xxth GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF IUGG VIENNA (AUSTRIA)

COLUMBUS I EGG
N Fukushima
Geophysics Reserach Laboratory
University of Tokyo
Tokyo 113 JAPAN
IAGA NEWS N0.29
Several years ago I happened to know that English-speaking
people usually do not understand the idiom "Columbus' Egg",
although most of them say that they have read a story about
this episode. In many of languages other than English (even in
Japanese) "Columbus' Egg" is used as an idiom meaning "an
unexpectedly simple solution for a seemingly insoluble
problem" or "unthinkably easy". I found in a Japanese-English
colloquial dictionary that "deceptively easy" will be an
adequate expression to have English-speaking people understand
what is meant by "Columbus' Egg".
In the h istory of sciences, an occasional stepwise advance in
our knowledge is owed in most cases to an idea of "Columbus'
Egg". Hence the progress in sciences is a compilation or
series of "Columbus' Eggs". In these days, English or broken
English is generally used among scientists for international
communication of their opinions or of new results. We
sometimes want to use the idiom "Columbus' Egg" for
introducing our own new ideas with some modesty but it is very
inconvenient that this idiom is unknown in English.
We must be very careful, however, that "Columbus' Egg" has
sometimes other meanings in some languages. I have the
following interesting experience. In November 1987 I had the
honour of giving a public talk in the municipal hall of
Huancayo in Peru in commemoration of the 65th anniversay of
the establishment of Hunacayo Magnetic Observatory. I spoke in
English: my speech was translated into Spanish sentence by
sentence. I use d some viewgraphs on the overhead projector,
all of which are written in English except for the one phrase
"Columbus' Egg" which was written in Spanish. I wanted to
emphasize the importance of ideas of "Columbus' Egg" in the
progress in sciences including geomagnetism.
As soon as I showed the viewgraph with the Spanish phrase of
"Columbus' Egg", the audience began to laugh and I was
embarrassed . I was told later that "Columbus' Egg" in Spanish
has a second meaning, which indicates a male organ. I insisted
that the second meaning should not come to mind becasue I had
showed the word in singular form and not in plural. However,
the reply was "It doesn't matter at all whe the r the word is
given in singular or in plural form".
I used the same viewgraph in my talks t o space scientists in
Argentina and in Brazil (where "Columbus' Egg" was written in
Portugese) with a special remark that this expression is not
49