William Lipscomb is the Abbott and James Lowell Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Harvard University. In 1976 he received a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on the structure and bonding of boron compounds and for his general discoveries about the nature of chemical bonding.
QUESTION: In your paper “Boron arrangement in B9 Hydride,” you discuss two plausible hydrogen atom arrangements.
Well, the fact is, this was a very difficult problem, because it was presented to us as a compound containing eight boron atoms, when it really contained nine. We were completely at a loss to understand it, and we tried out all the possibilities for the B8 hydride, and finally concluded that there couldn’t be eight—there must be one more. So we put another one in and it worked. This is an illustration about science that if you eliminate all the other possibilities, then if only one more remains, that must be the correct one. Well, that reminded me—I was then at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a chapter of the Sherlock Holmes Society “The Norwegian Explorers”—
QUESTION: Yes, Sherlock Holmes is very interesting. Now, we were talking about the hydrogen atoms…
Yes, I just wanted to illustrate that this was done using the method of Sherlock Holmes. In the complete works of Sherlock Holmes there are four places where Holmes says, “Wherever all other contingency fails, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” This is Holmes’s method. Now, the other three places use wording that’s rather like that but not exactly like that.
QUESTION: Indeed. Now about the arrangement of those hydrogen atoms…
The whole thing has to do with the number of boron atoms and the method of Holmes. This is a scientific method. You get all the possibilities except one final remaining one, and in doing this you have a method of science. And this is the method which Holmes used in at least four different places in the complete works of Sherlock Holmes—
QUESTION: About those hydrogen atoms…
You see, the Baker Street Irregulars is a society that has existed for a great many years, and they do research on Sherlock Holmes, finding problems to solve. Here’s an example of a research problem. In the complete works of Sherlock Holmes, Watson’s wife, who was born Mary Morstan, refers to her husband as John. Of course, that’s his name—John H. Watson, as Holmes writes in the volume. And the solution of this problem was actually achieved by Dorothy Sayers. There’s one place in which he’s referred to as “James,” rather than “John.” Now, it’s impossible that she could have not known her husband’s name. So the solution of this problem is that the H. stands for “Hamish,” which is Scottish for “James.” This is the kind of problem that one solves in Sherlock Holmes.
QUESTION: And the hydrogen problem?
Yes. Well, Holmes is a model for scientific investigation. He worked in the days when they didn’t use fingerprints. They used mental effort alone. They were presented with a problem, and he used his brains to work it out, and look for all the clues that he could. Now, what is a better way to do science?
QUESTION: Exactly. Now about those hydrogen atoms. They form an icosahedral fragment.
You see, the stories were not really written by Conan Doyle, who was a literary agent. They were written by Watson, except for four of them which were written by Holmes himself. So there’s something wrong with the idea that these are to be attributed to Doyle.
QUESTION: Indeed. Now, given that each boron atom supplies four orbitals but only three electrons—
There’s another aspect to Holmes that I really enjoyed very much. He was a violinist—a very fine musician, as Watson notes. Holmes needed some relaxation on a few occasions, and he used to go to concerts, and he played the violin. I really like that, because solving problems is an art, too, just like the performance of music, so it helps enormously.
QUESTION: Yes, it does. Well, thank you for talking with us!
You’re very welcome. There’s another method of Holmes that has not yet appeared in the literature, and that I hope to use. It refers to Silver Blaze. Silver Blaze is the name of a racehorse. One night the horse disappeared from the stable. Holmes was given the job to find out who did it, and towards the end of the investigation, he’s discussing the case with Watson, and he says, “Well that’s all right, but what about the curious incident of the dog in the night time?” And Watson says, “But the dog did nothing in the night time.” “That is the curious incident,” Holmes says. That means, you see, that since nothing happened, that was an important clue that the dog recognized the person who had visited the stable. When we have an experiment and we expect something to happen—yet nothing happens—this is the appropriate reference from Sherlock Holmes. I hope to use that some day in a paper.
Reference
“Boron Arrangement in a B9 Hydride,” Richard E. Dickerson, Peter J. Wheatley, Peter A. Howell, William N. Lipscomb, and Riley Schaeffer, Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 25, no. 3, Sept. 1956, pp. 606-607. Footnote 4 of the paper quotes Sherlock Holmes describing his theory of contingencies. The quotation is from the Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Bruce Partington Plans.”
MORE: Obituaries of The Colonel: New York Times, Associated Press, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Gazette, National Public Radio, The Curious Wavefunctiion, Chemical & Engineering News, El Pais, Nature.
UPDATE: A memorial event for Professor Lipscomb is scheduled to happen Saturday, September 10, at Harvard’s Memorial Church, from 2:00-3:00 pm, followed by a gathering to swap stories at the Sheraton Commander hotel.
UPDATE (September 12, 2011): The Nature blog’s report about the memorial. (September 20) Peaco Todd writes some of her thoughts from the occasion.
UPDATE [October 2011]: Jim Lipscomb, Bill’s son, transcribed the memorial talks.