As we’re in the Antibiotic zone, the answer to that has to be penicillin. It was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and has saved millions of lives around the world.
Well it’s not a discovery but, I would have liked to be the creator of the Periodic table (Dmitri Mendeleev).
As it is probably one of the most important things any researcher has ever done.
I would pick discovering rifamycin, an important antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis and leprosy. The people who discovered it found it in a nice place (Saint-Raphaël in the south of France) and decided to call it after their favourite film, “Du rififi chez les hommes”… they sound like they were a fun bunch
I would probably have discovered that microbes cause diseases. Because in old times people didn’t know that eating something rotten or half cooked or lack of hygiene could cause a lot of diseases. They used to think that people got sick because they were evil or for other wrong reasons. Until a smart guy called Louis Pasteur discover that microbes were the reason why things get rotten and why we get sick many times. So to keep healthy we only have to stay clean. It sounds very easy now that we all know, but this discovery made our lives much easier!!!! And because science is to make our lives better I would like to have discovered that myself! That would’ve been an honor, but unfortunately I am a bit late :S
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