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Faculté des Sciences de L ille” in 1854. In his leeture Pasteur says
that “ in the memorable year of 1820 H. G. Oersted, the Danish
physicist, held a copper wire, the ends of which were connected to
the poles of a voltaic pile. On the table was a revolving compass
needle, and suddenly he saw the needle move and take up a devi-
ating position, (not only suddenly, but by pure accident, you might
say, but then you have to bear in mind that within the sphere of
observation chance only favours minds already prepared for her).
This was the birth of the modern telegraph. When seeing a com
pass needle move, and nothing else, most people would ask: What
is the use of that? This question was also put to Benjamin Franklin
during one of his leetures on some scientific subject. Franklin s
answer was a repartee, ‘What is the use of a newborn baby ? And
yet Oersted’s discovery was not twenty years old when the almost
supernatural effect of it was —the electric telegraph .
In the spacious working-room of the large chemical institute
where Professor Fritz Håber, the Nobel Prize Winner of 1917,
before and during the First World War, solved the vital pioblem
of agriculture, namely that of chemical fertilizer from the niti ogen
of air, was only one single picture a portrait. A Danish scientist
who visited Professor Håber in the twenties, could not help asking
the professor why only that very picture was hanging there in
“ splendid isolation” . “ It is there” . Professor Håber answered ” in
order to remind me of the quality which is of the gieatest impoi
tance to all scientists, namely the capability of combining a mental
image with an experimental investigation irrespective of the so-
called ‘common sense’ . Common sense only prevents most people
from digging deep into a problem. When something which devi-
ates from the expected occurs, the so-called common sense prompts
you to think that the deviation was just unimportant or incidental. ‘
It was a portrait of H. C. Oersted which hung all by itself in
Professor Haber’s working-room.
8
7h e Chemical Laboratory of the University from 1824 to 1829.
In 1823 H. G. Oersted succeeded in inducing the University to set
up a chemical laboratory within the precinct of the University in
Set. Pederstræde and Studiestræde by converting a two-storied
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