Be Awesome...

You may have seen the video of the kid dressed as a president giving the country a pep-talk. If not, you can see it here.  It is cute, funny, and you can help but smile when his take home advice, to put it simply, is "Be Awesome."

Recently I came across a short article about Amoxicillin and in it was a quote from Alexander Flemming, the discoverer of Penicillin, the parent molecule to Amoxicillin.

“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. . . but I suppose that was exactly what I did.”
 
I often think about the fact that it took Michelangelo roughly four years to paint the Sistine Chapel.  The mastery, artistry, and effort to accomplish such a thing is outstanding and we have been able to bask in its beauty for centuries.  A chemist might spend as much time running reactions and making bonds to produce a drug or molecule.  The difference is, we never get to see the product.  To have a pill of Amoxicillin in your hand is to be in the presence of a billion little Sistine Chapels that have the benefit of being beautiful and purposeful in stopping bacteria.

Wonder in Discovery:

Now, some might claim that Amoxicillin is a derivative of penicillin, and penicillin was made by a fungus not a human. There is only ONE Sistine Chapel, and it was made solely by a human.  Maybe it is not a fair comparison, but it should still lead to wonder and awe, even if we can never lay back and take in the vision of these molecules.  Then again, the dyes and pigments on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are chemicals too.  Today researchers can design pigments to turn off an on with electrical current. We can sit back and read about the Sistine Chapel on our Kindle or Nook. All this because some pioneers designed molecules that took years to make and test bond by bond (brush stroke by brush stroke) until they were a modern masterpiece.

What will be the next game-changing discovery?  Will it be from slightly tweaking what was made before?  Will it be the culmination of a life long search? Or, will it be the unexpected that was noticed by the prepared individual?

August Kekule' (who described the structure of benzene) stated in 1858, "One cannot explore new countries in express trains, nor will the study of even the best textbooks qualify a man to become a discoverer. Whoever is content to follow well-laid promenades until he reaches some pleasant eminence frequented by tourists, may, by striking into the thickets, gather some forgotten flower; or if cryptograms, mosses and lichens satisfy him he may even bring home a well-filled vasculum; but anything essentially new he will not find."

He goes on to say that you must walk in the footsteps of those who went before you and upon understanding how they made it to that place, be ready for the opportunity to, "perceive where the foot of a further pioneer may find solid ground."

-From a translation printed in the Journal of Chemical Education 1958, 35, 21-23.

As Dr. Niel deGrasse Tyson suggests, we don't even know what field that stepping stone will come from:

You might be the next pioneer, if you are ready.

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." -Seneca