Who would you say made the mos important contribution-history of disease-past scientists? Give your top three.

Question: Who would you say made the mos important contribution-history of disease-past scientists? Give your top three.

Asked by nkdee to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:
  
  Edward Jenner – coming up with the first ever vaccine, for smallpox, which was totally eradicated from the face of the earth in 1979.
  Alexander Fleming – discovering antibiotics (Penicillin)
  James Watson and Francis Crick – Discovering the structure of the DNA molecule. It is the basis of the ongoing molecular medicine revolution.
- Panos Soultanas answered on 15 Jun 2010:
  
  Hi nkdee,
  
  I would say Watson & Crick for discovering the structure of DNA. This gave a huge advantage to many other scientists trying to cure many diseases.
  
  Pasteur for formulating some important ideas about microbes.
  
  Darwin for explaining evolution. It may sound unrelated to disease but it is very important believe me…
  
  There are many others too. the list will be too long.
  🙂
- Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:
  
  Well, I would say the discovery of penicillin is definitely up there (by Alexander Fleming and others), as this lead to the use of modern antibiotics which have saved countless lives.
  
  I would say, although not directly disease based, that Gregor Mendel’s findings that traits are inherited is key to us being able to now know that diseases can be passed on via our DNA to our children.
  
  Also the discovery of the genes that, when switched on, cause cancers (called oncogenes) is pretty high up there (won the guys a Nobel prize anyhow!)
- Michael Loughlin answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  Ohh this is the first few lectures with give the undergraduates…hmmm
  
  Louis Pasteur did loads and loads…proved that bacteria did not just appear from nowhere ( spontaneous generation) and showed how to prevent growth ( pasterisation ) treatment for rabies before we knew what caused it and so many other things..Brilliant !
  
  Dr John Snow…at the time people thought disease was casused by bad air a Miasma..which would float around causing disease.. made kinda sense since there wasa bad smell in the areas of disease..them being where refuse built up etc.. but anyway
  Cholera..you lose 20L of water in 24 hrs..carried in the water so when you drink the water to replace that you’ve lost you just get another dose
  Dr snow treated people with the disease and didnot believe it was bad air…if it was..why didn’t it attack the lungs..and why wasn’t he ill?
  anyway he looked at a map of where the diseases were found and worked out most people who had the disease in london used a single water pump for all the water.
  He removed the pump handle and found the level of disease dropped..He also found some people who lived near the pump had no disease and others who lived far away did.
  He followed this up and found some people drank very little water..mainly beer from the factory they worked, whereas one old lady liked the taste of the water from the contaminated pump and had her son carry buckets of it across town…always a good reason for odd results
  http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/8
  Finally Rosalind Frankin wqithout whom DNA double helix would not have been discovered..but died at an early age and was suffered from the sexism rife in the 1950’s Well worth finding out about
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/rosalind-franklin.shtml#
  
  loads of others obviously but they are todays top 3
  good question
- Sarah Burl answered on 17 Jun 2010:
  
  My top two are Jenner for vaccines and Flemming for antibiotics

Question: Who would you say made the mos important contribution-history of disease-past scientists? Give your top three.

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