The development of life science and biotechnology from the centennial Nobel Prize in Natural Science

As can be seen from the first part of the brief timeline of biotechnology development, the development of life science and biotechnology is inseparable from the development of physics and chemistry theory and technology, especially closely related to some Nobel Prize-winning technologies. On the one hand, the ideas and concepts put forward by theoretical physicists and chemists, as well as their own research into the field of life sciences, reserve the human resources and theoretical basis for the birth of the revolution in the field of life sciences and original biotechnology. In 1944, for example, Erwin Schrodinger, the founder of quantum mechanics, published What Is Life? . This work has deeply influenced the thinking of a group of physicists and biologists, not only contributed to the birth of the three basic schools of molecular biology (Lu Yongxiang's "Enlightenment of Neo-Confucianism (Memorial Report)"), but also directly attracted a group of physicists to join the upsurge of life science research. They include Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, a New Zealand physicist who proposed the double helix structure of DNA, and Francis Harry Compton Crick, a British physicist. In 1939, Linus Carl Pauling, the founder of quantum chemistry, published the Nature of Chemical Bonds, which was epoch-making in the history of chemistry, and in 1951 proposed the theory that α helix and β fold are the basic units of protein secondary structure, becoming one of the founders of biochemistry. On the other hand, the technical means invented by physicists and chemists have also become the source of the development of biotechnology. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered X-rays (1901 Nobel Prize in Physics); In 1912, German physicist Max von Laue discovered the diffraction phenomenon of X-rays passing through crystals (1914 Nobel Prize in Physics); In 1912, William Lawrence Bragg proposed the Bragg formula for X-ray crystal diffraction (1915 Nobel Prize in Physics). In 1949, British biochemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin used X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of penicillin (1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry); In 1962, Austrian biochemist Max Ferdinand Perutz and British biochemist John Cowdery Kendrew were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of globulins using X-ray diffraction methods. The emergence and development of X-ray diffraction method directly led to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, which opened the era of molecular biology. In 1963, Allan M. Cormack, an American physicist, found that different tissues of the human body had different X-ray absorption rates, and proposed a reconstruction algorithm and basic calculation formula based on the absorption rate. It lays a theoretical foundation for Computer AssistedTomography, also known as CAT scan.