James M. Schlatter received a patent for “Peptide Sweetening Agents” (U.S. No. 3,492,131), an invention which eventually led to the marketing of aspartame under the name NutraSweet. The patent was filed 18 Apr 1966, assigned to his employer, G.D. Searle & Co. In Dec 1965, a few months before filing, he had accidentally discovered the first example of such compounds. To pick up a paper, he had licked his finger. He tasted an unexpectedly sweet trace of a substance that had, he realized, earlier splashed onto the outside of a flask he had handled. It contained L-aspartyl-L-phenylalnine methyl ester. After development and much scrutiny of the testing of aspartame, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it (22 Oct 1981) with many permitted uses as a food sweetener.

Albert Einstein suggested the possibility of measuring the universe, which startled the audience, with his address Geometry and Expansion given at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Applying certain results of the relativity theory, he came to the conclusion that if the real velocities of the stars (as could be actually measured) were less than the calculated velocities, then it would prove that the real gravitations' great distances were smaller than the gravitational distances demanded by the law of Newton. From such divergence, the finiteness of the universe could be proved indirectly, and it would even permit the estimation of its size.