Index

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3
Inventions ............................................................................................................................... 4
Discoverties ............................................................................................................................ 5
Research Centers or Institutes ................................................................................................ 7
Advances in Science and / or Technology.............................................................................. 8
Prominent Scientist ............................................................................................................... 10
Nobel Prizes .......................................................................................................................... 12
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 15
Introduction

Great Britain, preeminent in the Industrial Revolution from the mid-18th to the mid-19th
century, has a long tradition of technological ingenuity and scientific achievement. It was in
the United Kingdom that the steam engine, spinning jenny, and power loom were developed,
and the first steam-powered passenger railway entered service. To British inventors also
belongs credit for the miner's safety lamp, the friction match, the cathode ray tube, stainless
steel, and the first calculating machine. One of the most famous scientific discoveries of the
20th century, the determination of the double-helix structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) molecule, took place at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge
University. In February 1997 the first successful cloning of an animal from an adult (resulting
in "Dolly" the lamb) was performed at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland's leading
animal research laboratory. The United Kingdom is also in the forefront of research in radio
astronomy, laser holography, and superconductivity.
The total national expenditure for research and development in 1987–97 was 1.9% of GNP;
2,448 scientists and engineers and 1,017 technicians per one million people were engaged in
research and development. The leading government agency for supporting science and
technology is the Ministry of Defense, which plays an important role in both the UK's
national security and its role in NATO. British industry funds half of all national research
and development, and government-industry cooperation in aerospace, biotechnology and
electronics have opened new frontiers in science. In 1998, high-tech exports were valued at
$64.5 billion and accounted for 28% of manufactured exports.
Inventions

Throughout history, the British have been responsible for many great inventions and are still
commonly acknowledged to be among the best in the world when it comes to inventing. Over
the past 50 years, according to Japanese research, more than 40 per cent of discoveries taken
up on a worldwide basis originated in the United Kingdom. Many of these British inventions
have had an enormous impact on the world. Some important inventions are:

• The First Working Electric Motor: The theory behind the production of mechanical
force from interactions of electricity and magnetic fields was realized by Andre-
Marie Ampere in 1820. However, it took the ingenuity of Michael Faraday to make
the theory a reality in 1821.

• The Steam Engine: The first practical patent for an atmospheric pressure steam
engine was filed by Thomas Savery in 1698. Over the next one hundred years or so
visionaries like Thomas Newcomen, James Watt and finally Richard Trevithick
would refine the design to produce steam engines small enough for uses in things like
locomotives.

• The Spinning Frame, Star of Yarn Production: This is one of the greatest British
inventions of all time. It is also one of the most important inventions of the Industrial
Revolution in general. The Spinning frame, developed by Richard Arkwright and
John Kay, in 1769. This invention really ramped up yarn production. It, almost
exclusively, put the older cottage industry of spinning out of business after 1830.

• The World Wide Web, the First Website, and the First Web Browser: Tim
Berners Lee had a dream, one that came to fruition in the latter half of the 1980s. As
an independent contractor for CERN in 1980, he developed a project using the
concept of hypertext to facilitate sharing and updating information among
 researchers. He built ENQUIRE, a prototype system, to showcase his information
web project. In 1989, after lending his talents to a private company, Berners-Lee saw
an opportunity to join hypertext with the internet as CERN became the place to be.
Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in March 1989 and, in 1990, redistributed it. His
Enquire system provided the basis to create the World Wide Web, for which he also
designed and built the first Web browser.

• The First ATM, Engineered by Shepard-Baron: It is widely accepted that the

world's first ATM was installed at a Barclays Bank in Enfield Town, London in 1967.
This was the product of John She pard-Bar on and his team of engineers.

Discoverties

During the infancy of the United States, Americans imitated and adopted British inventions
and technology. As American political and economic power grew in the mid-nineteenth
century, the impact of each country's technology on the other began to be mutual. After the
United States became the dominant world power in the twentieth century, American science
and technology deeply affected many areas of British life. American technology established
its first foothold in Britain after London's Great Exhibition of 1851, when the McCormick
reaper, the Colt revolver, and Day and Newell's patent locks found customers in the mother
country. It was also during this decade that the Singer sewing machine made major inroads
in the British market. After the American Civil War there was a reciprocal exchange of
technology; the United States received from Britain such major innovations as the Bessemer
converter, and Britain received from America inventions such as the telephone, courtesy of
a transplanted Scot, Alexander Graham Bell. In the twentieth century American technology
became a dominant feature in major sectors of British life: mass production methods
pioneered by Henry Ford, manned flight, skyscrapers, and computers, to name a few. In areas
such as pure science, a great deal of reciprocity continued, as, for example, in the discovery
of DNA by the British-American team of James Watson and Francis Crick.
• Electromagnetic induction & Faraday's law of induction: Began as a series of
experiments by Michael Faraday later became some of the first experiments in the
discovery of radio waves and the development of radio

• DNA profiling: Although it may sound technical, DNA profiling has given police a
huge advantage in solving crimes. British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys (pictured)
developed the process in 1984 at the University of Leicester; the first successful
identification and prosecution using the technique took place in the city four years
later.

• Fibre optics, lighting up the world: In the 1950s the "founding father of fibre optics"
Narinder Kapany and Harold Hopkins at Imperial College London demonstrated that
light could bend, given the right encouragement.

• Stem cells: Martin Evans' early research at Cambridge University led to his discovery
of embryonic stem cells - cells so early in their development that they have the
potential to grow into the different cells that make up the human body.

• Microcab: Researchers from Coventry University have developed technology that

does not give rise to harmful fumes generated by traditional petrol-powered engines.
Research Centers or Institutes

• Centro de Investigación en Energía Aplicada (CAER)

With more than 100 chemists, geologists and engineers, CAER is internationally recognized
for research in fields including algae for CO2 cleaning, ash handling, automotive catalysis,
biodiesel, biomass, carbon materials (including nanotube synthesis and applications ),
catalysis (including Fischer-Tropsch), carbon, concrete and cement cleaning (low energy),
emission control in utilities, energy policy, fuel research, hydrogen, material
characterization, petroleum processing and plant optimization. The center is funded by state,
industry, and federal agencies.

• Computational Science Center

The center works to improve the success of UK researchers and collaborators whose work
will benefit from research IT solutions. Its objectives are to increase publications and funding
for research related to research informatics and to increase access to specialized
computational resources (hardware, software applications, computational methodologies,
collaborative relationships and people / expertise). Major research projects, funded by NSF,
include ParaChem and the Kentucky Virtual Observatory and the Green Information System.

• Health Services Research Center

The center leads health services research that focuses on practice, education, and research in
interprofessional teams to advance health science and health care delivery. The center
provides the expertise needed for UK HealthCare to become a learning healthcare system
and guides healthcare teams to optimize the value of care for patients served by UK
HealthCare by leveraging the technology expertise of the information, analysis,
implementation science, industrial engineering, surveys. methodology, decision making and
quality improvement

• Human Development Institute (HDI)

With federal and state funding, HDI focuses on interdisciplinary education, research and
development, information sharing, advocacy and outreach. HDI conducts research,
development, and model demonstration efforts to continually improve cutting-edge best
practices. HDI staff provide outreach and consultation services to agency staff to identify and
resolve challenges involved in promoting and achieving independence, productivity, and
inclusion of people with disabilities throughout life
Advances in Science and / or Technology

The UK has always been at the forefront of great world breakthroughs. From penicillin,
which saved thousands of lives, to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). UK universities have
brought great innovations and countless scientific and technological advances to the world.
LCD screens or the development of the fingerprint are just a few examples.

Industry
The Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century when machines were invented to
make products more easily. The full results of this revolution only began to be seen during
the reign of Victoria. Steam-powered machines made it possible for factories to produce
items faster and more efficiently than ever before. Great Britain became the world leader in
the production of iron and steel. The country got rich through international trade.

Steam engines also led to drastic changes in public transportation. When Victoria came to
the throne, the railways ran only a few hundred kilometers. Between 1840 and the early
1850s, 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) of railway lines were built across Britain, giving
people the opportunity to travel cheaply and easily across the country. The railroads also
began to spread to other parts of the empire.
In 1851, the Great Exhibition was held in London's Hyde Park. This exhibition was
intended to showcase Britain's industrial, military and economic achievements. It also
included many of the achievements made by the British in their many colonies. The
exhibition attracted visitors from all over the world.
The age of invention
The success of the steam engine and the other inventions that led to the Industrial Revolution
also led to many new inventions. The Victorian era was a time of great scientific and
technological advancement. In 1839, photography was invented, and soon Victorians were
rushing to take portraits. Queen Victoria herself was fascinated by the process of
photography.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Bicycles became popular in the
1870s, and in 1872 a bicycle known as a bicycle (or penny farthing in English) was
introduced. This vehicle had a large wheel at the front and a smaller one at the rear. The
design was used until around 1880, when a bicycle with wheels of equal size was developed.
The first automobiles appeared after 1885.

Gas lighting illuminated houses, public buildings and streets. In 1879, Joseph Swan invented
an electric light bulb. In the 1880s, steam energy was used in power plants to generate
electricity.

Medicine
There were also advances in medicine and health care. The most important were those led by
Joseph Lister. Lister investigated the causes of infections that occurred after patients had
undergone surgery. He realized that the infections were caused by bacteria. In 1870, he
introduced sterilization methods for surgical instruments and the use of antiseptics to keep
hospitals clean. These methods dramatically reduced infections and deaths.
Charles Darwin was another important scientist of the time. His ideas about evolution forever
changed the way scientists thought about all living things.
Prominent Scientist

Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton is not just one of the great British scientists, but he’s also one of the most
prominent scientists ever to have walked this planet. A true polymath, Newton was an expert
mathematician, physicist, astronomer and alchemist. Newton is often remembered most for
his eureka moment under a tree, an epiphany that formed the basis of his book Principia.
More than just a thesis, Principia highlighted the universal laws of gravity which are still
relevant, cited and form the basis of research today. Newton also formulated his theory of
colour, which attributed colour as a property of light. When paired with his mathematical
breakthroughs, Newton’s work has formed the basis of hundreds of years of scientific
discovery — giving us the empirical tools to compare apples with apples. Isaac Newton is
one of the first titans of British science.

Rosalind Franklin
Many consider Rosalind Franklin’s emission from the rollcall of Nobel Prize winners as a
blemish on the great prize’s record. Franklin, a British biophysicist and X-ray
crystallographer, made hugely important and influential contributions to our understanding
of the molecular structures of DNA.
Through her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA, we discovered the DNA double
helix. The discovery of this structure allowed scientists to understand how genetic
information is passed between parents and their offspring.
Despite the importance of her work, she’s still often overlooked for three reasons. Firstly,
she died of ovarian cancer at young age. Secondly, her work was appropriated by the
Cambridge University scientists James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who
published a series of articles that led to the trio picking up a Nobel Prize. The final reason,
of course, was her gender. Women back in the 1950s were just not taken seriously. Wilkins,
who would later win the Nobel Prize by piggybacking on Franklin’s research, initially
thought that she was a lab assistant rather than the head of her own project. Rosalind Franklin
is undoubtedly on the best British scientists. She is also a frank reminder of the struggle’s
women had to endure just to have their work acknowledged and respected. The same can be
said of Ada Lovelace.

Alexander Fleming
Another Nobel Prize winner, this time in 1945, Alexander Fleming like Dorothy Hodgkin
had an impact that would transcend science. Born in Ayrshire in 1881, Fleming’s great
discovery came when he was studying influenza in 1928, almost a decade after returning
from service in the First World War.
He noticed that mould had started to develop on staphylococci culture dishes which had
accidentally been left out. This mould had created an immunity circle around itself, resisting
bacteria. Fleming named this substance penicillin.
Though it wasn’t Fleming who translated this discovery into the drugs that fight off bacterial
infections we use today (that honour went to the US drug industry), his groundbreaking
findings led the way in reducing the impact of bacterial infections for millions of people
globally (he also went on to write highly influential papers on immunology, chemotherapy
and bacteriology). A true British great.
Dorothy Hodgkin
As the only British woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, it’s perhaps not
surprising to see Dorothy Hodgkin’s name on a list of the greatest British scientists. Though
born in Egypt, she was raised and educated in the UK. Hodgkin’s prolific career was full of
incredible scientific discoveries. In 1945, she discovered the atomic structure of penicillin.
In 1954, she published work discovering the structure of vitamin B12. This research,
produced in collaboration with American chemist Ken Trueblood, led to Hodgkin being
awarded a Nobel Prize for “her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of
important biochemical substances.”
Hodgkin went on to reveal the structure of insulin, a project she’d been working on for
decades. Incredibly, she worked throughout her life suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.
Dorothy Hodgkin a true British great.

Nobel Prizes

Nobel Prize for Literature - Rudyard Kipling. Kipling, who was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1907, was the first winner of the prize from the British Isles and was also
the first English language writer to win. For many people, Kipling has become emblematic
of a type of late-Victorian Englishness: something which is most apparent in his all-
consuming zeal for the British Empire. Indeed, Kipling was born in Bombay, then a major
centre of the British Raj, and spent much of his life writing about the Empire. Works such as
Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The White Man’s Burden (1899) and If (1910) focused
on Imperial exploits and the heroism of British forces in facing down indigenous foes. In
subsequent decades he was dismissed as a propagandist for British Imperialism who cared
little for the rights of the various peoples that populated the Empire, although the literary
value of Kipling’s work has rarely been questioned. He is perhaps most fondly remembered
for his children’s stories, such as The Jungle Book, which remains widely read.
Nobel Prize in Physics - Joseph John Thomson. JJ Thomson studied electrical discharges
in gases. Following the discovery of x-rays and radioactivity his imaginative work inspired
many young researchers, including Ernest Rutherford, WL Bragg and CTR Wilson. He
received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906, partly for showing that cathode rays in electrified
gases were composed of ‘negative corpuscles’, soon to be known as electrons. Thomson was
the son of an antiquarian book dealer in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. Aged 14 he entered
Owens College, now The University of Manchester, expecting to become an engineering
apprentice. He studied with Osborne Reynolds, took some of the first courses in experimental
physics and continued to Cambridge where, from the age of 28, he directed the Cavendish
Laboratory.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Ernest Rutherford. Ernest Rutherford came from New
Zealand to study with JJ Thomson in Cambridge. He then worked with the chemist Frederick
Soddy at McGill University, showing that radioactive substances decay at constant rates,
emitting characteristic radiations: alpha and beta particles and gamma rays. He received the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 while he was Langworthy Professor of Physics at
Manchester. In the laboratory built at the University by Arthur Schuster, Rutherford created
a world centre for experiments in atomic physics. Highlights included an experiment in 1909
by Ernest Marsden (still an undergraduate) and Hans Geiger, which suggested that atoms
have dense nuclei; the nuclear model of atomic structure (1913); and the first artificial
transmutation of an atomic nucleus (1917).

Nobel Prize in Physics - William Lawrence Bragg. While still a research student, Lawrence
Bragg discovered the law by which the positions of the atoms in crystals could be calculated
from the way an x-ray beam is diffracted. In 1915, aged 25, he was the youngest ever winner
of the Nobel Prize in Physics – jointly with his father, William Henry Bragg, then professor
at Leeds. Educated in Adelaide and Cambridge, Bragg served in World War I. He then
succeeded Rutherford as Langworthy Professor of Physics at Manchester, where he remained
until 1937, building an important research programme in crystallography. When Bragg was
back in Cambridge from the 1940s, this subject proved crucial for the structural analysis of
DNA and proteins.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - John Sulston. John Sulston shared the 2002 Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and H Robert Horvitz for research on
the genetic regulation of tissue and organ development, including programmed cell death. By
painstaking microscopical observations he had worked out the cell lineages in the developing
nematode worm. He then led the analysis of the worm’s genome, before turning to human
genomics. Sulston studied nucleotide chemistry in Cambridge and returned to Cambridge
after postdoctoral work in California. Following his study of nematodes at the MRC
Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he headed the British side of the Human Genome Project.
His advocacy of open access to scientific information led to his appointment in 2007 as joint
chair of The University of Manchester Institute for Science, Ethics, and Innovation.

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences - Joseph E Stiglitz. Joseph Stiglitz helped create ‘the
economics of information’. He received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for
investigating monetary transactions where one party knows more than the other. He also
explored market dysfunctions, the need for state intervention and problems of implementing
economic reform. He advocated action against climate change and, later, reform of the
international financial system.
Stiglitz received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at
several leading American universities. He chaired the US Council of Economic Advisers
under President Clinton and was chief economist at the World Bank in the 1990s, before
becoming a major critic of neoliberal globalisation. In 2005 he was appointed chair of the
Brooks World Poverty Institute at The University of Manchester.
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