I was just watching "100 Greatest Discoveries" on the Discovery channel. They were showing the "Top Ten Discoveries of all time" as voted by viewers and so I had to compile my own list!
In their list, they spoke of Pennicillin, Newton's Laws of motion, Einstein's theories of General Relativity and ofcourse Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection - which was number 1.
Apart from the above mentioned discoveries here are some of my own favourite experiments. I have a feeling that I compiled a similar list a few years ago - but I am not too sure. No harm in repeating things that are worth repeating :D
Here is a list of some of my favourite experiments / discoveries...
(I tried to put these in some sort of order but I was unable to choose one over the other! So the following are in no particular order.)
1) Millikan's Oil drop experiment - determining the charge of an electron. Such a simple experiment and yet sooo powerful!
2) Milgram's Experiment - Ever since I heard of this experiment I have had to re-think about who we REALLY are. The baffling nature of the human mind - it forces me to think about just how much I am like everyone else and whether I can be manipulated by authority to the same degree as the subjects of this particular experiment.
3) Louis Pasteur disproving the Theory of Spontaneous Generation. When I first read about it, I hadn't even thought that a theory called "Spontaneous Generation" had existed. As a kid I had thought that that must have been how things came into the world - when it rains earthworms are EVERYWHERE - why? My way of answering it was "Spontaneous Generation" - but in simpler terms. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for someone to prove something that seems to make so much sense - until it is disproved and you think "How silly!"
4) Crick's Wobble Hypothesis - the redundancy built into the human genome continues to fascinate me!
5) Frisch's "Bee" exeriment. The "Waggle Dance". A discovery that I believe is able to make even the most head-strong individual humble and accept that nature is far more complex than we can imagine.
6) Pauling and Sickle Cell Anaemia. One small amino acid change is the difference between life and death. It is a miracle that there are so many "normal" individuals in the world!
7) Meselsohn-Stahl Experiment. One of my lecturers at uni called it "The most beautiful Experiment Ever". I think it shows the true power of collaborations from two very different fields - Radiation Physics and Molecular Biology.
8) John Cairns - the evolving nature of mutations. Simple Experiments are often the most Powerful.
9) Griffith's transformation experiment - showing that DNA are the carriers of hereditary information - who would have thought??
10) Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. This list couldn't possibly be complete without mentioning her.
I want to end this with a few of my favourite quotes...
"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars" - Sir Charles Darwin
"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have." - Albert Einstein
"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living." - Jules Henri Poincaré
One of my favourites - this has been said by many people in many different ways, but I often feel that this is basis of Science.
"Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one." - Konrad (Zacharias) Lorenz
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