The chairman of the board of our company called me into his office to tell me the good news. I was being promoted to Vice President of Corporate Research and Planning.
Of course, I was excited, but that didn't stop me from asking for my new title to be changed to Vice President of Corporate Planning and Research.
'Why?' asked the chairman.
'Because,' I said, 'our organization uses abbreviated job titles, and I don't want be known as VP of CRAP.'
Walter NoddackBorn 17 Aug 1893; died 7 Dec 1960 at age 67.Walter Karl Friedrich Noddack was a German chemist who discovered the element rhenium (Jun 1925) in collaboration with his wife Ida Tacke. In 1922, he began a long search for undiscovered elements. After three years, the careful fractionation of certain ores yielded element 75, a rare heavy metallic element that resembles manganese. Named rhenium after the Rhine River, it was the last stable element to be discovered. Noddack is also remembered for arguing for a concept he called allgegenwartskonzentration or, literally, omnipresent concentration. This idea, reminiscent of Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, assumed that every mineral actually contained every element. The reason they could not all be detected was they existed in too small quantities. |
