Cheese: Biotechnology through the Ages

Abstract

It was Walpole who suggested that the word “serendipity” be included in our vocabulary after reading the Three Princes of Serendip. Serendip is the old Persian name for Sri Lanka. Nowadays serendipity is defined as the finding of something unexpected and useful particularly whilst looking for something entirely unrelated, or to use the visual words of Pek van Andel, studying serendipity and a winner of the Ig Nobel prize: “looking for a needle in a haystack and rolling out of it with a milkmaid.” Since 1994, Serendip has also been an interactive educational website that helps people improve their chances of deliberately making discoveries by chance24. The discovery of cheese is a notable example of serendipity.