Greatest Scientific Discoveries
Antibiotics
Antibiotics transformed medicine. The discovery of antibiotics began by accident. On the morning of September 3rd, 1928, Professor Alexander Fleming was having a clear up of his cluttered laboratory. Fleming was sorting through a number of glass plates which had previously been coated with staphyloccus bacteria as part of research Fleming was doing. One of the plates had mould on it. The mould was in the shape of a ring and the area around the ring seemed to be free of the bacteria staphyloccus. Further research on the mould found that it could kill other bacteria and that it could be given to small animals without any side-effects. However, within a year, Fleming had moved onto other medical issues and it was ten years later that Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, working at Oxford University, isolated the bacteria-killing substance found in the mould - penicillin.
Florey got an American drugs company to mass produce it and by D-Day, enough was available to treat all the bacterial infections that broke out among the troops. Penicillin got nicknamed "the wonder drug" and in 1945 Fleming, Chain and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Post-1945 was the era of the antibiotics.
Atomic power
Atomic power unleashed it full might on August 6th 1945 when the "Enola Gay" flew to its target Hiroshima. On board was one bomb - "Little Boy". It had enormous explosive power, more than anybody on board the ‘plane could ever have imagined. Hiroshima was flattened. On the 9th August, the same destruction happened to Nagasaki. This time, the bomb was known as "Fat Man". Why did both bombs have such colossal explosive power? Atomic fission had the ability to unleash vast amounts of energy. The first man to realise this was Leo Szilard - a Hungarian physicist. Szilard believed that if you could control atomic fission, you could boil water to create steam to drive the generators in power stations. If you deliberately set out not to control atomic fission, you
Antibiotics transformed medicine. The discovery of antibiotics began by accident. On the morning of September 3rd, 1928, Professor Alexander Fleming was having a clear up of his cluttered laboratory. Fleming was sorting through a number of glass plates which had previously been coated with staphyloccus bacteria as part of research Fleming was doing. One of the plates had mould on it. The mould was in the shape of a ring and the area around the ring seemed to be free of the bacteria staphyloccus. Further research on the mould found that it could kill other bacteria and that it could be given to small animals without any side-effects. However, within a year, Fleming had moved onto other medical issues and it was ten years later that Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, working at Oxford University, isolated the bacteria-killing substance found in the mould - penicillin.
Florey got an American drugs company to mass produce it and by D-Day, enough was available to treat all the bacterial infections that broke out among the troops. Penicillin got nicknamed "the wonder drug" and in 1945 Fleming, Chain and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Post-1945 was the era of the antibiotics.
Atomic power
Atomic power unleashed it full might on August 6th 1945 when the "Enola Gay" flew to its target Hiroshima. On board was one bomb - "Little Boy". It had enormous explosive power, more than anybody on board the ‘plane could ever have imagined. Hiroshima was flattened. On the 9th August, the same destruction happened to Nagasaki. This time, the bomb was known as "Fat Man". Why did both bombs have such colossal explosive power? Atomic fission had the ability to unleash vast amounts of energy. The first man to realise this was Leo Szilard - a Hungarian physicist. Szilard believed that if you could control atomic fission, you could boil water to create steam to drive the generators in power stations. If you deliberately set out not to control atomic fission, you