Nabokov’s Butterflies

The New York Times on Vladimir Nabokov, novelist and amateur lepidopterist:

[In] a speculative moment in 1945, he came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.

For half a century, few people took Nabokov seriously, but just recently his theory was tested and his predictions found to be accurate:

“By God, he got every one right,” […] “I couldn’t get over it — I was blown away.”

The NYT article shows how Nabokov got it right using simple observation and attention to detail: that’s science in a nutshell, and proof that sometimes it’s outsiders who have the best ideas.