Don't Trivialize the Math!

I was surfing the net today and came across an article about Willard Boyle, the man that co-developed the CCD or Charged Coupled Device (ie the imaging sensor used in almost all digital cameras) with George Smith. Nice stuff, he's Canadian (Boyle). My only disappointment is that the authors dumbed down the aritlce a little too much for my liking. When it came to describing how they developed the invention, the article describes it as:

They fiddled with some math and drew some sketches on the blackboard showing how this new device could be made. After not more than an hour and a half Boyle said, "OK, this looks pretty good."

If I could fiddle math like other people could fiddle the violin I'd be a (very) happy camper. I could care less about the CCD ray right about now.

I poked around the site where the Boyle article some more to find this, an article about a Canadian scientist that came up with a "Triple axis neutron spectroscope," for which he wond the Nobel Prize. What was www.science.ca's explanation of the development?

He fiddled with some math on his notepad for a while and then went to the coffee room. As he passed the lab that housed the radioactive nuclear pile, a controlled nuclear reaction that emitted one of the most powerful sources of neutrons in the world at the time, he wondered whether he could put it to use. In the coffee room he met Hurst. Brockhouse went up to the blackboard and said, “Don, there’s something I’d like to show you.” He sketched out some equations on the blackboard. The math described a device they could build that would use a neutron beam as a better type of spectrometer, a kind of flashlight that could probe into the mysteries of crystal structures and other solids such as metals, minerals, gems, and rocks.

Makes me wonder if I should've gone into the arts where I could learn a little more about "fiddling" and "sketching" mathematical equations. Really, I'm being sarcastic.

How did these guys get the math like this? and how do I get it? That's the million dollar question, literally. If you didn't get it: the Nobel Prize is 1 million dollars! Get it? See? [Har har]