In 1991, Linda Buck and Richard Axel identified the multigene family expressing odor receptors. Their discovery transformed research on olfaction overnight, and Buck and Axel were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Behind this success lies another, less visible study about the methodological ingenuity of Buck. This hidden tale holds the key to answering a fundamental question in discovery analysis: What makes specific discovery tools fit their tasks? Why do some strategies turn out to be more fruitful than others? The fit of a method with an experimental system often establishes the success of a discovery. However, the underlying reasoning of discovery is hard to codify. These difficulties point toward an element of discovery analysis routinely sidelined as a mere biographical element in the philosophical analysis of science: the individual discoverer’s role. I argue that the individual researcher is not a replaceable epistemic element in discovery analysis. This article draws on contemporary oral history, including interviews with Buck and other actors key to developments in late 1980s olfaction.

What does it take for a scientific model to represent? Models, as an integral part of scientific practice, are historically and contextually bound in their application. Practice-oriented debates in recent philosophy of science have emphasised how models can be said to act as representations in practice, e.g., as “mediators” between theory and data. However, the questions that remain open are: what exactly is it that is represented by a scientific model, and in which sense can we speak of a representation? I argue that the proper object of representation in scientific practice is not a model as such but, rather, the entire experimental system in which a model is an active part. The implication of my claim is a strongly historicized perspective on the capacity models to represent: the capacity of a model to represent must be judged against the individual life of an experimental system. In support of my argument, I turn to modelling issues in fragrance chemistry regarding the molecular basis of odors. Explanations of irregularities in the pursuit of so-called structure-odor relations provide an interesting example to analyze the modelling strategies that inform the notion of chemical similarity.