Visual Thinking

By Ramesh Akkineni
Krogh was stimulated by biological problems. He wanted to find solutions to them, and these should always be based on accurate measurements. And he accomplished this in a very special way, which he called visual thinking. He described it as follows: "A considerable part of my work was done in bed during the night when I would try to visualize the processes studied and the experiments to be carried out. I found that I could visualize fairly complicated apparatuses and all details of their working. The constructive ideas would come, apparently, out of nowhere, but the visionary examination of them was a conscious and rational affair. I never made, and even now never make, drawings, not even rough sketches, until the construction of an apparatus was complete, because I found that a drawing would hamper the free flow of ideas and bind me down to that particular solution of the problem." - from an biographical article about August Krogh, Nobel Laureate 1920

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