poultice vaulter: The role of luck in a eureka moment

Sunday, March 17, 2013

The role of luck in a eureka moment

Douglas Heaven, reporter

(Image: Daily Herald Archive/National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library)

Mike Baillie is constantly on the look out for old wood. Sometimes he gets lucky.

A dendrochronologist at Queen?s University in Belfast, UK, Baillie pieces together precise chronologies spanning hundreds of years by analysing growth patterns in tree rings. The timelines can then be used by archaeologists and to calibrate radio carbon dating. But without samples of preserved timber for all periods, tree-ring chronologies will have gaps.

That was the situation several years ago, when Baillie had no wood bridging the 10th century - until one day, staring out of the window of the London to Durham train, he spotted a pile of bog oaks in a field. He sat up - but thought he would never be able to find that field in the middle of the North Yorkshire moors again. Then he saw signs for a motorway junction. ?As nice a grid reference as you?ll ever have,? he says.

Not only did Baillie manage to find the bog oaks again, but they spanned just the section of chronology he was missing.

In most accounts of scientific careers, the idea of serendipity doesn?t come up. As chemical engineer Julia Higgins of Imperial College London, the chair of a discussion on the topic at the British Library in London on 11 March, puts it: ?Scientific obituaries do not have much to say about luck.? Of course, scientists can be as lucky as the rest of us. But by convention, luck is brushed aside. It is not part of the scientific method.

?Scientists like to put over the idea that they are like Spock from Star Trek,? Higgins says. ?But actually they are passionately creative people.? And no less superstitious than the rest of the population, it seems. The panel talked of lucky toy giraffes, lucky cloning rabbits, and of a colleague dashing to get his lucky T-shirt before a rocket launch. ?You don?t believe in that, surely?? the lucky T-shirt wearer was asked. ?Of course not,? he said. ?But it works.?

Popular accounts of historic scientific breakthroughs, on the other hand, are littered with lucky eureka moments, from Isaac Newton?s apple to Alexander Fleming accidentally growing penicillin mould in an untidy lab. Never mind that such accounts are probably made up, with discoveries usually a serendipitous collision of creativity, thought and intuition. But intuition is a hard thing to pinpoint, let alone explain after the event, the panel agreed. Talk of luck is a way around that. And, of course, it makes for a better story.

The discussion was one event in the British Library?s National Life Stories series, an oral history project trying to capture the complexity of the people who make science. More than 100 interviews with some of the UK?s most distinguished scientists have been conducted so far, amounting to 1000 hours of childhood memories, early scientific influences and biographical details.

Is this kind of ?luck? something you can engineer? It doesn?t come without deep knowledge and the right facilities, and the best way to get it going may be to create interdisciplinary teams and strive for an ?electric effervescence? as people with different viewpoints spark off one another, the panel agreed. And how do you achieve that? ?Make sure there?s a coffee room and encourage people to use it,? says Higgins.

This event was part of the British Library's Inspiring Science season