From America to Viagra: the art of finding what you're not looking for

STOCKHOLM – It is serendipity: from America to Viagra, history is full of great discoveries helped along by chance, as more than a century of Nobel prizes can attest. Among the chance discoveries that have been honored with the prestigious prize are X-rays (physics, 1901), penicillin (medicine, 1945), fullerenes that paved the way for nanotechnology (chemistry, 1996), conductive polymers (chemistry, 2000), and the bacteria responsible for ulcers (medicine, 2005). But, as the father of pasteurization Louis Pasteur noted in 1854, "In the fields of observation, chance only favors the prepared mind" -- a remark made in reference to the discovery of the link between electricity and magnetism by Danish scientist Hans Christian Orsted. Orsted happened to notice that a compass needle deflected from magnetic north when an electric current from a battery was switched on and off -- a pioneering discovery in electromagnetism. Like Pasteur, Dutch scientist Pek Van Andel also believes in the unexpected.