Wide angle vision

The word “serendipity” was introduced in 1700 by Horace Walpole. In a letter to an acquaintance, he commented on a Persian legend in which the travellers “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. After that, the word “serendipity” was used in many fields, often with a wide range of meanings, to the extent that in 2004 it was defined as “one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate”. What meaning would you give to this word?

“Serendipity” is an appealing, pleasant-sounding word even for those who don’t know what it means, perhaps because it brings to mind words like serene, serenity, hence a calm, peaceful state of mind, which is something that everyone would like to have. In our laboratory, the word “serendipity” was written, many years ago, by my colleague Maria Teresa Gandolfi on a cupboard in the room where we used to meet up for discussions (and also parties). It’s great that it is a hard word to translate, so everyone can give it their own favourite meaning. It reminds me of the manna that, according to the Holy Scriptures, God left in the desert for his people each morning: a food that is the same for everyone, but which could satisfy each individual’s taste. For me “serendipity” is a reference to the fact that we need to work in serenity, and expect pleasant surprises.

“Serendipity” also seems to play an important role in the world of science. Many discoveries have been attributed to this “accidental sagacity”. For example, the discovery of polyethylene by the German chemist Hans von Pechmann in 1989 happened by chance as he was studying the reactivity of diazomethane. In view of your idea of “serendipity” do you think this is a suitable example? What role does serendipity play in everyday life?

Yes, it’s true, many scientific discoveries happen by chance, and to my mind, the example seems to fit. Yet there is even more “serendipity”, i.e. more accidental sagacity, in other cases. For example, in 1968, Spencer Silver, a chemist from 3M, was discouraged because a new adhesive he had developed was too weak for any kind of application; only by pure chance, many years later, while a secretary was throwing out the pages covered with that useless glue, did he realise that such a lack of sticking power could have a great advantage: and so the post-it was born.

This last example seems to me to be particularly important because it reminds us, as scientists, of a fundamental thing: we shouldn’t keep our gaze fixed too hard on the objective we set ourselves at the start of our research. Better to look at a broader context and try to adapt to the road that lies ahead. Also because deviations often take us further away from what we believe to be our “main road”. This is also true of everyday life in which we often discover, by chance and to our great surprise, lots of wonderful things that we weren’t looking for and that we didn’t even believe existed.

In your experience as a chemist and scientist, have you ever had the experience of making an important discovery linked to “serendipity”? If so, how has this influenced your scientific career?

I’ve made several. The first episode of “serendipity” even decided what field of chemistry I was later to research. The professor I had contacted for my thesis, Vittorio Carassiti, had curiously remarked that when some of his colleagues tried to register the Raman spectra of metal compounds, the compounds themselves decomposed under the intensely stimulating light of the spectroscope, which meant that no significant results were obtained. Carassiti thought that this result, negative as far as the spectroscope was concerned, could be an opportunity from a photochemical point of view. He suggested that I write my thesis on the study of the photochemical reactions of those compounds. We obtained interesting results and a few years later, the Academic Press asked us to write a monography that is still considered a classic in this field, even today. Another fundamental episode of serendipity happened to me during the 1990s. We had started carrying out research in the field of supramolecular photochemistry, with the aim of preventing the photochemical reactions of certain molecules, by incorporating them into others. However, we noticed that often, other kinds of cooperative processes occurred, and that it was possible to obtain mechanical movements. So it was that we started the research that has led us to the modern-day molecular elevator and the nanomotor, which runs on solar energy.

“Serendipity” is linked to chance, but also to the ability to recognise and exploit things that are discovered by chance. What combination of these two properties ensures success?

Of course the most important thing is the ability to recognise and exploit what is discovered by chance. As Louis Pasteur once said: in scientific research, “chance favours the prepared mind”.