Scientific breakthroughs that changed the way we understand the world-and the fascinating stories of the scientists behind them
Some of the most significant breakthroughs in science don't receive widespread recognition until decades later, sometimes after their author's death. Nobel Prize-winner Max Planck, whose black-body radiation law established the discipline of quantum mechanics, stated this as what has become known as Planck's principle, commonly summarized as "Science progresses one funeral at a time." In other words, for some truly groundbreaking discoveries, a new consensus builds only when proponents of the old consensus die off. Breakthrough discoveries require a paradigm shift, and it takes time and new minds for the new paradigm to be adopted.