JHU research changes the world - Hopkins' history is measured not only by years, but by discoveries

The next time you are enjoying a diet soda, take a break from patting yourself on the back for all the calories you are saving, and say, "Thank you, Hopkins."

That's right, the world's first-ever artificial sweetener, saccharin, was invented at the three-year-old Johns Hopkins University, in 1879.

It was discovered by Ira Remsen, who first oxidized orthotoluene sulfamide by potassium permanganate, producing orthobenzoyl sulfimied -- or, in layman's terms, "invented saccharin" -- while working at Hopkins' former downtown campus on Howard Street. Hopkins didn't move to the Homewood campus until 1914.

Remsen was teaching chemistry at Hopkins at the time, and was in fact one of the original six professors recruited by Hopkins President Daniel Coit Gilman.

If Remsen and Gilman's names sound familiar for the campus halls named for them, then so might two of the other professors -- classics professor Basil Gildersleeve and mathematics professor James Joseph Sylvester both have dorm houses in the AMRs named for them.

And believe it or not, saccharin isn't the only major invention or breakthrough that Hopkins researchers have been responsible for.

In fact, the next time you are enjoying a crisp, clean, glass of tap water, be grateful of the fact that you won't have to spend the next week in the bathroom, and say, "Thank you, Hopkins."

The process of chlorination was perfected in the early 1920s, and was pioneered by a young Johns Hopkins faculty member named Abel Wolman. Wolman was among the school of engineering's first class of undergraduates in 1913, and went on to work for Hopkins after graduating.

Chlorination soon became the predominant method of water purification for every water supply system in the country, and quickly began spreading to other countries. The process is still used today, and Wolman's discovery is estimated to have saved millions of lives.

Wolman died in 1989, and in 1999, was named Marylander of the century by the Baltimore Sun. To commemorate his services after his death, Hopkins officials -- you guessed it -- named a dormitory after him.

But for a school known for its medical studies, the invention of life-saving devices is hardly a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

The next time your heart stops beating, and electrodes strapped to your chest shock you with a jolt of electricity that rescues you from the grip of imminent death, why don't you go ahead and say, "Thank you, Hopkins."

The defibrillator was invented by Dr. William Bennett Kouwenhoven and a team of medical colleagues in 1933, in the basement of Shaffer Hall. Koewenhoven noted that a low-voltage electrical shock caused a ventricular fibrillation in humans, a process where the heart ceases beating, but continues to quiver, or fibrillate, rapidly.

The key to their invention was discovering that a countershock could also defibrillate a stalled heart. In 1933, they first pioneered the process on a dog.

Unfortunately, their protocol defibrillating machine weighed over 200 pounds and was not very mobile. So unless your heart happened to stop beating while you were in the immediate vicinity of the enormous contraption, you were kind of out of luck.

Hopkins has scores of other groundbreaking medical and scientific discoveries to boast about on brochures. Epinephrine was first isolated by Hopkins researchers in 1897--sales of epinephrine now exceed $6 million a year. The first successful renal dialysis was performed on an animal in 1913. Hopkins-affiliated researchers even took the first color photograph of the Earth, in 1967.

Yet, not to be outdone by the beaker-toting science geeks, researchers in the social sciences at Hopkins have also been responsible for many huge breakthroughs.

A Hopkins professor and archeologist, William F. Albright, is credited for confirming the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in 1948. Albright concluded that the manuscripts were Hebrew texts of the Maccabean period, which took place around 150 B.C.

In a 1966 report entitled Equality of Education Opportunity, Hopkins sociologist James S. Coleman propounded that disadvantaged black students learn better in well-integrated classrooms. The report was Commissioned by the Office of Education -- as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- and helped improve the integration of America's schools.

Did you have to suffer through a "driver's permit" period before you got your license, in which you had to have a parent in the car in order to drive your friends around? Well, it was Hopkins researchers who determined, in 2000, that the more passengers a teenage driver has in their car, the more likely it becomes that their ride will end in a fatal accident to the driver.

So, just think back on the six-month or year-long period of hell you had to undergo, and you'll know what to say.

Thank you, Hopkins.