Research Paper on:
Twentieth Century's Most Significant Discovery

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
rocket engines to space exploration, from the telephone to computers and then to the Internet, from flight to skyscrapers, from hygiene theory to anesthesia to germ theory and the list  goes on and on. And, now the mysteries of DNA are being unlocked and will lead to the prevention of birth defects and the cure of incurable diseases. Did you  know that it was really Oswald Theodore Avery who first proved that genetic material is DNA in 1944 (Mehnert and Gardner, 1998)? There are thousands, maybe millions, of discoveries or  developments that could be supported as the most important in the 20th century. In terms of the history of man, the 20th century may well have been the age of  the most incredible and the most important discoveries and developments since the beginning of time. It is hard to think over even ones lifetime, whether you are 20 or 90  and not get just plain excited about the discoveries in the last century. Whats more, scientists and others tell us the developments and discoveries of the 21st century will be  just as great, just as many and just as important to human life. We can only hope that they will be equally important to all forms of life. Wilson said:  "Looking back on the sheer volume of innovation that took place during the century, it seems reasonable to ask which one of the several million scientific discoveries was the most  important" (2000). We can take a cue from Stephen Hawking, the physicist regarded as the most brilliant thinker since Albert Einstein, who said: "Its a stupid question. All discoveries are  equally important" (Wilson, 2000). Hawking is right, of course. And, I certainly like the way he put it - each discovery, each development is equally important because each was