Sometimes in science, it really doesn't matter how successful your experiments are going. Or how bad they are going. Sometimes, the most amazing discoveries that have really advanced science for the better were made purely by accident. This I think is both hopeful and damn annoying at the same time. Damn annoying because this implies that even after all your training and experience, someone in your lab who just happens to be at the right place at the right time might just stumble onto something revolutionary. Hopeful because even if everything is going wrong for you, your experiments just aren't working and nothing is going right... something great might still happen!
So, here is my list of what I consider the greatest scientific accidents; the discoveries that no-one ever expected or hoped to make, and were only made due to errors and sheer dumb luck.
1.Discovering Penicillin.
This is the example I always remembered when things went wrong in the lab. And I would mutter 'yeah, well, Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin when he didn't keep his lab equipment sterile enough'.
This is actually pretty true.
In 1928, Alexander Fleming was working at St Mary's Hospital, London, and was investigating variation in S. aureus, a type of bacteria. One faithful day in August Flemming inoculated several culture plates with S.aureus and left them to grow. He then went off on holiday and arrived back in his laboratory on the 3rd September. When he and his research scholar Daniel Pryce inspected the plates, they noted one had a open lid (this would make any one who has worked with culture plates gasp and shake their heads) and a blue-green mould had grown. At this point, most people culturing bacteria cultures would probably groan and sadly chuck a load of bleach in the plate. But Fleming looked closely and noted that bacteria was not growing around the mould- but it was growing normally away from the mould. This meant that the mould was killing the bacteria. Fleming then uttered the infamous words … 'That's funny'. The words that greeted the discovery of the world's first bacteria killer were not words of eureka or amazement or success, but simple curiosity.
Most scientists would probably just shrug and decide they have more important experiments to do, and still throw the plate away. But what was ingenious on Fleming's part was to actually collect the original mould and experiment with it. He found that the mould grew fast, it inhibited bacterial growth, and it killed gram-positive bacteria. After making a 'mould-juice', he named it Penicillin. For years, no one even know where the mould had originally come from. In 1966, it was suggested that the spores drifted into Fleming's lab from a lab on the floor above. They were able to drift in due to Fleming leaving the doors open. Also, Fleming left his plates on his bench and not in an incubator. The laboratory temperature was optimum for the growth of the mould and the bacteria- but if he had put the plates in an incubator, the mould may not have grown.
Skipping forward some decades, Penicillin is credited for saving the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers in WW2. Penicillin started the 'antibiotic age', where hundreds of additional antibiotics were discovered and utilised. Without the discovery of Penicillin, a discovery made possible by accidents and luck, it is possible we would not have antibiotics at all. By 2025, Penicillin alone is credited with saving over 500 million lives. Antibiotics have also been estimated to extend the human lifespan by 23 years.
2. X-rays.
Who hasn't had an X-ray? These are such an invaluable part of medicine these days. In England alone from February 2022- to January 2023, 3.41 million X-rays were carried out. X-rays were the first non-invasive method for seeing inside the human body. This allowed early diagnosis of fractures, tumours, infections and also guided surgeons when operating.
X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen in 1895. They had been speculated about before- William Morgan in 1795 presented a paper describing a glow created when he passed electrical currents through a partially evacuated glass tube, Philip Lenard noted that rays penetrating various materials causing fluorescence on photographic plates and William Jennings and Arthur W. Goodspeed noted strange disks on photographic plates after experimenting with electricity. Nikola Tesla also noted damaged film and began investigating the energy that might have caused it.
But it was Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen who put a name to the phenomena . He actually named the rays 'X' to indicate that it was an unknown type of radiation. The name clearly stuck! Some colleagues wanted to call them 'Rontgen rays'- to which he objected too.
In 1895, Rontgen was conducting experiments in Wurzburg, Germany to investigate the effects of passing electricity though vacuum tubes. In one of these experiments, he added a thin aluminium window so that the streams of electrons from the electricity could escape. But as he didn't want to damage the aluminium, he added a cardboard covering. What he then noted was a flourescent effect on a barium platinocyanide-painted cardboard screen- even though the cardboard covering preventing light from escaping. He decided to repeat the experiment and darkened his lab. He then noted a faint shimmering from a bench some distance from where he was experimenting. It was coming from another barium platinocyanide screen. He noted that regular shadows were forming alongside the shimmering and called this ''rays'. He once tried using lead instead of aluminium and stood in front of the screen and created the first radiographic image - a flicking image of his skeleton.
Six weeks later, he then discovered the medical uses after taking a photo of his wife's hand, forming the first photograph of a human body part using X-rays. His wife didn't appear to be that happy about it, uttering the words 'I have seen my death' after seeing the photo.
It look surprisingly little time for X-rays to be accepted. In January 1896, the first use of X-rays under clinical conditions occurred when John Hall-Edwards used them to radiograph a needle stuck in the hand of an associate. A month later, he was the first to us use X-rays in a surgical operation.
X-rays also have impacts beyond medicine. In July 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched. Many violent processes in the universe produce X-rays - but not visible light. The Chandra X-ray Observatory allows for observations and explorations of stars and black holes, galactic collisions and novae exploding into space.
All of this, from broken bones to exploding stars was made possible by a scientist noting some strange shimmers of light in his lab, his recollections of the experiments that came before and his curiosity to explore further.
3.Radioactivity.
The incredible Professor Marie Curie was involved in this as was the physicist Henri Becquerel. He was investigating a relationship between phosphorescence and x-rays, and was trying to get uranium salts to emit X-ray radiation. He believed that the uranium would do so if exposed to sunlight. So in a way, we can actually credit the accidental discovery of x-rays as being responsible for the accidental discovery of radioactivity.
So he left a load of Uranium in a drawer (This makes me scream internally and I have to remind myself that radioactivity and its dangers were not known. But no wonder Professor Curie died of anemia caused by exposure to radioactivity and no wonder Henri Becquerel died with radioactive burns all over his skin). Underneath it, he stored a photographic plate in black paper. He kept the drawer shut. Later on, he developed the plate and discovered imprints of the uranium on the plate. This showed that they had emitted radiation strong enough to penetrate the black paper- without sunlight.
He was able to prove that this radiation was not x-rays and that there were actually three classes of radiation. Marie Curie, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel began investigating this phenomenon, which led them to the discovery of polonium and radium.
This discovery led to so so many advancements in science and medicine. It changed the way we think about the atom and showed that atoms could be divided and transformed. It showed that the atom had a source of enormous energy, which changed thermodynamics and opened up new research into nuclear energy. Radiometric dating allowed for the age of rocks and fossils to be determined, opening up research into Earth's history. Radioactivity still plays essential roles in medicine ,with radioactive materials being used to trace bodily functions, deliver targeted treatments and study chemical processes in living cells.
Despite its danger, radioactivity is one of the most important discoveries ever made. Many scientists unknowingly sacrificed their lives for this important accident and it's only right that it's value is still appreciated, albeit with concern.
4. The Pace Maker
This artificial heart was made possible by Wilson Greatbatch. By 2025, there are over 3 million people with pacemakers; approximately 600, 000 new pacemakers are implanted annually.
In 1956, Wilson Greatbatch was working on an oscillator- a machine designed to record a person's heartbeat. He then made a simple but incredibly fortuitous error. Instead of grabbing a certain resistor to add to his circuit, he grabbed the wrong one. His circuit then started to produce rhythmic electrical pulses. Someone else in his position might have just rolled their eyes, muttered a few words about how stupid they were being and just connected it. But Wilson Greatbatch did something that the best of us still need to remember to do at the best of times. He listened.
He realised that this rhythmic pulse could be used to stimulate a heart. If a regular pulse could be produced, this pulse could mimic and regulate a failing heart. The resistor that Greatbatch grabbed by mistake also resulted in a low electrical current; this meant it did not require a significant amount of power and could therefore be used to power a human heart.
Greatbatch collaborated with surgeon William Chardack and Andrew. In 1958, they inserted the device into a dog. To their surprise, the device took control of the dog's heartbeat. In 1960 on April 15, the pacemaker was inserted into a human patient for the first time. 9 more pacemakers were inserted in the following days. In 1974, Greatbatch developed the lithium-iodide cell, which is now the standard cell to power pacemakers.
Whilst I've focused on the accidents that impacted medicine in this article, many other accidents resulted in products that had an impact on life and the world. Post-it notes, Sticky Putty and Dynamite were all accidents. Of course, its not enough to just make the accident. It then requires curiosity and resilience to make the accident into something worthwhile and impactful. I think this means that sometimes, the best thing you can do in science is realise that something went wrong, but work out why. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is find the value in the wrong and the weird!
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