Science & academia | Good News for Humankind

digitally colorized scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image, depicts a blue-colored, human white blood cell, (WBC) known specifically as a neutrophil, interacting with two pink-colored, rod shaped, multidrug-resistant (MDR), Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria

Robert Austrian, Jerome Gold, and colleagues develop world’s first pneumococcal vaccine

By Peter Schulte / November 22, 1977 / Good news links, Archive of Human Genius

With the discovery of penicillin in 1928, interest in vaccines to prevent pneumonia waned. The assumption was that the problem would largely be eliminated by use of this antibiotic. Austrian and Gold, however, showed that, despite treatment with penicillin, deaths from pneumococcal pneumonia were unchanged in the first 96 hours of therapy. These efforts ultimately led to the licensing first of a 14-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1977 followed by the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1983.

ARPANET is first deployed via UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and The University of Utah

By Peter Schulte / December 7, 1969 / Archive of Human Genius

ARPANET was an early packet-switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet.

Early photo of plasma inside a pinch machine (Imperial College 1950–1951)

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Scylla I becomes world’s first machine to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion

By Peter Schulte / December 30, 1958 / Archive of Human Genius

The team that achieved it was led by a British scientist named James Tuck. After the success of Scylla-1, Los Alamos went on to build multiple pinch machines over the next few years.

Abram Hoffer, Humphrey Osmond, and others pioneer the field of psychedlic therapy

By Peter Schulte / February 4, 1951 / Archive of Human Genius

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, scientists in several countries conducted extensive research into experimental chemotherapeutic, and psychotherapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs.

Albert Schatz of Rutgers University isolates the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, streptomycin

By Peter Schulte / October 19, 1943 / Archive of Human Genius

Streptomycin is now on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies it as critically important for human medicine.

Louis S. Goodman and Alfred Gilman run first human trial of cancer chemotherapy

By Peter Schulte / August 27, 1942 / Archive of Human Genius

In collaboration with thoracic surgeon Gustaf Lindskog, the two doctors from Yale School of Medicine injected the chemical mustine into a patient with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In a monumental moment for the field of medicine, the patient, a Polish immigrant to Connecticut known in literature only as JD, experienced a dramatic reduction in his tumor masses, paving the way for millions of future patients who would benefit from the therapy in the years and decades to come.

Howard Florey conducts the first-ever clinical trials of penicillin

By Peter Schulte / August 3, 1941 / Archive of Human Genius

Florey’s discoveries, along with the discoveries of Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain, are estimated to have saved over 200 million lives, and he is consequently regarded by the Australian scientific and medical community as one of its greatest figures.

Canadian scientists Frederick Banting (right) and Charles Best circa 1924

Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolate insulin for the first time

By Peter Schulte / July 28, 1921 / Archive of Human Genius

Within a year, people suffering from diabetes were being treated with insulin for a disease that had been considered fatal.

Arthur Eddington publishes The Internal Constitution of the Stars correctly speculating about the existence of nuclear fusion

By Peter Schulte / December 19, 1920 / Archive of Human Genius

At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington correctly speculated that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium, liberating enormous energy according to Einstein’s equation E = mc2.

Frank Shuman thermal solar plant concept drawing

Frank Shuman builds the world’s first solar thermal power plant in Egypt

By Peter Schulte / March 23, 1913 / Archive of Human Genius

Frank Shuman was an American inventor, engineer, and solar energy pioneer known for his work on solar engines. Shuman built the world’s first solar thermal power station in Maadi, Egypt in 1913, using used semi circle shaped troughs to power a 60-70 horsepower engine that pumped 6,000 gallons of water per minute from the Nile River to adjacent cotton fields.