1828: Friedrich Wohler shows how artificial urea can be made

1856: William Perkins makes Mauveine, the first synthetic dye

1872: Louis Pasteur identifies the microbial origins of fermentation

1883: Emil Christian Hansen finds that wild yeast can destroy fermentation

1912: Chaim Weizmann discovers acetone and butanol and ends the search for synthetic rubber

1915: J B S Haldane describes ectogenesis

1928: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin

1953: James Watson and Francis Crick demystify the structure of DNA

1973:Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer trace the recombinant DNA