When inspiration hits, you want to be ready.

For me, it's often in the shower, and I have one of those dorky waterproof notepads

and a pencil in there, just in case.

But for real geniuses, you hope they're doing something extraordinary in a magnificent

setting, surrounded by brilliance.

I always think I should think of some romantic story of sitting underneath an apple tree

or sitting on the edge of Holiacala crater on Hawaii at sunrise or something.

Meet Frank Drake, an astronomer and astrophysicist, and a founding father of SETI, the search for

extraterrestrial intelligence.

He's a legendary figure, but his most famous idea did not come to him in one of those

magnificent settings.

No, the birth of his most famous equation came about while Frank was planning a conference.

Although, to be fair, it was the first serious scientific conference on the search for aliens,

which is still pretty cool.

He invited everyone in the world who had something to contribute to this subject.

All twelve of them.

And they all showed up to Frank's conference at the state of the art headquarters of the

National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, West Virginia.

There were some important people that was the first time I met Carl Sagan, for example.

One of the members of the group was Melvin Calvin, who was the one who had deciphered the

way chlorophyll works.

And it's probably going to get the Nobel Prize for that.

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