- 5 months ago
From ridiculed to revered! Join us as we count down our picks for brilliant minds who were once dismissed as lunatics. These revolutionary thinkers challenged established beliefs only to be vindicated by history. Who dared to drink bacteria to prove a point? Which scientist risked everything to make us wash our hands?
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00:00Wagner wasn't the first scientist to speculate that the Earth had once been dominated by
00:04a supercontinent.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we're counting down our picks for scientists who were once
00:10considered mad, fringe, or just plain wrong, only for history to validate their brilliance.
00:16If I'd never won the Nobel Prize, I think I still would have been pretty satisfied about
00:22the discovery that we made.
00:26Number 10.
00:27Lynn Margulis.
00:28She would think that an idea describing complex life as a collaborative effort would be popular.
00:33Lynn Margulis claimed the same in her 1967 paper On the Origin of Mitosing Cells.
00:39She believed that plant cells in mitochondria were once free bacteria.
00:43They were then engulfed by other cells and became part of them.
00:47When Lynn Margulis first proposed this theory, she wasn't believed, and the idea failed to
00:52gain traction.
00:53Scientists were reluctant to accept that complex life evolved through a mutually beneficial
00:58relationship.
00:59But decades later, DNA evidence confirmed Margulis' theory.
01:03Now known as endosymbiotic theory, Margulis' work has changed our understanding of evolution
01:08and cell biology.
01:09They didn't do that step by random mutation.
01:12They did it by acquisition of a microbial genome and the integration of the genome.
01:16That's what we're saying.
01:17What was once considered by many to be biological heresy is now widely agreed to be a fundamental
01:23fact.
01:24Number 9.
01:25William Harvey.
01:26Challenging tradition is not easy.
01:28In 1628, when William Harvey proposed that blood circulates through the body and is pumped
01:35by the heart, he was met with immediate scorn.
01:37We don't know exactly when Harvey realized he had discovered the circulation of the blood.
01:43We do know he was very surprised and taken aback by this, because it contradicted all the
01:49teaching about medicine and about the functioning of the body for 2,000 years.
01:53Harvey's idea flew straight in the face of the popular theory proposed by the ancient Greek
01:58physician Galen.
01:59The 1,500-year-old Galenic theory suggested that blood was made in the liver and absorbed
02:04by the tissues.
02:05Most physicians who read it thought it was nonsense, indeed heretical.
02:10How could William Harvey, an Englishman, oppose the views of the great Galen?
02:16And they wrote against him.
02:17Harvey's claims seemed outlandish, but he was able to silence his critics with evidence
02:22gathered through meticulous experimentation involving dissections of animal and human organs.
02:27Science is fundamentally based on evidence, and Harvey had everything at hand to prove his
02:32theory, which is now foundational to modern studies of cardiovascular physiology.
02:378.
02:38William Coley
02:39In the 1890s, American bone surgeon and cancer researcher William Coley observed a reduction
02:45in tumor size in cancer patients who developed infections.
02:48And so he hypothesized that maybe there was some kind of connection between whatever was
02:53happening during or after an infection and cancer disappearing.
02:58Curious, Coley began injecting cancer patients with heat-killed bacteria.
03:03These bacteria were unable to reproduce, but triggered the patient's immune system to fight
03:08their presence.
03:09This also caused the patient's tumor to regress and shrink.
03:12Coley's toxins faced enormous criticism from the medical community.
03:16Many doctors did not believe his results.
03:18The development of chemotherapy also shuttered Coley's efforts, and his toxins gradually disappeared
03:23from use.
03:24This whole process is enhanced when the immune system is boosted.
03:29And that's exactly what Coley's toxins were doing.
03:32Time has proven that Coley was far ahead of his time.
03:35His efforts were the first attempt at today's promising field of cancer immunotherapy.
03:40Number seven, Joseph Lister.
03:43Medical surgery was not a fun prospect in the 1800s.
03:46Many who went into surgery either died or developed post-operative infections that reduced
03:51their quality of life.
03:53Joseph Lister changed this by introducing the radical idea of sterilization.
03:58He thought that sterilization, which means getting rid of germs, could save lives.
04:04He was inspired by Louis Pasteur, a French microbiologist.
04:07Pasteur proposed that organisms too small to be seen by the naked eye were the cause of
04:13diseases.
04:14People would say there's absolutely no way that a tiny microscopic organism could possibly
04:19kill an organism as big as we are.
04:22Lister applied Pasteur's theory to the decomposition of tissue observed in physical wounds.
04:27To stop the germs behind this, Lister used carbolic acid as an antiseptic.
04:31Initially mocked for his efforts, Lister's methods drastically reduced surgical mortality.
04:36Today, antiseptic approaches are standard practice and Lister's work laid the foundations for
04:41this.
04:42Lister had a huge impact on reducing deaths in surgery.
04:46That's why he's known to this day as the father of modern surgery.
04:52Number six, Claire Cameron Patterson.
04:55In the 1940s, geochemist Claire Patterson determined that the Earth was approximately 4.55 billion years old.
05:02The world is 4.5 billion years old.
05:08We did it.
05:10He did this by analyzing the decay of uranium isotopes into lead isotopes in ancient meteorites.
05:16His prediction was remarkably close to the currently accepted value of 4.543 billion years.
05:22However, he also stumbled upon something even more perilous.
05:26Where's all that lead coming from?
05:29I think I know, Harrison.
05:31It's from leaded gasoline.
05:33Patterson recognized that lead was everywhere, from the atmosphere to human blood.
05:38Leaded gasoline was the primary source of this contamination.
05:41Patterson faced pushback from industry lobbyists who labeled him as a troublemaker and who actively
05:46tried to discredit his research.
05:48Science ultimately prevailed, and Patterson's data contributed to the banning of leaded gasoline.
05:53The man who figured out the age of the Earth was also responsible for one of the greatest public health victories of the 20th century.
06:01Number five, Alfred Wegener.
06:04In the autumn of 1911, at Marburg University, a young man browsing at the university library came across an interesting research paper.
06:12Hardly anyone in the early 20th century said why are there oceans and why are there continents?
06:18Wegener is a wonderful example of how science benefits from people coming from outside a scientific field and saying,
06:28well, why don't you look at it this way?
06:30It identified fossils of identical plants and animals found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
06:36The pattern repeated for other organisms as well.
06:38The young sleuth also noticed the close fit of the African and South American coastlines.
06:44The more he looked, the more links he found.
06:47This prompted Alfred Wegener to propose that the continents drifted across Earth's surface.
06:52Many deemed Wegener's theory as ugly and trivial.
06:55Wegener also lacked a convincing argument on how the continents moved.
06:59His peers weren't very receptive.
07:01There was no mechanism to explain how the continents might plow through the oceans.
07:06Continental drift was just too incredible to believe.
07:10It wasn't until the 1960s, with the rise of plate tectonics, that his theory was fully vindicated.
07:17His ideas are now a central pillar of geological studies.
07:21Number 4.
07:22Barry Marshall
07:23In the 1980s, most people believed that ulcers were caused by stress or spicy foods.
07:29Australian doctor Barry Marshall had a wilder theory.
07:32Ulcers were caused by bacteria.
07:35Specifically, Helicobacter pylori.
07:37The concept of discovering a new bacteria, which proved that all the medical books were
07:42wrong and had to be rewritten, that was kind of exciting to us.
07:45To prove it, Marshall took the same bacteria from the gut of an ailing patient, stirred them
07:50into an infectious broth, and drank it whole.
07:53Three days later, he developed gastritis, the precursor to an ulcer.
07:57Biopsying his gut, Marshall proved that bacteria caused ulcers.
08:01His self-experimentation stunned the medical world.
08:04Later, antibiotics became the standard treatment.
08:07The discovery by Dr. Warren and myself has benefited millions of people.
08:13Maybe saved a million lives over the last 10 years or 20 years.
08:17Marshall was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005, cementing his once laughed-at theory as medical
08:23fact.
08:24Number 3.
08:25Galileo Galilei
08:26In the 15th century, Nicholas Copernicus argued that the Earth orbited around the Sun,
08:31not the other way around.
08:32Copernicus realized that the movements of the planets were better explained if the Sun were
08:38at the center of the solar system, and the Earth circled it like an ordinary planet.
08:43It was a revolutionary insight.
08:45Copernicus published his controversial arguments, but was unable to fully prove the truth of
08:50his theory.
08:51This was accomplished by an Italian inventor named Galileo Galilei.
08:55Galileo built a telescope and studied the heavens, observing the moons of Jupiter and
09:00noticing their orbit around the planet.
09:02The Earth moved in space, he said, and he could prove it.
09:08The Church said that it did not.
09:11This meant that not everything orbited around the Earth.
09:14Branded a heretic by the Catholic Church, Galileo was placed under house arrest for the rest of
09:19his life.
09:20Years later, his observations on Jupiter's moons, sunspots, and lunar craters proved Copernicus
09:25to be correct, and marked the advent of the scientific revolution.
09:29He was one of the people to join natural philosophy to mathematics and take it out of the sphere
09:34of the Aristotelians working in universities.
09:37Number 2.
09:38Ignis Semmelweis.
09:39Ignis Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, was deeply alarmed by the high mortality rate
09:44of mothers dying in childbirth.
09:47He was very frustrated by this situation, where healthy women would go into the hospital
09:53to have a baby, and almost one out of five of them died from childbed fever.
09:59Most of these deaths were attributed to childhood fever, a bacterial infection following childbirth
10:05or a miscarriage.
10:06Even more disturbing, Semmelweis observed that women were dying at a higher rate at Vienna
10:10General Hospital, as opposed to those in midwife-staffed clinics.
10:14The culprit was a lack of medical hygiene.
10:17He discovered that what doctors were doing was that they would perform autopsies in one
10:22part of the hospital, and then run to deliver babies in a ward next door, without washing
10:29hands in between.
10:30Semmelweis found that doctors failed to wash their hands routinely.
10:34They went from autopsies to deliveries, spreading infection.
10:38So he mandated hand washing with chlorinated lime.
10:41The mortality rates dropped, but Semmelweis was ridiculed and fired.
10:45He met with so much resistance.
10:47The medical community really didn't want to change.
10:51Louis Pasteur's germ theory later proved him right, and today he is hailed as a martyr
10:56of modern hygiene.
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11:13Number 1.
11:15Nikola Tesla
11:16The poster child for mad scientist, Nikola Tesla taught to pigeons, claimed to have
11:21built death rays, and dreamt about wireless electricity.
11:24He was an inventor genius who conceived of things that were way ahead of his time, but are still
11:30used today.
11:31But behind the madness, there was an immaculate spark of genius.
11:34Tesla's most significant contribution was his work with alternating current and power
11:39systems.
11:40Tesla's research made it practical and possible to set the stage for long-distance electrical
11:44power transmission.
11:45Tesla's system of transmitting electric current as an alternating current instead of Thomas
11:52Edison's direct current enabled us to transmit electricity thousands of miles with minimal
11:57loss.
11:58This was a game-changer.
11:59By doing this, Tesla revolutionized power grids.
12:02Today's wireless communication, radio, and neon lights have all sprung from his genius.
12:08Considered unhinged by his peers, Tesla was a man ahead of his time, whose wildest ideas
12:14have been finally realized today.
12:16It's just amazing from a history standpoint, Tesla helped create the foundation of our electrical
12:22grid.
12:23Which of these crazy scientists do you think deserves more recognition?
12:27Let us know in the comments.
12:29And don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more electrifying countdowns.
12:34Before William Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, everyone believed that there
12:39were two blood systems in the body.
12:41One based on the liver, and there the veins distribute the nutrition to the whole body,
12:47and the other based on the heart, where the spirit of life is distributed with the blood
12:53to the body.
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