Fascinating essay. I also find it interesting that at any one of these surprise points, Davisson could have chalked things up to faulty equipment (broken nickel target) or negative results (inconsistent peaks and correction factors) and moved on. Most people probably would have just replaced the nickel target and forgotten the weird results. But he followed the surprises.
More than one historian of science has remarked on how often breakthroughs weren't about "Eureka!" but about "That's odd." Following up on things not quite right has often proved fruitful. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "That's odd." moments and not enough resource to follow up on every peculiarity. In the typical corporate lab, there's little or no time to follow up on things that didn't quite work the way they were expected. Research labs can do more of this, but the grant structure makes it difficult.
Thanks. A really interesting story. Indeed the messiness of the process is striking, though as a (retired) experimental biologist, not too surprising. Another striking feature was Davisson's PERSISTENCE.
Thank you- very interesting and (I agree with Richard) - the messiness does not feel surprising to me. I am curious what you think are takeaways in how we think about funding science today - particularly more curiosity driven work -- as the messiness makes it hard to see how pull funding would apply. The importance of connections/collaborations/knowledge sharing also feels evident in this story.
Gotta give the man props for persistence in the face of failure. I was in a PhD program in chemistry once upon a time. I couldn’t get my project’s experiments to work, and ended up leaving with my MS. It takes a specific type of person to not get curious instead of hopelessly depressed in the face of multiple experimental failures.
China's CAS seems to be a scaled-up, rather deluxe version of Bell Labs, where my father-in-law worked most of his career. CAS is also the world's leading research institute.
the pure research role of Bell Labs won't be replicated because the funding came from AT&T's position as a regulated monopoly.
The product development areas were about 90% of the employee base (I worked in two such departments) were not all that different from their industrial peers, although we benefited from the confidence that the telephone companies would buy the stuff we developed.
Interesting. As an aside, including the “solar pv cell” on the short list of contributions from Bell Labs is like including the band-aid on a list of important contributions to medical science.
Davisson was a rather interesting character. He was physically frail and his energy was notably limited but his perseverance was boundless and although his knowledge of physics was broad he was able to focus with sustained and undeviating intensity on a chosen problem.
During my interviews for a position at IBM Research, we discussed why Bell Labs was spun off (this was 1988). The response was that IBM Research maintained very close ties to IBM Corporation. There’s a delicate balance to maintain. There must be freedom to pursue the meandering lines of research described in this (excellent!) post — that’s the nature of the work. And management fully supports that.
But on the other hand, the corporation must realize value from the relationship. The most valuable contribution is the continual cycling of research personnel into corporate management — reaching its apogee with the current CEO, Arvind Krishna.
I don't know if this still happens, but until fairly recently a number of companies would offer employees who developed significant products license and resources to explore what they wished. For example, the Shulgins in the 1960s were able to explore psychoactive relatives of LSD thanks to a pesticide discovery. There's usually some kind of senior scientist title and a research budget associated with it.
Fascinating essay. I also find it interesting that at any one of these surprise points, Davisson could have chalked things up to faulty equipment (broken nickel target) or negative results (inconsistent peaks and correction factors) and moved on. Most people probably would have just replaced the nickel target and forgotten the weird results. But he followed the surprises.
More than one historian of science has remarked on how often breakthroughs weren't about "Eureka!" but about "That's odd." Following up on things not quite right has often proved fruitful. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "That's odd." moments and not enough resource to follow up on every peculiarity. In the typical corporate lab, there's little or no time to follow up on things that didn't quite work the way they were expected. Research labs can do more of this, but the grant structure makes it difficult.
Thanks. A really interesting story. Indeed the messiness of the process is striking, though as a (retired) experimental biologist, not too surprising. Another striking feature was Davisson's PERSISTENCE.
Thank you- very interesting and (I agree with Richard) - the messiness does not feel surprising to me. I am curious what you think are takeaways in how we think about funding science today - particularly more curiosity driven work -- as the messiness makes it hard to see how pull funding would apply. The importance of connections/collaborations/knowledge sharing also feels evident in this story.
More proof that most scientific discovery starts with: “Wait…that’s not supposed to happen…”
The rest starts with: “Oh, shit! Did you see that?”
Gotta give the man props for persistence in the face of failure. I was in a PhD program in chemistry once upon a time. I couldn’t get my project’s experiments to work, and ended up leaving with my MS. It takes a specific type of person to not get curious instead of hopelessly depressed in the face of multiple experimental failures.
China's CAS seems to be a scaled-up, rather deluxe version of Bell Labs, where my father-in-law worked most of his career. CAS is also the world's leading research institute.
the pure research role of Bell Labs won't be replicated because the funding came from AT&T's position as a regulated monopoly.
The product development areas were about 90% of the employee base (I worked in two such departments) were not all that different from their industrial peers, although we benefited from the confidence that the telephone companies would buy the stuff we developed.
“Overall, what strikes me about this scientific discovery is how messy everything is.”
Matt Ridley wrote a whole book on the “messiness” of scientific and engineering progress: “How Innovation Works”.
Interesting. As an aside, including the “solar pv cell” on the short list of contributions from Bell Labs is like including the band-aid on a list of important contributions to medical science.
More of a fun-fact or cocktail trivia.
Davisson was a rather interesting character. He was physically frail and his energy was notably limited but his perseverance was boundless and although his knowledge of physics was broad he was able to focus with sustained and undeviating intensity on a chosen problem.
During my interviews for a position at IBM Research, we discussed why Bell Labs was spun off (this was 1988). The response was that IBM Research maintained very close ties to IBM Corporation. There’s a delicate balance to maintain. There must be freedom to pursue the meandering lines of research described in this (excellent!) post — that’s the nature of the work. And management fully supports that.
But on the other hand, the corporation must realize value from the relationship. The most valuable contribution is the continual cycling of research personnel into corporate management — reaching its apogee with the current CEO, Arvind Krishna.
I don't know if this still happens, but until fairly recently a number of companies would offer employees who developed significant products license and resources to explore what they wished. For example, the Shulgins in the 1960s were able to explore psychoactive relatives of LSD thanks to a pesticide discovery. There's usually some kind of senior scientist title and a research budget associated with it.