Legendary Biologists Who Proved Failure Ain’t A Thing!

Biology Scientist’s Failure Before Success – Famous Biologists and their success story, arising from their failures.

A word that most people dread – Failure. Who doesn’t want to be successful? Everyone does. We want to be liked and admired. But the fear always pops up Failure and its experience is strong enough to make you want to quit and start a new life. It is no different for any scientist or anyone trying to

make something special out of their life. Success takes effort and time. We may fail many times before we are successful. Anybody who has become successful, definitely they will experience failure at any aspect of their journey.

 Many years ago, Charlie Sheen said that to overcome the obstacles and persevere after failure, “winners” always find one way or the other. There is no need to avoid failure. Failure is a chance to learn and know that something does not work! Reaching the destination is not always what defines a person, it is the journey that is taken to get there. The people with the biggest successes are the people who have gone through the biggest failures. If you are struggling in your work/opportunities, do not be afraid to try things that are “new” or “different” and perhaps even fly in the face of conventional wisdom. The worst thing that can happen is a failure, which is just a chance to learn and grow.

Here is a brief on the famous biologists, who had their own share of failure in their journey of becoming one among the greatest minds and among the successful biology scientists.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
Famous For: Theory of Evolution

Darwin kept silent for 20 years before going public and was only half-joking when he described writing his book ‘On the Origin of Species’ as ‘like confessing a murder’. He had done years and years of research and had pages of theory written but yet, he struggled to go public initially as he feared failure. Yet, Darwin did not give up and overcame the fear and finally went public with all his research and eventually became successful with his research. After attending the University of Cambridge and taking up medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Darwin was considered a naturalist. As a biologist, he proposed the concept that “all species of life” came from a single source. His theory of evolution marked the beginning of the discussion on natural selection. In On the Origin of Species (1859) book, he finally gave his theory full public expression.

 

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Famous For: Modern Genetics

Born to a family with limited means in German-speaking Silesia, Mendel was raised in a rural setting. He did not have an easy life as his family could not support him sufficiently due to which his initial days away from home were hard. To make ends meet, he tutored other students and he suffered serious depression twice and had to return home to recover. He worked in the community in Bruno and in 1849 his work here had exhausted him to the point of illness, because of which Mendel was sent to Znaim, to fill a temporary teaching position. But here he failed a teaching certification exam and in 1851, at the monastery’s expense to continue his studies in the sciences, he was sent to the University of Vienna. In 1856, he again attempted the teacher exam but the event caused a nervous breakdown and a second failure. Despite all his failures, Mendel’s research continued over as many as eight years (between 1856 and 1863) and involved tens of thousands of individual plants. He wrote “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” successfully, and paved the way for biology students to study genetic traits in peas. During his experiments, Gregor found that a specific trait would be dominant over other traits in the same species. This became to be recognized as the Mendelian inheritance.

 

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895)
Famous For: Created the process of pasteurization for treating milk and wine

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 students in chemistry and yet he became a professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, in 1848. Here, he met Marie Laurent and they wed and had five children, though only two survived a childhood as they suffered from illness and there was a lack of treatment. Suffered from his personal loss, he was led to study the cause of incurable diseases and he came up with pasteurization. Pasteur’s first vaccine discovery was in 1879 with a contagious disease called chicken-cholera. Pasteur continued to extend his “germ theory” to formulate vaccinations for various diseases including anthrax, smallpox, and cholera. In 1872, Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, wrote that “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” He did not let this bother him and he focused on his success. As one of the founders of medical microbiology, Louis Pasteur’s education in the field of chemistry and microbiology may be credited with his success. His germ theory of disease became the catalyst to his process we know as pasteurization.

 

Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
Famous For: Coined the term “cell”

Born in 1635 in the Isle of Wight, England, he was the youngest of their four children. Robert Hooke’s health was delicate for most of his childhood, and indeed his whole life. He spent much of his school time at home Robert Hooke received his higher education at Oxford University where he studied physics and chemistry. Overcoming his health problems, he worked hard in his research and reached heights with it.
His work included the application what is known today as Hooke’s law, his use of microscopy, and for the discovery of the “cell” in 1665 using cork and a microscope.

 

 

Edward Jenner (1749–1823)
Famous For: Creating the first effective vaccine for smallpox

Edward was born in Berkeley, England in 1749. Both of his parents died within two months of each other when he was just five. He was left in the care of his three sisters, the eldest nineteen. Unlike his brothers, he did not continue to prepare for Oxford. Struggling for education, he was accepted as an apprentice surgeon by John Ludlow aged 12 in 1761.  This was a turning point and very important for what followed. He specialized in microbiology at the University of St. Andrews and the University of London. Edward Jenner is considered as the “father of immunology” mainly because of his pioneering work on the smallpox vaccine and the use of vaccination.

 

Robert Brown (1773–1858)
Famous For: Discovered the cell nucleus

Robert Brown attended the University of Edinburgh where he studied medicine but he soon was distracted by a keen interest for botany. While he did not take a degree, Brown showed an interest in natural history. In 1793, Brown dropped out of his medical courses and around a year later, he was commissioned as part of the Fifeshire Regiment of Fencibles as a surgeon’s mate. Brown’s life in the military did not suit him at it prevented him from accessing libraries and from beginning his own collection of plant specimens. In 1800 he left military life and accepted a position as a naturalist for an expedition to Australia, in 1810. During that year, Brown published Prodromus Florae Novae Holandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, a study of Australian flora, he had to pay the costs of publication and was only able to sell 24 of 250 printed copies. This effort appeared to have discouraged him and Brown never completed a companion volume. Brown’s disappointing experience while publishing his study of Australian flora affected the style of his future work. He attempted no further broad syntheses but instead published his discoveries or thoughts as appendages to other works or as pieces of his memoirs. A botanist from Scotland who was a pioneer in microscopy, he was among the first botanists to describe the nucleus of cells while he also discovered Brownian motion. He was also highly influential in paleobotany, the study of prehistoric plant life.

 

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723)
Famous For: The Father of Microbiology 

Antoine Philips van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, the Netherlands in 1632. Antonie’s early life was rather rocky: his father died when he was just five years old. Family loss, low income, and a hard childhood were just a few of the difficulties he faced. Nothing seemed more important before his interest and he continued to fight hard and his interest in lensmaking and curiosity led him to be the first to observe single-cell organisms. He is considered a biologist and microscopist which has earned him the distinction of being the father of microbiology.

 

 

Joseph Lister (1827–1912)
Famous For: Using antiseptics for cleaning and sterilizing wounds

Joseph Lister was born in 1827 in the city of Upton, Essex, England where he attended the University of London, and later in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow. He became a surgeon and pioneered the work of antiseptic or sterile surgery. Joseph Lister had to go through a series of failed experiments for understanding the reason behind the deaths of the patients. In his second case, while treating a patient, gangrene set in and the patient’s leg was amputated and the treatment failed. Lister, however, did not let such a failure let him down, rather he had emphasized that he had learned much and suggested further innovations. With more experience and his research, he started the use of carbolic acid to cleanse wounds and to sterilize instruments used for surgery.

Salim Ali (1896 –1987)

Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, born in Mumbai, was an ornithologist and a naturalist. From his childhood, his life has been difficult as his father died when he was a year old and his mother Zeenat-un-Nissa died when he was three. Due to the lack of a formal university degree, Ali failed to get an ornithologist’s position which was open at the Zoological Survey of India. In 1926, he was hired as a guide lecturer for the salary of Rs 350 a month at the newly opened natural history section in the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai. Overcoming all his difficulties, Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology in the sub-continent. This Birdman of India was the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organization. He was awarded India’s second-highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan in 1976.

Har Gobind Khorana(1922 – 2011)

Har Gobind Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist. Dr. Khorana was born in Raipur in West Punjab. From Punjab University, Lahore, he earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. He went to Manchester University in 1945 and obtained a Ph.D. He returned to India in 1948 and when he applied for a post for a lectureship at Delhi University he was rejected. After this, he thought his future was bleak and this incident made him dejected. But he did not let this stop him and to carry out further research in his field, he returned to England. He successfully excelled in his research and he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. In 1970, Khorana became the first to synthesize an artificial gene in a living cell. His work became the foundation for much of the later research in biotechnology and gene therapy.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

All these people did not just fail, but they failed on a massive scale, and yet, they will be viewed as successful people in history because they bounced back and succeeded in the end without giving up.

One of the important lessons for becoming a successful scientist is to learn to never give up. Not just scientists, be it anything in life, nothing comes without any failures. You need to try, you need to fail, you need to learn from the failure, you need to try again, and this could go on for a number of times until eventually, you achieve and become successful.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy

In all of our lives, there are many such instances where we are being denied a position or job or we did not succeed at something we tried. The same happened with all of the great minds in history, but they emerged as super-achievers after a long struggle. With all these events, we can interpret the great secret of nature – failure is greater than success. You become content when you gain success, but failure can give you the experience and will teach you the most valuable lessons in life, motivating you to fight hard and win. There will be qualities unfolded in you that do not appear under normal circumstances when you start to struggle more than you normally do. Thus, for achieving great success, failure works as a stepping stone.

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