100 Greatest Science Discoveries Of All Time10.pdf

100 Great est
Science Discov eries
of All Time
by Kend all Haven

Dis cov ery! The very word sends tin gles surg ing up your spine. It quick ens your pulse.
Dis cov er ies are the mo ments of “Ah, ha! I un der stand!” and of “Eu reka! I found it!”
Ev ery one longs to dis cover some thing—any thing! A dis cov ery is find ing or ob serv ing
some thing new—some thing un known or un no ticed be fore. It is no tic ing what was al ways
there but had been over looked by all be fore. It is stretch ing out into un touched and un -
charted re gions. Dis cov er ies open new ho ri zons, pro vide new in sights, and cre ate vast for -
tunes. Dis cov er ies mark the prog ress of hu man civ i li za tions. They advance human
knowledge.
Court room ju ries try to dis cover the truth. An thro pol o gists dis cover ar ti facts from past
hu man civ i li za tions and cul tures. Peo ple un der go ing psy cho ther apy try to discover
themselves.
When we say that Co lum bus “dis cov ered” the New World, we don’t mean that he cre -
ated it, de vel oped it, de signed it, or in vented it. The New World had al ways been there. Na -
tives had lived on it for thou sands of years be fore Co lum bus’s 1492 ar rival. They knew the
Ca rib bean Is lands long be fore Co lum bus ar rived and cer tainly didn’t need a Eu ro pean to
dis cover the is lands for them. What Co lum bus did do was make Eu ro pean so ci et ies aware
of this new con ti nent. He was the first Eu ro pean to lo cate this new land mass and put it on
the maps. That made it a discovery.
Dis cov er ies are of ten un ex pected. Vera Ru bin dis cov ered cos mic dark mat ter in 1970.
She was n’t search ing for dark mat ter. In fact, she didn’t known that such a thing ex isted un -
til her dis cov ery proved that it was there. She even had to in vent a name (dark mat ter) for it
af ter she had dis cov ered its existence.
Some times a dis cov ery is built upon pre vi ous work by other sci en tists, but more of ten
not. Some dis cov er ies are the re sult of long years of re search by the dis cov er ing sci en tist.
But just as of ten, they are not. Dis cov er ies of ten come sud denly and rep re sent the be gin ning
points for new fields of study or new fo cuses for existing scientific fields.
Why study dis cov er ies? Be cause dis cov er ies chart the di rec tion of hu man de vel op -
ment and prog ress. To day’s dis cov er ies will shape to mor row’s world. Ma jor dis cov er ies
de fine the di rec tions sci ence takes, what sci en tists be lieve, and how our view of the world
changes over time. Ein stein’s 1905 dis cov ery of rel a tiv ity rad i cally al tered twentiethcen
tury phys ics. Dis cov er ies chart the path and prog ress of sci ence just as float ing buoy
mark ers re veal the course of a twist ing chan nel through a wide and shal low bay.
Discov eries often represent radically new concepts and ideas. They create virtually all
of the sharp de par tures from pre vi ous knowl edge, life, and think ing. These new sci en tific
dis cov er ies are as im por tant to our evo lu tion as are the evo lu tion ary changes to our DNA
that have al lowed us to phys i cally adapt to our changing environments