Biology wonderfully undertakes the natural aspects of life, and stunningly collaborates itself with a human’s infinite curiosity. Over the centuries biology has given us reasons and resolutions to tackle the threatening biological adversities, and it wonderfully continues to do so.

It is impossible to judge which is the greatest contribution in the biology domain, but here are some of the most ultimate biological inventions and discoveries of all time.

The theory of Evolution by natural selection
Darwin’s theory of Evolution advocates the notion that all forms of life has descended from a single ancestor. It focuses on the theory that all the complex forms of organism have naturally evolved from the basic predecessor.

Although Darwin wasn’t the first person to study the process of evolution, he was able to gain widespread support because of his coherent demonstrations. The concept of natural selection in evolution basically explains how there is a competition for limited resources in common species. This struggle for surviving is gradually passed on to their descendants, along with certain practical endurance skills. This process of natural selection is also known as survival of the fittest. This theory beautifully projects how and why humans are on the top of the universal food chain.

DNA
DNA, completely turned around the way we look at life.

Its discovery was a wake-up call for all the generations. DNA made us understand that the life we are living was never contained, but was rather an unending chain of possibilities. Since, its discovery it has not only affected the medical sciences but has reinvented our approach towards almost all walks of life. Not just in healthcare sector, DNA opened up avenues in agriculture, animal husbandry, forensics and even transformed the social strata of biological relations.

Polio vaccine
Invented by virologist Jonas Sulk, the polio vaccine is of the most crucial inventions of all time. Polio was considered to be the most terrifying health threat post World War 2. Salk undertook a research project affiliated and sponsored by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, after polio claimed thousands of lives and left countless disabled. Not only he developed an effective vaccine consisting of a killed polio virus, but also devised a meticulous plan to combat the outbreak. His trial arrangement had thousands of physicians, health officers and volunteers. Subsequently after the breakthrough of the injected polio vaccine (IPV), Dr. Albert Sabin came up with an alternative oral polio vaccine (OPV) that used the weakened strain of the virus in 1962.

Birth control pills
Gregory Pincus’s birth control pills have revolutionized the biological and social aspects of a human life. After meeting Margaret Sanger, Goodwin was deeply inspired to research on contraception. Along with the co-inventor, Min Chueh Chang, he began developing an oral pill combining estrogen and progestin. Their trials conducted in Puerto Rico were successful, and were later approved legally to be circulated amongst the public. This gradually led to the modern birth control movement advocating planned parenthood, population control and women’s rights.