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This article explores the scientific creativity of Henri Poincare and Albert Einstein through analysis of their scientific work, their introspective accounts, and their archival materials. Particularly in the case of Poincare, new sources are used which include a psychological profile of him and previously unpublished archival material Hypotheses are proposed concerning their modes of mental imagery. A cognitive model for Poincare's mode of thinking is offered and compared with discovery models proposed by Herbert Simon. Until now all psychological studies of Poincare's first great discovery in 1881 have addressed neither the mathematical problems with which he struggled nor why the results he obtained were so important. In order to give the reader a sense of the problems with which he struggled, the relevant mathematics is developed in a conceptual manner in two appendices and several footnotes. Similarly, certain scientific problems with which Einstein wrestled are discussed The following conclusions emerge: Introspections supported by historical data are invaluable for exploring scientific creativity; aesthetics and intuition are notions that can be discussed in a well‐defined manner and are essential to scientific research as are mental imagery in descriptive and depictive modes; and creative scientific thinking is carried out in a network or analog fashion rather than linearly.
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Arthur I. Miller (1992) studied this question.
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