Too many of us encounter scientific discovery through a looking glass which would make Lewis Carroll proud. Take the exciting announcement made last week by Yale's own chemistry department of a method for breaking down chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.
If one learned of Juan Burdeniuc, GRD '98, and chemistry professor Robert Crabtree's landmark discovery from the average scientifically illiterate headline writer, the story might read: "Rhubarb will save the earth."
This leaves a great deal to be desired. A more detailed account might go as follows: Burdeniuc created a chemical process which can convert ozone-depleting CFCs such as Freon into a harmless carbon compound, table salt, and sodium fluoride - a component of toothpaste. The trick involves reacting the CFCs with sodium oxalate, a substance found in rhubarb leaves, and heating the mix to 290 degrees Centigrade.
Why such a hubbub over the finding? It came after the first Nobel Prize ever awarded in an environmental science, given to Sherwood Roland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen for their research linking CFCs to ozone depletion. They showed that when CFCs are exposed to ultraviolet light high in the atmosphere, chlorine atoms are torn apart from the CFCs and participate in reactions which convert ozone (O3) into oxygen gas (O2). The resulting ozone hole leaves humans more susceptible to skin cancer.
The threat of CFCs to our ozone generated an international agreement among 139 countries to ban CFC production as of Jan. 1, 1996. Still, with 100 million pounds of Freon stockpiled in the U.S. alone, no one had found a feasible way to deal with the stuff on the ground, let alone the maverick chlorine atom wreaking havoc above. Due to CFCs' stable character, previous methods of destruction proved either too expensive at high temperatures or too messy in their generation of corrosive acid gases.
In this light, Burdeniuc's work is impressive in its simplicity and applicability. Yet beyond applauding the final result of this research, we should take it as an opportunity to see how "science" gets done. Science, you remember, was the thing you wrote down as your probable major on your application to Yale before you developed Group IV-o-phobia.
We must remind ourselves that the all-too-welcome finding is not the norm for lab work. A friend of mine put it well when he said that the most frequently heard phrase at the lab bench is not "Eureka!," but rather "That's interesting."
So it becomes important to relate how a person like Burdeniuc came to his discovery. Burdeniuc's story begins with his arrival in Crabtree's lab, where no one was working with the tricky carbon-fluorine and carbon-chlorine bonds. Why was there no work being done in the area? It was considered too high risk, in terms of yielding positive results, for a graduate student. Regardless, Burdeniuc wanted to explore these bonds and Crabtree suggested that his student expand his research to include the decomposition of CFCs.
The next step in the scientific process proves the most important and elusive - intuition.
Burdeniuc chose to explore a problem that had virtually no experimental background. He had a hunch that he needed a reducing agent to take apart the necessary bonds at a reasonable temperature with low toxicity while yielding recyclable products. Playing with a chemist's intuition which comes from more failed than successful experiements, Burdeniuc found himself sitting on his sofa at home one night, drinking coffee, when he turned to his wife and said, "I think that I have a good idea."
The reaction of sodium oxalate with CFCs has since proven an excellent idea. But the idea itself is not enough in university research. There is the matter of money.
When it comes to the funding of an ambitious idea such as Burdeniuc's, vicious cycles exist. Funding sources shy away from proposals which embark upon uncharted territories. Several companies rejected Burdeniuc's proposal offhand as too risky. It was 3M, with a reputation for funding innovative studies and respectful of Burdeniuc's previous work with perfluorocarbons, that finally agreed to foot the bill along with the U.S. Department of Energy. Only now, after Burdeniuc's breakthrough, will the funding flow freely.
But perhaps the greatest untold story of a discovery such as this is its dependence upon faith - seldom associated with hard science. Crabtree's faith and support of his student, Burdeniuc's faith in his efforts, and the faith of people with money at 3M in the work of university scientists make a breakthrough like Burdeniuc's possible.
Important research does require strong faith, and perhaps this is why so many of us drift away from Group IV during our Yale careers. It takes discoveries like Burdeniuc's to renew that faith.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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