100 Ideas That Changed the World Our most important discoveries, selected by our greatest minds

About this book

Every once in a while, an idea comes along that makes the entire world sit up and take notice. From the earliest understandings of our place in the solar system, via Darwinism, DNA, neutrons and quarks, right up to the theories that are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge today, we are forever propelled forward by our most gifted scientific minds.

In this fascinating book, former "BBC Focus" magazine editor Jheni Osman explores 100 of the most forward thinking, far-reaching and downright inspired ideas and inventions in history, each nominated by experts from all fields of science and engineering. With selections from established authorities such as Brian Cox, Patrick Moore, Richard Dawkins and Marcus du Sautoy, Osman covers topics as diverse as the Big Bang, vaccination, computing, radioactivity, human genomes, the wheel and many more.

Each essay looks at the logic behind these great inventions, discoveries, theories and experiments, studying the circumstances that brought them into being and assessing the impact that they had on the world at large. An intriguing and thought-provoking collection, "100 Ideas that Changed the World" offers us a glimpse into the minds behind history's greatest eureka moments.

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Biography

As the former editor of the BBC's award-winning science and technology magazine, "Focus", Jheni Osman was nominated for the BSME Editor of the Year 2010 and won the PTC New Editor of the Year 2008. She launched the Focus app and presented the podcast and FocusTV. With a background in Natural Sciences, and a masters from Imperial College London, Jheni has written for numerous publications including "Focus", "Lonely Planet" and "Countryfile" magazines, and worked for a TV news agency in Istanbul and in TV production at the BBC's Natural History Unit. A former professional tennis player who toured the world and played at Wimbledon, Jheni loves to travel and says her best experiences in life have been climbing Mont Blanc and swimming with a whale shark.