Grade 8 Humanities - Humans and Ideas: Scientific Developments

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Vaccination is a miracle of modern medicine. In the past 50 years, it’s saved more lives worldwide than any other medical product or procedure. However, the fascinating story of vaccination goes back all the way to ancient Greece.

Although this list represents the most famous inventors in the electric/electronic field, it is only a small subset of the great minds that have brought us to our current level of understanding, and the technology we enjoy today.

Throughout most of human history, the reason why an organism looks like its parents, while looking very different than a hound dog (unless its parents were hound dogs), was not known. This changed in the 1860s, when an Austrian monk by the name of Gregor Mendel began experimenting with peas. Mr. Mendel wanted to find out how lifeforms pass physical characteristics, also known as traits, from one generation to the next.

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882), was a British naturalist who became famous for his theories on evolution. Darwin proposed that, through millions of years, all species of plants and animals had evolved (developed gradually) from a common ancestor.