After the #COVID19 pandemic, I fear politicians ( @AgEInves , @astro_duque) will be tempted to fund applied biomed research only, and forget about basic science again. Science does not work like that.
@NobelPrize winner George de Hevesy will help illustrate my point. #Thread

Hevesy György studied in Budapest, Munich, Freiburg and got his first appointment @ETH_en, from where he left to Manchester, to work with none less than Ernest Rutherford ( @NobelPrize 1908). Here's one to #mobility!

Rutherford prided himself on always choosing ambitious, but never impossible projects. Here's de Hevesy's project in Rutherford's words: “If you are worth your salt, you separate Radium D (eventually proven to be Pb-210-212) from all that nuisance of lead”. Not bad, was it?

Besides finding how to separate isotopes of Pb, de Hevesy had another problem, he suffered stomach aches, and was quite sure the "recycling" of dinners at the lodge had something to do with it. Needless to say, his landlady would not admit to it.

de Hevesy worked tirelessly for two years trying to find reactions to separate the stable isotopes of Pb from the radioactive Pb...Of course, the reactivity of isotopes of the same element is pretty much the same, give or take some kinetic effects...so there was no way Jose!

Oh, but...if both elements reacted the same way...surely he could use the radioactive part of the sample to detect the non-radioactive part! And he could detect really tiny amounts of radioactive elements!!!

His first "practical" experiment was with his dinner. He sprinkled the leftovers with lead and detected radioactivity in the following day's meal! With this, de Hevesy proved his landlady's wrongdoing...but he also gave birth to #nuclearmedicine!! ( http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/20/6/590.full.pdf)

de Hevesy used the same concept to trace the absorption of lead by plants ( https://portlandpress.com/biochemj/article-abstract/17/4-5/439/7180/The-Absorption-and-Translocation-of-Lead-by?redirectedFrom=fulltext), and then moved to other elements and animal models (including himself!) And won a Nobel Prize

And that is how science leaps forwards. de Hevesy was not trying to find a method to trace chemical elements in plants, or animals, much less humans! He was trying to separate isotopes of lead...and he didn't even know!...and he failed!

Yes, we scientists sometimes focus on a particularly urgent problem and help solve it with the existing tools, or purposely develop new tools (war periods are unfortunately full of examples). But if you want us to keep making our lives better, you have to invest in basic science!

But surely this has nothing to do with the #COVID19 pandemic...or does it? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/817.full
Of course the problem is much more complicated than that, but...

Finally, THANKS to those battling the bug in the frontlines!!! MDs, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, microbiologists...
I hope we'll soon substitute the clapping with appropriate PPE, decent working shifts and salaries...