Some of the great discoveries that make our lives easier come from these scientific investigations, of women and men who for years studied phenomena, being at times ignored. Today we share some names of inventions and protagonists who with great dedication contributed a lot to modern life.
In 1878, physicist A. A. Michelson made a scientific experiment to calculate the speed of light, proving that it is a finite and measurable quantity. Thanks to his experiment it was possible to see that the speed of light is 186,282,397 miles per second.
In 1897, a rather eventful year for Marie Curie, she decided to study the uranium rays first described by Henri Becquerel. He discovered these rays accidentally, when he left uranium salts in a dark room and when he returned he discovered a photographic plate. Curie was intrigued by these mysterious rays, discovering radioactivity and the relationship science experiments between the amount of uranium and lightning; She even discovered that the rays were part of the atoms of a radioactive element, something very important but that she did not take into account. He also managed to isolate polonium and radium, and won Nobel prizes for it.
3. What would our day be without vaccines?
Smallpox was a big problem before vaccines existed, as the only way to “cure” it was to get sick and survive it. It was Edward Jenner who dedicated himself to investigating a possible cure for it, studying a person with a disease similar to smallpox, until he concluded that he could give immunity to a person by injecting him with the virus of the similar disease. The boy who received this “vaccine” remained immune to smallpox.
James Watson and Francis Crick are credited with decoding DNA, but the truth is that they were nourished by the studies of many others: Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase did experiments that led to linking DNA with genetics working with a bacteriophage virus. They never managed to delimit what part of the DNA corresponded to genetic inheritance. Rosalind Franklin then used an X-ray diffraction technique to figure out the shape of the DNA, and managed to get a sample with an X-shaped pattern that was a part of the helical molecule.
5. X-ray vision is not science fiction
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was considered in 1945 the greatest expert in X-ray diffraction techniques and was the discoverer of the structure of penicillin, which allowed it to become purer to make the treatment more effective. Hodgkin’s field of study was X-ray crystallography.
Charles Darwin was part of his research in the Galapagos Islands, of which twenty have unique subspecies that demonstrate adaptation to a unique environment. Some of the studies focused on orchids, with which Darwin realized that the more complex versions sought to attract insects, and that each species attracted a particular one. From this discovery Darwin created the theory of natural selection.
7. “Repeat that something remains” right, Pavlov?
When Pavlov did the experiments on dogs, he was not interested in psychology and behavior, but rather in digestion and circulation. In truth, he was looking at the relationship between salivation and digestion, but he ended up discovering conditioned reflexes.