The SciencesThe Unexpected Science to Come...The most important discoveries of the next 50 years are likely to be ones of which we cannot now even conceiveBy Sir John Maddox on December 1, 1999AdvertisementABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)SIR JOHN MADDOX was lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Manchester from 1949 to 1956 and editor-in-chief of Nature from 1966 to 1973 and from 1980 to 1995. He was knighted for "services to science" in 1985.