Alain Carpentier, perhaps the world's most renowned cardiologist, not only pioneered novel methods for repairing faulty hearts, he found a way to replace them. The 82-year-old French heart surgeon invented the Carmat heart, the world's first fully implantable, self-regulating heart. Unlike similar prosthetics, Carpentier's device mimics the heart's natural physiology, adjusting the volume of blood it pumps depending on whether its recipient is active or resting.

The world's roads and motorways are much safer thanks to inventions by automotive engineer Anton van Zanten. His breakthrough achievement, the electronic stability control system (ESC), also known as ESP (electronic stability program), is now mandatory in a number of countries, and is second only to the seatbelt in saving lives in car crashes.

The invention of pulmonary surfactants by Swedish laboratory physician Tore Curstedt at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm marked a milestone in saving the lives of early-born infants suffering from respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), a lung condition that was the leading cause of death among newborns for decades.

The invention of "bionic" knee and ankle prostheses by American biophysicist Hugh Herr at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) not only allows amputees to pursue fully mobile lifestyles, but even lets them compete as world-class athletes.

Paulraj's idea was to incorporate the space between antennae and receivers as part of the overall transferal equation - thinking about how buildings, ceilings, trees and any other objects influenced radio signals - and create a phenomenon called multipath propagation. By exploiting this, along with clever modulation techniques, he was able to incorporate at least two antennae and two receivers into wireless or Wi-Fi transmission. Instead of receiving two scrabbled signals, the receivers are able to recognise each individual signal thanks in part to the slightly different path it takes.