I Found It

I think I’ve found the easiest job in the world (apart from being a voice coach to a mime artist). The job is... a scientist. To demonstrate, let me tell you about two scientists who achieved greatness with a minimum of effort.

    The first person I’ll write about was a Greek from ancient times called Archimedes. Straight off, you can tell this guy is special – he’s so famous, he only needs one name. Just like Bono, Bjork, and Bambi. Archimedes is famous because he had a bath. I’ll elaborate; he had a bath and discovered two things. The first was water makes you wet. His second discovery was that the water level in a bath rises when you get into the bath. It gets a bit complicated after that; let’s just say he went on to have many more achievements. I’m sure he didn’t invent the rubber duck, however.

    The second scientist I will write about is Alexander Graham Fleming. Don’t let the fact that he has three names put you off. Just think of him as the Sarah Jessica Parker of boffins. Besides, Archimedes may have had one name, but he didn’t win the Nobel Prize, did he? Mr Fleming did win it by making a mistake, waiting a while, and then letting others do the work. Told you scientists had it easy. He wasn’t even trying to discover penicillin when he discovered it. He discovered the antibiotic by accident. I would guess the original name for penicillin was ‘Oops!’ Other people including Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey continued Fleming’s work and in 1945 all three won the Nobel Prize. 

    There you have it, Archimedes and Alexander Fleming became famous by simply taking a bath in the former’s case and by making a mistake in the latter. I wash and make mistakes all the time and yet the nearest I’ve come to any kind of eminence is listening to Eminem. Maybe I should take up science. Or at least wash and make mistakes more often.

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© John E. McBride (2017)