The following is a list of historically important scientific experiments. A historic scientific experiment is one which demonstrates something of great scientific interest, typically in an elegant or clever manner.
James Lind, publishes 'A Treatise of the Scurvy' which describes a controlled ship board experiment using two identical populations but with only one variable, the consumption of citrus fruit. (1753)
Edward Jenner tests his hypothesis for the protective action of mild cowpox infection for smallpox, the first vaccine (1796)
Charles Darwin and his son Francis, using dark-grown oat seedlings, discover the stimulus for phototropism is detected at the tip of the shoot (the coleoptile tip), but the bending takes place in the region below the tip (1880).
Alexander Fleming demonstrates that the zone of inhibition around a growth of penicillin mould on a culture dish of bacteria is caused by a diffusible substance secreted by the mould. (1928)
Luria-Delbrück experiment demonstrates that in bacteria, beneficial mutations arise in the absence of selection, rather than being a response to selection. (1943)
Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen selectively clone genes in bacteria, using bacterial plasmids cut by specific endonucleases (1975).
Mary-Dell Chilton shows that crown gall tumors of plants are caused by the transfer of a small piece of DNA from the bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, into the host plant, where it becomes part of its genome (1977).
Napoli, Lemieux and Jorgensen discover the principle of RNA interference (1990)
Erwin Chargaff disproves the "tetranucleoide theory" of DNA structure and determines that the composition of double-stranded DNA follows the rule, %A = %T and %G = %C (Chargaff's rule). This discovery was critical to the formulation of the Watson-Crick Model of DNA structure.
Eratosthenes evaluates the diameter of the Earth by comparing the length of the shortest shadow of the day with the distance between that location and a place where the sun shines to the bottom of the well at midday (240 BC)
Al-Khazini makes extensive use of the experimental method to prove his theories on mechanics in The Book of the Balance of Wisdom (1121)
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī provides the first correct explanation of the rainbow phenomenon and uses the experimental method to prove his theory (13th century)
Christian Doppler arranges to have trumpets played from a passing train. The ground-observed pitch was higher than that played when the train was approaching then lower than that played as the train passed and moved away, demonstrating the Doppler effect (1845)
Guglielmo Marconi demonstrates that radio signals can travel between two points separated by an obstacle. Marconi's servant is behind a hill 3 kilometers away and fires his rifle upon receiving the signals (1895).
J. J. Thomson's cathode ray tube experiments (discovers the electron and its negative charge) (1897)
Roland von Eötvös publishes the result of the second series of experiments, clearly demonstrating that inertial and gravitational mass are one and the same. (1909)
Benjamin Libet's experiment on free will shows that a readiness potential appears before the notion of doing the task enters conscious experience, sparking debate about the illusory nature of free will yet again. (1983)
Vilayanur S Ramachandran's experiment on phantom limbs with the Mirror Box throw light on the nature of 'learned paralysis'
