Of green grass and geniuses
In 1939 a vice president of General Motors, Charles F. Kettering, was asked to name the most important research problem in the world. His answer? To find out why grass is green. Kettering was a remarkable man, one of that likeable breed of far-thinking, imaginative capitalists we see too few of these days. His great enthusiasm was research. Pure research for its own sake. Not narrow, stifled, research of the kind some governments think is the only type worth funding. You can get a sense of the kind of man he was when you read some…
