那些偶然誕生的偉大發(fā)明

Louis Pasteur once said， “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Thats the truth behind all these accidental inventions—the scientists were prepared. They did their science on the brink and were able to see the magic in a mistake， set-back， or coincidence.

路易·巴斯德曾經(jīng)說過：“機(jī)會(huì)垂青有準(zhǔn)備的人。”這正是所有這些偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)背后蘊(yùn)藏的真理，而做出這些發(fā)現(xiàn)的科學(xué)家們就是那有準(zhǔn)備的人。他們的研究處于科學(xué)前沿，而且他們能夠從錯(cuò)誤、挫折或巧合中發(fā)現(xiàn)奇跡。

No.1 Penicillin1 青霉素

Alexander Fleming didnt clean up his workstation before going on vacation one day in 1928. When he came back， Fleming noticed that there was a strange fungus2 on some of his cultures3. Even stranger was that bacteria didnt seem to grow well near those cultures. The fungus became known as Penicillin. It became the first and is still one of the most widely used antibiotics4.

1928年的一天，亞歷山大·弗萊明在出發(fā)去度假之前忘了清理工作臺(tái)。度假歸來后，他發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的一些培養(yǎng)基上長(zhǎng)出了一種奇怪的霉菌。更加奇怪的是，細(xì)菌似乎不易在這些培養(yǎng)基附近生長(zhǎng)。這種霉菌就是后來廣為人知的青霉素。青霉素是人類最早發(fā)現(xiàn)的抗生素，并且至今仍是使用最廣泛的抗生素之一。

No.2 Mauve 苯胺紫

In 1856， 18-year-old chemist William Perkin was trying to come up with an artificial quinine. Instead of a malaria5 treatment， his experiments produced a thick murky6 mess. But the more Perkin looked at it， the more he saw a beautiful color in his mess. Turns out he had made the first-ever synthetic7 dye.

His dye was far better than any dyes that came from nature； the color was brighter， clearer， and didnt fade or wash out. His discovery also turned chemistry into a money-generating science—making it attractive for a whole generation of curious-minded people.

But the story is not over yet. One of the people inspired by Perkins work was German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich， who used Perkins dyes to pioneer immunology8 and chemotherapy9.

1856年，18歲的藥劑師威廉·珀金正在嘗試人工合成奎寧（編注：一種抗瘧藥）。不過，他的實(shí)驗(yàn)得到的卻并不是治療瘧疾的藥物，而是一團(tuán)黑乎乎的黏稠物質(zhì)。但珀金越看越覺得這團(tuán)物質(zhì)中透著一種美麗的色澤。原來，他已經(jīng)制成了歷史上第一種人工合成染料。

這種染料遠(yuǎn)勝于任何一種天然染料，用它染出的顏色更為鮮亮、清晰，而且不會(huì)褪色，水洗也不掉色。他的這一發(fā)明還使化學(xué)成為一門 “錢”途光明的科學(xué)，吸引了整整一代富有好奇心的人們投身其中。

不過，事情并未到此結(jié)束。很多人受到了珀金研究的啟發(fā)，其中便有德國(guó)細(xì)菌學(xué)家保羅·埃爾利希，他利用珀金的染料開創(chuàng)了免疫學(xué)和化學(xué)療法。

No.3 Radioactivity 放射現(xiàn)象

Back in 1896， physicist Henri Becquerel was fascinated by two things： natural fluorescence10 and the newfangled11 X-ray. He ran a series of experiments to see if naturally fluorescent minerals produced X-rays after they had been left out in the sun.

There was one problem： he was doing these experiments in the winter， and there was one week with a long stretch of overcast skies. He left his equipment wrapped up together in a drawer and waited for a sunny day.

When he got back to work， Becquerel realized that the uranium12 rock he had left in the drawer had imprinted itself on a photographic plate13 without being exposed to sunlight first. There was something very special about that rock. Working with Marie and Pierre Curie， he discovered that that something was radioactivity.

1896年，物理學(xué)家亨利·貝克雷爾對(duì)兩個(gè)事物很著迷：一個(gè)是自然熒光現(xiàn)象，另一個(gè)就是新奇的X射線。他進(jìn)行了一系列實(shí)驗(yàn)，想看看有自然熒光屬性的礦物質(zhì)在經(jīng)過日照后能否產(chǎn)生X射線。……