Volume 55, Number 18 · November 20, 2008
Science: The Coming Century
By Martin Rees
Fifty years ago no one could confidently have predicted the geopolitical landscape of today. And scientific forecasting is just as hazardous. Three of today's most remarkable technologies had their gestation in the 1950s. But nobody could then have guessed how pervasively they would shape our lives. It was in 1958 that Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductors built the first integrated circuit—the precursor of today's ubiquitous silicon chips, each containing literally billions of microscopic circuit elements. This was perhaps the most transformative single invention of the past century. A second technology with huge potential began in Cambridge in the 1950s, when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the bedrock mechanism of heredity—the famous double helix. This discovery launched the science of molecular biology, opening exciting prospects in genomics and synthetic biology.
Feature, 5035 words
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