Moving into a new century, it's quite natural to look back and ponder - cast up a balance, so to speak, and identify symbol names and events. What were the symbols of the twentieth century? What impacted our life in these hundred years? The A-bomb, computers and Internet? The discovery of a genetic code? The cloned sheep Dolley? Yes, sure... If we take a closer look and consider other, not so big events, we will still give pride of place to scientific and technological achievements, the breakthroughs.
The Moscow-published Nezavisimaya Gavta (its English logo is Independent Newspaper) runs a supplement, NG-NAUKA, or IN-SCIENCE, which did exactly that-it struck a balance of scientific and technological achievements of the century Throughout the year 2000 it was polling readership on these four nominations, to use the pat word:
- Outstanding scientists of the century;
- Scientific discoveries and theories (concepts) that impacted most of all the course of human civilization in the twentieth century;
- Most significant technologies and inventions;
- Greatest state-of-the-art technical (engineering) projects.
The readers' opinion poll produced a hundred names all in all, a "golden hundred" of 20th century science and engineering. Let's go over it plank by plank.
Outstanding Scientists
1. Ivan Pavlov (theory of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes-known as the Pavlovian reflexes);
2. Marie Sklodowska Curie (works on radioactivity);
3. Nikolai Semyonov (theory of branching chemical reactions);
4. Otto Hahn (uranium fission);
5. Albert Einstein (special and general theory of relativity);
6. Niels Bohr (atomic structure theory);
7. Max Planck (quantum theory);
8. Wolfgang Pauli (the Pauli exclusion principle in quantum mechanics);
9. Werner Heisenberg (quantum mechanics);
10. Paul Dirac (quantum mechanics);
11. Enrico Fermi (nuclear and neutron physics);
12. Edward Teller (nuclear reactions);
13. Steven Hawking ("black holes" radiation theory);
14. Benois Mandelbrot (fractional geometry);
15. Francis Crick, James Watson (discovery of a DNA double helix);
16. Norbert Wiener (cybernetics);
17. Ilya Prigozhin (thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes);
18. Dennis Gabor (holography);
19. Alexander Friedman (model of a nonstationary expanding Universe);
20. Claud Shannon (mathematical information theory);
21. William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain (transistor effect);
22. Alexander Fleming (discovery of penicillin);
23. Jules Henri Poincare (mathematical formulization of the special theory of relativity);
24. Tim Berners Leigh (World-Wide Web conception);
25. Christian Barnard (human heart transplant);
26. Pyotr Kapitsa (low-temperature physics);
27. Thomas Morgan (genetics);
28. Andrei Sakharov (works on thermonuclear fusion);
29. Fritz Haber (ammonia synthesis);
30. Glenn Seaborg (synthesis of transuranium elements);
31. Sergei Korolyov (realization of Soviet space projects);
32. Nikolai Vavilov (genetics);
33. Igor Kurchatov (development of the Soviet atomic weapon);
34. Vladimir Vernadsky (theory of the noosphere);
35. Vladimir Ipatyev (high-pressure and high-temperature chemistry);
36. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (theory of space flights);
37. Yuliy Khariton (development of the Soviet atomic weapon);
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38. Vladimir Utkin (development of Soviet aerospace technology);
39. Andrei Mirzabekov (genome sequencing);
40. Nikolai Basov, Alexander Prokhorov (works on quantum electronics);
41. Wallace Carothers (nylon synthesis).
Scientific Discoveries and Theories That Impacted the Course of Human Civilization
1. Special theory of relativity;
2. General theory of relativity;
3. Quantum mechanics;
4. Transistor effect;
5. Electro-weak interactions theory;
6. The noosphere concept;
7. Dissipative systems theory;
8. Branching chain reactions;
9. Laser effects;
10. DNA double helix;
11. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR);
12. Theory of immunity;
13. Discovery of chromosomes as heredity carriers;
14. Experimental proof of the quantum phenomenon;
15. Correlation of Heisenberg's indeterminacy;
16. Entropy principle;
17. Big Bang theory;
18. Quark theory of the structure of matter;
19. High-temperature superconductivity;
20. Sustainable development concept;
21. "Nuclear winter" concept;
22. Discovery of embryonal stem cells;
23. Continental drift theory;
24. Synthesis of transuranium elements;
25. Isolation of telamerase, an enzyme arresting the process of cell aging;
26. Vavilov's law of homologous series;
27. Discovery of the relict lake Vostok under a three-kilometer-thick ice shield in the heart of the Antarctic Continent;
28. Discovery of blood groups;
29. Planetary model of the atom;
30. Vavilov-Cherenkov effect (luminous radiation of electrons moving in water);
31. X-ray diffraction in crystals;
32. Cosmological theory ofsuperstrings.
Most Significant Technologies and Inventions
1. Gene engineering;
2. Internet;
3. Cloning of mammals;
4. Nuclear power engineering;
5. Lasers;
6. Computer virtual realities;
7. Silicon microchips;
8. Fiber-optics communication;
9. Facsimile service (FAX);
10. Mobile telephone;
11. Nanotechnologies;
12. Tomography;
13. Fullerene synthesis;
14. Television;
15. Compact disks (CD) and compact video disks (CVD);
16. Radiolocation and radar;
17. Thermonuclear fusion;
18. Molecular microchips for genome decoding;
19. Jet aircraft;
20. Synthesis of plastics;
21. Ball-point pen;
22. Zipper fastener;
23. Xerox;
24. SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, otherwise known as Aqualung);
25. Perfluoran ("blue blood") - blood substitute based on perfluorocarbon emulsions;
26. Technology of "clean rooms";
27. Bubble chamber;
28. Particle accelerators;
29. Rotor automated transfer lines.
State-of-the-art Technical Projects
1. "Sarcophagus" (a dome built over the fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power station);
2. Man's moon walk;
3. "Vega" project (assay of the substance of Halley's comet);
4. Kalashnikov submachine gun;
5. Sojourner Mars rover (the Martian station Mars Pathfinder);
6. The biggest H-bomb (50 megatons) developed and tested in the Soviet Union;
7. Orbital station MIR;
8. High dam of the Rogunskaya hydro-power station (355 m high);
9. Human heart transplant;
10. The world's first artificial satellite of the earth (sputnik);
11. Superdeep well on the Kola Peninsula (over 12,000 meters deep);
12. The Lenin nuclear icebreaker;
13. Ground-effect machine (plane) Monster of the Caspian (body length, 100 m; wing span, 40 m; 10 jet engines; speed, 800 km/h just several meters above water surface);
14. Unmanned mission of the Soviet space shuttle BURAN;
15. English Channel tunnel;
16. Hubble telescope;
17. Human genome project;
18. Siberian mining-and-chemical plant (Krasnoyarsk-20);
19. Soyu-Appolo Test Project;
20. Petronas Twin Towers (452 m) built in the downtown district of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia;
21. Ostankino TV tower in Moscow (537 m);
22. Radio broadcasting on a regular basis;
23. The first soft landing on Venus of the Soviet interplanetary probe VENERA-3;
24. Jovian probe GALILEO;
25. Space shuttle craft;
26. Big Adron Collider, a particle accelerator at the European Center of Nuclear Research (CERN);
27. CYCLOPE king-size marine platform for natural gas recovery in the North Sea;
28. GOELRO plan (State Plan for the Electrification of Russia).
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