Book Review : Serendipity: Eurekas Where They Weren’t Expected

Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science by Royston M. Roberts (John Wiley & Sons: $18.95; $12.95, paperback; 288 pages)

The future, it is said, always comes from around a corner where you weren’t looking.

This fact has been observed for centuries and stated in many ways. It is true of professional life and personal life and may be truest of all in the area of scientific research, where myriad discoveries have been made essentially by accident.

“Serendipity” by Royston M. Roberts is the story of several dozen of such discoveries--ones you know about, like penicillin, and ones that are less well known, like electromagnetism. In each case, researchers were looking for one thing and discovered another. Or perhaps they were looking for nothing in particular but noticed something unusual and pursued it.

Difference in Discovery

Roberts, a professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, distinguishes between what he calls “true serendipity”--a completely accidental discovery that no one was looking for--and “pseudo-serendipity”--an accidental discovery of something that someone was looking for. Here’s the difference:

“Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanization process for rubber when he accidentally dropped a piece of rubber mixed with sulfur onto a hot stove. For many years Goodyear had been obsessed with finding a way to make rubber useful. Because it was an accident that led to the successful process so diligently sought for, I call this a pseudo-serendipitous discovery. In contrast, George deMestral had no intention of inventing a fastener (Velcro) when he looked to see why some burs stuck tightly to his clothing.”

It’s an interesting and useful distinction, which, like many distinctions, tends to blur at the meeting point. But the fact that the categories are not completely distinct does not deprive them of meaning.

Overflowing Bath

To be sure, the history of science contains many completely accidental (truly serendipitous) discoveries--such as the discovery of oral contraceptives--as well as many that were only pseudo-serendipitous--such as Archimedes’ discovery of how to measure the volume of an irregular object, which came to him while sitting in the bath.

Archimedes had been thinking about the problem, and realized the solution when he saw water overflowing from his tub. By contrast, the discoverers of oral contraceptives, Russell Marker and Carl Djerassi, weren’t looking for oral contraceptives at all.

In either case, someone making an accidental discovery has to be alert to it. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” If Alexander Fleming had discarded the contaminated petri dish in his laboratory (as many researcher undoubtedly would have done), penicillin would not have been discovered--at least not then and not by him.

That’s one important difference between a truly serendipitous and a merely pseudo-serendipitous discovery. If a would-be truly serendipitous discovery passes unnoticed, it is gone. But if a researcher fails to notice a would-be pseudo-serendipitous discovery, there’s always a chance that he may come upon it again. At least he’s working on that problem.

History of Science

“Serendipity” is a straightforward history of science, told in an anecdotal, personal style. There does not appear to be much original research here. Roberts has collected his stories from existing works and sometimes quotes from published accounts by the scientists who made the discoveries. For the discovery of LSD, for example, we have the laboratory notebook of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who accidentally made some in 1938 and then ingested it.

Roberts’ book has the tone of the histories of science we used to read in high school. Paul de Kruif’s “Microbe Hunters” comes to mind. It’s the textbook story of science: researchers in their laboratories motivated by the quest for truth.

That is certainly the story scientists like to tell about themselves and their work, and it is certainly part of the picture. (As many other authors have told us in recent decades, it is not the whole picture of how science operates.)

But these stories may help inspire young people to pursue careers in scientific research. There is a great thrill in finding things out, which Roberts’ book makes clear.

It also makes clear that you don’t always discover what you were trying to and that you must be constantly alert to new paths and new possibilities as they arise. That lesson extends far beyond science.