Are you ridiculed?

If your ideas do not create ripples, then chances are that the ideas are flat in the first place. But, and this is very important, if the ideas are ridiculed AND you believe that your ideas make sense, there are chances that you have hit jackpot.

Here are a few names and ideas from history that should give you the courage to think beyond ridicule.

German geophysicist, Alfred Wegener. First proposed the Continental Drift Theory in 1912. He was ridiculed till the 1960s. Who would have believed that India was in the southern hemisphere and moved all the way to the north to slam into Asia to give rise to the Himalayas.

S Chandrasekhar. His thesis that predicted black holes was roundly criticized by his own guide. His predictions now go by the name 'Chandrasekhar Limit'. He received the Nobel prize 50 years after he first proposed the theory.

Karl Frederich Gauss, the prince of mathematics, did not dare publish his work on non-Euclidean geometry for the fear of ridicule. There are now three types of geometry (including Euclidean) that are correct and internally consistent. It is said that universe follows non-Euclidean geometry.

Hmmm.... Did someone laugh at you today?

Picture courtesy: Svilen Mushkatov