@gallaugher this quote stood out to me reading “Making Of The Atomic Bomb”, Richard Rhode., 1986. P 142.

“A psychological examination of scientists at Berkeley, using Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Tests as well as interviews, included six physicists and twelve chemists in a total group of forty. It found that scientists think about problems in much the same way artists do.

Scientists and artists proved less similar in personality than in cognition, but both groups were similarly different from businessmen. Dramatically and significantly, almost half the scientists in this study reported themselves to have been fatherless as children, “their fathers dying early, or working away from home, or remaining so aloof and nonsupportive that their sons scarcely knew them.”

Those scientists who grew up with living fathers described them as “rigid, stern, aloof, and emotionally reserved.” (A group of artists previously studied was similarly fatherless; a group of businessmen was not.)

Often fatherless and “shy, lonely,” writes the psychometrician Lewis M. Terman, “slow in social development, indifferent to close personal relationships, group activities or politics,” these highly intelligent young men found their way into science through a more personal discovery than the regularly reported pleasure of independent research. Guiding that research was usually a fatherly science teacher. Of the qualities that distinguished this mentor in the minds of his students, not teaching ability but “masterfulness, warmth and professional dignity” ranked first.

One study of two hundred of these mentors concludes: “It would appear that the success of such teachers rests mainly upon their capacity to assume a father role to their students.” The fatherless young man finds a masterful surrogate father of warmth and dignity, identifies with him and proceeds to emulate him. In a later stage of this process the independent scientist works toward becoming a mentor of historic stature himself.” — Richard Rhodes, “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb”

< https://archive.org/details/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-z-lib.org-1/The%20making%20of%20the%20atomic%20bomb%20by%20Richard%20Rhodes%20%28z-lib.org%29%20%281%29/page/142/mode/2up?q=Fathers>

cc @Ruth_Mottram