Reports from today’s Guardian that a recent poll run by online magazine Sp!ked, hail the web, the microscope, random search, and placing university research and teaching under one roof as among some of the planet's most important innovations.

The suggestions from the study’s 100 participants, six of which are Nobel Laureates, included the rocket, wireless radio and a method for copying DNA, were based on the field in which the contributors worked, the paper revealed. Sir Tim Hunt, lead scientist for Cancer Research UK and a 2001 joint Nobel prize winner chose a method for DNA manipulation saying “Recombinant DNA technology has made the biggest difference to the way my kind of biologist works today” adding “we couldn’t have got anywhere without it”

Steve Fuller, a sociologist at the University of Warwick who chose the idea of teaching and research under one roof explained his choice saying “That has done the most to allow knowledge to be pursued with impunity, while maximising its impact in society”

Meanwhile Matt Ridley a science writer who has worked for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph as scientific correspondent was an advocate for “random search” through using online search engines like Google to find unknown information for a user, he said “Random search has revolutionised the checking of facts, the discovering of new information, the gleaning of leads. If my profession is writing truthfully but interestingly about the world then this could be the best innovation one could wish for.”