it and even
discovers you know that what we call
Bernoulli’s principle or you call
Bernoulli’s principle which is that of
air is flowing over a curve son is
moving fast and so the air pressures
less and it lifts that’s how the aerial
screw works and he discovers it but it’s
really cool because he loves patterns
across nature and he discovers that
water cannot be compressed
even though air can be so that doesn’t
work for fish swimming so he puts it his
notebook why do fish swim faster in
water than birds fly in air because
water is heavier and he goes on to
observe this principle so these are
things that normally we don’t stop to
notice but he does not you mentioned
Bernoulli let me still do a quick demo
here for everyone okay so these are my
notes that shouldn’t or no that’s right
all right we seem to be flying fine
without so this sheet of paper is is
curved over so if I blow air across it
you think it would just keep pushing it
down and then what if you do that
no it flaps up because the air pressure
is less so there’s lower air pressure
above and higher below and on an
airplane this is why you can fly one of
several reasons and you see that fluid
dynamics and hydraulics and everything
he does including it all comes together
in the Mona Lisa the dissection of the
eye to figure out optics the lips and
mouth but also the flow of the river and
how it curves and goes into her there
people who have written about Leonardo
including the great Kenneth Clark who
wrote about him last century yeah it was
an art critic who said if he hadn’t
wasted so much time doing geology and
aerodynamics and optics he could have
painted more paintings and I think the
Mona Lisa a bit a great painter yeah I
didn’t yeah but the Mona Lisa answers
with a smile because just knowing the
flow the fluid dynamics I think is so
key it starts when he’s a young kid he’s
working for parochial he doesn’t work
Viroqua who’s a said it like we yeah
Pinocchio Pinocchio runs a shop in
Florence that makes a copper ball for
the top of the dome on the Florence
Cathedral but the you know famous dome
but he does art he does pageants he does
costumes he does props that was a cool
thing about Florence is it didn’t say
you’re an artist your jewelry maker
Verrocchio’s trained as a gold bead or a
jewelry maker and you’re an engineer
they all kind of worked in these do it
all shops and Leonardo among other
things besides soldering the ball that’s
on top of Brunelleschi’s dome on the
Cathedral he does the river in the
baptism of Christ he’s like 12 years old
and you see the ripples doing exactly
right scientifically these would be
Eddie’s that come if you come around
yeah the eddies and that’s when he
discovers his most important scientific
discovery was in an atom
which is the heart valve and this is
just huge people thought that the heart
valve pumped up and down because the
blood would come out of the heart push
it open and then the pressure would push
it down
he has his Eddie’s that he’s learned as
a kid invention he said no it would
crumble if that were the case the reason
is when it goes into the aortic valve
I’m the aorta it’s smaller so it forms
the Eddie and the Eddie spreads out the
membrane this is what happens when you
can both do the Mona Lisa and discover
how a heart valve works so now I’m a
little worried because how would you
know what moving blood does in a heart
he dissected many times versus live no
live Pig oh right okay because he does
sexy human heart right definitely were I
mean here’s some of his spiralling
drawings but in his second round of
anatomy he realizes that he’s got to you
know figure out the heart but he’s got
to figure out the fluid in it and so he
does their live pigs which by the way I
mean you’re an artist you’re Leonardo da
Vinci you’re wearing all these purple
and pink tunics and stuff and yet at
night you’re butchering live pigs to
figure out how the heart works this is
when you get very very curious you know
you’re so you know and of course the the
word for that is in biologists
vivisection yeah you can’t hear but this
is the heart valve discovery it shows
that the turning of the fluids moving
the membrane he described in his mirror
script how he said and then he even
shows you how to do a glass experiment
using grass seeds to prove it right so
you can follow where the seeds go right
and they only totally proved incorrect
about 30 years ago using iodine and mr
magnetic resonance imaging it’s saying
yes it flows that way but why no Walter
nobody can see these pictures I know but
there are hundreds I mean they have to
buy the whole yeah you gotta buy
the book or I can put him up but I’ll
show you one other sweet thing which you
can’t really see on the I told you it
was gay and he has a sleep what’s the
best evidence I guess he was arrested
for sodomy
no buts all I mean with reactions I mean
he’s quite open about it he draws
pictures of Sol al the time saw like
coming to a dinner parties and in any
later in life
Mel C is his companion but he has two
very upfront companions but on the
fifteenth page of heart drawings where
he finally gets it right he gets to the
last note and he draws a heart one more
time and he’s human his mind wanders and
there’s another sketch of Sol lying he
draws it to show the heart inside his
boyfriend so he this tale works better
than when I tried it in some other
cities and you’re going you’re Florence
I’ve been to places that were Rome so he
sounds like he was a little bit ad D you
know he was very distracted and he’d hop
around to many things but he was also
deeply focused I mean that’s young dr.
Ryan but he’s very compulsive in terms
of squaring the circle I mean in the
book there’s just page after page of
notebooks two hundred and thirty times
he’s trying to do it
the proportions of man that he does for
vitruvian man were just obsessive he
also is depressed at times and he does
his dough use drawings and tells the
heart tales about it and he’s elated
somewhat manic and whatever very
friendly people say was the autistic
well no he had a huge number of very
close friends very personable and
understanding people’s gestures but I do
fear because people always ask these
questions that if he were alive today we
would pull down that diagnostic manual
or whatever and put also it two three
and four letter OCD a DD ADHD on him and
probably put them on a pharmaceutical
regiment
and so that would get rid of his ad D
and his depression and all these things
and we get rid of the Mona Lisa and we
get rid of the Mona Lisa and interesting
if we if we know from this evidence
circumstantial and otherwise that he
would not have been on the autism
spectrum because most of that spectrum
would not involve eye contact with
another human being
Gordon le goodnight by the way so with
Mona Lisa way we real quick look up
there
that’s a self-portrait that’s him and
the eye contact is something that’s
pretty intense and so and of course if
you’ve never done this it’s spooky you
get even just a reproduction of the Mona
Lisa and just walk past it and her eyes
follow you as you go by yeah just do
just call the Mona Lisa fact and let’s
go yeah yeah and it’s because the way
the shadows work he understands optics
and shadows but if I can everybody get
up and just walk ahead around and you’ll
see I’ll show you if you don’t mind one
more thing that’s even more interesting
scientifically we spend at least a
minute on the Mona Lisa here right
that’s what I’m gonna do here okay which
is besides the eyes which I have a whole
section on the book of why they move
he had dissected the lips as I told you
right where he the human cadavers and
does every muscle and every nerve that
touches the lips so it’s very
scientifically accurate but he had also
decided the human eye and figured out
that at the very center of the retina
the cones and fovea see black and white
detail which is something that’s true
he’s got to write but the edges of the
retina see colors in shadow so if you’re
looking directly at something you see
the detail but if something’s coming out
of the corner of your eye you see the
shadow so for 16 years he paints a smile
with more than 200 layers of glaze
perfect and if you look really close at
the smile and I thought you know you can
see close up in the book the the corners
of the lip turn down slightly but the
shadows and colors turn up so if you
stare directly at her she said
is not quite smiling it’s more
mysterious but as your eye wanders to
her forehead or cheek or chin suddenly
the smile lights up because you’re
catching it in a different part of your
retina so it’s just an example of how
the science makes the smile interactive
although says if it does you know
virtual reality so so one point I’d take
this moment to make that there are some
who would argue that knowing the science
might subtract from someone’s art
because that would make it boring or
distractive and here is the example of
the now appealing for a scientifically
literate artist which would have no less
value to society as an artistically
literate scientist and so so to know all
of this he now has the power to capture
it beneath the layers of art that sit
above it so that it’s more real than
anything everyone anyone and that’s one
of the arguments of my book against the
Kenneth Clarke thesis which is had he
not to sect of the eye
had he not done the lips had he not
studied geology and understand how
rivers flow into roads flow into our
veins and that they have the exact same
curves as our veins you would not have
the Mona Lisa there is a painting in the
Louvre I forgot that I wrote it down I
don’t have it with me now you wore it up
and you’re no way on it no there’s a
cul-de-sac and there are trees
surrounding the cul-de-sac and there’s a
Sun in the sky
and all the shadows of the trees all
point into the center of the cul-de-sac
I’m thinking no this is not what shadows
do collect and so this is these are
people who just were not observant about
what they were painting and then I hear
with people who are sort of apologist
for them saying oh he probably did that
on purpose okay so every missing fact of
nature that you didn’t get right in your
painting somehow they did that on
purpose I’m not buying it okay let me go
to
no Monday on that point okay I’m at some
of you may know of Salvador Monday it’s
on display at Christie’s it’s gonna be
sold November 15th the only one in
private hands there’s a whole lot of
science here the way our eyes see it
back up so this is a painting confirmed
to have been confirmed only in the past
1012 years to have been an authentic
Leonardo we knew it existed it
disappeared in the 1700s because some
stupid British royal sold it to some
near too well nephew and we lost track
of it it was rediscovered and
authenticated as a Leonardo it is Dale
going on auction at Christie’s with a
hundred billion dollar minimum which is
very inexpensive for the only one of
Leonardo’s 15 finished paintings in
private hands but I’m now going to do a
piece of science on you first of all the
hand is sharp which he doesn’t usually
do sharp lines people thought that
couldn’t be Leonardo he never does sharp
lines I’ll look in the notebooks at the
very same time he’s doing this 1502 he’s
doing not just distance perspective but
acuity perspective which you would know
what it is sharpness per se which means
at a certain focal point lines are
actually sharp but if I’m looking at
something a little distance of it so it
makes it in photography that just be the
depth of field correct so depth of field
buds what is your your plane of
attention right focus and so what he’s
doing there is making it something look
three-dimensional
on a two-dimensional plane but here’s
the thing you should look at cuz you’re
a scientist a crystal orb with the
inclusions exactly right the three
inclusions perfect crystal but what’s
odd about it it doesn’t distort the
robes of Jesus Christ as you know any
lens any object if you take a goblet of
water and you put your finger behind it
you’ll see it distorted and inverted
sometimes so this gets to your question
of why did Leonardo get it
painted incorrectly the way nature would
not have it and my answer just be it’s
Jesus that’s the right answer and that
is the answer I come to which is that
three possibilities one is that he
didn’t know it just made him insane no
he came out no he’s done his optics
experiments he’s studied crystal he’s
doing lenses because he wants to focus
sunlight in order to be soldering irons
and to be weapon so we know he knows the
other is that he knows but it would be
too distracting the way there’s some
fakery in the Last Supper like
everybody’s on the same side of the
table that’s not the way we usually have
dinner parties right so he knows
everybody in the Last Supper is like
yeah dramatically why why dramatically
because he’s a theater producer and he’s
producing it as a dramatic narrative but
to get to this the second explanation is
it’s too distracting he knows it would
distort but decides not to do it because
then you wouldn’t even look at the face
of Jesus you know but goodness what’s
happened to the road the third
explanation is the one you just gave
which is this is salvador monday christ
as savior of the world and he knows that
it would distort and he knows some of
his viewers would know but he’s
imparting to salvador monday a savior of
the world the miraculous quality of
nothing he touches as distorted as the
Bible tells us and he’s showing it’s a
miracle and I think that’s the
explanation that you get yeah given
everything else we know he knows yeah
nobody was curious about there’s no way
that was an accident
correct that that happened that way for
sure so this is going for for how much
and the man when there’s a hundred yeah
million honestly there are people look
with all there are people in this zip
code
they’ve spent as much on a yacht yeah
yeah you could buy this painting have be
the only private owner of a Leonardo you
can put it on permanent display at the
Met which they would very much love and
there are people whose names are
mentioned because I’ve talked to them
because they’ve called me because I’m
you know we’ll have a whole I didn’t
know it was gonna go on sale but I have
a whole part of this book cuz it’s so
much science and aren’t connected whose
names you would know and who zip code
you live in who are thinking of going up
to at least 150 million trying to bid
for this I display now as a pre auction
on Monday ed Christie’s on 51st Street
opening at 9:00 a.m. the public can come
see it
and it’s awesome oh you’ve already seen
it but you’re not the public
I say yes to that and it was actually in
Luke’s license of the mad here that I
won’t get into too much detail but was
one of the people authenticated it was
in the 2011-2012 show at the in the
National Gallery in London where I first
saw it and that’s when it was first off
first to be authenticated you have to
have a major show that puts you in and
that’s like Good Housekeeping stamp so
before we end this and continue on with
questions from the audience could you
just comment on Leonardo’s capacity
either written or in practice two or is
his inventiveness with military
machinery catapults this sort of thing
when he just give us some reflections on
that what he turns 30 an unnerving
milestone in our lives if we can
remember it
he has messed up two paintings that he
hasn’t finished adoration of the Magi
insane to realm that his father the
notary
had notarized the contract so he decides
I gotta get out of here
so he moves to Milan and he writes an
amazing job application letter to the
Duke of Milan it’s 11 paragraphs long
thank God we have it in his notebook
this is resume basically yeah and it’s
well it’s a his dream resume it’s
slightly fantasy like everything
Leonardo does paragraphs or engineering
I can make weapons of war I can make the
cross
those that would destroy I can make
fortresses that are impregnable I can
divert the course of rivers they think
of diverting the Arno to defeat Pisa I
can you know all these engineering
things only in paragraph 11 does he say
I can also paint so he thinks of himself
as a military engineer and for reasons
that I’ll let psychologists try to
figure out I have some speculation he
really decides that’s what he wants to
do in his thirties for a while now he
makes a lot of big military drawings
tanks crossbows all those with all due
respect to Leonardo and I love them as
fantasies they stretched things that
would not be built for another hundred
or two hundred years so he was not a
great military engineer he did do one
huge thing in military thing and you’ve
seen it a bit because of our defense
innovation board if you went to Fort
Meade or the defense mapping agency
Leonardo and they seen that DiCaprio who
bought the rights of this should put in
the movie is holed up in the win over
1503 in the tiny town of Imola
with Nicolo Machiavelli and Caesar
Borgia they’re both working for the
warlord Caesar Borgia and Leonardo has
Sol ie
his companion chase off every one of the
streets 15 blocks tiny town and look at
him and he does it with them and he does
an aerial map almost directly aerial
view but maybe a five degrees skew so
you can see the three dimensionality of
it and as Machiavelli writes in the
prints which is about Caesar Borgia and
that winter he won not by weaponry but
by surprise he always knew where he was
and the enemy was better than anybody
else on the battlefield so what Leonardo
does by doing this notion of a map there
were no drones or blimps or
balloons back then so he has to imagine
what it looks like from the air that’s
actually a huge military step forward
which is we’ve seen on the defense
innovation board you go to the mapping
agency it looks like that Imola map so
so many things that he would do that we
take for granted today but somebody had
to do them first yeah and there and it
has to combine as we started this
conversation with imagination and
observation and just to give sort of one
allow you to sort of wrap this in a bow
you can imagine not to put words in your
mouth but I presume you can imagine he
being born at a different time in a
different place and none of this would
have been nurtured so could you sort of
take us out before we go to kill a on
reflecting what kind of an environment
like is a necessary condition for this
to happen at all right the environment
of creativity is such an important topic
and it’s not my dwelling in this book as
I said Florence was just the right place
had the tolerance had different people
coming in from places and all of a
sudden had big shops that were doing
everything from soldering the copper
ball to drawing you know painting the
baptism of Christ so people with
different ideas are coming in and not
being criticized for having different I
think they’re being celebrated for them
and they’re sometimes not from the upper
classes going to university they’re
self-taught what happens in 1452 when
leonardo and christopher colombus are
born in the fall of Constantinople to
bring the Arab wisdom of math to Italy
is Gutenberg opens his first print shop
so we start seeing Leonardo’s notebooks
as the astronomer so-and-so had a
measure of the Sun and then by the
ptolemy translation at the stationers by
the bridge so you have a confluence of
tolerance and innovation you see that at
other times 500 years
to the day almost later you see in the
bay area of California huge tolerance
free speech movements electric kool-aid
acid test but also three inventions
occurring the computer the microchip and
the network the internet all come
together to have another time when
people can find out what they want and
do what they want so you have to sort of
nurture these times of creativity and
especially in Manhattan now where the
next wave will be on health and biotech
as well as Big Data
how will you nurture that to this city
remains the you know cradle of
creativity it’s amazing how much time
energy and laws we spend silencing
people who were just simply different
and with different views and when you
don’t you get Florence and OH
Renaissance yeah beautiful all right so
let’s let’s we can bring the house
lights up a bit and we have someone up
top we didn’t forget you guys up in the
in the bleachers and so if you have a
question for for Sir Walter and and
while they’re finding you we’ll go up
front here just what did you did I hear
you correctly that Leonardo DiCaprio
yeah bought what I I know I got read in
the papers and film rights to Leonardo
da Vinci and you know okay I hear that
right
that’s all good hoping you’ll play book
very good a front row here sir thank you
um that’s all right well yeah this speak
love there we go
Walter I you’ve written some great
biographies and others like McCullough
written some good ones too as you think
about that bookshelf of great people
that need to be written about whether or
not you write the next one who needs to
be on that shelf well on contemporary
people I think they’re very creative
people whose biographies haven’t been
done
thing though gates is one Jeff Bezos is
another people like that I don’t think
you are musk Elon Musk I think they’re
not quite ripe when I was when Steve
Jobs first called to ask me you know if
I do his book I kind of said you know
I’d done Ben Franklin Heinz Stein he
says do me next I’m onion but I said
I’ll wait 30 years until you retire and
then I got told that he was keeping in
secret but he had been diagnosed so I
don’t think I know my peril camps yeah
and so I don’t think those are ripe yet
I think in history lorenzo de melo Enzo
the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici I
became fascinated by and I don’t think
there’s a great I’ll get if this is
being tweeted out I’ll get some email
from somebody who’s written a biography
of him but I didn’t find one also there
are a lot of women I tried in the
innovators to begin and end with Ada
Lovelace Lord Byron’s daughter who
combines poetry and processors to come
up with the concept of a general-purpose
computer and she is a theme throughout
the book which is augmented intelligence
versus artificial intelligence I think
it she’d be a difficult biography
because she only won’t wrote one great
scientific paper there’s not like but I
think she would be a good biography
excellent another question over here it
seems like Einstein was famous during
his time and Franklin famous in France
anyway was Leonardo da Vinci famous very
much so
first of all he was a bit of a show
person he as I said wore you know fancy
dress and tunics and all when he’s doing
the Last Supper
it becomes news of 49 years it becomes a
public event people are going to the
monastery to the
he’s painting it it’s just on the wall
it’s on the wall to watch him paint
there’s huge lines when he gets back to
Florence and he’s just done st. Anne the
Madonna and Child drawing for what will
become a great painting and just to see
his preparatory drawing we’re told by
contemporaries that crowds there to see
it and I’ll just supplement that by
saying what might not be true always
among artists is essentially always true
among scientists that if you’re a great
scientist you’re famous in your day your
contributions are known in the moment
and particularly when they’re applied
and they changed Society so and
scientists are I would say can be as
famous in life as they are in death
whereas art your up your stock value
goes up after you die is that correct
right yeah also what’s up with that
well Picasso was highly celebrated in
life right right but there are some
great geniuses especially in the arts
that are not celebrated in their time I
think partly because science there’s
just an aha breakthroughs and then they
get proven right like there’s an eclipse
as you know that suddenly proves
Einstein’s general relativity is correct
right and it’s the headline they have on
your time it’s like you know lights it
was a black when the New York Times knew
how to write headlines but do you
remember this headline right I remember
we lights all askew in the heavens men
of science more or less agog Einstein’s
theory proven correct yeah yeah great
was a general theory relativity
demonstrated by the 1919 total solar
eclipse eclipses are pretty common by
the way you didn’t
know that and the theory had just been
published in 1916
so it was experimentally verified within
three years first of all I’ll give the
advice that I the whole book is about
and the whole theme is cross disciplines
don’t just major people say you got a
major in coding you have to know how to
code to the future no machines will code
for us but the creativity connected to
the code is what we will do so I would
always try to do a dual major which
would be music in physics or art and
mathematics or something like that
and I think the big problem we have in
our education system is by the time
somebody’s 19 it’s like what are you
gonna major in what are you gonna
specialize in instead of and this is
even worse in England where I did my
graduate work you have to specialize and
I would say for heaven’s sake do a dual
major that has one of the humanities or
arts and one of the hard sciences and by
the way I will now having preach to the
choir get a few boos by saying
scientists like Neil a much more open to
the beauty of art but when I talk to
people to hell we need arts education we
don’t need stem we need steam you know I
really can’t stand people who don’t
understand the difference we Mack Beth
and King Lear and then I say yeah you’re
right we do need that do you know the
difference between a transistor and a
resistor do you know how a logical
circuit using on-off switches does
boolean algebra now look at me and say
oh no I don’t do bad I don’t do science
so we from a humanities background have
also got to move to the intersection I
add there that my college program major
my undergraduate degrees in physics the
PhD is and what’s in astrophysics half
of all the courses I took were not in
the sciences or math
and I’d say the most influential on me
was a an Art and Design course that I
took that changed how I saw the world
well you know that I’m saying that
trouble with astrophysics meaning after
does general relativity he can’t believe
there would be black holes he can’t
believe it interfered with his right
everybody can’t believe that the
universe would expand all the things
that are the Astrophysical consequences
of general relativity and when he was
stymied by that he said he pulled out
his violin and played Mozart because it
connected him to the harmonies of the
spheres harmonious Mundi will say of
Einstein that he was much more of a
theorist than a practitioner but the
question is a good one
Leonardo for all he wanted to be thought
of as an engineer who had a major impact
on the diversion of rivers and all that
in the end despite what he wanted his
huge impact is transforming art it is
making and on a two-dimensional plane a
scene that looks three-dimensional doing
what Neal said which is taking a
theatrical production and then making
the last supper not just a moment but a
moment that begins as a narrative with
Jesus saying one of you shall betray me
you see it rippling out to the next set
of apostles is it I Lord is rippling out
to the end finally he that dip at this
hand you see Judas doing it and finally
the institution of the Eucharist well
you know where he’s reaching for the
bread and wine
so you see him creating three
dimensionality on a plain understanding
sharp lines are not the way you do that
and understanding that even a Mona Lisa
even a still portrait can actually be a
drama that changes and becomes a
narrative yeah I’ll add to that that
it’s why for example as brilliant as the
Leonardo was Isaac Newton had far more
impact on civilization because the
physics that he invented shaped how we
actually
do things physically cities machines and
it laid the groundwork for the
Industrial Revolution so I’ll be
interesting to know if if Leonardo came
up who came about during the industrial
revolution then his sort of engineering
ideas might have taken his engineering
ideas or instituted a hundred or two
hundred years later yeah I mean so many
of the things he sketched out and that’s
of joy and the beauty of connecting
fantasy with observation is that
eventually reality catches up with your
fascination yeah yeah a couple more
questions and we’ll get another one from
up top if we’ve got one yes I’m somewhat
surprised there was no mention of music
at all with all his interest in art did
they have any involvement yeah he
there’s a whole chapter on music in the
book and other things when I said he
went to Milan he went as part of a
cultural delegation because Florence
didn’t have a great army so its
influence was soft power basically
sending out its artists its architects
in Plymouth
so there’s a delegation led by a
playwright from the mataji’s with about
30 people and Leonardo goes as a
musician because he’s invented four or
five new musical instruments one of
which is called the lira de bracha which
is bel like a violin but he shaped it
like a horse’s head and so he brought
that with his companion he was part of
the delegation and in there I show his
understanding of waves which you know is
what you write about so often whether
it’s water waves or light waves or sound
waves or whatever
he understood sound waves so well that
one of his great inventions that still
hasn’t really been produced was a
keyboard instrument that made it sound
through strings in other words like a
violin it had revolving strings but you
presto so you had the flexibility of a
keyboard but the tonal quality of
strings so there’s a lot on music in the
book but
music is one of the sciences he loved
indeed indeed let’s take one more
question up top and one down here and
we’ll call it a night yes hi good
evening
what can be done in the education system
for young children young students to be
more creative well I do think whether it
was both Einstein who ran away from the
gymnasium in Germany which made him
learn by rote or Leonardo it helped that
they had a visual education that they
were taught to be clear gymnasium in
yeah Germany is an educational things
two dishes one of the gym auditorium
that would know that yeah
and so what Leonardo was able to do even
when he’s doing vitruvian man as I said
it’s sort of it’s not clicking now but
the circle and the square he would see a
mathematical problem and could visualize
it geometrically
I think visual thinking is under taught
in our schools secondly creativity
coming from imagination and fantasy as
opposed to having to learn the math and
the English language arts by Road for a
variety of reasons is underdone in our
school system so allowing people to
create and invent and I guess the third
thing it’s a theme of the innovators but
also here is collaboration both at
school level and at university is not
generally taught in fact we had a name
for it when I was growing up it was
called cheating but what you should be
allowed to do is not do your homework
but be part of a team that does homework
together because that’s how life works
it works through collaboration so I’ll
join me in thanking Walter Isaacson walk you
written a zillion books you’ve only
written a few books but they have such
presence on the lists on the bestseller
list in our awareness its shapes
conversation that people have and the
beautiful thing about them is they all
have something in common they have sort
of it’s an anatomy of innovation and
genius but this particular set are
people who have have a have connected in
their own lives and in their own
creativity lines of science with lines
of art and so if I can just understand
from you what motivated you to make this
kind of your latter day mission in life
to explore these characters for our
benefit well you do that as well and I
think one of the important things is you
know if you’re at the 92nd Street Y or
Time magazine you meet a lot of smart
people and if you’ve realised smart
people are a dime a dozen they don’t
usually amount to much it’s creative
people and so I wanted to do what is
creativity and how do you achieve it and
to me the essence of it is being able to
love all disciplines like you know you
with science and art and so I look at
people who stand at that intersection
which obviously Ben Franklin did but
especially when I did Steve Jobs he
would always end his product
presentation with that slide of the arts
connecting to the sciences and say
that’s what creativity occurs and then
the ultimate of that and the real symbol
of that is Vitruvian Man which is a
great work of science and a great work
of art and so I decided to the capstone
of these books would be the self-taught
guy I mean you know you talk about
Einstein a lot in your latest book I did
it
whenever maybe you will but we’re never
quite gonna be like Einstein I mean he
had a processing power that was almost
as if touch by lightning Leonardo
was born out of wedlock didn’t go to
school had trouble with math but he’s so
observant and so curious that’s what
made him a genius so I let me reaffirm a
statement you just made that however
rare a smart person might be in your
life in the world smart people are
actually not uncommon and it takes an
extra spark beyond that to shape the
world and to innovate the world because
the person should get straight A’s
they’re not necessarily and in fact I
would say most of the time are not the
people who actually make the difference
in this world it’s a curious interesting
they’re the ones who write the
biographies and the people
[Laughter]
[Music]
so just to just to reiterate that we’ve
got of your biographies you’ve got Ben
Franklin one of my favorite characters
who’s under celebrated as a scientist we
think of him as a doddering old dude
flying a kite in the rain yeah those
electricity experiments as you know but
most the audience may not are the most
important experimental and then
theoretical when it comes to the single
fluid theory of electricity he would
have thought you were a Luddite or you
know a Philistine if you didn’t know
science but nowadays as you’ve done with
your books people who know the Arts and
Humanities often feel intimidated by
science and Ben Franklin was somebody
who thought that was crazy
you’re supposed to combine science with
humanities and he was as famous if not
more famous as a scientist across Europe
than he was a diplomat lightning from
the skies as courtesan when he goes to
France you know they turn out on the
streets to watch him make the
progression as the Ambassador not
because he’s a famous diplomat but
because he has snatched lightning from
the gods he is discovered lightning rod
now my mic my only regret about him no
it’s not a grant I’m just something I’m
pissed off about yeah so we’ve got them
on our money all right so if you didn’t
know he’s on our currency you just have
to work harder because your dollar bill
right okay he’s on the hundred dollar
bill and you look on both sides and
there is no iconography of his
scientific interest as there would be
for any other scientist that’s on a bill
historically throughout Europe before
the the Euro came in yet science as you
know the first euro what it was on it
because they kept fighting they could of
course vitruvian man Oh first yes very
nice so Leonardo
yeah Leonardo yes the one thing they can
all agree oh you’ve got it yeah there we
go
uh-huh that’s not a euro that’s actually
his notebook
so let’s let’s get to let’s get to
Leonardo so so he was and I’m Casco give
me the the list of things that the total
misfit misfit you know and you remember
Steve Jobs is wonderful line here’s to
The Misfits the rebels the round pegs in
the square holes
Leonardo was born out-of-wedlock didn’t
go to school was gay left-handed
somewhat heretical vegetarian and yet in
Florence
he’s totally embraced and this is
something a lesson we have to learn is
that at that time in the fourteen 70s in
Florence with the Medici running things
it was a republic that was so tolerant
of people coming from the Arab world
after the fall of Constantinople people
from Africa people from all over people
of different religious as well you know
the Reformation is a starting to bubble
up in a way and so Leonardo wearing pink
and purple short tunics which is a good
looking I have to process this
everything you listed about his misfit
ax tude could have gotten him burned at
the stake in some place in the world in
some time throughout history he did get
arrested for sodomy
fortunately among the four people
arrested it was a member of the Medici
family so boom things are slightly
corrupt then if you listen if you get
arrested get arrested with someone rich
right does it I think people already
know you’re preaching to the choir but I
will say to not get political on it but
you put it was a time of great tolerance
was why you have great creativity but
sometimes you backslide and Savonarola
comes in in the 1490s with the bonfire
of the vanities and they start burning
at the stake gays and others the good
news is it lasted less than four years
and he was and gotten rid of but we all
know what it’s like to backslide
from an era of Tolerance so I as an
educator and people who have kids in
school or anyone who’s thought about it
at all one of the deep questions we
Harbor is are you born innovative or is
it something that can be taught or
something that we don’t know how to
teach and we still need to figure it out
and so do you you must have insights
yeah I believe and the theme of this
book is mainly that you don’t have to be
born that way
Leonardo by not having been sent to
school and then you know infused with
the scholastic you know medieval stuff
they were teaching in schools makes a
list every week in his notebook of
things he wants to learn and he does it
out of pure curiosity as a little kid in
the village of Vinci and he just teaches
himself and he’ll say you know find out
why water swirls when it goes from a
larger to a smaller Channel why is the
sky blue
he does experiments with vapor and light
hey you know describe the tongue of a
woodpecker
who on earth wakes up in the morning
other than you and says I want to know
what the tongue of a woodpecker looks
like but it’s pure curiosity and then
observant he’d say look at the wings of
birds as they move up faster or down
faster when they take off these are all
things we can teach ourselves or at
least pledge not to hammer out of our
children which is curiosity for its own
sake daydream imagine fantasize and
observe so something I’ve said for a
while is you know we spend the first
years of our children’s lives teaching
them to walk and talk yeah and we spend
the rest of the lives telling to shut up
and sit down
and so this is not commensurate with the
absolutely but it’s true which is we
sometimes like you’ll quit asking
questions and Leonardo to his deathbed
to his last page you know you would know
the classical mathematical challenge of
squaring the circle you can’t do it yeah
yeah but as a little kid it’s coz pie is
a very irrational number and Neil can
explain it to you at some point but he
tries in his notebook as a young kid and
his last notebook paid he’s still using
right triangles shading things to trying
to square the circle because nobody ever
said hey you know quit asking questions
so I so there are two elements of this
that I want to make sure people
recognize there’s being curious but the
combination of being curious and being
observant oh man oh my god that’s that’s
where you take off so what you’re saying
is his his mind was nurtured so you
can’t say it was just born doing this he
was simply curious and observant and
that that recipe age can drive and if
it’s insatiable oh my gosh there is no
limit and we have 7,000 pages or more of
his note I thought you described in the
length of this book no no no sorry
actually sure I died heavy stock paper
because I I want to give a plug to Simon
& Schuster okay which was I said look
this is a big one to finally put it on a
tee pound stock pure white coded we can
afford it and keep it the same price and
now the book weighs 80 pounds yeah you
have cut you have color imagery
throughout yes it’s not one of the and
so every now and then it was like
learning from Leonardo how do you just
try to make it perfect now I know the
books not perfect but even the fonts and
the paper
so Simon Shuster deserves
one of the editors Stuart Roberts is in
the audience you Madame Arlena so I want
to make sure they get their shout out
but going back to your observant thing
on these notebook pages you just watch a
mine dancing across nature well he’s
trying to figure out okay how does a
bubble set of bubbles affect the swirl
when something comes up let me observe
it he says one of his notebook entries
is go down to the moat near the castle
and looked at four winged dragon flies
to see if their wings alternate or go up
and down in unison and he observes it
now the cool thing about it is every one
of these things is something you and I
can observe so when I’m walking here I
try now to do that little pause as if we
were still in our Wonder Years before
people beat it out of us to say why does
the light hitting a shiny object have a
glitter and a Glen but it moves
differently than the shadow moves when
you move your head this is something
Leonardo observed he observed when he’s
discectomy human face to do the Mona
Lisa smile well at the bottom the fact
that that’s even a thing to think to do
he dissected 30s women face so to draw
face so let me deceptive urse face every
muscle thinks this because he drilled
down and did it partly because it was
useful he needed to smile but then he’d
rose down and he’s like doing the spinal
cord and the nervous system and
everything you don’t need that to paint
the Mona Lisa smile but you do need it
if you’re Leonardo so how does he gain
access to dead bodies there was a
tolerance as I said both in Florence and
later in Milan with the church which it
banned autopsies in two sections the
church is not as strict then I mean the
Pope has a son Caesar Borgia so you can
tell they’re not exactly strict the way
it was and so they start for a period
those Jews in the audience
folks are supposed to be celibate hope
is should be the most celibate
Catholic in yeah and the Medici Pope
were not popes were not and so they do
allow two sections both in the hospital
the hospital in Florence and then in
Milan he works every night in the
basement and he does something that you
would really appreciate which is the
visual display of information he’s a
person who not only figures out how the
heart valve works but I mean here’s just
one I mean this is not a bad visual
display of information the fetus in the
womb and so he does deceptions but he
also combines them with art so up till
now we’ve only really been describing
what in modern times we might call a
naturalist someone who observes nature
is curious about it they might sketch it
but that alone doesn’t make you an
artist so what came first or did what
did they both develop
yeah in tandem the art in him and the
science in him and the engineer right
all right science and engineering all
the brushstrokes of the beauties of
nature and at a certain point when I’m
at Windsor Castle where some of his
notebooks are looking at the swirls he
does called the deluge drawing I said to
the curator there do you think he did
that initially as a work of art or is
the work of science the same question
you ask as only a curator at Windsor
Castle can do he raised himself until
his full glory of five feet four and
looked down upon me and said I do not
think that Leonardo would have made that
distinction and that’s what sort of
occurred to me is that nature in all of
its forms is Vitruvian Man a work of
science a work of art or work of man
Leonardo felt it was all together so it
is our
dare I say frailty of mind to even ask
that question presuming everything was
compartmentalized and then he physically
connects them when he makes no
distinction whatsoever right we silo
things we have departments in university
you get in the Department of
astrophysics and unlike Einstein you
don’t also get taught music at the same
time or maybe you know most people dumb
and it’s the people who do not silo
knowledge and you see the patterns
across nature that’s another part of
creativity I in my field we were one of
the earliest out-of-the-box to try to
cross pollinate not so much art in
science but one silo of science to
another silo science so NASA in the
1990s created the origins project which
was not here’s this science we have
funding for that science its origins
so because the question area how do how
was earth formed well you need the
astrophysicist the geologists there’s
the biologists where life is making its
footprint and so that forced
collaborations that created whole new
journals journals of sort of
astrobiology journals of astrogeology
and so that’s that’s an attempt to
accomplish what we really have to be
more cross-disciplinary and not thinking
let’s talk let’s talk about Leonardo’s
sort of engineering because this is a
under-recognized
element of his background in his
notebooks they’re drawings of all kinds
of machines and I don’t did they make
these did somebody now a lot of them of
fantasy and one of the things I
discovered them the notebooks is that
his early main job was as a theater and
spectacle producer for the Medici in
other words he did the mechanics the
scenery the art because this was a
like joseph papp was a big deal when we
were growing up to have public
spectacles
so that helicopter that you know that
aerial screw that’s very famous i
discovered it wasn’t initially to
transport humans it was to bring angels
down from the rafters in a performance
of don i you a play that they were
putting oh but then being leonardo it’s
like let me blur the line between
imagination and reality let me indulge
fantasy until he says okay let me try to
make human powered flying machines and
so that’s another secret of leonardo
another thing we hammer out of our kids
which is indulge fantasy yeah and i
don’t know who has not seen that image
it’s a it has it’s a corkscrew spinning
not so much propellers but imagine a
corkscrew made large and this if it
spins you knew air would be shifted down
or up depending on which way you turned
it and that’s covers a lot on
aerodynamics because of it and even
discovers you know that what we call
Bernoulli’s principle or you call
Bernoulli’s principle which is that of
air is flowing over a curve son is
moving fast and so the air pressures
less and it lifts that’s how the aerial
screw works and he discovers it but it’s
really cool because he loves patterns
across nature and he discovers that
water cannot be compressed
even though air can be so that doesn’t
work for fish swimming so he puts it his
notebook why do fish swim faster in
water than birds fly in air because
water is heavier and he goes on to
observe this principle so these are
things that normally we don’t stop to
notice but he does not you mentioned
Bernoulli let me still do a quick demo
here for everyone okay so these are my
notes that shouldn’t or no that’s right
all right we seem to be flying fine
without so this sheet of paper is is
curved over so if I blow air across it
you think it would just keep pushing it
down and then what if you do that
no it flaps up because the air pressure
is less so there’s lower air pressure
above and higher below and on an
airplane this is why you can fly one of
several reasons and you see that fluid
dynamics and hydraulics and everything
he does including it all comes together
in the Mona Lisa the dissection of the
eye to figure out optics the lips and
mouth but also the flow of the river and
how it curves and goes into her there
people who have written about Leonardo
including the great Kenneth Clark who
wrote about him last century yeah it was
an art critic who said if he hadn’t
wasted so much time doing geology and
aerodynamics and optics he could have
painted more paintings and I think the
Mona Lisa a bit a great painter yeah I
didn’t yeah but the Mona Lisa answers
with a smile because just knowing the
flow the fluid dynamics I think is so
key it starts when he’s a young kid he’s
working for parochial he doesn’t work
Viroqua who’s a said it like we yeah
Pinocchio Pinocchio runs a shop in
Florence that makes a copper ball for
the top of the dome on the Florence
Cathedral but the you know famous dome
but he does art he does pageants he does
costumes he does props that was a cool
thing about Florence is it didn’t say
you’re an artist your jewelry maker
Verrocchio’s trained as a gold bead or a
jewelry maker and you’re an engineer
they all kind of worked in these do it
all shops and Leonardo among other
things besides soldering the ball that’s
on top of Brunelleschi’s dome on the
Cathedral he does the river in the
baptism of Christ he’s like 12 years old
and you see the ripples doing exactly
right scientifically these would be
Eddie’s that come if you come around
yeah the eddies and that’s when he
discovers his most important scientific
discovery was in an atom
which is the heart valve and this is
just huge people thought that the heart
valve pumped up and down because the
blood would come out of the heart push
it open and then the pressure would push
it down
he has his Eddie’s that he’s learned as
a kid invention he said no it would
crumble if that were the case the reason
is when it goes into the aortic valve
I’m the aorta it’s smaller so it forms
the Eddie and the Eddie spreads out the
membrane this is what happens when you
can both do the Mona Lisa and discover
how a heart valve works so now I’m a
little worried because how would you
know what moving blood does in a heart
he dissected many times versus live no
live Pig oh right okay because he does
sexy human heart right definitely were I
mean here’s some of his spiralling
drawings but in his second round of
anatomy he realizes that he’s got to you
know figure out the heart but he’s got
to figure out the fluid in it and so he
does their live pigs which by the way I
mean you’re an artist you’re Leonardo da
Vinci you’re wearing all these purple
and pink tunics and stuff and yet at
night you’re butchering live pigs to
figure out how the heart works this is
when you get very very curious you know
you’re so you know and of course the the
word for that is in biologists
vivisection yeah you can’t hear but this
is the heart valve discovery it shows
that the turning of the fluids moving
the membrane he described in his mirror
script how he said and then he even
shows you how to do a glass experiment
using grass seeds to prove it right so
you can follow where the seeds go right
and they only totally proved incorrect
about 30 years ago using iodine and mr
magnetic resonance imaging it’s saying
yes it flows that way but why no Walter
nobody can see these pictures I know but
there are hundreds I mean they have to
buy the whole yeah you gotta buy
the book or I can put him up but I’ll
show you one other sweet thing which you
can’t really see on the I told you it
was gay and he has a sleep what’s the
best evidence I guess he was arrested
for sodomy
no buts all I mean with reactions I mean
he’s quite open about it he draws
pictures of Sol al the time saw like
coming to a dinner parties and in any
later in life
Mel C is his companion but he has two
very upfront companions but on the
fifteenth page of heart drawings where
he finally gets it right he gets to the
last note and he draws a heart one more
time and he’s human his mind wanders and
there’s another sketch of Sol lying he
draws it to show the heart inside his
boyfriend so he this tale works better
than when I tried it in some other
cities and you’re going you’re Florence
I’ve been to places that were Rome so he
sounds like he was a little bit ad D you
know he was very distracted and he’d hop
around to many things but he was also
deeply focused I mean that’s young dr.
Ryan but he’s very compulsive in terms
of squaring the circle I mean in the
book there’s just page after page of
notebooks two hundred and thirty times
he’s trying to do it
the proportions of man that he does for
vitruvian man were just obsessive he
also is depressed at times and he does
his dough use drawings and tells the
heart tales about it and he’s elated
somewhat manic and whatever very
friendly people say was the autistic
well no he had a huge number of very
close friends very personable and
understanding people’s gestures but I do
fear because people always ask these
questions that if he were alive today we
would pull down that diagnostic manual
or whatever and put also it two three
and four letter OCD a DD ADHD on him and
probably put them on a pharmaceutical
regiment
and so that would get rid of his ad D
and his depression and all these things
and we get rid of the Mona Lisa and we
get rid of the Mona Lisa and interesting
if we if we know from this evidence
circumstantial and otherwise that he
would not have been on the autism
spectrum because most of that spectrum
would not involve eye contact with
another human being
Gordon le goodnight by the way so with
Mona Lisa way we real quick look up
there
that’s a self-portrait that’s him and
the eye contact is something that’s
pretty intense and so and of course if
you’ve never done this it’s spooky you
get even just a reproduction of the Mona
Lisa and just walk past it and her eyes
follow you as you go by yeah just do
just call the Mona Lisa fact and let’s
go yeah yeah and it’s because the way
the shadows work he understands optics
and shadows but if I can everybody get
up and just walk ahead around and you’ll
see I’ll show you if you don’t mind one
more thing that’s even more interesting
scientifically we spend at least a
minute on the Mona Lisa here right
that’s what I’m gonna do here okay which
is besides the eyes which I have a whole
section on the book of why they move
he had dissected the lips as I told you
right where he the human cadavers and
does every muscle and every nerve that
touches the lips so it’s very
scientifically accurate but he had also
decided the human eye and figured out
that at the very center of the retina
the cones and fovea see black and white
detail which is something that’s true
he’s got to write but the edges of the
retina see colors in shadow so if you’re
looking directly at something you see
the detail but if something’s coming out
of the corner of your eye you see the
shadow so for 16 years he paints a smile
with more than 200 layers of glaze
perfect and if you look really close at
the smile and I thought you know you can
see close up in the book the the corners
of the lip turn down slightly but the
shadows and colors turn up so if you
stare directly at her she said
is not quite smiling it’s more
mysterious but as your eye wanders to
her forehead or cheek or chin suddenly
the smile lights up because you’re
catching it in a different part of your
retina so it’s just an example of how
the science makes the smile interactive
although says if it does you know
virtual reality so so one point I’d take
this moment to make that there are some
who would argue that knowing the science
might subtract from someone’s art
because that would make it boring or
distractive and here is the example of
the now appealing for a scientifically
literate artist which would have no less
value to society as an artistically
literate scientist and so so to know all
of this he now has the power to capture
it beneath the layers of art that sit
above it so that it’s more real than
anything everyone anyone and that’s one
of the arguments of my book against the
Kenneth Clarke thesis which is had he
not to sect of the eye
had he not done the lips had he not
studied geology and understand how
rivers flow into roads flow into our
veins and that they have the exact same
curves as our veins you would not have
the Mona Lisa there is a painting in the
Louvre I forgot that I wrote it down I
don’t have it with me now you wore it up
and you’re no way on it no there’s a
cul-de-sac and there are trees
surrounding the cul-de-sac and there’s a
Sun in the sky
and all the shadows of the trees all
point into the center of the cul-de-sac
I’m thinking no this is not what shadows
do collect and so this is these are
people who just were not observant about
what they were painting and then I hear
with people who are sort of apologist
for them saying oh he probably did that
on purpose okay so every missing fact of
nature that you didn’t get right in your
painting somehow they did that on
purpose I’m not buying it okay let me go
to
no Monday on that point okay I’m at some
of you may know of Salvador Monday it’s
on display at Christie’s it’s gonna be
sold November 15th the only one in
private hands there’s a whole lot of
science here the way our eyes see it
back up so this is a painting confirmed
to have been confirmed only in the past
1012 years to have been an authentic
Leonardo we knew it existed it
disappeared in the 1700s because some
stupid British royal sold it to some
near too well nephew and we lost track
of it it was rediscovered and
authenticated as a Leonardo it is Dale
going on auction at Christie’s with a
hundred billion dollar minimum which is
very inexpensive for the only one of
Leonardo’s 15 finished paintings in
private hands but I’m now going to do a
piece of science on you first of all the
hand is sharp which he doesn’t usually
do sharp lines people thought that
couldn’t be Leonardo he never does sharp
lines I’ll look in the notebooks at the
very same time he’s doing this 1502 he’s
doing not just distance perspective but
acuity perspective which you would know
what it is sharpness per se which means
at a certain focal point lines are
actually sharp but if I’m looking at
something a little distance of it so it
makes it in photography that just be the
depth of field correct so depth of field
buds what is your your plane of
attention right focus and so what he’s
doing there is making it something look
three-dimensional
on a two-dimensional plane but here’s
the thing you should look at cuz you’re
a scientist a crystal orb with the
inclusions exactly right the three
inclusions perfect crystal but what’s
odd about it it doesn’t distort the
robes of Jesus Christ as you know any
lens any object if you take a goblet of
water and you put your finger behind it
you’ll see it distorted and inverted
sometimes so this gets to your question
of why did Leonardo get it
painted incorrectly the way nature would
not have it and my answer just be it’s
Jesus that’s the right answer and that
is the answer I come to which is that
three possibilities one is that he
didn’t know it just made him insane no
he came out no he’s done his optics
experiments he’s studied crystal he’s
doing lenses because he wants to focus
sunlight in order to be soldering irons
and to be weapon so we know he knows the
other is that he knows but it would be
too distracting the way there’s some
fakery in the Last Supper like
everybody’s on the same side of the
table that’s not the way we usually have
dinner parties right so he knows
everybody in the Last Supper is like
yeah dramatically why why dramatically
because he’s a theater producer and he’s
producing it as a dramatic narrative but
to get to this the second explanation is
it’s too distracting he knows it would
distort but decides not to do it because
then you wouldn’t even look at the face
of Jesus you know but goodness what’s
happened to the road the third
explanation is the one you just gave
which is this is salvador monday christ
as savior of the world and he knows that
it would distort and he knows some of
his viewers would know but he’s
imparting to salvador monday a savior of
the world the miraculous quality of
nothing he touches as distorted as the
Bible tells us and he’s showing it’s a
miracle and I think that’s the
explanation that you get yeah given
everything else we know he knows yeah
nobody was curious about there’s no way
that was an accident
correct that that happened that way for
sure so this is going for for how much
and the man when there’s a hundred yeah
million honestly there are people look
with all there are people in this zip
code
they’ve spent as much on a yacht yeah
yeah you could buy this painting have be
the only private owner of a Leonardo you
can put it on permanent display at the
Met which they would very much love and
there are people whose names are
mentioned because I’ve talked to them
because they’ve called me because I’m
you know we’ll have a whole I didn’t
know it was gonna go on sale but I have
a whole part of this book cuz it’s so
much science and aren’t connected whose
names you would know and who zip code
you live in who are thinking of going up
to at least 150 million trying to bid
for this I display now as a pre auction
on Monday ed Christie’s on 51st Street
opening at 9:00 a.m. the public can come
see it
and it’s awesome oh you’ve already seen
it but you’re not the public
I say yes to that and it was actually in
Luke’s license of the mad here that I
won’t get into too much detail but was
one of the people authenticated it was
in the 2011-2012 show at the in the
National Gallery in London where I first
saw it and that’s when it was first off
first to be authenticated you have to
have a major show that puts you in and
that’s like Good Housekeeping stamp so
before we end this and continue on with
questions from the audience could you
just comment on Leonardo’s capacity
either written or in practice two or is
his inventiveness with military
machinery catapults this sort of thing
when he just give us some reflections on
that what he turns 30 an unnerving
milestone in our lives if we can
remember it
he has messed up two paintings that he
hasn’t finished adoration of the Magi
insane to realm that his father the
notary
had notarized the contract so he decides
I gotta get out of here
so he moves to Milan and he writes an
amazing job application letter to the
Duke of Milan it’s 11 paragraphs long
thank God we have it in his notebook
this is resume basically yeah and it’s
well it’s a his dream resume it’s
slightly fantasy like everything
Leonardo does paragraphs or engineering
I can make weapons of war I can make the
cross
those that would destroy I can make
fortresses that are impregnable I can
divert the course of rivers they think
of diverting the Arno to defeat Pisa I
can you know all these engineering
things only in paragraph 11 does he say
I can also paint so he thinks of himself
as a military engineer and for reasons
that I’ll let psychologists try to
figure out I have some speculation he
really decides that’s what he wants to
do in his thirties for a while now he
makes a lot of big military drawings
tanks crossbows all those with all due
respect to Leonardo and I love them as
fantasies they stretched things that
would not be built for another hundred
or two hundred years so he was not a
great military engineer he did do one
huge thing in military thing and you’ve
seen it a bit because of our defense
innovation board if you went to Fort
Meade or the defense mapping agency
Leonardo and they seen that DiCaprio who
bought the rights of this should put in
the movie is holed up in the win over
1503 in the tiny town of Imola
with Nicolo Machiavelli and Caesar
Borgia they’re both working for the
warlord Caesar Borgia and Leonardo has
Sol ie
his companion chase off every one of the
streets 15 blocks tiny town and look at
him and he does it with them and he does
an aerial map almost directly aerial
view but maybe a five degrees skew so
you can see the three dimensionality of
it and as Machiavelli writes in the
prints which is about Caesar Borgia and
that winter he won not by weaponry but
by surprise he always knew where he was
and the enemy was better than anybody
else on the battlefield so what Leonardo
does by doing this notion of a map there
were no drones or blimps or
balloons back then so he has to imagine
what it looks like from the air that’s
actually a huge military step forward
which is we’ve seen on the defense
innovation board you go to the mapping
agency it looks like that Imola map so
so many things that he would do that we
take for granted today but somebody had
to do them first yeah and there and it
has to combine as we started this
conversation with imagination and
observation and just to give sort of one
allow you to sort of wrap this in a bow
you can imagine not to put words in your
mouth but I presume you can imagine he
being born at a different time in a
different place and none of this would
have been nurtured so could you sort of
take us out before we go to kill a on
reflecting what kind of an environment
like is a necessary condition for this
to happen at all right the environment
of creativity is such an important topic
and it’s not my dwelling in this book as
I said Florence was just the right place
had the tolerance had different people
coming in from places and all of a
sudden had big shops that were doing
everything from soldering the copper
ball to drawing you know painting the
baptism of Christ so people with
different ideas are coming in and not
being criticized for having different I
think they’re being celebrated for them
and they’re sometimes not from the upper
classes going to university they’re
self-taught what happens in 1452 when
leonardo and christopher colombus are
born in the fall of Constantinople to
bring the Arab wisdom of math to Italy
is Gutenberg opens his first print shop
so we start seeing Leonardo’s notebooks
as the astronomer so-and-so had a
measure of the Sun and then by the
ptolemy translation at the stationers by
the bridge so you have a confluence of
tolerance and innovation you see that at
other times 500 years
to the day almost later you see in the
bay area of California huge tolerance
free speech movements electric kool-aid
acid test but also three inventions
occurring the computer the microchip and
the network the internet all come
together to have another time when
people can find out what they want and
do what they want so you have to sort of
nurture these times of creativity and
especially in Manhattan now where the
next wave will be on health and biotech
as well as Big Data
how will you nurture that to this city
remains the you know cradle of
creativity it’s amazing how much time
energy and laws we spend silencing
people who were just simply different
and with different views and when you
don’t you get Florence and OH
Renaissance yeah beautiful all right so
let’s let’s we can bring the house
lights up a bit and we have someone up
top we didn’t forget you guys up in the
in the bleachers and so if you have a
question for for Sir Walter and and
while they’re finding you we’ll go up
front here just what did you did I hear
you correctly that Leonardo DiCaprio
yeah bought what I I know I got read in
the papers and film rights to Leonardo
da Vinci and you know okay I hear that
right
that’s all good hoping you’ll play book
very good a front row here sir thank you
um that’s all right well yeah this speak
love there we go
Walter I you’ve written some great
biographies and others like McCullough
written some good ones too as you think
about that bookshelf of great people
that need to be written about whether or
not you write the next one who needs to
be on that shelf well on contemporary
people I think they’re very creative
people whose biographies haven’t been
done
thing though gates is one Jeff Bezos is
another people like that I don’t think
you are musk Elon Musk I think they’re
not quite ripe when I was when Steve
Jobs first called to ask me you know if
I do his book I kind of said you know
I’d done Ben Franklin Heinz Stein he
says do me next I’m onion but I said
I’ll wait 30 years until you retire and
then I got told that he was keeping in
secret but he had been diagnosed so I
don’t think I know my peril camps yeah
and so I don’t think those are ripe yet
I think in history lorenzo de melo Enzo
the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici I
became fascinated by and I don’t think
there’s a great I’ll get if this is
being tweeted out I’ll get some email
from somebody who’s written a biography
of him but I didn’t find one also there
are a lot of women I tried in the
innovators to begin and end with Ada
Lovelace Lord Byron’s daughter who
combines poetry and processors to come
up with the concept of a general-purpose
computer and she is a theme throughout
the book which is augmented intelligence
versus artificial intelligence I think
it she’d be a difficult biography
because she only won’t wrote one great
scientific paper there’s not like but I
think she would be a good biography
excellent another question over here it
seems like Einstein was famous during
his time and Franklin famous in France
anyway was Leonardo da Vinci famous very
much so
first of all he was a bit of a show
person he as I said wore you know fancy
dress and tunics and all when he’s doing
the Last Supper
it becomes news of 49 years it becomes a
public event people are going to the
monastery to the
he’s painting it it’s just on the wall
it’s on the wall to watch him paint
there’s huge lines when he gets back to
Florence and he’s just done st. Anne the
Madonna and Child drawing for what will
become a great painting and just to see
his preparatory drawing we’re told by
contemporaries that crowds there to see
it and I’ll just supplement that by
saying what might not be true always
among artists is essentially always true
among scientists that if you’re a great
scientist you’re famous in your day your
contributions are known in the moment
and particularly when they’re applied
and they changed Society so and
scientists are I would say can be as
famous in life as they are in death
whereas art your up your stock value
goes up after you die is that correct
right yeah also what’s up with that
well Picasso was highly celebrated in
life right right but there are some
great geniuses especially in the arts
that are not celebrated in their time I
think partly because science there’s
just an aha breakthroughs and then they
get proven right like there’s an eclipse
as you know that suddenly proves
Einstein’s general relativity is correct
right and it’s the headline they have on
your time it’s like you know lights it
was a black when the New York Times knew
how to write headlines but do you
remember this headline right I remember
we lights all askew in the heavens men
of science more or less agog Einstein’s
theory proven correct yeah yeah great
was a general theory relativity
demonstrated by the 1919 total solar
eclipse eclipses are pretty common by
the way you didn’t
know that and the theory had just been
published in 1916
so it was experimentally verified within
three years first of all I’ll give the
advice that I the whole book is about
and the whole theme is cross disciplines
don’t just major people say you got a
major in coding you have to know how to
code to the future no machines will code
for us but the creativity connected to
the code is what we will do so I would
always try to do a dual major which
would be music in physics or art and
mathematics or something like that
and I think the big problem we have in
our education system is by the time
somebody’s 19 it’s like what are you
gonna major in what are you gonna
specialize in instead of and this is
even worse in England where I did my
graduate work you have to specialize and
I would say for heaven’s sake do a dual
major that has one of the humanities or
arts and one of the hard sciences and by
the way I will now having preach to the
choir get a few boos by saying
scientists like Neil a much more open to
the beauty of art but when I talk to
people to hell we need arts education we
don’t need stem we need steam you know I
really can’t stand people who don’t
understand the difference we Mack Beth
and King Lear and then I say yeah you’re
right we do need that do you know the
difference between a transistor and a
resistor do you know how a logical
circuit using on-off switches does
boolean algebra now look at me and say
oh no I don’t do bad I don’t do science
so we from a humanities background have
also got to move to the intersection I
add there that my college program major
my undergraduate degrees in physics the
PhD is and what’s in astrophysics half
of all the courses I took were not in
the sciences or math
and I’d say the most influential on me
was a an Art and Design course that I
took that changed how I saw the world
well you know that I’m saying that
trouble with astrophysics meaning after
does general relativity he can’t believe
there would be black holes he can’t
believe it interfered with his right
everybody can’t believe that the
universe would expand all the things
that are the Astrophysical consequences
of general relativity and when he was
stymied by that he said he pulled out
his violin and played Mozart because it
connected him to the harmonies of the
spheres harmonious Mundi will say of
Einstein that he was much more of a
theorist than a practitioner but the
question is a good one
Leonardo for all he wanted to be thought
of as an engineer who had a major impact
on the diversion of rivers and all that
in the end despite what he wanted his
huge impact is transforming art it is
making and on a two-dimensional plane a
scene that looks three-dimensional doing
what Neal said which is taking a
theatrical production and then making
the last supper not just a moment but a
moment that begins as a narrative with
Jesus saying one of you shall betray me
you see it rippling out to the next set
of apostles is it I Lord is rippling out
to the end finally he that dip at this
hand you see Judas doing it and finally
the institution of the Eucharist well
you know where he’s reaching for the
bread and wine
so you see him creating three
dimensionality on a plain understanding
sharp lines are not the way you do that
and understanding that even a Mona Lisa
even a still portrait can actually be a
drama that changes and becomes a
narrative yeah I’ll add to that that
it’s why for example as brilliant as the
Leonardo was Isaac Newton had far more
impact on civilization because the
physics that he invented shaped how we
actually
do things physically cities machines and
it laid the groundwork for the
Industrial Revolution so I’ll be
interesting to know if if Leonardo came
up who came about during the industrial
revolution then his sort of engineering
ideas might have taken his engineering
ideas or instituted a hundred or two
hundred years later yeah I mean so many
of the things he sketched out and that’s
of joy and the beauty of connecting
fantasy with observation is that
eventually reality catches up with your
fascination yeah yeah a couple more
questions and we’ll get another one from
up top if we’ve got one yes I’m somewhat
surprised there was no mention of music
at all with all his interest in art did
they have any involvement yeah he
there’s a whole chapter on music in the
book and other things when I said he
went to Milan he went as part of a
cultural delegation because Florence
didn’t have a great army so its
influence was soft power basically
sending out its artists its architects
in Plymouth
so there’s a delegation led by a
playwright from the mataji’s with about
30 people and Leonardo goes as a
musician because he’s invented four or
five new musical instruments one of
which is called the lira de bracha which
is bel like a violin but he shaped it
like a horse’s head and so he brought
that with his companion he was part of
the delegation and in there I show his
understanding of waves which you know is
what you write about so often whether
it’s water waves or light waves or sound
waves or whatever
he understood sound waves so well that
one of his great inventions that still
hasn’t really been produced was a
keyboard instrument that made it sound
through strings in other words like a
violin it had revolving strings but you
presto so you had the flexibility of a
keyboard but the tonal quality of
strings so there’s a lot on music in the
book but
music is one of the sciences he loved
indeed indeed let’s take one more
question up top and one down here and
we’ll call it a night yes hi good
evening
what can be done in the education system
for young children young students to be
more creative well I do think whether it
was both Einstein who ran away from the
gymnasium in Germany which made him
learn by rote or Leonardo it helped that
they had a visual education that they
were taught to be clear gymnasium in
yeah Germany is an educational things
two dishes one of the gym auditorium
that would know that yeah
and so what Leonardo was able to do even
when he’s doing vitruvian man as I said
it’s sort of it’s not clicking now but
the circle and the square he would see a
mathematical problem and could visualize
it geometrically
I think visual thinking is under taught
in our schools secondly creativity
coming from imagination and fantasy as
opposed to having to learn the math and
the English language arts by Road for a
variety of reasons is underdone in our
school system so allowing people to
create and invent and I guess the third
thing it’s a theme of the innovators but
also here is collaboration both at
school level and at university is not
generally taught in fact we had a name
for it when I was growing up it was
called cheating but what you should be
allowed to do is not do your homework
but be part of a team that does homework
together because that’s how life works
it works through collaboration so I’ll
join me in thanking Walter Isaacson walk you
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