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European scientists and thinkers shaped the twentieth century

Europeans comprise the majority of the 20 scientists and thinkers who overthrew established ideas in the twentieth century, according to TIME magazine. Of TIME's top 20 scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century, 14 were born in Europe or of European parents: - Leo Bae...

Europeans comprise the majority of the 20 scientists and thinkers who overthrew established ideas in the twentieth century, according to TIME magazine. Of TIME's top 20 scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century, 14 were born in Europe or of European parents: - Leo Baekeland (Ghent, Belgium), who invented the first rue plastic; - Tim Berners-Lee (London), who created the world wide Web; - Albert Einstein (Ulm, Germany), who discovered relativity; - Enrico Fermi (Rome), who proposed the theory of beta-particle decay, involving strong and weak nuclear forces; - Alexander Fleming (Ayrshire, Scotland), who discovered penicillin; - Sigmund Freud (Freiberg, Moravia), who advanced psychoanalysis; - Kurt Gõdel (Brunn, Moravia), who transformed mathematical logic with his incompleteness theorem; - John Maynard Keynes (Cambridge, England), who advanced economic theory; - The Leakey Family (Louis, Mary and Richard), who advanced evolution theory; - Jean Piaget (Switzerland), who gave insight into how children learn; - William Shockley (London), who invented the transistor; - Alan Turing (London ), who devised the computer as an imaginary machine; - Francis Crick (Northampton, England), who, with James Watson, figured out the structure of DNA; - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Vienna), who advanced mathematical logic. Leading up to the year 2000, TIME is profiling 100 individuals who helped shape the century. They will be considered in five fields of endeavour, including science and thinking, culminating with the Person of the Century. TIME is inviting people to vote in the Person of the Century Poll at: URL: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/time100/time100poll.html