American president Theodore Roosevelt once gave the following advice: “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.” Sometimes there’s no di­fference between an unsolved problem and a problem solved with an error. When a student says that they “almost solved the problem, but there was a minor error,” they are certainly right, in a way.

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” -LOUIS PASTEUR. Faster, higher, stronger - people are always trying to maximize their achievements. But are we the only ones? Among the world’s rivers, there are plenty of record breakers as well.

In 1981, the young owner of a software company declared: “No one will need more than 637 KB of memory for a personal computer. 640 KB ought to be enough for anybody.” This young owner was none other than Bill Gates. Today, this prediction seems ridiculous, but do not rush to blame the former head of Microsoft for shortsightedness: in 1980, the price for one kilobyte of RAM was almost 98 cents (compared to 0.3 cents in 1995). Therefore, in the reality of those years, the assessment of Bill Gates was quite reasonable considering how much the memory of only one PC costs! Computers, though, still have other components.

Infections threatened humanity for centuries. And it’s no wonder, given that it was not known how to cure them at all. During epidemic outbreaks, people died by the millions. The situation changed only 200 years ago, with the invention of vaccines. The English doctor Edward Jenner, who studied traditional medicine, became the developer of the world’s first vaccine against smallpox.