Science and Remembrance Day

On November 11th we all stop to remember those who have sacrificed so we can live the lives we do today. When we remember the wars that people fought and died in we often focus the majority of our interest on acts of heroism and the advancements in technology that allowed the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries to be as horrific as they were. In doing this we tend to undervalue the advancements science has made in keeping soldiers and civilians alive in times of war. Here we will catalogue a few examples of the ways science has tried to offset its darker history by providing life saving and life improving advancements.

In 1853 during the Crimean war the Russian Empire was fighting an alliance of the French, English, and Ottoman Empire in the Crimean Peninsula. The war gave us the poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson, and Florence Nightingale. Of the 1.6 million soldiers that entered the war more than 900,000 were killed. Florence Nightingale was instrumental in developing cleaner hospitals and the presentation of data. Over the course of the war she compiled statistics on causes of death of British soldiers that showed that mitigatable zygotic diseases killed far more soldiers than did conventional fighting. Her presentation of the data to Queen Victoria led to more resources to hygiene in hospitals.

Figure 1 Florence Nightingales' boxcomb plot.

Rehmeyer, J. (2008, November 26). Florence Nightingale: The passionate statistician. Retrieved October 28, 2017, from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/florence-nightingale-passionate-statistician

World War 1 was known as the war to end all wars . The two things that define this was as the bloodiest and most cruel war are the advancements of technology producing things like machine guns, and poison gas. Fritz Haber was a Jewish-German scientist who in 1909 discovered a way to synthesize ammonia by combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen from natural gas. This process has allowed for the ability to feed millions of people around the world through the synthesized fertilizers that are produced. In 1919 Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. However, Fritz Haber is a reminder that scientists are human and not incapable of terrible things. During the first world war Haber also helped create and pushed for the use of poison gases. It’s also a reminder that scientific discoveries can be a Pandora’s Box. The technique he won the Nobel Prize for and which has likely saved the lives of millions from famine was also used to produce the chemicals used during the Holocaust.

Figure 2. Fritz Haber

Fritz Haber – Biographical. (n.d) . Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 29 Oct 2017. From http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1918/haber-bio.html

There are a few discoveries we will highlight from the second world war that have saved lives directly and indirectly. Prior to the war, in 1932, French chemist Ernest Fournou discovered that the dye Prontosil degraded to produce sulfanilamide. This finding was later used by German biochemist Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk in determining that sulfanilamide can be used to kill bacterial infections. During the war sulfanilamide was widely distributed to fight strep infections, meningitis, and pneumonia. Domagk was given the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1939.

Gerhard Domagk – Biographical (n.d). Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 28 Oct 2017. From http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1939/domagk-bio.html

Nuclear energy is the major by-product of the Manhattan Project that allowed the Allies in the first world war to possess the first nuclear weapon. The advent of the nuclear age has meant the death’s of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians as a result of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as living in fear of atomic bombs being used again. Aside from the destructive force of nuclear weapons nuclear power is itself a divisive topic. Chernobyl, Three-mile island, and recently Fukushima have left people nervous about the prospects of using nuclear energy. In a paper published in 2013 NASA scientists Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen determined that the total lives saved as a result of switching to nuclear energy from traditional fossil fuels has saved 1.8 million lives, and will save up to 7 million lives over the next four decades. The loss of life due to the three disasters listed previously is far outweighed by those saved by the switch to nuclear from fossil fuels. This comes in the form of reduced carbon emissions and the related loss of life due to global climate change.

These are just a few advancements in medicine, energy, and chemistry that have been used to save lives. While we have to recognize that scientific breakthroughs do not exist in a vacuum and can be used for things as harmful as they are beneficial, we have to recognize the benefit that they have played in the lives of soldiers and citizens alike.