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ACCORDING TO A POLL OF PHYSICS WORLD READERS:
1 - Young's double-slit experiment applied to the interference of single electrons
2 - Galileo's experiment on falling bodies (1600s)
3 - Millikan's oil-drop experiment (1910s)
4 - Newton's decomposition of sunlight with a prism (1665-1666)
5 - Young's light-interference experiment (1801)
6 - Cavendish's torsion-bar experiment (1798)
7 - Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth's circumference (3rd century BC)
8 - Galileo's experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes (1600s)
9 - Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus (1911)
10 - Foucault's pendulum (1851)
The accompanying article includes some interesting thoughts on beauty and the experimental process.
PERFORMERS
Though named Young's experiment, it wasn't until 1961, the same year Feynman started his lectures, that someone carried out the winning experiment in real world - Claus Jönsson of Tübingen. "By that time no one was really surprised by the outcome, and the report, like most, was absorbed anonymously into science" - now, it gets revisited, and the Physics World editorial has more on the history of this experiment.
WUMBA-WAMBA-WHAT?
The New York Times goes ahead and delivers enlightenment to the masses: background and details on the ten experiments in plain English, "a bird's-eye view of more than 2,000 years of discovery" (free login required)