paging all rocket scientists..

July 5, 2006 9:26 AM

whats the origin of the phrase 'you dont have to be a rocket scientist..?

any idea when/where this phrase came into popularity? did it arise spontaneously or did it come from movie or something? i remember my dad used to say 'well it doesnt take a rocket scientist..' as a polite way to tell me im stupid and i always thought he made it up until i heard other people use it. also why do we hold rocket scientists in such high esteem?

posted by petsounds to society & culture (15 comments total)

It's been around. An older variant is "it's not brain surgery".
posted by doctor_negative at 9:33 AM on July 5, 2006

Because rocketry was a literal and figurative arms race in the 20th century, first against the Nazis, then against the USSR, a lot of emphasis was placed on getting the best and brightest minds into developing better and better rockets. Not only that, but before digital computers, anything involved with designing a rocket was extremely complicated.

I'd love to hear that there's a specific historic origin for the term, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't go any deeper than that.
posted by Hildago at 9:41 AM on July 5, 2006

Might it be Tom Lehrer? Or too late.

"I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London" always made me laugh
posted by A189Nut at 10:04 AM on July 5, 2006

The late "Spy" manazine ran an articcle many, many years ago going through the list of rocket scientist mistakes to explode the myth of their intellectual superiority.

And as a Canadian I cannot discuss this phrase without mentioning the Shania Twain hit "That Don't Impress Me Much", where Shania is unimpressed by the claim of being a rocket scientist, among other things.

I assume the phrase has been around since the sawn of the space age. I wonder if there is a provable first usage.
posted by GuyZero at 10:10 AM on July 5, 2006

I would say it has been around since well before the dawn of the space age. Immediately prior to WWII and especially during WWII there was a rocket-based arms race, and the US succeeded in attracting many German scientists - regardless of their war status - to the US because of their superiority in rocket technology.

To be a rocket scientist was quite literally considered to be the pinnacle of braininess, likely from sometime in the late 20s or 30s until maybe the 60s?

Also note that it predates the analogous "brain surgery" comparison, which probably dates from the 50s and Wilder Penfield's work in Montreal.
posted by mikel at 10:21 AM on July 5, 2006

The earliest use of the term I can find is from 1979. However, I did not search exhaustively. No doubt this cite can be antedated.

1979 Donald Ramsay Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada) "Ben left out in the sun" p. S6: It doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that coach Roger Neilson's days are numbered with the NHL club.
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:14 AM on July 5, 2006

I agree with Mo. The term may have been around since the V-2 days but the ironic "doesn't take a rocket scientist" put-down is a much more recent expression.
posted by Rash at 11:35 AM on July 5, 2006

the ironic "doesn't take a rocket scientist" put-down is a much more recent expression

I see no reason to believe this is true.
posted by jjg at 1:07 PM on July 5, 2006

Orbital Mechanics, a core discipline topic for rocket scientists, is pretty heavily rooted in math and classical physics, and is remarkably counterintuitive. Rocket engine design is another bit of trade craft for the rocket scientist, that requires more than passing familiarity with math, the physics of flow dynamics, and chemistry. Also, to get far in the field, you've got to be willing to blow stuff up, and endure public humiliation when that happens.

As to the esteem bit, despite the intellectual difficulty and education required, for the most part, it's a government type job (even if you're working for private contractors), with GS scale pay and benefits. And sooner or later, you're probably going to have to swelter in a Houston summer.
posted by paulsc at 1:44 PM on July 5, 2006

Related (and possibly apocryphal) anecdote: in a post-match interview (English Premier League), someone once mentioned to Shaka Hislop (the West Ham United and Trinidad & Tobago goalkeeper) that you didn't have to be a rocket scientists to be a goalkeeper and he is said to have replied "Actually I am a rocket scientist" He studied astrophysics at university
posted by essexjan at 2:38 PM on July 5, 2006

I have always assumed that it wasn't just that rocket science was a key part of WWII, but that the german rocket scientists, most notably Wernher Von Braun, were spirited out of Germany at the end of the war in a special secret operation and brought to the USA to continue their work.

So, at the time when most Germans were suffering the consequences of humiliating defeat, starving, getting locked up or shot at dawn etc., the Rocket Scientists were being sneaked out of the country and given cool jobs in the USA.

Their pampering and exalted status must have given the general public that a Rocket Scientist was a very special kind of person indeed.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:10 PM on July 5, 2006

Here it says:

"ROCKET SCIENTIST - 1985. ".The world of the rocket scientist (1952) was, and still is, perceived as one in which complex thinking rests on an understanding of mathematics, aerodynamics, materials, and chemistry beyond the grasp of the rest of the human race. Their opinion was respected: 'Take it from the rocket scientists who expect to fly to mars some day,' said the Baltimore 'Sun' in 1952. 'Flying saucers are not space ships from other planets.' But by the mid-80s, as near as lexicographers can determine, 'rocket scientist underwent a subtle change in meaning. Rocket scientists were no longer so often in the news. When they were mentioned, it was in the phrase 'You don't have to be a rocket scientist'. Why 'rocket scientist' instead of, say, 'computer scientist' for this phrase? Perhaps because computer scientists were all-too-familiar 'geeks' (1978), while 'rocket scientist' called up the old image of a German-accented professor, something of an Albert Einstein." From "America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America" by Allen Metcalf and David K. Barnhart (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston & New York, 1997)."

posted by tellurian at 5:00 PM on July 5, 2006

The OED has a March 2006 draft addition on the term "rocket science":

DRAFT ADDITIONS MARCH 2006

rocket, n.3

rocket science n. the science of designing rockets; (hence humorously) something requiring a high level of intelligence or expertise (freq. in negative constructions, implying that something is relatively simple).

1931 Illustr. Weekly of India 15 Nov. 11/1 (caption) Martyr to *rocket science. Max Valier, the famous rocket-experimenter..met his death by an explosion of one of his rocket devices.

1986 Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 24 Oct. 79 Nesmith says, half jokingly, that ‘the tape manufacturing will be somewhere close to rocket science’ to cut costs.

2001 Start & run your Business Dec. 23/2 With no strict qualifications needed to enter the wine trade Davis explains that managing a wine bar isn't rocket science.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:00 PM on July 5, 2006

Just as an amusing aside, I remember reading an interview with Bryan Gaensler, an astrophysicist who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1999. He was working at NASA at the time (and still is) and commented that one of the favourite running jokes among the NASA guys he worked with was to begin sentences with "Well, I'm no rocket scientist, but..."

(I read that interview seven years ago, and still remember it, which says something about me, I'm sure. I just wish I knew what.)
posted by hot soup girl at 1:22 AM on July 6, 2006

I've always heard it as "it's not exactly rocket science". For added fun see "rocket surgery": "brain science" somehow doesn't have the same zest.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:25 AM on July 6, 2006