1.23.1: Water
There can be little doubt that water(\(\ell\)) has been all-pervasive in the development of thermodynamics and, of course, solution chemistry. Chemical laboratories throughout the whole world have this liquid ‘on tap’. Speculation about intelligent life forms (cf. are we alone?) in the rest of the universe [1] often start with comments concerning the presence of water(\(\ell\)) on distant planets.
Footnotes
[1] Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Doubleday, New York, 2003, chapter 16.