THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 27

What role did chance play in the invention of Saccharin, strikeable matches, and safety glass?

 

Subject: Creativity - Pasteur’s “Prepared Mind”

Event:  Birthday of French scientist Louis Pasteur, 1822

 

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. -Louis Pasteur

More than probably any person who ever lived, the French scientist Louis Pasteur - who was born on this day in 1822 - revealed the power of science as a tool for mastering nature.

Today we take for granted that germs attack the human body from outside.  It was Pasteur who opened the world’s mind to seeing how microorganisms or “germs” can lead to disease.  He also did pioneering work in vaccines, being the first to use weakened viruses to develop cures for anthrax and rabies.  Part of his motivation for studying infections and vaccinations was the fact that three of his five children died of typhoid.  He also invented the process that bears his name - pasteurization, where liquids are heated to kill harmful germs (1).

                                                        Image by Monoar Rahman Rony from Pixabay 

In an 1854 lecture, Pasteur made a remark that has inspired generations of scientists who have followed in his footsteps:   “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”  Certainly, imagination and creativity have an important role to play in invention and discovery.  As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  However, we might say based on Pasteur’s remark that this is a false dichotomy because unless there is a healthy balance between imagination and knowledge, the “prepared mind” will have little chance of capitalizing on serendipity.

As examples of prepared minds capitalizing on chance, read the following three anecdotes of chemists who were ready when serendipity smiled on them:

1. One evening the Russian chemist Constantin Fahlburg was working late in his lab on derivatives of coal tar.  Typical of a scientist immersed in his work, Fahlburg almost forgot about his supper.  Leaving the lab in a rush without washing his hand, he sat down to eat.  Breaking a piece of bread and putting it to his lips, he tasted something sweet. He soon realized that by chance he had discovered something as sweet as sugar and luckily it did not contain any poisonous substances.  He later marketed the world’s first artificial sweetener: Saccharin.

2. In 1827, an English chemist named John Walker was mixing a pot of antimony sulfide and potassium chlorate.  When he noticed a dried lump of the mixture on his mixing stick, he attempted to scrape it off; at that point, the mixture ignited.  By chance, Walker had just created the world’s first strikeable match.

3. One day in 1903 when he was working in his lab, French chemist and artist Edouard Benedictus dropped a glass flask.  Although the glass shattered, Benedictus noticed that the glass shards held together.  Inquiring further, he realized that the glass had previously been filled with cellulose nitrate, a liquid plastic that Benedictus used in his art deco projects.  Apparently when the liquid evaporated, it left a thin film of plastic on the glass that kept the shards of glass from falling apart. As an additional stroke of luck, Benedictus had recently read a newspaper article about the dangers of broken glass in automobile accidents.  Next, Benedictus went to work to produce what would become what we know today as shatterproof, safety glass.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  In one of the three examples above, explain how chance favored the prepared mind.

Challenge - Serendipity Strikes:  Research other inventions that have resulted from the combination of chance events and prepared minds.  What is one example that you find particularly interesting?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 28, 1845:  On this day, an editorial appeared in the New York Morning News by John L. O’Sullivan (1813 - 1895).  In the editorial, Sullivan, a newspaper editor and proponent of U.S. expansion, argued for the United States’ claim to the Oregon Country, a large region in the West for which England and the U.S. had rival claims.  To Sullivan, expansion of the U.S. across all of North America to the Pacific coast was more than just a hope for the young nation; instead, it was its duty and its fate:

Away, away with all these cobweb issues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, continuity, etc.… our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.

Sullivan’s editorial popularized the motto: manifest destiny, giving proponents of expansion a rallying cry.  By the end of 1846, Oregon became a U.S. Territory after negotiations with Britain established the border at the 49th parallel.  At the time of Sullivan’s editorial, the United States had just 27 states.  By the end of the 19th century that number would expand to 45.

Sources:

1-Alexander Hammond. Louis Pasteur: "The Father of Microbiology" Who Pioneered Vaccine Science. Foundation for Economic Education 2 June 2019.

2-Ward, Alvin. “24 Unintended Scientific Discoveries.” Mental Floss 2 May 2015.