Quote:
Originally Posted by Steffen
Interesting list. Wouldn't Becquerel/Rutherford/Curie also qualify (nuclear physics), or Fleming (Penicillin)?
Cheers
Steffen.
|
As for Rutherford and Curie, I do agree with you, as experimental scientists often get a bad deal in lists of scientific advances (e.g. Boyle's law is almost common knowledge these days, but it was very hard for Boyle to do these experiments in the context of his times). I will see if I can at least slip in Rutherford, as atomic physics would be inconceivable without his experiments.
In the notes that go with this list, which I have not yet published, I refer to the Bohr atom as the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom. However, I ended up just calling it the Bohr atom in the main list of discoveries.
(in the same vein, the Hubble Constant should be called the Hubble-Lemaitre constant)
As for Penicillin, I think that it was an important advance, but perhaps reliant on other work in biochemistry that may be thought of as more fundamental.
I would probably go for Jenner, the pioneer of Vaccination, in preference to Penicillin.
The problem with medical advances is that there are too many of them to put them all in the list!
Robert Koch was probably the greatest practical microbiologist, at least in the context of his times, as the role of microbes in causing disease was still greeted with scepticism when he was working in the 19th C; yet he proved that several diseases were caused by specific bacteria.
In many cases, it is even difficult to assign credit for work done, but I have done a more accurate job on giving accurate dates and in attributing work properly, than you will find in many other timelines on the internet.