Science, environment and possible futures

Charles Darwin (1809--1882) was a British naturalist. After a five-year voyage around the world aboard HMS Beagle, he published On the Origin of Species in 1859. In this book he explained the diversity of living species through natural selection: organisms that are better adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce. His theory transformed biology and remains a foundation of modern science.

Alexander Fleming (1881--1955) was a Scottish bacteriologist. In 1928, he noticed by chance that a mould growing on one of his laboratory dishes killed the surrounding bacteria. This observation led to the discovery of penicillin, the first widely used antibiotic. Later developed by other researchers, penicillin has saved millions of lives. Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.

In 1953, at the University of Cambridge, James Watson (American) and Francis Crick (British) described the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information. Their work relied in part on the X-ray images produced by the British chemist Rosalind Franklin (1920--1958), whose essential contribution was long overlooked. This discovery opened the way to modern genetics.

Alan Turing (1912--1954) was a British mathematician, considered one of the founders of computer science and artificial intelligence. During the Second World War he helped to break the German Enigma code. In 1950 he proposed the famous Turing test, a way of asking whether a machine can be said to ``think''. His question is still discussed today, in the age of AI.

Rachel Carson (1907--1964) was an American marine biologist and writer. In her book Silent Spring (1962), she showed the harmful effects of chemical pesticides such as DDT on birds, the food chain and human health. The book had a huge impact on public opinion in the United States and is often seen as the starting point of the modern environmental movement.

The first Earth Day took place in the United States on 22 April 1970, bringing together millions of people to demand the protection of nature. It is now celebrated worldwide every year. In the same period, the organisation Greenpeace was founded in 1971 in Vancouver (Canada), campaigning at first against nuclear testing, and later for the protection of the environment.

H. G. Wells (1866--1946) was a British writer, often called ``the father of science fiction''. He imagined time travel in The Time Machine (1895) and an alien invasion of Earth in The War of the Worlds (1898). His novels explore progress, science and the possible dangers of technology.

Two famous British authors imagined dark futures called dystopias. In Brave New World (1932), Aldous Huxley described a society controlled through technology and conditioning. In Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell imagined a state of total surveillance, ruled by ``Big Brother''. Both novels warn against the loss of freedom and remain widely read today.

The American author Isaac Asimov (1920--1992) wrote many science-fiction stories about robots, gathered in I, Robot (1950). He is famous for imagining the Three Laws of Robotics, a set of ethical rules meant to protect humans from robots. These laws are still quoted today in discussions about the ethics of artificial intelligence.