A genius explains | Richard Johnson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html
“Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.”

Idealist and realist; Albert Einstein’s free spirit | Yehuda Elkana
http://www.signandsight.com/features/18.html
“Finally, it is an important legacy of Einstein to take popular science seriously, and to encourage it being written by excellent writers who know science and reflect upon it. It is well-known that Einstein ascribed his early awareness of problems, and his overview of them, to having read at an early stage the series of popular science books by Aaron Bernstein. These books left a deeper mark on him than is usually acknowledged. We talk much nowadays of the ‘public understanding of science’: often it is presumed by working scientists – even by some of the best of them – that the issue is a popular explanation of technically difficult points like how a nuclear reactor works, or what in technical terms constitutes cloning. But they are wrong: what the public needs is an argument about problem-choices, the place and importance of chosen problems in the context of social needs but also of the map of the state of science, risks and chances.”