Collections · 5 files
Brilliant, then broken
They changed the world. The world did not thank them.
Bankrupt, prosecuted, stripped of their clearance, or simply gone: these inventors and scientists did their greatest work and then lost almost everything.
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Nikola Tesla
He Lit Up the World… and Died Broke
He died alone in room 3327 of the Hotel New Yorker in 1943, effectively bankrupt.
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Alan Turing
He Helped Win WW2. Then Britain Arrested Him.
For much of the war he led Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, which broke German naval Enigma. In 1952 he was prosecuted because of a relationship with a man.
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
He Built the Bomb. His Country Turned Against Him.
After a security hearing in 1954 his clearance was revoked. The decision was only vacated in 2022.
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Rosalind Franklin
They Stole Her Photo to Discover DNA
Her Photo 51 was shown to James Watson without her permission. She died at 37, before the Nobel Prize for DNA was awarded.
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Rudolf Diesel
The Inventor Who Vanished at Sea
He disappeared from a steamer crossing to England on the night of 29 to 30 September 1913.
