One Hundred Years Later

It has been another dynamic year. As an individual, reflecting on what happened in the past is the best way for us to prepare for the future. While most of us have not been on this planet for a hundred years but what happened a hundred years ago do have implications today and some of the decisions we collectively make today will have impacts for a long time coming. Here are a few events which occurred in 1922 for us to ponder on where we are today and where we might be 100 years from now.

1922: In the early 1920s Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin under the directorship of John Macleod at the University of Toronto. With the help of James Collip insulin was purified, making it available for the successful treatment of diabetes. On January 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 13 year-old boy who was dying of diabetes, was given the first human experimental dose of insulin and he would go on to live for another thirteen years before eventually dying of pneumonia at the age of 26.

100 years later: We know that medicine always has a degree of uncertainty and risk, but today approximately 7.4 million people in the United States alone use one or more formulations of insulin. The discovery of insulin is considered one of the twentieth century's most important medical advances which has saved millions of lives.

1922: US Supreme Court unanimously upholds 19th amendment to the US Constitution - women's right to vote on February 27, 1922.

100 years later: My Alma Mater Wharton School of Business for the first time admitted more women than men for its incoming MBA class. Yet, gender inequality persists at the institutional and structural level. In the business world, there are only 41 female CEOs out of the Fortune?500 companies. While it is a significant improvement from 2 out of 500 in the year 2000, eight percent is still far away from a fair representation of the talent pool or a demonstration of inclusion.

1922: Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922 to honor the 16th President of the United States, with the following inscription behind his statue: "In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."

100 years later: It seems the society is more polarized and divided than ever before with divisional politics or never ending ideological battles. Democracy is inherently messy and squabbles are inevitable. However, we do need leaders who can unite people in order for the nation to compete in this increasingly competitive global stage.

1922: A general meeting was held on May 4 in order to decide on the constitution, officers, etc., of the new National Council for Mental Hygiene in Great Britain. “Such a council … will endeavor to make a more prominent subject in the education of medical students and, by instructing the public in principles underlying mental health and illness gradually diminish the enormous waste of time and energy in all classes of society which now results from widespread ignorance concerning these questions.”

100 years later: The two year pandemic is creating a mental health crisis to many but especially among those frontline health-care workers. While social stigma is still making it difficult for many to get the help they need, two prominent athletes Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles raised the bar on mental health awareness. Simone Biles, the best gymnast in the world by far, pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics team final. Naomi Osaka, one of the best tennis players in the world when she is on her game, gave up her chance to win two Grand Slam events this year to focus on her mental health.

1922: US Supreme Court ruled on May 29, 1922 that organized baseball is a sport and not a business and thus not subject to antitrust laws.

100 years later: Metaverse is emerging as one of the biggest topics. People are spending real money to buy buildings in the metaverse, from the digital replicas of the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower to gravity-defying skyscrapers. I wonder if it is going to be mostly a universe for entertainment like baseball was a hundred years ago or the meta world will be also be subject to antitrust laws just as other businesses in the real world.

1922: Russian Author Aleksei Tolstoi’s best-selling novel Aelita:?(Aelita: Sunset of Mars), first published in serialized form in 1922, told the story of a Russian engineer who traveled to Mars and incited a proletarian revolution among the Martians. The magazine version of the tale was made into movie Aelita (1924), one of the earliest full-length films about space travel.

100 Years Later: Spacecraft from three Mars exploration programs from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States arrived at Mars in February 2021. Meanwhile, several private funded space flights successfully sent a few starry-eyed billionaires into space. More exciting for the scientific community is probably the successful launch of long delay James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Day. The telescope is headed for a gravitationally stable spot 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet in the direction of Mars. It'll take 29 days to get there, and there will be lots of nail-biting action for the telescope along the way including the unfolding of a fragile five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court that's essential to its mission.

1922: Lewis Fry Richardson, the British scientist and mathematician published a book entitled Weather Prediction by Numerical Process. Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used nowadays. However, when he published the book in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He reckoned it would need 60,000 people working with slide rules to predict tomorrow’s weather before it arrived.

100 years later: The Glasgow Climate Pact which was endorsed by nearly 200 countries established a set of principles and goals for action on climate change. More than 130 have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. There are many uncertainties but computer model simulations suggest a rise of global temperature of 1.8 degrees if the pledges and commitments are met.

1922: American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller first broke the one minute barrier for 100m freestyle on July 19 at a time of 58.6 seconds.

100 years later: Aussie star Kyle Chalmers set a new world record in the men’s 100m freestyle at the FINA World Cup in Kazan, Russia on October 29, 2021. Chalmers won the event in 44.84 seconds. It took a hundred years to shave 14 seconds of the record.?On the one hand, we are limited as human beings in terms of our physical abilities. On the other hand, the fact that every record will eventually be broken highlights that the limit of human capabilities is directly related to motivation.

1922: Danish physicist Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, for work on the structure of atoms, at a ceremony in Copenhagen.?Niels Bohr introduced the idea of quantum jumps with his model of the atom and later the full development of quantum mechanics with others in the mid-1920s.

100 years later: Scientists are trying to harnesses the phenomena of quantum mechanics to deliver a huge leap forward in computation to solve certain problems that today’s powerful supercomputers cannot solve. Quantum computers are not just about doing things faster or more efficiently. Quantum computers will find a use anywhere where there’s a large, uncertain complicated system that needs to be simulated. That could be anything from predicting more efficient products – from new materials, better and cheaper drugs, to improving weather forecasts.

1922: Creation of the USSR formally proclaimed in Moscow on December 30, 1922 from the Bolshoi Theatre, Soviet Union organized as a federation of RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SSR.

100 years later: After the collapse of Soviet Union thirty years ago at the end of the Cold War, Russia eventually recovered its footing as a power player in the international system. President Vladimir Putin is now trying to reclaim some of the lost glory by demanding security guarantee.?How the US will respond could have far reaching implication and set the stage for the next few decades for Eastern and Central Europe. The chasm is deep and the threats and brinksmanship have the feel of Cuban missile crisis.

What would the world look like a hundred years from now in 2122? What are some of the current events which would have enduring impacts 100 years from today? While we reflect and ponder, best wishes for a happy and prosperous year of 2022!

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