夢想家: R. Buckminster Fuller

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty; but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

 

BIO

R. “Bucky” Buckminster Fuller was born July 12^th, 1895, to a Massachusetts family known for service and activism; the last of the Transcendentalists.  He spent much of his youth in Penobscot Bay, learning the fundamentals of boat construction and design; eventually leading to a passion for invention and innovation.
  

Bucky went to Harvard in 1913, but was expelled for “over-socialization” and missing his exams.  He began working at a Canadian lumber mill, where he learned the ins and outs of machinery.  In 1915, he gave Harvard another shot and Harvard, again, kicked him out.

By then World War I had broken out, so Bucky signed up with the U.S. Navy.  He quickly redesigned one of the rescue boats, making it capable of saving downed fighter pilots before they could drown.  In 1917, Bucky married a woman named Anne Hewlett.  Soon thereafter, he and his new father-in-law started a promising business in housing.

1927 was Bucky’s “epiphany” year.  His new business collapsed and he went into a deep depression, even contemplating suicide.  Eventually, he realized that he “had no right to end his own life” and that he had an obligation to serve humanity through innovation and creativity.

In 1947, he designed the first geodesic dome, a structural phenomenon capable of withstanding great stress and extreme environments.  The technology quickly spread across the planet, providing safe and affordable housing for many.  Perhaps you recognize it...
 

Epcot

Antarctica

By the 1950’s, Bucky had first mentioned the term “Spaceship Earth."  He viewed our planet as a single, self-sustaining system, traveling through the emptiness of space.  His passions soon shifted to the environment, sustainability, and global solidarity.  With this in mind, he developed a new two dimensional map of the globe (the Dymaxion Map) that would shift geographic understanding from political borders to natural resources and holistic awareness.  

Bucky lectured at universities around the world.  He often described his complex ideas in rhythmic verse, leading to a one year appointment to the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard (apparently they finally let him stay).  For all of his work in education, Fuller attained forty-seven (yes, 47) honorary doctorate degrees and was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.

In late June of 1983, Bucky’s wife had developed severe cancer and slipped into a coma.  He immediately came to her side, waiting day and night for her to wake.  On July 1^st, Bucky began screaming “I know she’s squeezing my hand, she’s squeezing my hand!!!!!”  A moment later, his heart stopped, and Bucky’s life ended.  His wife followed suit less than 36 hours later.

QUIRKS 

Fuller was a man of many peculiarities.  First, he walked almost everywhere he went.  His daughter recalls one time in particular when Bucky walked nearly one hundred miles (yes, 100) to see his wife while on leave in the Navy.  His daughter believed that “this was his best thinking time. His thinking was connected to his body."

 Additionally, Bucky experimented with polyphasic sleep (he called it Dymaxion Sleep).  For two years, he lived on only two hours of sleep a day.  He eventually stopped the practice because of schedule conflicts with associates. 

Finally, Bucky documented his entire life between 1915 and 1983, collecting over two hundred and fifty feet of paper about himself (including copies of all outgoing and incoming mail).  He called it the Dymaxion Chronofile.  You can still read it today at Stanford University. 

LEGACY

With over twenty accredited patents and more than thirty published books, Fuller is among history's greatest inventors.  However, he left much more behind than simple machinery and text.  Bucky was a catalyst in the rapid progression of systems thinking.  He suggested a more holistic perspective of our existence on Earth, calling the idea "synergetics".  For instance, rather than going "up" or "down" stairs, Bucky would have gone "in" or "out", always referring to his direction in respect to the center of the Earth and the force of gravity.

Fuller understood the fragile interconnectedness of the environment, and the threat that human division presented to the system.  He created a world game that would encourage international communication, eco-design, and efficient logistics; all in the hope of promoting sustainability and solidarity.
 

In 1985, two years after Fuller passed away, scientists discovered a new molecular structure of carbon similar to the geodesic dome.  They named it buckminsterfullerene, or simply buckyballs, in his honor.