Cross-disciplinary approach in research comes to the fore

It may be useful for scientists to keep a keen eye on kitchens too from now on, rather than focusing only on their laboratories. After all, the recent breakthrough that promises progress in the field of cancer treatments has its origins in the machinations of a French chemist-turned-molecular gastronomy pioneer, Hervé This. He had debuted his technique to unboil an egg — admittedly for no useful purpose — years before researchers at two universities improved on it by finding a 'new' way to do so that would allow the ‘untangled’ proteins to be reused. Though only the new technique unveiled this week has implications for development of medicines, that the basic out-of-the-box idea came from a food experiment points to the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches in research.

There is reason enough for scientists to also probe other This discoveries, such as colloids or substances that hover between solid and liquid, like mousses and gels that are now a staple of molecular gastronomy everywhere. And those who question such lines of inquiry should be reminded that when the bookbinder-turned-physicist Michael Faraday was supposedly asked by William Gladstone to explain the probable uses of electrical induction, he answered, "Why, sir, there is every probability you will be able to tax it!"