Herschbach, a Harvard University professor who has lectured frequently on Franklin, says: “Franklin’s scientific curiosity extended far beyond his adventures with electricity. He made important discoveries and observations concerning the motion of storms, heat conduction, the path of the Gulf Stream, bioluminescence, the spreading of oil films, and also advanced prescient ideas about conservation of matter and the wave nature of light.”

Franklin actually benefited from having so little formal schooling. He had to educate himself. For precisely this reason, he didn’t know what he didn’t have to know, so he assumed he needed to know everything. He was incessantly curious. He simply wanted to know how the world works. He was formulating questions in his own mind about natural phenomena like lightning, like waves in the ocean or the Gulf Stream. I don’t know if most people know that Franklin was responsible for the lightning rod. Franklin’s bifocals have made life a lot easier for all sorts of people of middle age and older.