Eureka! Accidental discoveries shaping the world

From lifesaving medical breakthroughs to everyday conveniences, accidental discoveries and inventions have proved that unexpected discoveries can change the world. Stories of a failed experiment, a simple mistake, or pure curiosity remind one that innovation often comes from the most surprising places. In history, such things have generally fallen into three categories. One, to succeed in finding the objective of one’s search, which is, almost always, a result of determination, patience, and systematic investigation. Another is one that was chanced upon, while looking for something else, a serendipitous discovery or invention. The third, and easily the most gratifying, is the sort of thing one had originally imagined would exist, and being able to prove that it does; what generally is called a successful ‘thought experiment’.

Serendipitous discoveries happen when unexpected accidents or oversights are combined with a curious, prepared mind that recognizes their value. For example, the discovery of the principle of buoyancy in 287 BCE by Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes. While wrestling with the problem of how to determine the purity of gold, Archimedes had the sudden realization that the buoyancy of an object placed in water is equal in magnitude to the weight of the water the object displaces. According to one popular version of the legend, he made his discovery at a public bathhouse, whereupon he leapt out of his bath, exclaiming in Greek “Heurēka! Heurēka!” or “I have found it!” and ran home naked through the streets. The expression ‘Eureka’ has since become an adjective describing moments of discovery or epiphany. Clearly, while physics is often viewed as a structured, deliberate march of logic, it is surprisingly full of serendipity.

A sensational event took place in 1492, when Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail westward from Spain with the explicit intent of establishing a direct spice trade route to Asia. Instead of reaching the East Indies, he accidentally made landfall in the Caribbean. This monumental navigation error opened a massive geographic reality, in the shape of the discovery of the Americas, which Europeans did not know existed, forever changing the global map.

In a somewhat similar manner, in 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with cathode ray tubes when he noticed a glowing fluorescent screen across the room. Even with the tube shielded by thick black paper, invisible rays passed through the room to light up the screen, revealing the bones inside his own hand. He realized that he had produced a ray of previously unknown ‘invisible light’, or that was being emitted from the tube, which could pass through the heavy paper covering the tube. Through further experiments, he also found that the new ray would pass through most substances casting shadows of solid objects on pieces of film. He named it X-ray, because in mathematics ‘X’ is used to indicate an unknown quantity. That discovery, as is well known, revolutionized medicine, physics, and science by making it possible to view the interiors of solid objects and living tissue for the first time, without surgery.

Another remarkable event in the history of scientific investigation took place in 1896, French physicist Henri Becquerel had stored uranium salts next to unexposed photographic plates inside a dark drawer. Even without sunlight exposure, the plates were fogged by penetrating radiation emitted directly by the uranium. Becquerel had discovered what would soon be called ‘radioactivity’, a term coined by the celebrated scientist couple Marie and Pierre Curie, who took up the work and found new radioactive elements. The discovery opened the way to nuclear physics, radiotherapy, carbon dating and nuclear energy, and to an understanding of the dangers of radiation.

Albert Einstein used the idea instead of physical laboratory equipment to reshape modern physics, unlocking the theories of special and general relativity. Einstein pictured a passenger on a moving train and an observer on a stationary platform watching two lightning bolts strike the front and back of the train simultaneously. Because the train moves toward one flash and away from the other, the two observers disagree on whether the strikes happened at the same time. Simultaneity, therefore, is a relative concept and time flows differently depending on one’s motion.

Then there was the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming who, in 1928, had just returned from a vacation. While he was away, a stray mould spore had drifted into his laboratory, likely from a geology laboratory downstairs and landed on a petri dish planted with bacteria. The bacteria had grown normally everywhere on the plate except for a ring directly surrounding the blue-green mold. In that specific “zone of inhibition,” the bacteria had been dissolved. Fleming realized that the mould was producing a powerful substance that actively killed the bacteria. He named this by product penicillin. The discovery of penicillin marked a profound turning point in history and paved the way for the development of additional antibiotics.

Swiss physicist Walter Jaeger, in the 1930s, was trying to invent a sensor that could detect poison gas. Instead, his device registered the smoke from his cigarette, a discovery that led to the invention of the modern smoke detector.

Another similar discovery was made in 1965, when radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were troubleshooting an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey. They could not get rid of a persistent, low-level background ‘noise’ coming apparently from everywhere in the sky, which turned out to be the leftover thermal radiation from the ‘Big Bang’ or the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, a discovery dating to roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory is a fundamental concept in cosmology that explains the origin and evolution of the universe. It proposes that the universe began as an infinitely dense and hot point, known as a singularity, around 13.8 billion years ago, which underwent an explosive event called the Big Bang, which initiated the expansion of space, time, matter, and energy. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel in physics for the discovery.

The most sensational accidental discovery in the history of India is widely considered to be the Ajanta Caves. In April 1819, a British cavalry officer, John Smith, was out hunting tigers in the dense, horseshoe-shaped rocky gorges of the Waghora River near Aurangabad. Following a tiger’s tracks up a steep, overgrown hillside, he cleared away thick jungle foliage and spotted the top arch of a massive, man-made cave, entering which with flaming torches, he discovered 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave temples carved directly into the basalt cliff face, the Ajanta caves.

The early 1990s saw another spectacular discovery in the shape of a drug which researchers of Pfizer were clinically testing as a potential treatment for angina or cardiovascular chest pain. While the drug failed to effectively treat angina, clinical trial participants reported a striking and consistent side effect that led to a revolution in treating erectile dysfunction. And thus, came into being the internationally popular ‘wonder drug’ Viagra’.

Much earlier, in 1886, Dr John Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta, was trying to create a remedy for headaches and exhaustion, and accidentally created a syrup, which when mixed with carbonated water, became the world-famous beverage Coca-Cola. While the formula was originally intended to be medicinal, it quickly became a popular soft drink, creating one of the most recognizable brands in the world. What had originally started off as a medicinal concoction had, in other words, finally ended up as a popular global refreshment!

(The writer was formerly

Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr MOHAN KANDA

Dr MOHAN KANDA[email protected]