🧬 Medicine & Life Sciences Chronological History Timeline

Chronological Timeline (22 Entries)

1. [1559] Conrad Gessner — Gessner pioneered scientific description, notably documenting species like the tulip in 1559, solidifying his status as a foundational figure in modern natural history.
2. [1771] Dugald Stewart — In 1771, he attended the University of Glasgow to study under Thomas Reid, an experience that later shaped his theory of morality.
3. [1809] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck — The modern era generally remembers Lamarck for a theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, called Lamarckism (inaccurately named after him), soft inheritance, or use/disuse theory, which he described in his 1809 Philosophie zoologique.
4. [1823] Edward Jenner — Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine.
5. [1838] Carl Gustaf Mosander — Mosander discovered lanthanum in 1838.
6. [1901] Atomic Age — In 1901, Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving the release of energy.
7. [1909] Karl Landsteiner — With Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper, he discovered the polio virus in 1909.
8. [1917] Félix d'Hérelle — In 1917 he discovered that "an invisible antagonist", when added to bacteria on agar, would produce areas of dead bacteria.
9. [1918] Lu Xun — Lu Xun pioneered the New Culture Movement by publishing the first novel in vernacular Chinese, Diary of a Madman, in 1918.
10. [1922] Alexander Fleming — He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named Micrococcus lysodeikticus, later renamed Micrococcus luteus.
11. [1926] Hidetsugu Yagi — The Yagi-Uda antenna, patented in 1926, allows directional transmission using radio waves, and is especially useful in the very high frequency and ultra high frequency radio bands.
12. [1928] Nok culture — The Nok culture is a population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in southern Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928.
13. [1940] Barbara McClintock — During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered transposons and used it to demonstrate that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off.
14. [1945] Operation Paperclip — The effort began in earnest in 1945, as the Allies advanced into Germany and discovered a wealth of scientific talent and advanced research that had contributed to Germany's wartime technological advancements.
15. [1946] Marguerite Perey — She subsequently earned her Doctorate of PhysicsINK_0@@ from the Sorbonne in 1946, focusing her thesis on her newly discovered element 87.
16. [1954] Andrew Huxley — Together they discovered in 1954 the mechanism of muscle contraction, popularly called the "sliding filament theory", which is the foundation of our modern understanding of muscle mechanics.
17. [1957] Earl Bakken — In 1957, he pioneered the first external, battery-operated, and wearable artificial pacemaker.
18. [1970] Leland H. Hartwell — In a series of experiments from 1970 to 1971, Hartwell discovered the cell division cycle (CDC) genes in baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
19. [1977] Carl Woese — Most critically, he pioneered the use of 16S ribosomal RNA taxonomy, defining the novel domain of life, Archaea, in 1977.
20. [1978] Robert Edwards (physiologist) — Along with obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy, Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of Louise Brown on 25 July 1978.
21. [2008] Harald zur Hausen — He carried out research on cervical cancer and discovered the role of papilloma viruses in cervical cancer, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008.
22. [2018] He Jiankui — In November 2018, He announced that he had created the first human genetically edited babies, twin girls who were born modified with HIV resistance in October 2018 and were known by their pseudonyms, Lulu and Nana.