riding on the shoulders of giants

Or to flog the metaphor a bit further: tugging on the coat-tails of giants.

I want face time with the heroes of pulsed power, I'm either gonna have to kidnap a bunch of scientists, or somehow get into an IEEE Pulsed Power Conference.  These a few of the luminaries:

David Platts
Carl E. Baum
Everette Farr
J.C. Martin
Ihor Vitkovitsky
John Pappas

Because most of the pioneering work was done during (and because of) The Cold War, some of those names won't be around much longer.

Of course, as soon as I revealed to any of them that I can't do real math I expect they'd lose interest in talking to me rather quickly. Everything these guys write is full of calculus. I really need to get on that task. Maybe I can get the time to do it by not washing dishes or putting away clothes or cleaning up after the cats for a few months. (j/k)

Dr. Baum especially is someone who should receive more recognition for his work. He's scary smart, and spent most of his career working on EMP simulation and other cutting-edge pulsed power work relating to nuclear weapons, nuclear weapon effects simulation, controlled fusion experiments, and so on. He has received several scientific awards, and he used the monetary portion of them to start up The Summa Foundation, a philanthropic organization to promote scientific and educational activities in the field of electromagnetics.