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Jay Ingram
(20 Mar 1945 - )
Canadian broadcaster and science writer who contributed over many years to such Canadian programs as Quirks and Quarks on CBC radio and the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet. In his books, Ingram satisfies his readers’ curiosity with a very diverse range of topics in the natural and physical sciences explained in entertaining essays.
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Science Quotes by Jay Ingram (1 quote)
An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a “quarter-meter square.” That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimate of 1½ square meters; that’s a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven’t seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist’s poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don’t know, but I’m on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field.
— Jay Ingram
In The Burning House: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain (1994, 1995), 11.
See also:
- The Science of Everyday Life, by Jay Ingram. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Jay Ingram.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
