I’ve just finished reading a biography, The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy, by Henry Hemming. It covers a rather fascinating figure from the First and Second World Wars, the Brit Geoffrey Pyke, who might be best described as an idea man.
In the WW I, his contributions consisted of smuggling himself into Germany as an American journalist in the opening days of the war, prior to America’s entry, where his attempts to send dispatches back to his British employer resulted in his incarceration in a prisoner camp that was supposedly inescapable.
So he escaped from it.
The camp, and perhaps his escape from it, damaged his health permanently, making him medically unfit to serve in the military. This didn’t didn’t stop him from his restless quest to solve problems, as he becomes a best-selling author, opens a school founded on revolutionary principles, makes and loses a fortune through investing, and enters into World War II with outré ideas to solve problems ranging from distracting the Germans to building indestructible aircraft carriers – from ice. These ideas get him into a British military command as a senior civilian advisor and consultant, driving some senior military officers up the wall, while others seized on his ideas as manna from heaven.
But, through it all, runs the question of whether he was truly a spy. Letters later found in East Germany archives seemed to indicate he was at least a fellow traveler with the Communists, although temperamentally unsuited for officially joining up. But how this affected his work is speculative.
Perhaps the most valuable portion of this book is the epilogue: How To Think Like A Genius. From questioning all received wisdom to fine tuning problem statements and exploring obviously wrong approaches, and looking for solutions, old or new, everywhere around him, an ambitious young reader might benefit enormously from reading the epilogue and taking it to heart.
But for a fuller treatment of Mr. Pyke’s approach to solving difficult problems, just read the whole thing. Told as a third-person narrative, it was fun!
