Issue Eight
Why Basic Science by Herbert Hauptman drawing by Hannah Taylor
On the first day of the nineteenth century, New Years Day, 1801, the Italian astronomer, Piazzi...
On the first day of the nineteenth century, New Years Day, 1801, the Italian astronomer, Piazzi, working out of his observatory in Palermo, Sicily, made an important discovery which was destined to play a major role in improving the public health some two hundred years later. Piazzi had discovered a new planet, the tiny asteroid Ceres, one of thousands of asteroids circling the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Now you may well ask how an astronomical discovery, no matter how fundamental or important, could possibly have any impact on the public health two centuries later. It is worth exploring the connection since it is a story repeated time and time again, one which makes clear not merely the desirability, but the need of societal support for basic scientific research, that is research done for the sole purpose of acquiring knowledge. Only with such support can one hope to reap the benefits to society which such research often makes possible.
What made Piazzi's discovery particularly noteworthy was that within a short period of time, some two or three months later, he lost the planet, a consequence no doubt of his inability to track its course over an extended period due to its small size. He was therefore unable to calculate a precise orbit which would have permitted him to predict its position when next it came close enough to the earth to be visible.
But luck was on his side. By remarkable coincidence the young mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss, certainly one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, had just formulated his famous Principle of Least Squares, a mathematical procedure of such generality and power, that it had easy application to the solution of Piazzi's problem in particular, as well incidentally of many others. Thereupon Gauss set himself the task of determining the precise position of Ceres when it would next be close enough to earth to be visible, using his newly discovered least squares method and Piazzi's limited observations. What a triumph it was to find this wayward particle, the tiny Ceres, buried among the infinitude of stars, in precisely the position predicted by the twenty-three year old mathematician. Not only was Gauss's reputation as a mathematician founded on this accomplishment but it is also generally accepted that Piazzi's discovery and Gauss's re-discovery of the planet Ceres firmly established the Principle of Least Squares as a major tool in the development of all the natural sciences ever since. In fact it is fair to say that this Principle has played a major role in the rapid growth of all the natural sciences in the last two centuries.
The next chapter in this story was the discovery in 1912 by the German scientists von Laue, Friedrich, and Knipping that crystals scatter X-rays as was suggested by the theoretical work of the mathematical physicist, Paul Ewald, whose goal had been to learn how light is propagated in a crystalline medium. With this discovery the science of X-ray crystallography was born. The further development of this science was facilitated not only by the work of Gauss a century earlier but by the early work of the mathematician Galois who developed the theory of groups in his study of the solution of algebraic equations and by the mathematical physicist Fourier who created the field of harmonic analysis for his theory of heat.
The importance of the new science of X-ray crystallography is that it turned out to be the single most powerful method for the determination of molecular structures, in particular the structures of molecules of biological importance. Thus this science enables scientists to clarify the connections between structure and biological function and makes possible the deeper understanding of life processes, in particular the causes of disease, and, therefore, points the way to the rational design of drugs to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. None of this would have been possible were it not for Gauss's Principle of Least Squares, discovered by him to track a wayward planet, as well as the fundamental contribution of mathematician-scientists such as Ewald, Galois, Fourier, and others whose work, superficially, seemed to have no relation to human health.
Can we find a better example of the connection between basic scientific discovery and the improvement in the human condition than this story connecting Gauss's Principle of Least-Squares, Piazzi's discovery of the asteroid Ceres, the science of X-ray crystallography and modern drug design?