Sunday Snippet: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

Most people, myself included, are not terribly familiar with the name Albert Szent-Gyorgyi. It’s not exactly the kind of name that comes up during everyday conversations and he is not recognized among the general populace in the same way that we’d recognize Albert Einstein or Marie Curie.

However, I think most of us are familiar with a little something called vitamin C. You may even know a thing or two about the citric acid cycle. Well, guess what? Albert Szent-Gyorgyi is widely credited with the discovery of vitamin C, as well as the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle. To make such a discovery, you would almost have to assume that Albert was a genius. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that you are not capable of making discoveries too.

It’s not like vitamin C only came into existence after Szent-Gyorgyi saw it under a microscope one day. It has always been there and thousands of other scientists have seen it before him. However, Szent-Gyorgyi was the first one to recognize that it was there. That’s his discovery. As per his quote, he was able to think what no one else has thought. You just have to see things in a different light than others.

Have you ever had the experience where you were struggling with a certain problem? You tried approaching this problem from all sorts of different angles and, for the life of you, you could not find a suitable solution? Then one day, out of the blue, you have a sudden epiphany and it all becomes clear to you? That’s exactly the kind of “new thought” that Albert Szent-Gyorgyi is describing.

To discover new things and to see the world in new ways, you just have to shift your perspective. It’s amazing the kinds of things you can discover when you put on a slightly different thinking cap.