Scientists as Inventors
By Henry Petroski
Often considered distinct, engineering and science are frequently difficult to distinguish
This Article From Issue
September-October 2008
Volume 96, Number 5
Page 368
DOI: 10.1511/2008.74.368
Theodore von Kármán, the engineer who came to be identified as an aerospace scientist on a commemorative postage stamp, is credited with the oft-cited distinction between a scientist and an engineer: The scientist seeks to understand what is; the engineer seeks to create what never was. But dichotomies are seldom clear cut, and just as von Kármán could be considered both an engineer and a scientist, many an individual scientist or engineer can also behave like the other, and many have.
Courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology/photo by Vincent A. Finnigan.
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