The falling apple has caused physicist Isaac Newton to formulate his laws of gravity. Archimedes took a bath and figured out how to calculate volume and density.

Anna Marie Roos, a historian of science, advises us to take these eureka moments with a grain of salt. However, she thinks they give insight into the creative process.

Narratives of scientific discovery get polished after the fact.

• Newton was an old man when he told his friend, William Stukeley, that his thinking on the nature of gravity "was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood." The adage of "the ap...