The Five Most Impactful Accidental Scientific Discoveries
Although it may seem as if the objects we use today result from years of meticulous research and planning, many of them were actually discovered accidentally.
Penicillin:
Today, we use penicillin to treat most infections caused by bacteria. Although this medication is crucial to modern medicine, its discovery was accidental. In the summer of 1928, Alexander Fleming, while working in a hospital in London, noticed mold had contaminated a flu culture in one of his Petri dishes while conducting flu research. Instead of throwing the Petri dish away, he kept it and isolated the mold, eventually discovering it belonged to the genus Penicillium. From this, penicillin was born, and Fleming won a Nobel Prize in 1945.
Insulin:
Insulin is used to manage blood sugar for those with type one diabetes. When German physicians Joseph van Mering and Oscar Minkowski removed the pancreas from a dog in 1899, they noticed a swarm of flies feeding on the dog’s urine. After running a test on the urine, the two men realized that the dog’s urine was sugar urine, which was a sign of diabetes. Since the dog was healthy before the removal of its pancreas, the physicians realized that the removal of the pancreas caused diabetes in the dog. After conducting more tests, they realized that insulin secreted by the pancreas could be used to manage diabetes, which later led to development of the synthetic human insulin that is used today.
The Microwave:
In modern North America, it’s hard to imagine a home without a microwave. This device may seem necessary today, but it wasn’t invented until the 1940s. While working for the Raytheon Corporation, Percy Spencer was testing a vacuum tube for a radar-related project. While testing the tube, he realized the chocolate bar in his pocket melted faster than he thought it would melt in the first place. He started experimenting by aiming the tube at other objects and concluded that the heat these objects absorbed was from microwave energy. On October 8th, 1945, Raytheon filed the first patent for a microwave.
Vaseline:
Vaseline is mainly used for cosmetic purposes today, despite it originally being discovered in an oil rig. In 1859, when 22-year-old chemist Robert Chesebrough was investigating an oil rig in Pennsylvania, he heard a rumor that a jelly-like substance called “rod wax” was getting into the machines and causing them to malfunction. However, after further investigation, Chesebrough noticed that the workers used the so-called “rod wax” to soothe burns and cuts on their skin. Chesebrough took the “rod wax” home, and it eventually became what we now know as Vaseline. It is rumored that he ate a spoon of Vaseline a day (don’t try this at home!).
X-Rays:
X-rays have discovered various foreign objects in human bodies, ranging from grenades to chair legs. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen was studying cathode rays and wanted to see if the rays escaping from a glass tube completely covered with black cardboard would still be visible. He noticed a glow emerge in his darkened laboratory a few feet away from the cardboard-covered tube. Rontgen realized he had discovered a new type of ray that could penetrate solid objects and record the images of photographic negatives and human skeletons. In the first year of the Nobel Prize, 1901, he won it for his accidental discovery of the X-ray.
One thing that all of these discoveries had in common was the curiosity needed to lead to them in the first place. Perhaps by exploring your curiosities, you too can make a huge discovery!
