Science and technology in the United Kingdom

"British scientists" redirects here. For the Russian internet meme, see British scientists (meme).

A Watt steam engine, which powered the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom and played a key role in it becoming the world's first industrialised nation

Science and technology in the United Kingdom has a long history, producing many important figures and developments in the field. Major theorists from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland include Isaac Newton whose laws of motion and theory of gravitation have been recognized as foundational to modern science and Charles Darwin whose theory of evolution by natural selection was fundamental to the development of modern biology. Major scientific discoveries include hydrogen by Henry Cavendish, penicillin by Alexander Fleming, and the structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others. Major engineering projects and applications pursued by people from the United Kingdom include the steam locomotive developed by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian, the jet engine by Frank Whittle and the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. The United Kingdom continues to play a major role in the development of science and technology and major technological sectors include the aerospace, motor and pharmaceutical industries.

Important advances made by British people

Further information: List of British innovations and discoveries

Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) with his important contributions to classical physics and mathematics

Charles Darwin (1809–82) whose theory of evolution by natural selection is the foundation of modern biological sciences

England (which included Wales at the time) and Scotland were leading centres of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th century. ^[2] The United Kingdom led the Industrial Revolution from the 18th century, ^[3] and has continued to produce scientists and engineers credited with important advances. ^[4] Some of the major theories, discoveries and applications advanced by people from the United Kingdom are given below.

• The development of empiricism and its role in scientific method, by Francis Bacon (1561–1626). ^[5]
• The laws of motion and illumination of gravity, by physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian, Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727). ^[6]
• The discovery of hydrogen, by Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). ^[7]
• The steam locomotive, by Richard Trevithick (1771–1833) and Andrew Vivian (1759–1842). ^[8]
• An early electric motor, by Michael Faraday (1771–1867), whose work made electricity practical for technological applications. ^[9]
• The theory of aerodynamics, by Sir George Cayley (1773–1857). ^[10]
• The first public steam railway, by George Stephenson (1781–1848). ^[11]
• The first commercial electrical telegraph, co-invented by Sir William Fothergill Cooke (1806–79) and Charles Wheatstone (1802–75). ^[12]
• First tunnel under a navigable river, first all iron ship and first railway to run express services, contributed to by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59). ^[13]
• Evolution by natural selection, by Charles Darwin (1809–82). ^{[1] : 46}
• The invention of the incandescent light bulb, by Joseph Swan (1826–1914). ^[9]
• The unification of electromagnetism, by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79). ^{[1] : 30}
• The first practical telephone, patented by Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922). ^{[14] [note 2]}
• The discovery of penicillin, by biologist and pharmacologist, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955). ^[15]
• The world's first working television system, and colour television, by John Logie Baird (1888–1946). ^{[16] [17]}
• The first meaningful synthesis of quantum mechanics with special relativity by Paul Dirac (1902–84) in the equation named after him, and his subsequent prediction of antimatter. ^[18]
• The invention of the jet engine, by Frank Whittle (1907–96). ^[19]
• The invention of the hovercraft, by Christopher Cockerell (1910–99). ^{[20] [ better source needed ]}
• The Bombe computer, developed by Alan Turing (1912–54), was an early electromechanical computer designed for code-breaking during World War II at Bletchley Park. ^[21]
• The structure of DNA, by Francis Crick (1916–2004) and others. ^{[1] : 56}
• The invention of modern data communication by Donald Davies (1924–2000), including packet switching, high-speed routers, hierarchical computer networks, layered communication protocols and the essence of the end-to-end principle. ^{[22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [note 3]}
• The theoretical breakthrough of the Higgs mechanism to explain electroweak symmetry breaking and why some particles have mass, by Peter Higgs (1929–2024). ^[30]
• Theories in cosmology, quantum gravity and black holes, by Stephen Hawking (1942–2018). ^{[1] : 16}
• The invention of the World Wide Web, by Tim Berners-Lee (1955–). ^{[31] [32]}

Technology-based industries

Further information: Aerospace industry in the United Kingdom, Automotive industry in the United Kingdom, and Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom

The Airbus A380 has wings and engines manufactured in the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom plays a leading part in the aerospace industry. Companies such as Rolls-Royce are major players in the aero-engine market, while BAE Systems serves as Britain's largest defence supplier and the Pentagon's sixth largest. Large companies including GKN act as major suppliers to the Airbus project. ^[33] Two British-based companies, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, ranked in the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world by sales in 2009 ^[34] and UK companies have discovered and developed more leading medicines than any other country apart from the US. ^[35] The UK remains a leading centre of automotive design and production, particularly of engines, and in 2011 had around 2,600 component manufacturers. ^[36] Investment by venture capital firms in UK technology companies was $9.7 billion from 2010 to 2015. ^[37]

The UK technology sector represents a significant portion of the global technology industry, and valued at $1.2 trillion in the first half of 2025. ^[38]

Scientific research

Further information: Universities in the United Kingdom, List of science parks in the United Kingdom, and List of UK government scientific research institutes

A Welsh Government short video of science in Wales

Scientific research and development remains important in British universities, with many institutions establishing science parks to facilitate production and cooperation with industry. ^[39] Between 2004 and 2012, the United Kingdom produced 6% of the world's scientific research papers and had an 8% share of scientific citations, the third- and second-highest in the world (after the United States' 9% and China's 7% respectively). ^{[40] [41]} Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature , the British Medical Journal and The Lancet .

Britain was one of the largest recipients of research funding from the European Union. From 2007 to 2013, the UK received €8.8 billion out of a total of €107 billion expenditure on research, development and innovation in EU Member States, associated and third countries. At the time, this represented the fourth largest share in the EU. ^[42] The European Research Council granted 79 projects funding in the UK in 2017, more than any other EU country. ^{[43] [44]} The United Kingdom was ranked 5th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024. ^[45]

See also

• United Kingdom portal
• Science portal
• Technology portal

• Government Office for Science
• Internet in the United Kingdom
• List of exports of the United Kingdom
• Manufacturing in the United Kingdom
• Telecommunications in the United Kingdom

Notes

1. Watt steam engine image: located in the lobby of into the Superior Technical School of Industrial Engineers of the UPM (Madrid)
2. Alexander Graham Bell, born and raised in Scotland, made a number of inventions as a British citizen, notably the telephone in 1876; he did not become an American citizen until 1882, and then spent the remaining years of his life predominately living in Canada at a summer residence.
3. In the early 1960s, Paul Baran invented distributed adaptive message block switching for digital communication of voice messages using switches that were low-cost electronics. His work did not include routers with software switches and communication protocols, nor the idea that users, rather than the network itself, would provide the reliability. ^{[27] [28] [29]}

References

1. Hatt, Christine (2006). Scientists and Their Discoveries . London: Evans Brothers. ISBN   0-237-53195-X.
2. Gascoigne, John (1990). "A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the Scientific Revolution". In Lindberg, David C.; Westman, Robert S. (eds.). Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 248. ISBN   978-0-521-34804-1.
3. "European Countries – United Kingdom". Europa (web portal). Archived from the original on 8 April 2010. Retrieved 15 December 2010.
4. Reynolds, Ernest Edwin; Brasher, N. H. (1966). Britain in the Twentieth Century, 1900–1964 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 336.
5. Urbach, Peter (1987). Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science: An Account and a Reappraisal . La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co. p. 192. ISBN   978-0-912050-44-7.
6. Burtt, Edwin Arthur (2003) [1924]. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. Mineola, NY: Courier Dover. p. 207. ISBN   0-486-42551-7.
7. Jungnickel, Christa; McCormmach, Russell (1996). Cavendish. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society. p. 152. ISBN   0-87169-220-1.
8. James, Ioan (2010). Remarkable Engineers: From Riquet to Shannon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 33–6. ISBN   978-0-521-73165-2.
9. Bova, Ben (2002) [1932]. The Story of Light . Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks. p. 238. ISBN   1-4022-0009-9.
10. Ackroyd, J.A.D. (22 May 2002). "Sir George Cayley, the Father of Aeronautics. Part 1. The Invention of the Aeroplane" (PDF). Notes and Records: Royal Society London . 56 (2): 167–181. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2002.0176. JSTOR   3557665 . Retrieved 29 May 2010.
11. Davies, Hunter (1975). George Stephenson: A Biographical Study of the Father of Railways. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN   978-0-297-76934-7.
12. Hubbard, Geoffrey (2008) [1965]. Cooke and Wheatstone and the Invention of the Electric Telegraph. Oxfordshire: Routledge. p. 78. doi:10.4324/9780203706374. ISBN   978-0-415-47485-6.
13. Tames, Richard (2009). Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-0-7478-0758-2.
14. Ribiero, Daniel (1947). "Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922)". Nature . 159 (4035): 297. Bibcode:1947Natur.159Q.297.. doi:10.1038/159297a0. S2CID   4072391.
15. "Sir Alexander Fleming – Biographical". The Nobel Foundation . Retrieved 29 August 2025..
16. "John Logie Baird (1888–1946)". BBC History. Archived from the original on 21 June 2011..
17. "The World's First High Definition Colour Television System". BraidTelevision.com. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
18. "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
19. Cole, Jeffrey (2011). Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia. London: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 121. ISBN   1-59884-302-8.
20. "Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell". Hovercraft Museum. Archived from the original on 6 July 2008. Retrieved 24 June 2011.
21. Smith, Michael (2004). Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park. Pan Grand Strategy Series (Revised ed.). London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN   978-0-330-41929-1.
22. Yates, David M. (1997). Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory 1945-1995. National Museum of Science and Industry. pp. 132–4. ISBN   978-0-901805-94-2. Davies's invention of packet switching and design of computer communication networks ... were a cornerstone of the development which led to the Internet
23. Naughton, John (2000) [1999]. A Brief History of the Future. Phoenix. p. 292. ISBN   978-0-7538-1093-4.
24. Campbell-Kelly, Martin (1987). "Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (1965-1975)". Annals of the History of Computing. 9 (3/4): 221–247. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1987.10023. S2CID   8172150. the first occurrence in print of the term protocol in a data communications context ... the next hardware tasks were the detailed design of the interface between the terminal devices and the switching computer, and the arrangements to secure reliable transmission of packets of data over the high-speed lines
25. A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade (PDF) (Report). Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. 1 April 1981. pp. 53 of 183 (III-11 on the printed copy). Archived from the original on 1 December 2012.
26. Davies, Donald; Bartlett, Keith; Scantlebury, Roger; Wilkinson, Peter (October 1967). A Digital Communication Network for Computers Giving Rapid Response at remote Terminals (PDF). ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 October 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2020. "all users of the network will provide themselves with some kind of error control"
27. Kleinrock, L. (1978). "Principles and lessons in packet communications". Proceedings of the IEEE. 66 (11): 1320–1329. doi:10.1109/PROC.1978.11143. ISSN   0018-9219. Paul Baran ... focused on the routing procedures and on the survivability of distributed communication systems in a hostile environment, but did not concentrate on the need for resource sharing in its form as we now understand it; indeed, the concept of a software switch was not present in his work.
28. Pelkey, James L. "6.1 The Communications Subnet: BBN 1969". Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications 1968–1988. As Kahn recalls: ... Paul Baran's contributions ... I also think Paul was motivated almost entirely by voice considerations. If you look at what he wrote, he was talking about switches that were low-cost electronics. The idea of putting powerful computers in these locations hadn't quite occurred to him as being cost effective. So the idea of computer switches was missing. The whole notion of protocols didn't exist at that time. And the idea of computer-to-computer communications was really a secondary concern.
29. Waldrop, M. Mitchell (2018). The Dream Machine. Stripe Press. p. 286. ISBN   978-1-953953-36-0. Baran had put more emphasis on digital voice communications than on computer communications.
30. Griffiths, Martin (1 May 2007). "The tale of the blogs' boson". Physics World . Retrieved 29 August 2025.
31. Quittner, Joshua (29 March 1999). "Network Designer Tim Berners-Lee". Time Magazine. Retrieved 29 August 2025. ...the World Wide Web is Berners-Lee's alone. He designed it. He set it loose it on the world. And he more than anyone else has fought to keep it an open, non-proprietary and free.
32. McPherson, Stephanie Sammartino (2009). Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web . Twenty-First Century Books. ISBN   978-0-8225-7273-2.
33. O'Connell, Dominic (30 January 2011). "Britannia still rules the skies" . The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 12 January 2012.
34. "IMS Health" (PDF). IMS Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 July 2011.
35. Department of Trade and Industry. "The Pharmaceutical sector in the UK". The National Archives. Archived from the original on 3 June 2007. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
36. "Automotive industry". Department of Business Innovation and Skills. Archived from the original on 2 July 2011..
37. Moore, Mike (7 January 2016). "UK Tech Firms Smash VC Investement Record". Silicon UK. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
38. The Tech Nation Report 2025 (PDF). Tech Nation (Report). Snowflake. June 2025. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
39. Castells, Manuel; Hall, Peter (1994). Technopoles of the World: the Making of Twenty-First-Century Industrial Complexes. Oxfordshire: Routledge. pp. 98–100. ISBN   0-415-10015-1.
40. "Knowledge, networks and nations: scientific collaborations in the twenty-first century" (PDF). Royal Society. 2011. ISBN   978-0-85403-890-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 June 2011..
41. MacLeod, Donald (21 March 2006). "Britain second in world research rankings". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 14 May 2006.
42. "How much research funding does the UK get from the EU and how does this compare with other countries?". Royal Society. 23 November 2015. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
43. Crisp, James (6 September 2017). "Boost for hopes of post-Brexit co-operation as EU awards Britain more research grants than anywhere else" . The Telegraph. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
44. "ERC Starting Grants 2017" (PDF). European Research Council. 6 September 2017. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
45. Dutta, Soumitra; Lanvin, Bruno; Rivera León, Lorena; Wunsch-Vincent, Sacha, eds. (2024). Global Innovation Index 2024 (17 ed.). Geneva: World Intellectual Property Organization. p. 18. doi:10.34667/tind.50062. ISBN   978-92-805-3680-5. ISSN   2263-3693.