Most scientific fields have been made over with a revolutionary theory at least once in recent centuries. Such makeovers, or paradigm shifts, reorder old knowledge into a new framework. Revolutionary theories succeed when the new framework makes it possible to solve problems that stymied the previous intellectual regime. Here are my favorite revolutions. I’m hoping for more before I die.
10. Information theory: Claude Shannon, 1948
9. Game theory: John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, 1944 (with important embellishments from John Nash in the 1950s)
8. Oxygen theory of combustion: Antoine Lavoisier, 1770s
7. Plate tectonics: Alfred Wegener, 1912; J. Tuzo Wilson, 1960s
6. Statistical mechanics: James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, J. Willard Gibbs, late 19th century
5. Special relativity: Albert Einstein, 1905
4. General relativity: Einstein, 1915
3. Quantum theory: Max Planck, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born, Paul Dirac, 1900–1926
2. Evolution by natural selection: Charles Darwin, 1859
1. Heliocentrism: Copernicus, 1543
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