ABSTRACT
Posterity will remember the twentieth century for many things. The history books of the future will inevitably dwell on such social and political events as the two World Wars; the rise and fall of marxist-leninism; the arrival of the United States of America as a global superpower. It also dwell on the end of the British Empire and of European colonialism generally; and the beginning of the rise of China and the European Union as economic powers of global importance. Chemistry and electricity between them spawned a second industrial revolution in the late nineteenth century probably because it was America and Germany that made the running. The first half of the century saw a huge expansion in the fields of physics and chemistry. The second half saw medicine and biology start to catch up. Medical research, unlike the other sciences, had been a job for professionals throughout history. The twentieth century has truly been the century of science.
