Twenty-two Nobel laureates in the fields of chemistry, physics, and medicine and physiology from Europe and the United States were interviewed according to a systematic research protocol focused on in-progress creative work. Twelve of these subjects had also participated in a controlled experiment involving word-association tasks. Documentary investigations were separately carried out on autobiographical accounts and work-in-progress manuscripts pertaining to the creative formulations and discoveries of outstanding scientists of the past—Bohr, Darwin, Dirac, Einstein, Planck, and Yukawa. Include was a personal account by Einstein about the breakthrough idea leading to the general theory of relativity. Overall analysis of the data regarding the creative work of the contemporary outstanding scientists and those of the past indicated the significant role in scientific creation of the janusian process ('actively conceiving multiple opposites or antitheses simultaneously'). This process was found to be complex, involving four phases developing over extended periods of time. The phases, described and documented in this article, are motivation to create; deviation or separation; simultaneous opposition or antithesis; and construction of the theory, discovery, or experiment.
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