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leer en español Is being lucky just a matter of, well, luck. Or is it fate? Destiny? Providence? Thomas Jefferson is credited as saying ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get.’ But that’s far too simplistic. Men work hard hours in mines and women in paddy fields without ever being lucky once. The philosopher Seneca coined the phrase ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’ But, then, there must have been a few galley slaves whose only luck was a day without feeling the lash of the whip. The Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was working in his lab in 1928, when he noticed mould developing on a sandwich he’d left beside a culture dish being used to grow the staphylococci germ. The mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. With further experiments, ...