Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas FRS Hon FREng Hon FRSE The unpredictability of science and its

consequences 30 April 2007

Tales of the unexpected No-one knew what to expect when they arrived for the RSE lecture in April by Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas on the unpredictability of science and its consequences. But as the evening unfolded, his insights into scientific discovery proved that happy accidents drive human progress just as much as clever calculations The clue didnt come till the end of the lecture. Sir John Meurig Thomas, Professor of Material Sciences at the University of Cambridge and former Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, then revealed his secret he had spent four years advising the cabinet office on the future of technology and science, and almost none of his predictions had come true. Thomas and his fellow committee members had managed to identify the enormous potential of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and confocal light microscopy, but most of their other predictions ended up in the shredder, while many other key developments (including the spectacular rise of the shredder) didnt even appear on the radar. Speaking of radar, this was one of the technologies missed by a similar US commission appointed by President Roosevelt in 1937 to identify the major developments in science and technology over the next 30 years. Roosevelt wanted to plan for the future and optimise deployment of his national resources, but the commission failed to notice many imminent breakthroughs like radar and lasers, fax machines, biotechnology, antibiotics and jet planes, despite the fact that all of them already existed, at least in the text books some of them, like fax machines, for more than a century. Some members of the US commission had probably spent too much time reading Scientific American, the academic publication which had confidently predicted in 1920 that steam planes were the way to fly in future. This echoed the remarks of the eminent Scottish scientist Lord Kelvin, who once declared that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Another of Sir Johns heroes, the physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford, had also been guilty of getting it terribly wrong. In 1934, he predicted that anyone who expected to generate power from the transformation of atoms was talking moonshine. Was this the same Rutherford who turned the world of science upside down, and in the process disproved Kelvins theory that the Earth was only 100 million years old? The history of science, said Professor Thomas, is littered with inaccurate predictions and blindspots, dating back to Emperor Vespasians chief military advisor Frontinus, who thought invention had already reached its limits with the catapult and other high-tech weapons. According to Professor Thomas, unpredictability is actually one of the engines of science while proving the prophets wrong it may actually encourage innovation. When the inventor of the jet engine, Sir Frank Whittle, read in 1940 that according to the latest scientific wisdom, jet turbines would never take off, despite the fact he had already built a prototype eight years before, he said it was a good thing he was too stupid to know this at the time. Even the experts cant see more than three years ahead, said Professor Thomas. But rather than discuss how experts get it wrong so often, lets ask how science and technology progress the internal and external factors which drive science forward. Professor Thomas then described how it is chance (and sometimes more than chance) that leads to many major scientific breakthroughs, together with the interplay of political, societal, commercial and military influences. Sometimes, he said, it is a case of being in the right place at the right time, and making the right decision. Sometimes, he added, it is the fanatically keen experimentalist and an all-consuming passion approaching madness a blend of scientific, artistic and neurotic qualities which drives the inventor. Sometimes, it is money War also drives technology and science like the Internet, developed by the military in the US to defend its data systems from a nuclear attack. Without the existence of a Soviet threat, the scientists may not have even tried to invent it. And who could have predicted the increase in the

number of nodes on the network, from only four in 1969 to 23 nodes two years later and billions today? Exponential is not good enough to describe this incredible growth, Professor Thomas commented. Paranoia can also lead to exciting discoveries. In 1969, for example, when US officials suspected that the Soviets were exploding nuclear bombs on the dark side of the moon, American military scientists investigated further and discovered the existence of gamma ray bursts events which happen once or twice a day and last 1/100th of a second, emitting energy equivalent to all the fuel burned by the sun in the course of its lifetime, signalling the birth of a black hole. Without the Cold War, it is possible this cosmic phenomenon would not have been detected for many more years The lecture then covered a few hundred years of inventions, from the microscope and telescope which let us see bacteria and faraway stars, to the much under-rated charged coupled device (CCD) which enables us to see the tiny organisms living in the ocean and expands our view of the cosmos by a factor of over 1,000, to observe the birth, growth and death of galaxies as well as to see whats going on inside the human body, via endoscopy. Other breakthroughs touched upon during the lecture included genetic fingerprinting, helicobacter pylori (the bacteria which causes ulcers), radio astronomy and lithium, as well as more domestic inventions like double glazing and pressure cookers all of which owe a debt to the times and the places they came from, as well as serendipity plus profit and political ambition. For example, lithium is now widely used to treat manic depression, but its discovery was more or less an accident the lithium salt of uric acid, being soluble, was used as a substitute for uric acid, which is insoluble, in an experiment to test a speculative theory. Radio astronomy developed from research into something a lot more mundane interference when Janski discovered that radio waves, coming from deep outer space, were the source of the crackling, rather than the circuitry inside the wireless. The platins used to treat testicular cancer resulted from an error in the lab, when researchers discovered that platinum not the electrical field they were using was responsible for the effects they observed. The best accident in physics, according to Professor Thomas, happened in 1895, when Wilhelm von Roentgen discovered the existence of x-rays during an experiment involving electricity and phosphors, when something unpredictable happened... Being in the right place at the right time has also been responsible for some of the most sensational discoveries e.g. when Rutherford and Soddy departed from all of the dogma with their theory of atomic transmutation (including isotopes and radioactive half-life), which depended on having the funding and all the resources in place at their lab in Montreal in the early 1900s, or when Crick and Watson heard a scientist talking at dinner in 1953 and discovered the missing piece in the DNA jigsaw, saving them years of research. If Michael Faraday had not attended Sir Humphrey Davys lecture, and gone on to study electromagnetism, asked Professor Thomas, thus inspiring the theories of Maxwell and Einstein, what would life be like today? However, if we focus too much on esoteric scientific theory and not enough on practical applications, we may fail to develop things which impact our everyday life e.g. many useful electronic devices. Sir John also suggested that all the great moments in science result from an almost alchemical meeting of minds, when different scientific fields collide and lead to unexpected consequences for them all. Human chemistry and educated guesses may therefore be more critical to scientific progress than all the noblest efforts of political and academic planners. Even making too many plans for the future may be a mistake, Professor Thomas concluded, since the future is full of surprises. As one of the audience said at the end of the lecture, You cant predict the unpredictable predictable is boring. And based on the evidence of his lecture, boring is not a word in Professor Thomass vocabulary. Peter Barr