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Unpredictability and Chance in Scientific Progress

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Unpredictability and Chance in Scientific Progress Progress in Informatics, No. 4, pp.1–4, (2007) 1 Special Contribution Unpredictability and chance in scientific progress John Meurig THOMAS University of Cambridge, England and Royal Institution of Great Britain, London It is much easier to interpret the past than to predict dren under the age of ten in the UK alone now have a the future, and especially so when dealing with the vi- mobile phone!) cissitudes of science. The laser, for example, which In astronomy, the CCD’s use has led to sensational did not emerge until 1960, could have been assembled advances, for in the last fifteen years our knowledge decades earlier by perspicacious physicists following of the size of the visible pageant of the heavens has Einstein’s classic paper in 1917 on population inver- increased over a thousand-fold. The CCD has also sion in electronic energy levels. Equally, a widely read, transformed gastroenterology, for in association with mathematically-oriented engineer or computer scien- earlier advances in flexible fibre optics, it has brought tist, knowing Radon’s work in Leipzig, also in 1917, well nigh to perfection the endoscope for examining in- could have foreseen and accelerated the arrival of the side the human body and, very recently, inside blood technique of tomography, with all that it has done to vessels. And in the so-called Census of Marine Life revolutionize medicine. In this article, I cite examples (COML) of a few years ago — an international project of devices, techniques, procedures, and theories that ex- to map the biodiversity of the oceans, which are the hibit a variety of different origins and subsequent devel- world’s most under-explored environment — it was opment. In some instances progress had been extraordi- found that the hitherto most inaccessible stretch of nary rapid, in others extremely slow; and in several the ocean, deep beneath the Arctic ice-cap, is teeming with element of chance and coincidence has played a vital farmore life than scientists had ever thought possible. role. Numerous hitherto unidentified species, many of which With the exception of the computer itself few elec- are new to science, have been discovered — suspected tronic devices have had a more profound impact on the new species of jellyfish and of squid and octopus, never progress of experimental science and on social inter- seen previously, were found in those northerly waters. action among human beings than the charge coupled At the more commercial, consumer level, the CCD device,otherwiseknown as the CCD. It has funda- has comprehensively changed our way of recording mentally transformed the whole of observational as- both scientific and family images. Digital camera tronomy and very large sections of terrestrial and ma- transmission via the internet is widespread; and there rine biology. The study and application of nanoscience has been a concomitant slump, in the manufacture of no less than progress in nanotechnology have likewise conventional cameras and films. CCDs have given been revolutionized by the CCD, which is an ultra- agreat boost to investigations of animal behaviour, sensitive detector that picks up extremely low levels because they make possible ultra-sensitivity in night- of light ranging from the infra red to the visible, the vision video recording. They also figure in the armoury ultra violet and even X-rays. It is more than a thou- of modern military warfare. sand times more sensitive than the most sensitive pho- It wasWillard Boyle and George Smith, working at tographic plate, which is why it is nowadays the basis AT. and T. Bell Laboratories in 1969, who invented the of modern digital and video cameras, optical scanners CCD. Yet — and this is the quintessential point — there and camcorders, as well as spectrometers, fax machines was no immediate great excitement within those labo- and other high - performance imaging facilities that are ratories when the patent was duly filed. The revolution- these days a part of mobile phones. (One million chil- ary features of the CCD took some time to register. Im- mediate technical and commercial exploitation did not Received September 19, 2006. occur. Fairchild was the first company to manufacture DOI: 10.2201/NiiPi.2007.4.1 c 2007 National Instiute of Informatics 2 Progress in Informatics, No. 4, pp.1–4, (2007) CCDs (in 1974); but only gradually did their full poten- space. The fluorescence of the sample signified the lib- tial and impact become universally apparent to all the eration of unknown (X) radiation. Within days, Roent- manufacturers of electronicequipment. Moreover, it gen had rendered visible (photographically by X-rays) took until 2006 before the US National Academy of En- the bones in his and his wife’s hand. Within only a gineering awarded Boyle and Smith their coveted C.S. few months medicinal scientists as far afield as Moscow Draper Prize for their remarkable invention. and Harvard were exploring the digestive systems of Even slower exploitation took place in the case of animals and photographing fetuses in pregnant women fax machines.Theveryfirstwasdesigned and patented by X-rays. An enterprising Frenchman named Seguy in 1843 by Alexander Bain of Scotland, thirty three patented as early as 1897 a machine for X-raying bag- years before the telephone and Morse were used. Gio- gage at transport depots — the forerunner of the equip- vani Caselli, the Sienese physicist working in Florence, ment now used for airport security. brought forth a robust, reliable fax machine (in 1861) Ever since, X-rays have played a pivotal rˆole in which he called the pantel´ egraphe´ ,andinthe first year medicine and scientific research and X-ray crystallog- of its use he sent nearly 5,000 fax messages! In 1924, raphy is now the single most effective technique for elu- the RCA company in the US marketed what they called cidating the structure of molecules, minerals and the atransoceanic radio fax; and it was used to transmit enormous and burgeoning variety of new materials. In- a photograph of President Calvin Coolidge from New terestingly, a major intellectual advance was made by York to London in 1929. Yet when the expert Com- W.H. Bragg in 1915, when he suggested that Fourier mission set up in 1937 by President Roosevelt to advise methods for analysing X-ray patterns might hold the him of the most important technical and industrial de- keytosolving atomic locations in crystalline materi- velopment for the next thirty years or so, the fax ma- als of arbitrary complexity. But it was not until John chine was not mentioned in the final report! This is all Kendrew in the mid 1950s demonstrated how the elec- the more surprising for in the early 1900s the Ameri- tronic computer could greatly accelerate the speed of can scientist Arthur Korn had invented a photo-electric structural retrieval (which he used in his Nobel prize- scanning fax machine which, by 1910, was used con- winning work on myoglobin) that the digital computer stantly to link Paris, London, and Berlin over the tele- became a central and indispensable tool in all chemical phone network. I knew a chief scientific advisor to molecular-biological investigations. the UK Ministry of Defence in the 1960s who turned The invention of the CCD, the transistor and in- down “as surplus to needs” a fax machine that had been tegrated circuit and the ever-smaller electronicchips demonstrated to him for future military deployment. In associated with Japanese digital electronics wizardry later life he regarded it as one of his greatest errors were all products of planned intellectual endeavour, of judgement. It was not until 1987, when the Canon as was the emergence of the personal computer and Company in Japan introduced the first plain paper fax the World Wide Web. Thesameistrueofthe machine — at the time (purely coincidentally) of a pro- labyrinthine networking and the recent dramatic de- longed postal (letter) delivery strike in Britain — that velopment of Supercomputing Grids for scientific use the fax machine became an indispensable instrument at epitomized by the spectacular succession in Japan least in the UK. of: the Information Technology Based laboratory Slower exploitation still occurred in the case of the (http://www.itbl.riken.jp) initiated in 2001; the Su- fuel cell,whichwasfirstdevised by the Welsh lawyer perScience Information Network (http://sinet.ad.jp); W.R. Groveinthe late 1830s. Here, however, it is the BioGrid project (http://www.biogrip.jp); the Viz- largely the technical difficulties posed by electro catal- Grid project (http://www.vizgrid.org ); and now, in ysis (the phenomenon involved in converting chemical 2006, the National Research Grid Initiative NAREGI combustion directly into electrical energy) that has held (http:/www.naregi.org). The computational research up the widespread use of the fuel cell as an environmen- environment that NAREGI engenders is expected in tally benign means of generating energy for transport, thenextfive years to be at the level of several hun- heating and general electrical production. dred TFLOPS (tera-floating-point instructions per sec- By contrast to all these examples, the chance discov- ond). As Miura [1] has recently outlined this facility ery of X-rays by Roentgen had immediate and dramatic should solve types of nano-scale problems that cannot consequences. It was a fortunate fact, that evening be solved by conventional theories and methodologies. on 8th November 1895, that samples of fluorescent It will also greatly facilitate quantum mechanical calcu- platinocyanide compounds (in which
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