Talk:Serendipity

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Just want to say that the eBay image made me laugh. Don't remove it! slicedoranges

Why the stub warning? What's missing? -- till we *) 10:11, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

I think it's too much of a dictionary entry; there ought to be more 'encyclopedic' material in there. Gaurav 13:20, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But isn't it more than a dictionary entry, with the hints on its artifical origin, its usage in sociological theory and the list of things named so? -- till we *) 14:59, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] serendipity

good luck or to find something useful

[edit] Cases of serendipity which could be added to the list

  • POST IT. 3M chemist Spence Silver liked trying and error. But he never expected that by mixing simple organic molecules in a odd proportion during an experiment in 1968, he would concoct a polymer that was exactly the opposite of what he wanted to achieve. Instead of holding on to the objects after it was applied, the polymer let go easily. In other words, it was a glue that didn’t stick very well. Although he knew there must be some good use for it, never did he imagine that that accidental fluke would turn out to be such a huge commercial success today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjpcondor (talk • contribs) 22:40, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Columbus' landing in the West Indies, as he had thought, has been much later described as discovery of Americas. The continent that celebrates Columbus Day is in fact named after Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian explorer and cartograph who sailed coasts of South America between 1499 and 1500 AD, and told the Europeans that they had discovered a new continent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjpcondor (talk • contribs) 22:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Thomas Seebeck's discovery of the Seebeck Effect. -- Tronatz 03:22, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
  • William Henry Perkin discovery of the first aniline dye, mauveine (of the colour mauve). -- Tronatz 03:22, 14 May 2005 (UTC); AdderUser 21:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Discovery of the principle behind inkjet printers by a Canon engineer. After putting his hot soldering iron by accident on his pen ink had been ejected from the point of pen af few moments later.
  • Why isn't Teflon listed (discovered by Roy J. Plunkett; the story is on his page)? It is already mentioned in the text further down anyways. -- 23 Nov 2005
  • DES, diethylstilbestrol: In his autobiography "To See the Obvious" on page 103, Arthur John Birch writes: "[Sir Edward Charles] Dodds, my bete noir, owed his position largely to the fact that he had operated on King George. Because he was such a poor organic chemist, when he tried to make propenylphenol anole by standard alkaline demethylation of anethole he accidentally obtained a dimer instead. It happened to be diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first powerful synthetic estrogen." AdderUser 17:51, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Cherenkov observed blue light coming from a container of water in the vicinity of a radiation source. Further investigation led to the discovery of the Cherenkov Effect. AdderUser 19:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • According to the obituary of Friedrich Asinger in Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 2007, 46, 6010-6013: "In experiments on the production of rocket fuels during his forced stay in the Soviet Union Asinger studied the combined effect of elemental sulfur and gaseous ammonia on pentan-2-one ..." under mild conditions. He could not identify the products at the time. He was released after "8 years and 9 winters" and returned to Germany whereupon he determined that he had unintentionally (serendipitously?) prepared 3-thiazolines, a class of compounds of which only one example was previously known.AdderUser 16:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  • According to a bio at an MIT website, Wilson "Greatbatch was building an oscillator to record heart sounds. When he accidentally installed a resistor with the wrong resistance into the unit, it began to give off a steady electrical pulse. Greatbatch realized that the small device could be used to regulate the human heart. After two years of refinements, he had hand-crafted the world's first successful implantable pacemaker (patent #3,057,356). Until that time, the apparatus used to regulate heartbeat was the size of a television set, and painful to use." The WikiPedia pages for Wilson Greatbatch and Artificial pacemaker make no mention of this version of the story. Was it serendipity or not?AdderUser 07:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "The discovery of the Friedel-Crafts reaction was the fruit of serendipity and keen observation. In 1877, Friedel and Crafts were working in Charles A. Wurtz's laboratory. In order to prepare amyl iodide, they treated amyl chloride with aluminum and iodine using benzene as the solvent. Instead of amyl iodide, they ended up with amylbenzene! Unlike others before them who may have simply discarded the reaction, they thoroughly investigated the Lewis acid catalyzed alkylations and acylations and published more than 50 papers and patents [...]" Quoted from Jie Jack Li, Name Reactions: A Collection of Detailed Reaction Mechanisms, 3rd Ed., Springer, 2006, Note 1, pages 240-243. AdderUser 09:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The photocatalyzed lysis of water to oxygen and hydrogen, H2O → ½O2 + H2, with titanium dioxide was discovered serendipitously by Akira Fujishima when he was still a graduate student at the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo. The most cited relevant paper is A. Fujishima and K. Honda, "Electrochemical Photolysis of Water at a Semiconductor Electrode", Nature, 1972, 238(5358), 37-38. The story is told in TiO2 Photocatalysis; Fundamentals and Applications, A. Fujishima, K. Hashimoto and T. Watanabe. Tokyo: BKC, Inc., 1999 (translation of the Japanese original published in 1997).AdderUser 02:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • According to the Wikipedia article on triboluminescence: "The discovery of triboluminescence was actually an accident. In the late 1790's sugar production began to produce more refined pure sugar crystals. These crystals were formed into a large solid cone for transport and sale. This solid cone of sugar had to be broken into usable chunks using a device known as a sugar nip. People began to notice that as sugar was `nipped' in low light, tiny bursts of light were visible. The first recorded observation however, occurred even earlier and is attributed to English scholar Francis Bacon when he wrote in his 1620 Novum Organum that `It is well known that all sugar, whether candied or plain, if it be hard, will sparkle when broken or scraped in the dark.'. The scientist Robert Boyle also reported on some of his work on triboluminescence in 1663."AdderUser 14:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The tale is of Indian origin not Persian

As I have mentioned before, The Three Princes of Serendip was published in Venice in 1557 by an enterprising printer called Michele Tramezzino. That Tramezzino was well-respected can be judged by the fact that the book bears the imprimatur of Pope Julius III. The title page of The Three Princes of Serendip claims that one Christoforo Armeno translated the book from Persian into Italian, but there are serious doubts as to whether Armeno ever existed, except in the fertile mind of Michele Tramezzino. Most likely Tramezzino was himself the compiler of the various tales, which were probably of ancient origin, mostly Indian.[1]. Heja Helweda 15:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Good Work But!:

If you want to know origin of a word you must consult prestigious dictionarys.Up to know, do you have any complain? OK I continue:)

Merriam Webster Dictionary :

  • "Etymology: from its possession by the heroes of the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip" [2] and [3]

Do you know Dictionary.com?

  • Serendipity was its word of the day in January 15, 2004 :

"The word serendipity was formed by English author Horace Walpole (1717-1797) from Serendip (also Serendib), an old name for Sri Lanka, in reference to a Persian tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "discovered, quite unexpectedly, great and wonderful good in the most unlikely of situations, places and people." [4]

American Heritage Dictionary : "From the characters in the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, who made such discoveries, from Persian Sarandp, Sri Lanka, from Arabic sarandb.[5]

and I can't see anything in here :[6]

and the last, Horace Walpole (the one who coined it in English) says : " ...Deriving its name from an ancient Persian folktale "The Three Princes of Serendip.." [7] you think, he is lying or what?

So according to above, I changed back the article. Good Luck!

--Pejman47 16:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, those sources should be included, but one can not deny the fact that there is a controversy over the origin of the name, as shown by this source [8] Cheers! :).Heja Helweda 04:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
You didn't understand my point! I said the dispute was about the origion of a word. And for that you must consult prestigious dictionays not unknown unverifable websites. The persian story has the support of M_W and all the known dictories. They have not even mentioned this dispute! I can make a website like you have found to support my point. so, until you find a Dictionay to support it, you may not change it back. (I said dictionary OK!)You even mentioned the Indian orgion first and then Persian story! As M_W source is inferior to your source!
Be carefull that I consider any other move by you on this subject as vandalism and proof of your biased behaviour on Wikipedia. --Pejman47 06:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language By Kate Burridge, pg 15: Serendip is an old name for Sri Lanka. The name came into English initially via the a Persian story called the Three princes of Serendip. Heja's source is an unacademic website and does not merit giving it more weight than the more academic and widely accepted argument. Also the Encyclopedia Britannica agrees. I am sure there are more serious articles to make arguments over..--alidoostzadeh 06:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

With specific reference to "The tale is of Indian origin not Persian":

The tale as Walpole knew it then (possibly a French translation of the 1557 Italian Peregrinaggio) and as we know it today (Remer's 1965 English translation; Hodges' 1964 and 1966 versions; scholarly papers about Persian, Indian and related literature) is a COMPOSITE.

The detailed stories about the king (the "host" to the Three Princes who nearly puts them to death) go back to Firdausi's Shahnameh (1010 AD) and are about the life of Bahram V Gur, a real king of the Sassanid Empire who ruled from ~420-440 AD in the region that was once known as Persia (now Iran). The Sassanids are PRE-Persian. Firdausi was Persian; the Shahnameh is Persian and it is definitely an important part of Persian history and culture. Many of the stories about Bahram V Gur and his rule have been verified by historians. However, in his 1010 epic history, Firdausi did NOT describe any stories of Three Princes from the land of Serendip.

After Firdausi, other poets (and minstrels?) retold and rewrote parts of the Shahnameh, sometimes for other kings or patrons. Nizami wrote his extract, the Haft Paykar, around 1197 AD. As far as I am aware, the first version known to incorporate The Three Princes of Serendip was Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht (1302 AD). (This is NOT the current Hasht-Bihisht entry in Wikipedia.) Khusrau was a Turk living in India when he wrote it so things are getting even more multicultural. I am not sure whether Khusrau wrote the Hasht Bihisht in Arabic or Hindi: probably in Arabic and probably NOT in Persian. The story about three princes or three wise brothers and the missing camel that Khusrau appears to have added to the Shahnameh can be traced to Indian folktales going back to around 100-500 AD, but possibly even earlier.

Other embellishments incorporated into Firdausi's Shahnameh by Khusrau or others can be traced to many different but sometimes overlapping sources: Indian folktales, Persian folktales, Hebrew folktales, possibly Turkish folktales, etc.

Pre-Persian Sassanids, Persians, Indians, Turks, ... The current English version of The Three Princes of Serendip that I think is being "discussed" here is from the Italian Peregrinaggio. That work is most closely derived from Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht. However, the entire work is a composite primarily yet inseparably derived from Persian epic literature (the Shahnameh) about pre-Persian Sassanians with elements added from Indian (camel story and some other adventures) folktales by a Turk.

The first few pages of Reference 3b ("Bahramdipity and Nulltiple Scientific Discoveries") on the main Serendipity page has some of the historical background, with detailed references. The PDF is a free download.

Rough Timeline:
100-500 AD: Indian folktales, including the story of three wise brothers or three princes and a camel.
400 AD: The real Bahram V Gur. Nothing about wise three princes.
1010 AD: Firdausi's epic history, the Shahnameh, in Persian. Nothing about three princes.
1197 AD: Nizami's Haft Paykar, in Persian. Nothing about three princes.
1302 AD: Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht. Written in India, possibly in Arabic but later translated into Persian. First verifiable mention of The Three Princes of Serendip along with stories of Bahram V Gur.
1557 AD: The Peregrinaggio published in Italy, attributed to Christoforo Armeni and almost certainly a partial translation of Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht, even if only from memory of "folktales" he learned growing up.
1754 AD: Walpole coins the word "serendipity" from the Peregrinaggio or a translation.
1900+ : Resurrection and poplularization of the word "serendipity".

Please login. Also you did not read the pdf carefully: [9], the three princes of serendip is based on the life of Bahram V Gur, king of Persiaa. (pg 78). Also the stories are in a Persian book and was translated from Persian. --alidoostzadeh 07:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The paper does say that Bahram V Gur was "King of Persia" but it does get complicated. I'll concede "Persia" but some works break things down into the Early, Middle and Late Persia periods or sometimes even distinguish some periods as pre-Persian. In those cases, Pre-Persian must mean pre-modern Persian.

But I still say that The Three Princes of Serendip is a composite. At that time, much of the literature was oral, not written. The most famous story about the three princes and the missing camel is of early (100-500 AD) Indian origin. I don't know of any source that places it elsewhere eariler. Such stories do, of course, travel well and there may have been Persian, Chinese, Turkish and other adaptations or translations.

The stories of Bahram Gur and other kings began as an oral tradition and became a sort of mythology. They also probably traveled into other languages and cultures. Firdausi wrote them down in the Shahnameh.

Khusrau is the first writer to have placed the camel story in with the other stories that have been definitively traced to the section of the Shahnameh that deal with the life of Bahram V Gur.

Where did Khusrau learn these stories? We don't know, but probably by oral transmission. Did Khusrau learn an Indian version of the camel story and an Indian or Arabic version of the Shahnameh? We don't know. Did Khusrau learn the camel story and the Bahram Gur stories as Persian stories? We don't know. In what language did Khusrau originally write the Hasht Bihisht? I don't know, but I might be able to dig it out. He was on the payroll of Indian kings so he probably wrote for them. But Persian was known in India at the time.

In what language did Cristoforo Armeni learn the stories that were eventually translated as the Peregrinaggio? By the inscription, he probably learned and translated them from Persian, which makes sense as Persian was spoken in regions where he probably lived and grew up ("Christopher the Armenian", Persian being spoken in Armenia). Did Armeni ever see a written version of the original Hasht Bihisht and know that it was written by Khusrau? Probably not. It was probably all oral folk tales to him.

Some people actually did think that the Shahnameh was just mythology and folk tales until scholars figured out that it was based on reality.

I'd like to make an analogy to the Western literature, such as the Bible. Today, children know a lot of Bible stories in their native language (e.g., English) as if they were folktales. No one has to read the Bible to know about Noah and the Ark. But what is the origin of such stories? Walt Disney? England, the King James Bible? Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic versions? The earliest oral versions?

The camel story can be traced to oral Indian folktales.
The stories of Bahram Gur can be traced the written Shahnameh and earlier oral versions.
The final Three Princes of Serendip is a combination of Indian and Persian material.

New Comments:

I recently noticed a new entry for The Three Princes of Serendip. I originally wrote most of what is posted there and asked someone to submit it to this (serendipity} article before I knew how to post things. I did notice that it was removed but it seems that someone actually relocated it to a new article without making it clear what had happened. (For months, I thought it was completely deleted.) There is now a link from serendipity to The Three Princes of Serendip.

Next, I have added info about Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht to the wikipedia article Hasht-Bihisht.

Next, alidoostzadeh seems to know a lot about all of this stuff. Some of the differences may arise from imprecise use of terms: "Persian" to refer to the geographic region cf. culture cf. language cf. genealogy cf. etc. Were the Sassanians also Persians or did another group or tribe establish a lineage that is more closely associated with modern (current) Persians? The Sassanians were a dynasty within the Persian (geographic? cultural? genealogical?) empire? Did the Sassanids die out or did they get assimilated into a subsequent identifiable group? Similar disagreements probably arise in discussion of China and the various dynasties that have ruled the land we know as China. In the U.S., we are probably exposed to more Chinese history and culture and know about Qin, Han, Ming, Qing, ... dynasties from movies, books, etc. and better understand if someone says that an expensive porcelain vase is Ming, not Chinese or if a famous artwork is Han, not Chinese. I don't have an answer, I'm just trying to explain why there may be confusion or disagreement about what is meant by Persian in each discussion.

Next, a few more comments about origin of the word serendip versus the literary origin of The Three Princes of Serendip. Walpole was primarily influenced by the camel story. If Walpole had read it in a different context, he might still have been inspired to coin a new word as long as the Princes or brothers had a catchy word in their name or homeland. If Walpole had read the camel story in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (the English version can be found here: Burton, R. F. (1901) Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume IV. Burton Society, Denver, CO: pages 1-15. (Facsimile reprint of the original 1886 Edition by the Kamashastra Society, Benares.), there would be no mention of Bahram V or anything else definitively traceable to Persian history or folklore. He might still have coined serendipity. But he didn't read it there.

Walpole only came across the Princes and the camel story because of a long series of events that I listed above in the "Rough Timeline": there are Sassanid, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Armenian, Italian and French contributions to Walpole's creation of serendipity in 1754.

The book originated as a composite as described above (and in Reference 3b on the main page); the word was inspired by a sub-plot that is, thus far, known to be of Indian origin but would not have been known to Walpole without the book.

It may reference present-day India/Sri Lanka, but it was Persian. The band Led Zeppelin wrote a song entitled Going to California. California is in the USA. Does that mean Led Zeppelin must be an American band??
What are you saying was Persian? Khusro's Hasht-Bihisht? I think people are arguing about a possible "ultimate" origin, if one can ever truly be identified. The earliest verifiable stories of brothers or princes (from India, Serendib or elsewhere) making wise or sagacious discoveries (i.e., the camel story) and earning unsought rewards go back to Indian folktales from around 100-500 AD. Khusro combined those folktales with authentic Persian material (stories about Bahram V Gur in the Shahnameh and Haft Paykar) into his Hasht-Bihisht. This is the Persian "fairy tale" that Chrisoforo Armeni translated into Italian for the Peregrinnagio which, after other translations, is what influenced Walpole. I'm waiting for someone to dig up an ancient tablet from China that shows that the princes and camel story originated there in 500 BC and was brought to India along trade routes.
Walpole was inspired by the adventures of the Three Princes and their stories are of Indian origin. Those stories were only known to Walpole because of the more complicated history and how they became incorporated into the Peregrinnagio of "Persian origin".AdderUser 14:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Discovery of Nylon?

The main page (on October 19, 2006) says: "Nylon was discovered when a group of young scientists playing around the lab when the boss was away, tried to produce a long fiber by stretching a blob of polyamide gel across the corridors." Unless the well documented history of nylon is a complete fabrication, this story seems to be outrageous beyond belief. For many years the focus of the Carothers group's research was synthetic polymers and fibers. Their goal was to make fibers to replace silk and other natural materials. From personal accounts that I have read and heard, they were pulling fibers from their flasks and tubes from the outset. There was nothing accidental or serendipitous about the preparation of Nylon. The choice of specific starting materials was deliberately planned to circumvent problems encountered with earlier approaches. This story about "playing around ... when the boss was away" sounds like pure hogwash and should be authenticated or referenced or removed as an example of serendipitous discovery.

[edit] Serendipity in the Origin of the Origin of The Three Princes of Serendip

Walpole derived "serendipity" from The Three Princes of Serendip, parts of which can be traced back to Firdausi'sShahnameh. There is an example of serendipity in the Shahnameh.

In the first part of the Shahnameh ("The First Kings"), it is told how King Hushang discovered fire from flint: "One day the king was riding ..." when he encountered a big black monstrous snake. The king threw a rock. The thrown rock hit the ground and shattered. "From the collision of the two stones a spark leaped out and the rock's heart glowed with fire. The snake was not killed but the fiery nature of flint was discovered so that whenever anyone struck it with iron sparks flashed forth." Hushang gave thanks to god and from that day forth men prayed toward fire. (Quotations from: Shahnameh; The Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, Copyright: Mage Publishers, Washington DC, 1997/2000/2004; Published by Viking Penguin, NY/London, 2006.)

If Walpole had read that, he might have coined "hushangdipity" instead of "serendipity".AdderUser 23:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split page

The bulk of this page is a list of accidental scientific discoveries, which isn't really about serendipity. The list needs to be made into a separate article (eg List of accidental scientific discoveries), and the remainder of the article tidied up. --88.111.41.106 01:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know a lot about how Wiki works, but maybe make a redirect or co-title "List of serendipitous scientific discoveries" to faclilitate searching? 129.64.56.40 22:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Science

I removed the bit that says scientists don't like to admit to a discovery being serendipitous, this is completely counter to all of my experience with them. One of the frequent justifications for conducting all blue sky research is that beneficial discoveries and technologies will be discovered by accident Murray.booth 10:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

But it is completely agreeing with my experience (being a researcher myself, I know how it works from the inside - sometimes serendipity is recognized, but often there is a reluctance in doing it). It is true that the "accidental benefit" of blue sky research is often cited -but it doesn't involve true serendipity, it's more like practical spin-offs of scientific technology. I'd put back the bit, perhaps with a little more clarification. --Cyclopia 10:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
(Am I also a PhD student) Bring as we appear to have completely contradictory experiences maybe some sort of compromise between the extremes would make sense. Its just that it made it sound like no scientist would ever admit to it, and hey, be bold as they say!
how about:
While some scientists and inventors are reluctant about reporting accidental discoveries others openly admit its role.....Murray.booth 21:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it's good. You're welcome to add something of this tone to the article. --Cyclopia 12:39, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 3M not 3:00AM

The paragraph that starts with "Post-it Notes" in the Inventions section , contains text "3:00AM" and I think it should say "3M". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.130.245.126 (talk) 01:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Bogus examples?

1. oxygen: Just what was serendipitous about the discovery of O2? Rather, the multiple independent disoveries of O2?

2. Acyclovir: unless I'm mistaken, acyclovir was discovered as part of a deliberate research program in anti-proliferative and anti-viral agents.

3. ether: Just what was serendipitous about the multiple independent developments of ether as an anesthetic? People knew about its hypnotic effects and the men who started using it in surgery (Morton, Long, et al.) did so deliberately, not by accident.

4. Acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin): Hoffmann was deliberately trying to moderate the effects of salicylic acid which his father found discomforting. The product of his focused efforts was Aspirin. No serendipity. (Whether he was the first to make it or not is irrelevant: there was a deliberate search for a derivative with fewer side effects than salicylic acid itself.)

5. Magainin (from frogs): The fact that frogs are able to resist infection even after suffering severe wounds is what compelled Zasloff to search for a natural substance associated with that resistance in their skin. Lo and behold, he found what he was looking for: the magainins. What was the serendipity?

6. benzodiazepine: The comments provided are not consistent with what I have read about the discovery of this class of compounds. Sternbach had prepared a series of compounds for another project. Quite some time (years) later, he pulled out those old samples for testing on a new project. Only one of them was active. It turns out that the lone active structure was NOT what he had tried to synthesize; the reaction to make that compound had taken an unexpected course and produced a benzodiazepine. The part about "while cleaning up his lab" is, according to what I have read, untrue.

I can't check all of these entries, but many of them seem borderline to bogus. I think many of them should be deleted.

7. Spelling: cyanoacrilate is cyanoacrYlate. AdderUser 02:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I removed the entries no. 2,4,5. I agree with your concerns and it would be fine if you can check and substantiate more of them. --Cyclopia 14:13, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

8. Re: "The German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz dreamed about Ourobouros, a snake running around and forming a circle, leading to his solution of the closed chemical structure of cyclic compounds, such as benzene" in the Serendipitous Ideas section.

Alfred Bader and others have made a strong case that Kekule's dream was a story made up after the fact and was actually an unattributed recollection of material that he had read in manuscript or even textbook form before making his claim. E.g., Bader Summary: "Bader will present "Richard Anschutz, Archibald Scott Couper, and Josef Loschmidt: A Detective at Work". This talk will explore the sorting out of truth from fiction in crediting the discovery of the structure of benzene. Bader provides evidence that Couper was the first person to describe the tetravalency of carbon, and not Kekule and also that Loschmidt, best known for his calculation of Avogadro's Number, was the first to describe the cyclic structure of benzene and made innumerable contributions to chemistry prior to turning his attention to physics.""AdderUser 16:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Post it note

This is provided as an example in both the inventions and chemistry sections. One of them is redundant but I don't know which. Capuchin 11:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prod it?

Why should we keep this random collection of trivial "examples" peppered with original research? --Ghirla-трёп- 18:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed a random collection - of examples, of stories, and of ideas about how discoveries are made and such (which may or may not be original research - there are some sources but not online and not tied to specific parts of the article). Without knowing a whole lot about the topic, there seems to be material for an article here, but right now it isn't an article, it is just a jumble. Kingdon 13:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Serendipity Ad?

There was a section about a program called "serendipity" for some business school in Utah. I deleted it. Is there any reason such a section shouldn't be deleted? FructoseFred 02:43, 11 November 2007 (UTC)