Sunday, November 8, 2015

Nice Guys Finish Second!



It never sat right with George Whipple when he won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1934 for his invention of dual ply toilet paper. Even though he shared the prize with two other doctors, he knew in his heart that his assistant Bill Charmen was the man who really invented it when he was caught short one day in the lab and was forced to use two pieces of typing paper that were stuck together. Mr. Whipple stole the idea and patented it and licensed it for millions of dollars.

Whipple was celebrated for his contributions to human hygiene, won the Nobel prize for medicine and became rich and famous while his assistant died alone and penniless. Whipple later named his company after his erstwhile friend and paid tribute to him in a series of commercials that are repeated to this day.

Unfortunately Mr Charmen's contributions have been wiped from the history books. So to speak.
(Nice Guys Finish Second, Men who Lost the Nobel Prize, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Playboy Press, 1998

3 comments:

deborah said...

Brutal. Kearns Goodwin covers everything.

Methadras said...

Nice guys in general almost never finish first.

JAL said...

A friend of mine (now deceased) really did 'come in second.' He was a cancer researcher in NYC at the prestigious whatevers. He was still the same really really smart guy who discovered cool things. If he was pissed off he was over it by the time I met him years later.

His was an amazing story. As a GI in WWII he and some buddies stumbled on a concentration camp. Horrific. The officers (who already knew it was there) confiscated his film. He kept a roll. I saw the pictures.

He also was completely devastated when his lady friend was killed on Flight 93 on her way to the west coast.

Everybody has a story.