Princes Of Serendip Research Articles

The Three Princes of Serendip: New Tellings of Old Tales for Everyone by Rodaan Al Galidi

Reviewed by: The Three Princes of Serendip: New Tellings of Old Tales for Everyone by Rodaan Al Galidi Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Al Galidi, Rodaan, ad. The Three Princes of Serendip: New Tellings of Old Tales for Everyone; tr. by Laura Watkinson; illus. by Geertje Aalders. Candlewick, 2021 [144p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536214505 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781536223446 $19.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2-4 This gorgeous collection of twenty Middle Eastern folktales, retold by Iraqi-born author Al Galidi and originally published in the Netherlands, spans human and animal fables, comical episodes, meditations on spirituality, and more. In the titular tale, three prankster princes track down a wayward camel; other stories deal with wisdom and folly, such as “The Man Who Was Thirsty,” or friendship and the limits of self-sacrifice (“The Partridge and the Turtles”). The tales are short and pithy, often humorous, and occasionally poignant. Watkinson’s translation from Dutch sits lightly on the page, while intricate cut-paper decorations in sumptuous hues make nearly every spread a visual feast. This would be excellent for reading aloud as well as private reading, and the volume will prompt discussion about different versions of folktales and the role of immigration in spreading and altering stories. Indeed, a “Note from the Gatherer of Tales” encourages readers to “let these stories become your own.” Many readers and listeners will do just that. Unfortunately, no source notes are included. [End Page 85] Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The three princes of Serendip - Notes on a mysterious phenomenon

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The Discovery of the Hepatitis D Virus: Three Princes of Serendip and the Recognition of Autoantibodies to Liver-Kidney Microsomes.

The Discovery of the Hepatitis D Virus: Three Princes of Serendip and the Recognition of Autoantibodies to Liver-Kidney Microsomes.

Engineering Self-Assembled Materials through Serendipity

Organic architectures are considered amongst the most promising candidates for engineering molecular-based devices. It is however necessary to develop systems that can form at interfaces organized molecular assemblies featuring addressable and controllable arrangements. In this respect, the hierarchical self-assembly of organic molecules featuring complementary non-covalent recognition sites allowing the simultaneous assembly of several units and long-range order is one of the most promising approaches. In this talk, I will describe our approaches to engineer multidimensional structures through the exploitation of weak interactions established by programmed molecules. Quoting a letter (dated 28 January 1754) from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". Therefore, specific serendipitous examples will be discussed with the attempt to answer to the question of whether and how the supramolecular approach can bridge organic chemistry with molecular organization and to which extend we can achieve macroscopic functions solely through molecular engineering.

ChemInform Abstract: Dealing with Crystal Forms (The Kingdom of Serendip?).

AbstractReview: 72 refs.

Dealing with Crystal Forms (The Kingdom of Serendip?)

The variety of crystal forms that may be associated with one specific molecule of interest can be extremely large: in addition to polymorphs, all sorts of crystalline solids can be obtained, from molecular and ionic co-crystals to hydrates/solvates, to, needless to say, polymorphs of all these new crystal forms. Lack of predictability of crystallization experiments, far from representing a failure or a nuisance, should encourage in the crystal maker the same attitude shown by the three princes of Serendip (who were making unexpected discoveries by virtue of their "sagacity and readiness of mind") to be ready to pick new avenues as the crystal experiments will yield something unplanned for.

Designing for (un)serendipity: Computing and chance

The tale of a lame, one-eyed, toothless camel1 may not, at first glance, seem an auspicious start for ground-breaking discoveries of penicillin, X-rays and chocolate chip cookies. However, when Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity in 1754, based on the tale of ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ and the aforementioned camel, he was giving name to the accidental sagacity (i.e. accidental wisdom) involved in many scientific discoveries and inventions, where there is “no discovery of a thing you are looking for”1.

Book review: happy accidents

Serendipity, as most physicians know, is the term coined in a letter by Horace Walpole in 1754, wherein he referred to three princes of Serendip (the Persian name for Sri Lanka) who made unusual discoveries by chance. The phrase was popularized by Walter Cannon much later. Scientists have often benefited from serendipitous observations, with the best-known example in medicine being the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming. There is a large body of literature, mainly in journals, on serendipity in medicine. Morton Meyers, a radiologist, with an interest in serendipity and history of medicine, has put together a book detailing numerous examples. I, too, have a special interest in the subject and have written on it – though I cannot claim to have made any discoveries, serendipitously or otherwise! – but was pleasantly surprised to learn of so many examples of which I was not aware. There are four separate sections, with articles on infectious disease and pharmacology, cancer, cardiology and psychiatry. The usual suspects are covered, including the discovery of penicillin as an antibiotic and the beginnings of cancer chemotherapy due to an observation of leucopoenia in survivors of a bombing attack during World War II, when mustard gas was released into the atmosphere. However, we also learn about the role that serendipity has played in the discovery of aspirin’s efficacy as an agent against colon cancer, cisplatin as an antineoplastic, the acid fast stain for tuberculosis and thalidomide as an anti-angiogenesis drug, among others. Many anecdotes, not all of which are related to serendipity, come to light. Wilhelm Einthoven, the discoverer of the ECG, was an honourable man in addition to being a great researcher. After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1924, he tried to track down his assistant to give him a share of the prize money. On learning that his assistant had passed away but that his sisters were living in poverty, Einthoven gave them half of the money. On the other hand, von Behring, the winner of the 1901 Nobel Prize, did not acknowledge the contributions of Paul Ehrlich, a fact that is not well known to many – including Wikipedia. My only concern is that a few of the anecdotes would at best be bordering on serendipity. The use of thalidomide for blocking angiogenesis was indeed a direct offshoot of another observation, the unfortunate one of seal limbs in babies – yet to my mind, this does not qualify as classic serendipity. Nor, for that matter, does the discovery of salvarsan for the treatment of syphilis by Paul Ehrlich. While there was indeed some luck involved, the fact is that Ehrich was working specifically on a chemotherapeutic agent against the bacterium that causes syphilis (the actual story is too long to be recounted here). Luck forms an important part of any research venture, but to ascribe everything to serendipity is overkill. What message does the book carry, beyond informing and entertaining the reader? It is obvious to anyone reading this book that structured, linear-thinking research is not always successful. Luck favours those who investigate every curious, apparently irrelevant observation. Meyers suggests that the referees who sit on committees and give grants to evidence-based medicine take a fresh look at their beliefs and accommodate creative, unbiased thinking. To this end, he has interviewed numerous historians and researchers, including Nobel laureates, who have admitted that luck played a major role in their discovery. Meyers states, quite correctly, that maverick, outside-the-box thinking is unlikely to be accepted by peers who think within the accepted paradigms. Pharmaceutical research, too, he believes, suffers from the same problem of not taking risks. Meyers explains what factors make ‘lucky’ scientists tick and believes that it is essential for educators to emphasize the importance of original thinking in science.

Editorial

Editorial Christopher W. Lemelin (bio) The work of an editor is often like that of a quilter-pulling together patches of fabric, combining them, reordering them, and assembling them into a single unit. The editor's ideal goal is to produce something more than a collection of random patches. Sometimes this happens by the editor's deliberate hand; sometimes it happens serendipitously. And as I think back on the final stages of assembling this issue of Sirena, I am struck by the role that serendipity has played in the process. I recently learned that the word "serendipity" has no lengthy etymology, but rather was coined in the eighteenth century by Horace Walpole, who derived it from a book of Persian tales titled The Three Princes of Serendip, the heroes of which make many accidental discoveries on their journeys. Certainly, producing this issue of Sirena could be likened to a journey for me, and it has come together in ways that I never expected when I began to work on it in September. As John Barth wrote, in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, "you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously." Having set out in good faith toward other goals, I came upon the "fortunate chance" of offering in this issue reproductions of paintings of Haitian poet and artist Frankétienne, as well as an essay on his work by Jean Jonassaint. That Jonassaint's essay speaks of Frankétienne 's "quest for a typo/topo/poetic," a way to combine the poetic and the graphic, obviously resonates with what Sirena strives to present to its readers in each issue. As I continued to think about this serendipitous connection, I realized that there are (at least) several in this issue. Following the gesture of Frankétienne, this issue includes poems that have art as their motivation, such as Gisela Hemau's "Malevich" and David Monteira's "Kandinsky." Additionally, the compact forms in Antonio Ganomeda's "Georgics" resonate interestingly with István Vöros's "Eternal Calendar," and, not surprisingly, thematic and metaphoric connections appear, fade, and resurface throughout the poems in these pages. Nevertheless, putting together this issue of Sirena required the genuine work of many hands. No matter how serendipitous the arrival, the journey is always a matter of labor, and I am grateful to all who have offered their time and care in the production of this issue. Now that it is assembled, I hope that its readers will find in it more than a patchwork of poetry and art, but a work of "accidental discoveries." [End Page 4] La tarea de un editor es como la de un fabricante de colchas-uno tiene que juntar trozos de tela, combinarlos y organizarlos para construir una unidad coherente. La meta ideal del editor es producir algo más que una colección azarosa de parches. De vez en cuando esto ocurre a causa de la mano intencional del editor, y otras veces como producto de la casualidad. Al pensar en las etapas finales de la compaginación de este número de Sirena me sorprende el papel que ha tenido la serendipidad. Acabo de aprender que la palabra inglesa seredipity no tiene una larga etimología, sino que fue inventada en el siglo XVIII por Horace Walpole, quien la derivó de un libro de cuentos persas titulado The Three Princes of Serendip. Durante sus viajes, los héroes de esa historia accidentalmente realizaron varios descubrimientos. Sin duda, se podría caracterizar la producción de este número de Sirena como un viaje que ha acabado de manera muy diferente a la imaginada en septiembre cuando la comencé. Como escribió John Barth en The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, "no alcanzas Serendib mediante una carta de mareo, sino que hace falta empezar un viaje hacia otro lugar con buena voluntad y perderse en la casualidad." Aunque comencé con buena voluntad este proyecto con otras metas, me vi frente a la "afortunada oportunidad" de ofrecer en este número reproducciones de pinturas del poeta y artista haitiano Frankétienne, como...

Human heme oxygenase‐1 deficiency: A lesson on serendipity in the discovery of the novel disease

The first case of human heme oxygenase (HO)-1 deficiency was reported by Yachie et al. at our laboratory in the Department of Pediatrics, Angiogenesis and Vascular Development, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Science, in 1999. In the present paper I would like to review this novel disease. Our studies into HO-1 deficiency were called by us 'Kanazawa version Project X'. From the story of our successful discovery we have learned that serendipity is a very important spiritual factor. Serendipity is the making of fortunate and unexpected discoveries by chance (from its possession by the heroes in the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip).

Drug Discovery–-A History

I must thank Dr Kamran Abbasi for inviting me to review this book because if I had seen it on the shelf in a bookshop I would almost certainly have passed it by; and, in doing so, I would have missed a book of great merit and considerable scholarship. The book deals first with those drugs from historical eras, then with those derived from naturally occurring precursors and prototypes and finally with the wholly synthetic drugs. In general this arrangement works well for a history of the discovery of drugs—which is, of course, the purpose of this book—though it does produce some rather odd bedfellows; for example, the section on oral rehydration is followed by one on disinfectants. It is less satisfactory for those who wish to read about the history of the different drugs used in the treatment of certain diseases such as asthma or diabetes because the reader must flip continually from one section and from one chapter to another, and also because it is less easy to understand the relative importance of different groups of drugs as the treatment of those diseases has evolved over time. However, as a history of the discovery of individual drugs and of categories of drugs this book is excellent. Sneader writes fluently and lucidly, his research has been scrupulous and his evaluation of the data is appropriately critical. The book abounds with pertinent original references, and not just to the drugs themselves; if you want to lay your hands on the seminal references to the work by Goldblatt and his colleagues on the role of renin in renal hypertension in 1934 or on Ahlquist’s concept of alpha and beta adrenoreceptors in 1948 you will find them here. There are also first-class vignettes on such topics as the Paracelsians, Brunonianism and pneumatic chemistry, to mention only a few. Readers will also learn, if like me they did not already know, how Horace Walpole introduced the word ‘serendipity’ (from the three princes of Serendip who had repeatedly made fortuitous discoveries) and how the discovery by Henry Salter, a London physician, that strong black coffee could relieve asthma, was later to lead to the finding that theophylline was a bronchodilator. And there are many more such anecdotes. Inevitably there are omissions though all are of a minor nature and largely a matter of personal choice. I was disappointed that the chapter on herbals mentions only those which appeared in printed formats, effectively therefore just those published after 1480. Although the earlier manuscript herbals inevitably had a more limited circulation, they did still have a substantial impact on medical practice. This was especially true of those written in the vernacular, such as the English translation in 1373 by John Lelamour, a schoolmaster in Hereford, of a Latin herbal, a work which also served as one of the earliest English texts on gardening. Those with connections to the Scottish capital city will read the comprehensive section on the use of Dakin’s solution as an antiseptic and will then ponder the omission of any mention of Edinburgh University Solution Of Lime (Eusol), until they remember that the author is based in Glasgow. For most people this will not be a book to read from cover to cover but one into which they will dip repeatedly with pleasure and profit. It will probably be used primarily as a reference book and it does have the essential accompaniment of any such work, namely an excellent index; albeit one in a font size so small as to trouble the eyes of some older readers.

Websites of note

Websites of note

Hunting cosmic explosions

THERE IS a Persian fairytale about the three princes of Serendip – the island in the Indian Ocean that is now known as Sri Lanka. The princes were seasoned travellers who made a series of astonishing discoveries through good fortune alone. Their luck was so amazing that we now use the word “seren-dipity”to describe what happens when we find something unexpectedly. As the discovery of gamma-ray bursts makes clear, serendipity often plays a key role in science.

Immanuel Kant versus the Princes of Serendip: Does science evolve through blind chance or intelligent design?

When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had previously determined, to roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made air carry a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or in more recent times, when Stahl changed metal into oxides, and oxides back into metal, by withdrawing something and then restoring it, a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that reason has insight only into that which reason produces after a plan of its own; that reason must not allow itself to be constrained, as it were, by nature's reins, but must itself show the way... thereby constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason's own determining. Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which reason alone is concerned to discover... Reason must not approach nature in the character of a pupil who listens to everything the teacher has to say, but as an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions that he himself has formulated.

Suppression of scientific research: bahramdipity and nulltiple scientific discoveries.

The fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip can be taken to be allegorical of not only chance discovery (serendipity) but of other aspects of scientific discovery as well. Just as Horace Walpole coined serendipity, so can the term bahramdipity be derived from the tale and defined as the cruel suppression of a serendipitous discovery. Suppressed, unpublished discoveries are designated nulltiples. Several examples are presented to make the case that bahramdipity is an existent aspect of scientific discovery. Other examples of non-ideal scientific research and discovery are provided in order to contrast and clarify the meaning and use of bahramdipity. Additional allegories of scientific discovery are taken from the tale and a hope for the strengthening of scientific integrity is expressed.

Serendipity in Scientific Discovery: A Closer Look

SERENDIPITY IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: A CLOSER LOOK HOWARD GEST* The word serendipity was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole, in a letter to one of his correspondents: I once read a silly fairy tale, called "The Princes of Serendip" [an ancient name for Sri Lanka] ; and as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand Serendipity? [I]. In an interesting essay on creativity and scientific discovery, Luis Leloir, the 1970 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, discussed serendipity and noted that The faculty ofmaking happy chance finds requires also careful and wise observation ... A trained research worker would surely find the evidence ver)' weak and the behavior of the mule rather odd. He surely would recommend confirmatory work such as observing the eating habits of a mule that has one eye covered. [2] Discussions of serendipity in scientific research tend to overemphasize "accident" as the prime factor, but the path from accidental observation to a significant discovery is usually forged by curiosity and hard work. Frequently overlooked in Walpole's original definition is the requirement for sagacity, the ability to see what is relevant and significant, or keen judgement . Numerous noteworthy researches in biological science were "directed ," in a sense, by serendipic observations, but it is often not easy to identify a single serendipic event as the crucial happening. This is illustrated in the following by several case histories. *Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.© 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/97/4101-1044$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 41, 1 ¦ Autumn 1997 21 Pasteur: "Chance Favors Only the Prepared Mind" Pasteur's brilliant career included many episodes in which serendipity led to important discoveries. The ' 'accidents" occurred so often that in his biography of Pasteur, Dubos lists a number of index entries under "Pasteur's luck" [3] . Two examples illustrate Pasteur's propensity for serendipic luck. During the course of his research on optical activity of organic compounds, Pasteur noticed that a tartrate solution had become turbid due to mold growth during warm weather. He found that D-tartrate was readily destroyed by the "mold fermentation," whereas the L-form was unaltered: The solution of paratartrate, at first optically inactive, soon becomes perceptibly levorotatory, and the rotation gradually increases and attains a maximum. The fermentation then stops. There is now no trace of the dextro tartaric acid left in the liquid, which on being evaporated and treated with an equal volume of alcohol yields a fine crop of crystals of ammonium levo tartrate. It was an accident which gave the clue to the solution of the problem [i.e., vaccination ]. Pasteur had begun experiments on chicken cholera in the spring of 1879, but a trivial difficulty came to interrupt the work after the summer vacation; the cultures of chicken cholera bacillus that had been kept in the laboratory during the summer failed to produce disease when inoculated into chickens. A new, virulent culture obtained from a natural outbreak was inoculated into new animals, and also into the chickens which had resisted the old cultures. The new animals, just brought from the market, succumbed to the infection in the customary length of time, thus showing that the culture was very active. But to the surprise of e.11, and of Pasteur himself, almost all the other chickens survived the infection . . . Pasteur immediately recognized in this accidental occurrence an analog)' with cowpox vaccination . [3] No wonder that Pasteur frequently said: "In the field ofexperimentation, chance favors only the prepared mind." Pasteur was a great exemplar of capitalizing on serendipity in research. He was able to exploit an accidental observation with intuition, sagacity, and persistence. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and Vitamin C The Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi made a number of important pioneering discoveries on the mechanisms of biological oxidations and muscle biochemistry. He is also widely known as the discoverer...

Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (review)

236_________________________Reviews____________________________ Made in America: An Informal History ofthe English Language in the United States. 1994. Bill Bryson. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. xiv + 417 pp. $23.00 U.S., cloth. Made in America, Bill Bryson's most recent work on language, is a storehouse of information and anecdotes about the origins of American words and expressions (readers will likely be familiar with his earlier works, including A Dictionary of Troublesome Words and The Mother Tongue). During an enjoyable first reading of Bryson's new book, I was reminded of Walpole's three princes of Serendip who, as the tale goes, continuously and accidentally found many valuable and pleasant things while on their journeys. Any who enter the pages of Made in America, will find it a serendipitous excursion into American English. But, while thejourney is pleasurable, it must be noted that this present work, despite certain trappings ofscholarship, is intended for a popular market. It is also important to note that Made in America is no more a rigorous history of the English language in America than it is a socio-cultural history of the American people enveloped in word histories. In Bryson's own words, "This book is a modest attempt to examine how and why American speech came to be the way it is, and in particular where our words come from. It is not, I hope, a conventional history of the American language . Much of it is unashamedly discursive" (xi). Discursive is defined in The American Heritage College Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993) as "1. Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling. 2. Proceeding to a conclusion dirough reason." Made in America is wildly successful ifjudged by the first definition . As for the second definition, Bryson leads die reader to two predominant conclusions. He arrives diere, however, by a preponderance of anecdotal evidence rather than by reason or erudite scholarship. His first conclusion is that the English language is unfailingly interesting in its varieties and formation. His second conclusion is that to understand the history of the English language in America it is first necessary to understand the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which words were formed. Ostensibly, Bryson has written a work on the origins ofAmerican words and phrases in the tradition of H. L. Mencken's American Language. It is a work that generally avoids the finer issues of etymology but that explains word origins by identifying and describing the historical context in which they were conceived and popularized. Bryson ranges widely to discuss American culture, past and present; in his discussion he spends much time debunking both popular myths and school-book history. We are reminded, for example, that the Battle of Bunker Hill, in truth, occurred on Breed's Hill, that Charles Lindbergh was not the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air, and that Ray Kroc was not the founder of the McDonald's drive-in restaurants. Many heroes from America's distant past are critically examined under Bryson's revisionist light. Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, is exposed as a ne'er-do-well drunkard who came to ruin and died in obscurity. Patrick Henry, it is revealed, never said in the Virginia House of Burgesses, "I know not what course others may take, but as for Reviews237 me, give me liberty or give me death." Bryson also writes, "there is no evidence that Henry ever said anytiiing of substance or found space in his head for a single original thought. He was a country bumpkin, unread, poorly educated, and famously indolent." (32) Thus, Paine, Henry, and odiers are exposed. They are figuratively supplanted by such Americans as the also famous Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Charles Goodyear as men worthy of emulation and more lastingly important to the story of America. Equally significant, however , are the stories that Bryson recounts of the non-famous. We learn, for example , of Alexander Stewart, an Irish immigrant in New York, who opened the first department store in 1846, and Sylvanus F. Bowser who invented die first workable gas pump in 1905 for the burgeoning automobile industry. Made in America is, openly, a work that...

Serendipity in psychiatric sub-specialty selection and training

The word serendipity has its origins in a fairy-tale about ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the latter being the former name for Ceylon. The heroes of this fairy-tale were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in search of. The earliest use of this term was by Horace Walpole, the essayist, who coined it in a letter of 1754. Later, he wrote a little fairy comedy on this theme, which was produced successfully at the Haymarket Theatre, London. The term means, therefore, the gift of being able to make delightful discoveries by pure accident and this is why it is used sometimes as the name for an antique shop or a second-hand clothes store. It is likely that most people could give examples of serendipitous incidents in their lives and the purpose of invoking the concept of serendipity in relation to sub-specialty selection by trainees is concerned with the possibility that chance can be a major determinant of outcome in this process. This issue is related to wider concern that the optimum methods for the well-informed recruitment of trainees into the sub-specialties and special interest areas in psychiatry have not yet been organised satisfactorily.

The Peabody vision program: Ethos, serendipity, and zeitgeist

Silence fell in the great hall of the palace at Anuradhapura. The oldest of the three princes of Serendip was about to relate a story for his father, the king, and members of the royal court. The monarch . . . had once sent his sons forth to travel in the great world that they might grow in virtue and wisdom. By happy chance and not a little sagacity, they met with fortunate adventures, heard marvelous tales, and gained extraordinary friends. (Hodges, 1966, p. 3) As students, you came to the halls of Peabody to grow in wisdom and by happy chance and not a little sagacity you started on a fortunate venture. You heard marvelous tales (especially when your professors weren't prepared), and above all, gained extraordinary, lifelong friends. It is interesting that serendipity is defined not only by accidental findings, but also by sagacity which means keenness in sense perception, discernment, and farsightedness. You brought sagacity with you and developed it further here. The ethos and serendipity of Peabody and the Zeitgeist in which the Program developed have played significant parts in your student, scholarly, and professional lives. Now you have returned for some professional renewal and the renewal of serendipitous friendships in this Conference on Research and Practice in the Field of Visual Impairment. I congratulate you on your sagacity in doing so. The Conference is remarkable for its breadth and depth, all contributed by Peabody alumni.

Science by Accident

The word was coined and first used by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford and English writer, connoisseur, and collector, who is best remembered today as perhaps the most prolific letter writer in the English language. In a letter dated Jan. 28, 1754, to Horace Mann (an Englishman residing in Florence, Italy, not the American educator) Walpole wrote: This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call serendipity , a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip : as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the ...