ok I have an essay due in a few days and it is supposed to be on important 20th or 21st century ideas in science that changed the way that you think/act. So my question is, what do you think was the most important 20/21 century idea in any area of science.

 

Thanks a lot

Schottky & Bader (AT&T BELL) - The transistor? - is the first thing that comes to mind.

If we're talking about specific applications of theories I'll have to agree on the transistor.

I'd go with antibiotics.

Salk vaccine, and the associated elimination of polio

 

Plastics

 

One of my friends suggested the Haber process.

Relativity and/or quantum physics.

The 20th century gave us the realization that misapplications of science could destroy humanity. Nuclear weapons pose an existential risk to the human species, and were conceived as an application of scientific principles.

 

This idea arguably gave birth to postmodernism and the idea that not all progress is progress.

thank you so much nuclear weapons is a great one it has some controversy in it so I will be able to give some good writing on it. also i can link some physics in there.

 

Thanks a lot everybody

Looks like I'm late to the game and you may already have what you need, but my thought is photovoltaics.

 

The technology behind solar power is going to play a very major role in our collective futures (in helping to ensure a collective future is even available and we all don't fall prey to the mass extinction event going on right now).

Climatology and the realization of how humans and other factors change the environment is my candidate for greatest advancements of the 20th/21st century.

I would say group theory and differential geometry. These two areas of mathematics have had huge impacts in physics and applied mathematics, including relativity and quantum theory .

chemistry comes to mind

ok I have an essay due in a few days and it is supposed to be on important 20th or 21st century ideas in science that changed the way that you think/act. So my question is, what do you think was the most important 20/21 century idea in any area of science.

 

Thanks a lot

 

Something that changed in the philosophy of science.

Lots of things did.

Pick a topic.

I believe that Einsteins relativity theories are the biggest leap in thought and science in these modern times. Everything since has been based upon Einstein. Everyone in the science community to school kids have all come to some kind of understanding of his theories.