(Some of) The Most Influential Scientific Findings of All Time

(partly from The Science Class You Wish You Had, by David Eliot Brody and
Arnold R. Brody, 1998, and edited by F. A. Ringwald)

A great way to start scientists arguing is to suggest which are the most
influential scientific findings of all time.  Despite the risk, I decided
to do this, as an attempt at summarizing all of known science, on one
page.  It also shows that the most influential findings aren't necessarily
those with the most immediate practical applications, although these do
come, in time: they are the findings that change how we look at the world
around us.  My picks are:

1) Newton's Laws of Motion and Gravity (1687).

2) The Principle of Relativity (Albert Einstein 1905, 1916): that all
physical law is local, which implies that matter and energy are
equivalent, and that space, time, and gravity are inextricably linked.

3) The nuclear model of the atom, based on the discovery of the atomic
nucleus by Ernest Rutherford (1905) and the theory of atomic structure by
Niels Bohr (1912).  This would become quantum mechanics (1926), which
would explain the periodic table of the elements and the chemical bond
(Linus Pauling 1954).

4) The discovery that we are not the center of the Universe, beginning
with Copernicus (1543) and culminating with the discovery of the expansion
of the Universe by Edwin Hubble (1929).

5) Plate tectonics: Earth's surface is broken into moving plates, which
unifies much of geology (mountain building, continents, earthquakes)
(proposed by Alfred Wegner in 1915, but not accepted until the 1960s).

6) Living things are composed of cells (Robert Hooke, 1665); single-celled
microscopic organisms, or germs, can cause disease (Louis Pasteur 1865).

7) The heredity of living things is carried by genes (Gregor Mendel,
1865).  The genetic information is carried by DNA, a molecule present in
all cells (James Watson and Francis Crick, 1954).

8) Living things evolve (change over time) by natural selection (Charles
Darwin, 1859).  This is no longer "just a theory,"  you can see it happen:

a) My friend's dog, a Golden Retriever/Basset Hound mix.  He has the gold 
fur of a Golden Retriever, and the short legs and long body of a Basset.  
If this can happen in one generation, imagine what can happen over 
millions of years.

b) Strains of germs that have recently become resistant to antibiotics, 
and strains of insects that have become resistant to insecticides.

c) Pepper moths in England, which were white in the 1700s, then became 
black in the 1800s (when coal was used for fuel), and now are white again.

d) Vestigial organs, e.g. leg bones still present in snakes and whales.

e) We can trace specific genes in specific DNA sequences, back in time.  
Modern humans share 98% of their genes with chimpanzees.

Honorable mentions: Light, electricity, and magnetism are all forms of the
same thing (the electromagnetic theory of James Clerk Maxwell, 1865); the
discovery of oxygen and the realization that all things are made of
chemical elements by Antoine Lavoisier (1776); thermodynamics, the study
of energy (various, 1800s).