Polly Painter, Year 12, Millfield School, Somerset The pill has ignited a revolution towards female empowerment. Invented by Gregory Goodwin Pincus and Carl Djerassi and approved in 1960, the invention of the pill was a monumental challenge but also an astounding breakthrough. In conjunction with introducing birth control into a country where thirty states had…
Isabella Kwiecinski, Year 13, Lady Margaret School, London Nobody looks forwards to getting them. They leave our arms painful and aching, they make babies wail and adults faint. The vaccine. For many of us that dreaded word will not conjure up feelings of joy or excitement, instead, the image of a sharp needle and feelings…
Luke Hayward, Year 12, King Edward VI School Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire Invention, discovery and scientific advancement are arguably the things that set humans apart from all other beings on our planet. Our capacity for abstract thought, coupled with a deep desire to apply our findings to real world problems has expanded the capabilities of Homo sapiens…
Mukhtar Quraishi, Year 12, Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, Lancashire The Haber Process seems like a simple discovery. The process takes nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia and is seemingly unimportant. It feels like a backyard experiment gone wrong. After all, ammonia is a toxin to sea life and is even a common by-product of reactions…
India Thomas, Year 12, Monk’s Walk School, Hertfordshire Many frequently used obstetrical inventions, like the epidural, were developed during the 20th century. But some of the most widespread and effective technologies evolved during the dark ages of medicine and somehow have survived all way into the 21st century. One such invention is the forceps. In…
Christen Rayner, Year 12, St Anthony’s & St Aidan’s Sixth Form, Tyne and Wear Runner-up for the Schools Science Writing Competition, Trinity Term 2020 ‘Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.’ Katherine Dunn The discovery of penicillin was undoubtedly one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent…
Catrin Herrenden-Harker, Year 10, Kings Monkton, Wales Alzheimer and dementia are devastating diseases which affect 60 million people in the world, with the number set to grow, so is a major problem for healthcare systems and puts extreme pressure on old people’s homes. So, what are these diseases? Dementia is an overall term for diseases…
Cadence Webley, Year 11, St Georges College Weybridge, Surrey In 1825, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce looked at his silver chloride coated paper and realised he had just taken the first ever photograph. Louis Daguerre continued this process with a plate coated in silver iodide and developed the first ever portable camera which was made available to…
Yeast: what is it good for? Well, quite a lot of things. In a talk recently given to the Oxford Synthetic Biology Society, Tom Ellis, professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, explained how simple baker’s yeast can be utilised in the fight against global health challenges. Baker’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is…
View our Hilary Term 2020 issue, Breakthrough, here. The Hilary 2020 issue of The Oxford Scientist is here! Packed full of articles looking at the past, present and future of groundbreaking scientific discovery.
