The 40 Greatest Scientific Advances of the 20th Century

For their 100^and anniversary, Hilton hotels conducted a survey of 8,000 people in 7 countries (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and United Arab Emirates) on the most significant historical events of the 20th^and century. In first place comes the end of the second world war in 1945 and, in 6^and position, the fall of the wall of Berlin in 1989 but, apart from that, eight scientific advances appear in the top 10 of the respondents. A sign that science, more than politics or culture, is for our fellow citizens the best hope of changing the world.

Scientific advances in medicine in the lead

Health and medical discoveries are the most cited, ahead of technology or leisure. The first one graft successful organ surgery in the history of medicine, performed on December 23, 1954 by the surgeon Joseph Murray in Boston, is thus the most important event according to the respondents. This transplantation of kidney between two twin brothers saw the recipient survive 8 years after the transplant, with his donor brother even living to be 79. In the same year, the immunosuppressantslimiting the risk of rejection of the graft. In 1967, Professor Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. The same year will be successful the first transplant of liver.

And technological advances

In 4^and and 5^and positions, arrive the first man on the moon and the first man in space. The live broadcast of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969 held more than 600 million viewers worldwide. A mission as exceptional as perilousconstituting a revenge on Yuri Gagarin’s Soviet featwhich had spent 108 minutes in orbit around the Earth in 1961. More surprisingly, the laser for corrective vision or in vitro fertilization arrive in front of the e-mail or the invention of theInternetwhose impact on our daily lives is much greater.

The top ten:

• the first organ transplant (1954);
• the first heart transplant (1967);
• the penicillin (1942);
• the first man on the moonNeil Armstrong1969);
• the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin1961);
• the vaccine against the tuberculosis (1927);
• the artificial heart (2015) ;
• the chemotherapy (1956);
• treatment against AIDS (1987);
• the pacemaker (1958).

From color TV to test-tube baby

Invented in 1936, black and white television only arrived in color on French posts only on 1^er October 1967. It touched almost everyone, which probably explains why this invention is cited before the first satellite in orbit or the brain scanner.

The following ten:

• color television (1926);
• the defibrillator (1947);
• I’computer programmable (1936);
• the first satellite in orbit (Sputnik 1, 1957);
• the contraceptive pill (1960);
• the laser for the surgery corrective eye (1983);
• the machine dialysis (1943);
• the first test-tube baby (1978);
• the first brain scanner (1977);
• the first blood bank (1937).

From the e-mail to the first cloned sheep

at thefall 1971, Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman Technologies (a company employed by the US Department of Defense for the development of the ARPA network), sends itself the first e-mail in history. Its content: “QWERTYUIOP”, i.e. the first line of the keyboard English-speaker. Today, 293 billion emails are sent every day in the world (not counting the Spam).

The penultimate ten:

• the first email (1971);
• I’invention of the internet (world Wide Web1989);
• the first photo sent since March (1976);
• the GPS (1974);
• the first one cloned sheep (Dolly, 1996);
• the SMS (1992);
• the camera digital (1975);
• the first talkie (The Jazz Singer1927);
• Alan Turing cracks the Enigma code (1945);
• Roald Amundsen reached the North Pole (1926).

Scientific advances: from Concorde to Everest

What remains of Concordeof CD and the instant camera, invented between the 1960s and 1980s? The first stopped flying on October 24, 2003, the second was superimposed for the first time by the streaming in 2018 and the third is a victim of selfies and smartphones.

The last ten:

• the Concorde’s first supersonic flight (1969);
• the compact disc (1980);
• the Instant Camera (1963);
• the first video on Youtube (2005);
• the first video game (an ancestor of the game Pong, 1958);
• the first commercial flight (between London and Johannesburg, 1952);
• Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach on top of Everest (1953);
• the first high-speed train speed (Shinkansen, 1964);
• the first animated film (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs1937);
• the first animated film produced by computer (Toy Story1995).