My strategy for writing this autobiography is to use examples of how working on seemingly different projects can often lead to outcomes more important than originally envisioned. Serendipity is a happy accident—specifically, the accident of discovering something useful without directly looking for it. This often occurs when two research projects converge unexpectedly. The main text contains examples of how serendipity has led me to important discoveries, including (a) finding surprisingly high 228Ra activities in the ocean; (b) developing a means of rapidly and quantitatively extracting radium from seawater; (c) devising a rapid, sensitive method of measuring 224Ra and 223Ra; (d) realizing the scale and biogeochemical importance of submarine groundwater discharge; and (e) conceiving a method to estimate the total flux of submarine groundwater discharge to the Atlantic Ocean. The Supplemental Material fleshes out details of these discoveries and places them in the context of my other investigations.

中文翻译：

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发现的机缘巧合：一位地球化学家的一生


我写这本自传的策略是用例子来说明，在看似不同的项目上工作往往会带来比最初设想的更重要的结果。Serendipity 是一个快乐的意外——具体来说，就是在没有直接寻找的情况下发现有用的事物的意外。当两个研究项目意外融合时，通常会发生这种情况。正文包含机缘巧合如何使我获得重要发现的示例，包括 （a） 在海洋中发现了惊人的高 228Ra 活动;（b） 开发一种从海水中快速定量提取镭的方法;（c） 设计一种快速、灵敏的 224Ra 和 223Ra 测量方法;（d） 认识到海底地下水排放的规模和生物地球化学重要性;（e） 构思一种方法来估计海底地下水排放到大西洋的总通量。补充材料充实了这些发现的细节，并将它们置于我的其他调查的背景下。