This provocative question was posed to some of the world's foremost scientific and creative thinkers, including several Nobel laureates. Their answers may surprise you. Lively and thought-provoking, The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years is not only an entertaining book about science and creativity but also an opportunity to peek inside the minds of some of the leading thinkers of our time. With contributors such as Stewart Brand, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Howard Gardner, Sherry Turkle, Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, and Leon Lederman, The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years is an invitation to a salon of our leading thinkers. Their answers to the editor's question are as varied as the group itself.
Some contributors comment perceptively on their colleagues' nominees.
Not all of the respondents limited their answers to concrete objects.