Jack of All Trade, Master of All

There are also prominent musician from Taiwan Wang Lee Hom, British song-writer Sir Elton John, prominent scientist and book-writer Prof Stephen Hawking, and last but not least, the all rounder Leonardo Da Vinci.

Most people are blessed with a particular talent; Good vocal but no music sense. Excel in Math but have no basic knowledge on physics. Play badminton but suck at back-hand return. Scientifically-literate and at the same time public-illiterate.

There are some who fare a little bit better; Playing multiple instrument but sucking in all of them. Playing multiple sports but ain't good enough to make a breakthrough in any. Good in scientific discussion but fail terribly in examination. These people are the so-called "Jack of all trade, master of none."

Image: mariamuir.com

Then, most professionals are equipped with at least two-significant talents. Professional singers are blessed with a good vocal plus excellent music sense(except some singers from Taiwan, they are more joke than art). Engineers are good at math and physics. Footballers should be able to kick with both feet. Professional mathematicians would have a little sense about all other subjects; account, science, economics.

Of couse, there are this little fraction of people, who excel in whatever they're doing. More amazing, they ply their trade in two seemingly incompatible areas; arts and science. Educators have known for ages the fact that for general public, arts are incompatible with science. It is as if our brain has its own default settings to determine whether we are an-art-or-science people.

It is not to say that most of us are good either in science or arts and there is no chance for us to make a breakthrough because this is how nature makes us, in fact there are a lot of my classmates who play piano went on to become excellent science students. But to actually excel in their musical career, they would have to prove themselves against the likes of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, and that would require them to sacrifice a lot more time on music rather than their academics. And I seriously doubt that other than piano(which modern-Chinese-moms would normally want their children to learn) do they really have the musical sense-the factor that helps them pick up other instruments easily.

Yet evolution has been quite unfair really to produce some people who are incredibly talented. For example Prof. Brian Cox, a particle physicist from the University of Manchester(yeah I know he's hot).

Looks more like a rocker than a Professor. Image: year2008-2009.student-direct.co.uk

He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is also working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres (1,380 ft) from the interaction points of the main experiments.-wikipedia

I believe most of us don't understand the scientific terms that are written above. But let's try this:

He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC. He also had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player for the pop band, D:Ream.-wikipedia

Image: fuckyeahbriancox.tumblr.com

Uh-huh~! The words seem easier to perceive now aren't they? (Which tells me that you're more art than science)

In fact these sort of scientific terms are not what we expect to see on the resume of a lead guitarist of a rock band. Lo and behold, fate is more joker than I thought.

Image: banguniverse.com

The lead guitarist of Queen, Dr. Brian May, is a full-fledge astrophysicist graduated from the Imperial College. Now the two banners under which he's standing, Queen and Imperial College, are two of the most outstanding names in their respective field. Hence to be able to excel in both area really makes this dude an outstanding product of evolution.

Imagine your lecturer bearing a hairstyle like this. Image: brianmay.com

Other than that, there are also prominent musician from Taiwan Wang Lee Hom, British song-writer Sir Elton John, prominent scientist and book-writer Prof Stephen Hawking, and last but not least, the all rounder Leonardo Da Vinci.
These are the people that I would gladly call "Jack of all trade, master of all".



Malcolm
info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)