 The origin of this claim has been difficult to pin down with any certainty . John H. <unk> recounted an anecdote about an unnamed Swiss aerodynamicist at a dinner party who performed some rough calculations and concluded , presumably in jest , that according to the equations , bumblebees cannot fly . In later years , <unk> has backed away from this origin , suggesting there could be multiple sources , and the earliest he has found was a reference in the 1934 book Le Vol des Insectes by French entomologist Antoine Magnan ( 1881 – 1938 ) ; they had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found their flight was impossible , but " One shouldn 't be surprised that the results of the calculations don 't square with reality " . 
