Inventions that changed the world

Emile Berliner · Light, sound and physics

An improved telephone transmitter, then the flat disc record and gramophone, the format that carried recorded music for a century.

Albert A. Michelson · Light, sound and physics

Splits a light beam and recombines it to measure distances finer than a wavelength. Giant versions now catch gravitational waves.

Ludwik Zamenhof · Food, water and language

A neutral, easy-to-learn shared language, created in the hope that people who could talk to each other would stop hating each other.

Gabriel Lippmann · Blood, hearts and medical devices

His capillary electrometer, a hair-thin tube of mercury, recorded the first electrocardiogram of a human heart.

Gabriel Lippmann · Light, sound and physics

Captured true colours in a single photographic plate using light interference, a method that won him the 1908 Nobel Prize.

Waldemar Haffkine · Vaccines and medicines

The first vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. Haffkine injected himself first, and millions in India were protected.

Robert Bárány · Blood, hearts and medical devices

Warm and cold water in the ear reveal how each balance organ works, a test doctors still use for patients with vertigo.

Fritz Haber · Food, water and language

The synthesis behind the fertilisers that grow the food for about half of humanity.

Paul Ehrlich · Vaccines and medicines

The idea of a “magic bullet” drug that hits a germ and spares the patient. His Salvarsan was the first effective treatment for syphilis.

Richard Lewisohn · Blood, hearts and medical devices

Found the safe dose of sodium citrate to stop donated blood clotting, so blood could be collected, stored and given later.

Abel Wolman with Linn Enslow · Food, water and language

A scientific way to calculate how much chlorine makes water safe, adopted around the world.

Leo Szilard & Albert Einstein · Light, sound and physics

Two physicists designed and patented a silent, safer fridge after reading about a family killed by a leaking one.

Wassily Leontief · Mathematical tools that run the world

Tables showing how every industry buys from every other, used to trace jobs, prices and supply chains.

Simon Kuznets · Mathematical tools that run the world

The first official estimate of US national income, the groundwork for the measure we now call GDP.

Leonid Kantorovich · Mathematical tools that run the world

Worked out to solve a plywood factory’s puzzle: how to get the most from limited resources.

Ernst Chain with Howard Florey · Vaccines and medicines

Purified penicillin and proved it cured infections, turning Fleming’s laboratory curiosity into the first great antibiotic.

John von Neumann · Computers, the internet and encryption

His EDVAC report set out the design, program and data in the same memory, behind almost every computer since.

Dennis Gabor · Light, sound and physics

A way to record light waves themselves. It now protects banknotes, credit cards and passports.

George Dantzig · Mathematical tools that run the world

Finds the best plan among countless options, used by airlines, refineries, power grids and food producers.

Robert Hofstadter · Blood, hearts and medical devices

A sodium iodide crystal that detects gamma rays, still the heart of the gamma cameras hospitals use for heart and SPECT scans.

Gertrude Elion with George Hitchings · Vaccines and medicines

Rational drug design: 6-mercaptopurine for childhood leukaemia, azathioprine for organ transplants, allopurinol for gout and acyclovir for herpes.

Rosalyn Yalow with Solomon Berson · Blood, hearts and medical devices

Measures tiny amounts of hormones in blood. Yalow refused to patent it so every lab could use it.

Carl Djerassi & Gregory Pincus · Vaccines and medicines

Djerassi’s team made norethindrone, a key oral contraceptive hormone; Pincus led the research that produced the first approved pill.

Harry Markowitz · Mathematical tools that run the world

The mathematics of diversification, behind how pension funds and savers spread risk.

Donald Glaser · Light, sound and physics

A superheated liquid in which particles leave trails of bubbles, physicists’ main window on the subatomic world for two decades.

Herbert Simon with Allen Newell and Cliff Shaw · Computers, the internet and encryption

The Logic Theorist proved mathematical theorems by search and helped launch the field of AI.

Jonas Salk · Vaccines and medicines

The first successful polio vaccine. Asked who owned the patent, Salk answered: “Could you patent the sun?”

Arthur Schawlow & Theodore Maiman · Light, sound and physics

Schawlow, with Charles Townes, set out the laser concept; Maiman built the first working laser with a pink ruby and a flash lamp.

Simcha Blass · Food, water and language

Water delivered drop by drop to plant roots, helping millions of farmers grow more food with far less water.

Baruch Blumberg · Vaccines and medicines

Found the hepatitis B virus, then a blood test that made transfusions safer and a vaccine credited with preventing countless liver cancers.

Norbert Hirschhorn · Vaccines and medicines

Clinical studies showing that a simple salt and sugar drink can treat cholera, a cheap remedy that has saved millions of children.

Stanley Plotkin · Vaccines and medicines

The RA 27/3 vaccine is the rubella part of MMR shots worldwide and protects unborn babies from birth defects.

Albert Sabin · Vaccines and medicines

A cheap vaccine given on a sugar cube and never patented. It became the backbone of the global drive to wipe out polio.

Bernard Lown · Blood, hearts and medical devices

A carefully shaped direct-current shock that safely stops a fatal heart rhythm, now in hospitals, ambulances and public places.

Jerome Horwitz · Vaccines and medicines

Made as a cancer drug that failed; in 1987 it became the first approved treatment for HIV/AIDS.

Judith Graham Pool · Blood, hearts and medical devices

A simple way to concentrate clotting factor from frozen plasma, the first practical concentrate for treating hemophilia.

Paul Baran · Computers, the internet and encryption

Cut messages into small blocks that travel by any route open, a network with no centre. It is how the internet still works.

Andrew Viterbi · Computers, the internet and encryption

Cleans errors out of digital signals in mobile phones, satellites and space probes. He chose not to patent it.

Zhores Alferov · Light, sound and physics

Layered heterostructures that made room-temperature laser diodes possible, now carrying the internet through optical fibre.

Leonard Kleinrock · Computers, the internet and encryption

His mathematics of data networks guided ARPANET, and his UCLA lab became its first node and sent its first message.

Alfred E. Mann · Blood, hearts and medical devices

His companies brought a rechargeable pacemaker, insulin pumps, cochlear implants and an artificial retina to patients.

Paul Berg · Genetic engineering

Joined DNA from two different organisms into one molecule for the first time, the founding step of genetic engineering.

Stanley Cohen with Herbert Boyer · Genetic engineering

A way to copy genes inside bacteria, the technique that launched genetic engineering and the biotech industry.

Robert Kahn with Vint Cerf · Computers, the internet and encryption

The open set of rules that lets any network in the world join the internet.

César Milstein with Georges Köhler · Vaccines and medicines

A way to make unlimited identical antibodies, left unpatented. It underpins diagnostic tests and many of today’s leading drugs.

Martin Hellman with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle · Computers, the internet and encryption

Two strangers can agree on a secret over an open line. The idea secures nearly every website and payment.

Jacob Ziv with Abraham Lempel · Computers, the internet and encryption

The methods inside ZIP files, GIF and PNG images and much of the data compression used today.

Walter Gilbert with Allan Maxam · Genetic engineering

One of the two methods that opened the age of genetic sequencing.

Adi Shamir & Leonard Adleman with Ron Rivest · Computers, the internet and encryption

The S and the A in RSA, the most widely used public-key system, protecting online banking, shopping and messages.

Michel Mirowski with Morton Mower · Blood, hearts and medical devices

A device small enough to live inside the body that shocks a failing heart back into rhythm. Mirowski was a Holocaust survivor.

Arthur Ashkin · Light, sound and physics

A focused laser beam that holds and moves single cells, viruses and strands of DNA, a standard tool in biology labs.

Bruce Beutler · Vaccines and medicines

A hybrid protein that neutralises the inflammatory molecule TNF, now a widely used treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.

Paul Milgrom with Robert Wilson · Mathematical tools that run the world

An auction design that has raised more than $200 billion and put airwaves to work for mobile phones and data.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin · Computers, the internet and encryption

Ranking web pages by the links pointing to them made the web’s information findable for everyone.

David Baker · Genetic engineering

Computer-designed proteins never seen in nature, already used in an approved COVID-19 vaccine.

Alvin Roth · Blood, hearts and medical devices

Matching systems that let a donor who cannot give to a loved one give to a stranger instead, so both patients get a kidney.

Drew Weissman with Katalin Karikó · Vaccines and medicines

The tweak that stopped mRNA from triggering harmful inflammation, making the COVID-19 vaccines given to billions possible.