When we think of giants of creativity as recorded by history—Einstein, Michelangelo, Gandhi—we remember them for their great contributions, for the fruits of their labour. It is easy to ascribe their contributions to a stroke of genius and forget the incredible work that preceded their gift to humanity. (Think of Thomas Edison’s famous line: "Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.") Creativity does not happen in the flash of an instant; it is a prolonged labour, a labour of love, enabled and sustained by certain strengths of character.

Three creative giants who contributed to vastly different fields share character aspects that fuelled their creativity: Antoni Gaudi, the architect who transformed Barcelona into a brilliant landmark of art nouveau; the Curies, the husband-and-wife physicists who together worked to isolate radium; Muhammad Yunus, the most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, who developed micro-credit banks in Bangladesh. Each had the patience to observe, the fortitude to persevere and the conviction to contribute for reasons beyond self-glorification.

Anyone visiting Barcelona has delighted in the creative genius of Antoni Gaudi. From the mosaic-covered benches at Güell Park, to the rounded balconies of Casa Batlló, to the snails crawling up the spires of Sagrada Familia, Gaudi boldly ventured into art nouveau, developing his own unique style. From an early age, he was fascinated by nature, showing great curiosity about and insight into the world around him. Nature was to become the wellspring of his inspiration. Gaudi would later say, “Do not copy Gaudi, copy nature.” His genius sprang from careful observation of the wonders in the design of nature.

In 1883, Gaudi received his most enduring commission, the cathedral of Sagrada Familia. His designs were more impressionist drawings than architectural sketches. The architect was known to wander through the construction site and ask workers for their ideas. Instead of being subject to strict timelines and an architect’s insistent adherence to his own fixed ideas, the cathedral advanced organically.

Living in near anonymity, Gaudi devoted the last 12 years of his life to Sagrada Familia, even living in a workshop in the unfinished cathedral. When he was fatally hit by a tram, nobody recognized the brilliant architect and he was taken to a pauper’s hospital. Today, Gaudi’s cause for beatification is being reviewed by the Roman Catholic Church.

Gaudi’s creativity was founded on his sensitivity to the intricacies of nature. This same patience in observing nature’s wonder led the Curies to their discoveries in the field of physics. Yet, perhaps most remarkable about the Curies was their perseverance in the work that was required to prove their hypotheses.

Marie Curie’s dedication to intellectual pursuits existed before she began studying physics. While she was still Marie Sklodowska, she made a deal with her sister: They would alternately support each other through studies in France. As a result, Marie only began university at age 25. She met her husband Pierre in France and together, they are a magnificent testimony to the value of fortitude in persevering toward the completion of a project. Marie began investigating the nature of radiation and Pierre soon joined her in the monumental task of isolating radium to formally prove the existence of the element. No laboratories were available, so the Curies conducted their research in a shed.

After processing several tons of rock manually, Marie was able to isolate one decigram of radium chloride for her doctoral dissertation. Ten years had passed between Marie’s completion of her degree in physics and isolation of that single bit of radium. The story of the Curies’ collaboration and dedication to their field exemplifies the hard work required to make a contribution as significant as theirs. The selflessness of their motivation is evident in their refusal to patent the process they had developed. Instead, they freely published and encouraged the use of their work for the advancement of science.

A similar selfless motivation pushed Muhammad Yunus to contribute to humanity through the founding of Grameen Bank.

Muhammad Yunus was the son of a goldsmith in the former Bengal. His studies led him to become a professor of economics. In 1974, as Yunus explains, he “found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible famine in Bangladesh.” Yunus recounts that he wanted to make a difference, even if it would only change the life of one person. He soon discovered that one reason it was impossible for some Bangladeshians to rise out of poverty was the crushing rates charged by moneylenders in the villages. Yunus began by lending the equivalent of $17 to 27 women and was most surprised to have all of the loans paid back.

Over the following years, Muhammad Yunus increased his loans, even though no bank would lend money to the poor. He took out a line of credit and funded micro-credits. In 1983, he opened Grameen Bank, or Village Bank, which gives out collateral-free loans to the poor. The Grameen Bank statistics are staggering: loans to nearly 7 million poor people, most of them women; a cumulative $6 billion in loans given out, allowing 640,000 houses to be built and 58 per cent of the bank’s clients to rise above the poverty line; 99 per cent repayment of loans.
Yunus’ work and vision extend far beyond the above description; his Nobel Lecture is an inspirational and worthwhile read.

The beginning of Gaudi’s, the Curies’ and Yunus’ creativity lay in their initial openness and patience to observe. Observation may be likened to a form of listening. It is an openness to something outside of oneself and patience that accommodates the building of knowledge. Gaudi copied what he saw in nature, the Curies investigated to answer the questions posed by their observations and Yunus opened his heart to the suffering he saw. Yet it did not end with ideas that developed out of their observations. It was followed by 99 per cent perspiration: hard work.

At this point, it is interesting to note the 10-year rule, a concept recently explored in Scientific American. In looking at the lives of chess players, it was discovered that grandmasters arrived at that level because of their dedication to developing expertise. And that expertise was established through the accumulation of knowledge of the game rather than innate genius. Indeed, psychologists have noted the 10-year rule in many different fields—Einstein’s theory of relativity, Eliot’s The Waste Land and Stravinsky’s Le sacred du printemps all were produced after a decade of work in their respective field.1 Gaudi, the Curies and Yunus displayed a similar fortitude in perseverance.

But what motivation drives someone to persevere through a decade of hard work? Although we cannot pinpoint the motivations of the aforementioned individuals, an argument can be made that their motivation did not lie in a desire for personal advancement. Nobody recognized the “pauper” hit by the tram, the process to isolate radium has no patent, and the profits of Grameen Bank are used to increase the scope of its aid.

As teachers, we aspire to push our students to do great things, to use their talents to contribute their unique gift to society. We encourage our students to explore their creativity. But if genius requires openness to observation, hard work and selflessness, our focus should also be to instill these qualities. Concrete examples of genius, of creativity, reveal that strength of character is the springboard and the foundation for the fulfillment of creativity.
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1 Feldman, D., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Gardner, H., Changing the World: A framework for the study of creativity (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, 1994)
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Further reading:
Ross, P., “Secrets of the Expert Mind,” Scientific American, August 2006
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (Harper Collins, New York NY, 1996)
Feldman, D., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Gardner, H., Changing the World: A framework for the study of creativity (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, 1994)
Muhammad Yunus M., Nobel Lecture (Nobel Foundation, 2006; www.nobelprize.org)
Zerbst, R., Antoni Gaudi (Taschen, Cologne, Germany, 1993)