An interesting discussion indeed. My 2 cents. I would suggest the following list: (i) Linnaean taxonomy (Linnaeus) (ii) The cellular concept (iii) Evolution and Natural selection (Darwin) (iv) Discreteness of genetic information ("Mendel") (v) Population genetics (Fisher-Wright-Haldane) (vi) Replication of genetic information (Watson-Crick) (vii) The coding principle and the Central Dogma (Gamow-Crick; Nirenberg etc) (viii) Principles of molecular evolution, sequence conservation (Zuckerkandl-Pauling) (ix) Viruses and mobile elements ("Ivanovsky"-d'Herrelle-Delbruck-McClintock)
9 seems like a good number (muses and the like). Discoveries are more important and obvious than discoverers. For the cellular concept, it is simply impossible to point out an author (certainly, Schleiden and Schwann "did not exist"), and for all the rest there were important predecessors and equally important developers (Mendel indeed had no impact; Darwin did not discover evolution but he did make it a coherent and rational concept; replication was sort of predicted by Timofeev-Resovsky-Delbruck-Pauling etc etc). The names in parentheses are more or less "focal points", no more than that.
The discoveries/principles are listed roughly in the temporal order not by importance. In historical terms, it is hard to argue against Darwin being the most important biologist ever. However, in conceptual terms, there seems to be nothing as fundamental as the discovery of Watson-Crick.
no subject
I would suggest the following list:
(i) Linnaean taxonomy (Linnaeus)
(ii) The cellular concept
(iii) Evolution and Natural selection (Darwin)
(iv) Discreteness of genetic information ("Mendel")
(v) Population genetics (Fisher-Wright-Haldane)
(vi) Replication of genetic information (Watson-Crick)
(vii) The coding principle and the Central Dogma (Gamow-Crick; Nirenberg etc)
(viii) Principles of molecular evolution, sequence conservation (Zuckerkandl-Pauling)
(ix) Viruses and mobile elements ("Ivanovsky"-d'Herrelle-Delbruck-McClintock)
9 seems like a good number (muses and the like). Discoveries are more important and obvious than discoverers. For the cellular concept, it is simply impossible to point out an author (certainly, Schleiden and Schwann "did not exist"), and for all the rest there were important predecessors and equally important developers (Mendel indeed had no impact; Darwin did not discover evolution but he did make it a coherent and rational concept; replication was sort of predicted by Timofeev-Resovsky-Delbruck-Pauling etc etc). The names in parentheses are more or less "focal points", no more than that.
The discoveries/principles are listed roughly in the temporal order not by importance. In historical terms, it is hard to argue against Darwin being the most important biologist ever. However, in conceptual terms, there seems to be nothing as fundamental as the discovery of Watson-Crick.