An interesting subject to submit Humble Opinions on, not only because it shows the differing achievements of the nations, but because it reflects on Dopers’ differing ideas of what “greatest” means.
For me:
Russia: Music. Stravinsky. Tchaikovsky. Prokofiev. Borodin. Rachmaninoff. Rimsky-Korsakoff. Shostakovich. I don’t think all the other Russians ever born, put together, contributed anything to the world as great as those seven. I’m sure somebody here will say literature, but I run into a lot more people who didn’t like Tolstoy than people who want to get up and leave in the middle of Peter and the Wolf.
Great Britain: Medicine. Alexander Fleming and Edward Jenner. If the Brits had done nothing else for medicine but invent penicillin and vaccination, they would still have achieved more for human health than all the other physicians of the world combined.
Greece: Politics. The record of how humans govern themselves is pretty damn discouraging. Give the Greeks credit for democracy, individual rights, and the concept of separation of powers. It wasn’t much, didn’t even keep them from practicing slavery, but we haven’t advanced all that much further in the two thousand years since the Greeks gave us those things.
China: Tough one. They gave the world paper, porcelain, gunpowder, and the civil service exam. (And Chinese food! Don’t knock this, it’s a subject I’m passionate about). Which was most important?
India: Supposedly, Bertrand Russell was once asked what India’s contribution to the world had been and he smilingly answered, “Zero.” An underhanded compliment if there ever was one.
Denmark: Beer. Yes, it had been brewed for millennia before then, but see the excerpt below for an explanation.
"As great industrial cities sprang up all over Europe and Scandinavia, workers demanded quality beer on a regular basis. Until the mid-nineteenth century, brewing was a seasonal affair, impossible to carry out in summer because of the risk of infection from heat and bacteria.
When brewers attempted to make beer in summer they found their brews went sour. In the Carlsberg Laboratory, Jacobsen’s chief scientist, Emil Hansen, used a microscope to discover that brewer’s yeast was made up of dozens of different competing cells. Some were bad cells that lay dormant in cold weather but sprang to life in summer.
Hansen managed to isolate one pure cell of yeast. By mixing it with a sugary solution, he produced more yeast that was then stored in a ‘yeast bank’. It was offered to Jacobsen’s main rival, Tuborg when its beer was infected, and even to his disaffected son’s company. Eventually, Carlsberg’s yeast was made available world-wide. It transformed brewing and was given the scientific name of saccharomyces carlsbergensis , the basis of all lager brewing today."
Old Joke:
Arab 1: Allah be praised! I’ve just invented the zero!
Don’t forget the Germans’ contribution to music. Bach and Beethoven are two of the most towering and influential geniuses ever to bestride that particular world.
Britain: Literature (Shakespeare, Dickens, Kipling, Keats, Milton, continue ad infinitum). The steam engine, and hence the industrial revolution. Macadam roads and the pneumatic tyre (for which thank the Scots, although Telford’s road surface would have done at a pinch). Railways.
Turkey: prisons.
Norway: fjords or death metal.
Iceland: probably Bjork.
Poland: the odd pope here or there.
Sweden: their bikini team, which spends an unusual amount of time in the United States.
Kenya: Olympic distance runners.
South Africa: Charlize Theron.
Djibouti: A good laugh every time you say its name.
