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Abdul Qadeer Khan
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Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is a famous Pakistani nuclear scientist and a metallurgical engineer. He is widely regarded as the founder of gas-centrifuge enrichment technology for Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent program. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program is a source of extreme national pride. As its “father”, A.Q. Khan, who headed Pakistan’s nuclear program for some 25 years, is considered a national hero.
Early life and Career:
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan was born in 1936 in Bhopal, India. He immigrated with his family to Pakistan in 1947. After studying at St. Anthony’s High School, Khan joined the D. J. Science College of Karachi, where he took physics and mathematics. His teacher at the college was famous solar physicist Dr. Bashir Syed. Khan earned a B.Sc. degree in physical metallurgy at the University of Karachi in 1960.
Khan accepted a job as an inspector of weight and measures in Karachi after graduation. He later resigned and went to work in Netherlands in the 1970’s. Khan gained fame as a talented scientist at the nuclear plant he worked in. He had special access to the most restricted areas of the URENCO facility. He could also read the secret documentation on the gas centrifuge technology.
In December, 1974, he came back to Pakistan and tried to convince Bhutto to adopt his Uranium route rather than Plutonium route in building nuclear weapons. According to the media reports, A.Q. Khan had a close and cordial relationship with President General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and the Military of Pakistan. He also maintained a close relationship with the Pakistan Air Force.
After his role in Pakistan’s nuclear program, Khan re-organized the Pakistani’s national space agency, SUPARCO. In the late of 1990s, Khan played an important role in Pakistan’s space program, patricularly the Pakistan’s first Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) project and the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV). Khan’s unrestricted publicity of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities brought humiliation to the Pakistan’s government. The United States began to think that Pakistan was giving nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, to get ballistic missile technology in exchange. Khan also came under renewed scrutiny following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. He allegedly sold nuclear technology to Iran. However, he was pardoned in 2004, but placed under house arrest.
On the 22nd of August 2006, the Pakistani government declared that Khan had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was undergoing treatment. He was released from house arrest in Februray 2009.
Other Contributions:
Khan was also a key figure in the establishment of several engineering universities in Pakistan. He set up a metallurgy and material science institute in Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. The place, where Khan served as both executive member and director, has been named as Dr. A. Q. Khan Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Material Sciences. Another school, Dr. A. Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at Karachi University, has also been named in his honor. Khan thus played a vital role in bringing metallurgical engineering courses in various universities of Pakistan.
Despite his international image, Khan remains widely popular among in Pakistanis and he is considered domestically to be one of the most-influential and respected scientists in Pakistan.
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Abu Nasr Al-Farabi
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Abu Nasr Muhammad al- Farabi, one the earliest Islamic intellectuals who were instrumental in transmitting the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle to the Muslim world, had a considerable influence on the later Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. He was an outstanding linguist who translated the Greek works on Aristotle and Plato and made a considerable addition to them of his own. He earned the nickname Mallim-e-Sani, which is translated as “second master” or “second teacher”.
Early Life:
Al-Farabi completed his earlier education at Farab and Bukhara but, later on, he went to Baghdad for higher studies, where he studied and worked for a long time. During this period he acquired mastery over several languages as well as various branches of knowledge and technology. Farabi contributed considerably to science, philosophy, logic, sociology, medicine, mathematics and music, but the major ones are in philosophy, logic and sociology and for which he stands out as an Encyclopedist.
Contributions and Achievements:
As a philosopher, Farabi was the first to separate philosophy from theology. It is difficult to find a philosopher both in Muslim and Christian world from Middle Ages onwards who has not been influenced by his views. He believed in a Supreme Being who had created the world through the exercise of balanced intelligence. He also asserted this same rational faculty to be the sole part of the human being that is immortal, and thus he set as the paramount human goal the development of that rational faculty. He considerably gave more attention to political theory as compared to any Islamic philosopher.
Later in his work, Al-Farabi laid down in Platonic fashion the qualities necessary for the ruler, he should be inclined to rule by good quality of a native character and exhibit the right attitude for such rule. At the heart of Al-Farabi’s political philosophy is the concept of happiness in which people cooperate to gain contentment. He followed the Greek example and the highest rank of happiness was allocated to his ideal sovereign whose soul was ‘united as it were with the Active Intellect’. Therefore Farabi served as a tremendous source of aspiration for intellectuals of the middle ages and made enormous contributions to the knowledge of his day, paving the way for the later philosopher and thinkers of the Muslim world.
Farabian epistemology has both a Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian dimension. The best source for al-Farabi’s classification of knowledge is his Kitab ihsa al-ulum. This work neatly illustrates Al-Farabi’s beliefs, both esoteric and exoteric. Through all of them runs a primary Aristotelian stress on the importance of knowledge. Thus al-Farabi’s epistemology, from what has been described may be said to be encyclopedic in range and complex in articulation, using both a Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian voice.
Farabi also participated in writing books on early Muslim sociology and a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqa (The Book of Music) which is in reality a study of the theory of Persian music of his day, although in the West it has been introduced as a book on Arab music. He invented several musical instruments, besides contributing to the knowledge of musical notes. It has been reported that he could play his instrument so well as to make people laugh or weep at will. Al-Farabi’s treatise Meanings of the Intellect dealt with music therapy, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.
Later Life:
Farabi traveled to many distant lands throughout his life and gained many experiences a lot, due to which he made so many contributions for which he is still remembered and acknowledged. Inspite of facing many hardships, he worked with full dedication and made his name among the popular scientists of history. He died a bachelor in Damascus in 339 A.H. /950 A.D. at the age of 80 years.
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Ada Lovelace
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Ada Lovelace is a metaphysician, analyst, and the founder of scientific computing, and described what she did as “poetical science”. Also known as the “Enchantress of Numbers”, her passion and contributions have served as inspiration to modern women around the world.
Life and Education
Born Augusta Ada Byron in London on December 10, 1815, she was the daughter the well-known romantic poet Lord George Byron and Anne Isabella “Annabella” Milbanke. Their marriage was brief and Lord Byron left shortly after Ada was born. English law stated that the father is granted full custody of children in the event of separation, but he did not show any interest in exercising his parental rights. He left England and died in Greece in 1823 when Ada was just 8 years old, never seeing his daughter again. Ada on the other hand, was not allowed to even view a portrait of her father until she turned twenty.
Annabella did not want her to end up as a poet like her father, as she could not bear that unpredictable nature that Lord Byron had. She was slightly distant to her child and would often leave Ada with Hon. Lady Milbanke, who spoiled her grandchild. However, she kept up with the appearance of being a loving mother because it was what society expected of her. In fact, Annabella frequently sent letters to Lady Milbanke asking about how Ada was doing in case she would eventually need evidence that she deeply cared about her child.
Ada was a sickly child, and would often have terrible bouts of headache. She suffered from measles and was left paralyzed, and was under bed rest for almost a year. She regained to ability to walk in 1831, with the help of crutches.
Ada was exposed to rigorous tutoring in logic, Mathematics and science, and Ada’s inclination towards complex things became apparent when she came up with a design for a flying machine in 1828, when she was just 13 years old. She also created different designs for boats, and would endlessly look at diagram after diagram of new inventions from the Industrial Revolution that were published in all the scientific magazines she could find. Her great exposure to Mathematics formed the person she was to become and prepared her for the contributions she was to give to the modern world.
Ada married an aristocrat, William King, in 1835 when she was 19 years old. King was ten years her senior. After three years, King inherited a noble title, making them the Earl and Countess of Lovelace. This was how she became known as Ada Lovelace, instead of Lady Ada King. They had three children together, but their family and fortune was still greatly influenced by Ada’s mother, Lady Byron. King accepted Lady Byron’s domineering personality and rarely opposed her decisions.
Lady Byron took on William Benjamin Carpenter to serve as a tutor for King and Ada’s children. However, he fell in love with Ada and continued to pursue her despite the circumstances. Ada was not comfortable about this and cut off any communication with him.
Notable Contributions and Works
It was an era where noblewomen were not expected nor encouraged to be intellectual. Still, Ada continued to pursue her passion for numbers and logic.
Ada developed a strong respect for her tutor, Mary Sommerville, and they continued corresponding for years. She was also acquaintances with other intellectuals like Andrew Crosse, Charles Wheatstone, and Charles Dickens.
In 1883, she met Charles Babbage through Mary Sommerville. He was a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge. This meeting would later on prove to grow into a lifelong friendship, as their mutual interests became the source of their constant correspondence. They would talk about their theories, beliefs, and visions, and she was left fascinated by the work that Babbage did. Charles Babbage was the one who initially called her as the “Enchantress of Numbers”.
Charles Babbage has already gained popularity at that time, and had previously been working on a Difference Engine, a machine that would have the ability to compute for polynomials by using the differences method. Because of a number of personal tragedies and continued disagreements between him and his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, Babbage’s frustrations about the whole project became evident and the government ceased its support for the project in 1842. This paved the way for him to concentrate on a calculating machine, and Analytical Engine.
Although the plans for this project had been drawn in 1834, the government refused to fund it because of the unfinished Difference Engine. However, this project earned interest from abroad. The Italian Mathematician Louis Menebrea discussed the Analytical Engine in a French memoir in 1842. This was where Ada proved to be most useful for Babbage. She was hired to translate the memoir from French to English. Ada worked on the memoir non-stop, working on it within a nine month period from 1842 to 1843. She also added her own notes to the translated memoir, which later on became critical in the work of Alan Turing, Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence as he worked on building the first modern computers during the 1940’s. These notes were seen as the first set of algorithms that were to be followed by a machine. They were longer than the memoir itself, and explained in great detail how the Analytical Engine differed from the Difference Engine. And though Babbage and a lot of other people in the same field concentrated merely on a computer’s capacity for calculating and number crunching, Ada believed in the vision that a computer can do so much more than that.
Ada Lovelace died at the early age of 36 in 1852 due to uterine cancer. Before she died, her husband abandoned her after she was rumored to have confessed to an affair. She was buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham beside her father as per her request, because her interest in him never subsided despite never having met him.
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Al-Battani
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Al-Battani is sometimes known by a Latinized version of his name, being Albategnius, Albategni or Albatenius. His full name was Abu Abdallah Mohammad ibn Jabir ibn Sinan al-Raqqi al-Harrani al-Sabi al-Battani. Al-Battani’s father was Jabir ibn Sinan al-Harrani who had a high reputation as an instrument maker in Harran. The name makes the identification certain that al-Battani himself was skilled in making astronomical instruments and there is a good indication that he learnt these skills from his father.
Early Life and Career:
Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinan al-Battani al-Harrani was born around 858 C.E. in Harran. Battani was first educated by his father Jabir Ibn San’an al-Battani, who also was a well-known scientist. He then moved to Raqqa, situated on the bank of the Euphrates, where he received advanced education and later on flourished as a scholar. At the beginning of the 9th century, he migrated to Samarra, where he worked till the end of his life. His family had been members of the Sabian sect, a religious sect of star worshippers from Harran. Being worshipers of the stars meant that the Sabians had a strong motivation for the study of astronomy. Al-Battani, unlike Thabit, another mathematician from his home town, was not a believer in the Sabian religion. His name “Abu Abdallah Mohammad” indicates that he was certainly a Muslim.
Al-Battani made remarkably accurate astronomical observations at Antioch and ar-Raqqah in Syria. The town of ar-Raqqah, where most of al-Battani’s observations were made, became prosperous when Caliph Harun al-Rashid built several palaces there.
The Fihrist describes al-Battani as one of the most famous observers and a leader in geometry, theoretical and practical astronomy, and astrology. He composed work on astronomy, with tables, containing his own observations of the sun and moon and a more accurate description of their motions than that given in Ptolemy’s “Almagest”.
The main achievements of al-Battani’s are:
• He cataloged 489 stars.
• He refined the existing values for the length of the year, which he gave as 365 days 5 hours 46 minutes 24 seconds, and of the seasons.
• He calculated 54.5″ per year for the precession of the equinoxes and obtained the value of 23° 35′ for the inclination of the ecliptic.
Rather than using geometrical methods, as other scientists had done, al-Battani used trigonometric methods which were an important advancement. Al-Battani showed that the farthest distance of the Sun from the Earth varies and, as a result, annular eclipses of the Sun are possible as well as total eclipses. Al-Battani is important in the development of science for a number of reasons, but one of these must be the large influence his work had on scientists such as Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus.
Death:
Historians all agree that Al-Battani passed away in 317 H. /929 A.D., near the city of Moussul in Iraq. He was regarded as one of the most famous Arab astronomers. He dedicated all his life until his death to the observation of planets and stars.
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Alan Turing
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Alan Turing was a man before his time. This brilliant English code-breakerhelped turn the tide of a major World War II battle, and was arguably one of the fathers of the entire field of computer science. He was a Renaissance man who studied and made contributions to the philosophical study of the nature of intelligence, to biology and to physics. His biography reveals that he was also the victim of anti-homosexual attitudes and laws, losing his security clearance and resorting to suicide two years later.
Background:
Born right before the start of WW I, and parked in England by his Indian civil service parents,Turing studied quantum mechanics, a very new field, probability, and logic theory at King’s College, Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow. His paper-based theoretical model for the Turing Machine, an automatic computational design, proof of the theorem that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems is called the Turing Machine, and contributed significantly to computational theory. He continued his studies at Princeton in algebra and number theory.
Enigma:
In the years leading up to open hostilities in World War II, he was secretly working in government crypto-analysis. When England entered the war, he took on the full-time task of deconstructing the operation of the German Enigma machine. This cipher generator of immense complexityallowed the Germans to create apparentlyunbreakable codes. Turing embraced this cryptographychallenge, creating a decryption machine specifically aimed at Enigma, named the Bombe. Enigma’s unraveling was a several year process that achieved success in 1942. Information gleaned from decoded German messages permitted the Allies to anticipate U-Boat deployment, thereby winning the battle of the Atlantic.
Diversification:
In cooperative US/UK cryptographic efforts in the latter years of the war, Turing was lead consultant. At war’s end, he joined the National Physical Laboratory to try to invent a digital computer, or thinking machine.To that end, he studied neural nets and tried to define artificial intelligence. Disappointed by the reception his ideas received at the NPL, he moved to Manchester University, in England’s gritty industrial region. His department unveiled the first practical mathematical computer in 1949.
One triumph followed another. In 1950, hedeveloped Turing Test for machine intelligence assessment: In brief, if an observer cannot tell whether they are interacting with human or machine, the machine is intelligent.
As always a polymath, he also did work on non-linear growth in biological systems, and physics, that promised to bear fruit.
Scandal:
However, a bio of Alan Turing is not complete without addressing the facts of his personal life. According to 1952 legal charges, he became involved with what was termed ‘a bit of rough trade’. In other words, he had a short term sexual liaison with a laborer who was down on his luck financially. The scandal of this British national intellectual treasure, a Fellow of the Royal Society, innovator in a whole new discipline of study, and the savior of the navy, being revealed as a homosexual, was immense. The humiliating trial ruined his career and his life. He was stripped of his security clearance, because at that time it was believed that a homosexual was vulnerable to blackmailand enemy (read Communist) subversion.
This punishment effectively cut off from the work that he had pioneered. He poisoned himself in 1954, leaving behind much intriguing unfinished work in physics and biology.
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Albert Abraham Michelson
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The nineteenth century physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson, was the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. He became famous for his establishment of the speed of light as a fundamental constant and other spectroscopic and metrological investigations. He had a memorable career that included teaching and research positions at the Naval Academy, the Case School of Applied Science, Clark University, and the University of Chicago.
Life:
Born to a Jewish family on December 19, 1852 Strzelno, Provinz Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Michelson was brought to America when he was only two years old. He was brought up in the rough mining towns of Murphy’s Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a trader. He completed his high school education in San Francisco and later in 1869 he went to Annapolis as an appointee of President U.S. Grant.
During his four years at the Naval Academy, Michelson did extremely well in optics, heat and climatology as well as drawing. He graduated in 1873. Two years later, he was appointed an instructor in physics and chemistry. After resigning from the post in 1880, he spent two years studying in Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the Collège de France and École Polytechnique in Paris. He developed a great interest in science and the problem of measuring the speed of light in particular.
He was then employed as a professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science at Cleveland, Ohio. Later in 1889 he moved to Clark University as professor of physics, and after three years he was invited to head the department of physics at the new University of Chicago, a position which he held until 1931.
In 1899, he married Edna Stanton and they had one son and three daughters.
Achievements:
During his stay at Annapolis, he carried out his first experiments on the speed of light. With his simple device, made up essentially of two plane mirrors, one fixed and one revolving at the rate of about 130 turns per second from which light was to be reflected, Michelson was successful in obtaining a measure closer than any that had been obtained to the presently accepted figure — 186,508 miles per second.
Michelson executed his most successful experiment at Cleveland in cooperation with the chemist Edward W. Morley. Light waves were considered as ripples of the aether which occupied all space. If a light source were moving through the aether, the pace of the light would be different for each direction in which it was discharged. In the Michelson-Morley experiment two beams of light, passed out and reflected back at right angles to each other, took equal amount of time. Thus the concept of stationary ether had to be discarded.
Michelson is also known for the measurement of the diameter of super-giant star, Betelgeuse, using astronomical interferometer with his colleague Francis G. Pease.
In 1907, Michelson was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid”. During the same year he also won the Copley Medal, the Henry Draper Medal in 1916, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1923. Moreover, a crater on the Moon is also named after him.
Death:
Michelson died on May 9, 1931, while he was working on a more refined measurement of the velocity of light in Pasadena, California.
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Albert Einstein
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Albert Einstein was born in Germany. He was a great physicist from America and a Nobel laureate. Einstein gained worldwide fame as he created extraordinary theories related to relativity and for his suggestions and premises that are related to the light’s particle nature. Einstein is one of the most renowned physicists of the twentieth century.
Einstein was born on 14th March, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He spent his teenage years in Munich with his family. He and his family had an electronic equipment store. Einstein was not talkative in his childhood, and till the age of three, he didn’t talk much. But as a teenager, he had great interest in nature and had aptitude to comprehend tricky and complicated theories of arithmetic. Einstein knew geometry when he was 12 years old.
Einstein loved to be creative and innovative, therefore he loathed the boring and noncreative spirit in his school at Munich. Einstein left his school at the age of 15, as his family left Germany due to constant failure in their business. His family went to Milan and Einstein spent a year with them. It was then that he decided that, in order to survive, he has to create his own way out. He studied his secondary school from Switzerland and then joined Swiss National Polytechnic which was located in Zurich. Einstein didn’t like the teaching method there, so he bunked classes to study physics or play his violin. With the help of his classmate’s notes, he cleared his exams, and in 1900, he graduated. Einstein was not considered a good student by his teachers.
Einstein accepted the job of a professor and worked as an alternate teacher for about two years. He achieved the post of an examiner in the year 1902 in Bern at the office of Swiss patent. Einstein wedded his class mate Mileva Maric in 1903. He had two sons with her but they later divorced. After some years Einstein married someone else.
Early Scientific Publications
University of Zurich awarded Einstein doctorate in 1905 for his thesis on the different sizes and extent of molecules. In order to highlight the importance of physics, Einstein published three theoretical documents which stated the significance of physics in twentieth century. One of these papers was based on Brownian motion which discussed Einstein’s prediction related to the movement of particles that are present in any liquid. Later many experiments supported his predictions.
Einstein’s second publication discussed photoelectric effect. This paper comprised of innovative premises related to the light’s nature. Einstein gave the idea that light under some conditions contains some particles and the energy that a light particle contains is termed as photon. This photon and the radiation’s frequency are directly related. Its formula is E=hu where E is defined as the radiation’s energy and h is a constant defined as Planck’s constant and u is defined as radiation’s frequency. Einstein’s idea was rejected by everyone because it was against the conventional idea which stated that transfer of light energy is an ongoing process.
Robert Andrews, who was an American physicist, was surprised when Einstein’s theory was experimentally proven by him a decade later. Main focus of Einstein was to comprehend the nature of radiations that are electromagnetic. This led to the birth of a theory that will be a mix of light’s particle and wave nature. This theory too was comprehended by few scientists.
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity
In 1905, Einstein’s third paper was published. It was based on dynamics of bodies in motion which later was called as the theory of relativity. The nature of radiation and matter and their interaction was the theme of discussion since the era of Newton. The view that laws of mechanics are essential is defined as the mechanical view of world, and the view that laws of electric are essential is defined as electromagnetic view of world. None of the view has been successful in giving a reliable elucidation for the interaction between matter and radiation, that is, the relation between radiation and matter is seen concurrently by the viewer at rest and a viewer travelling at consistent speed.
After observing these problems for a decade, Einstein came to the conclusion that the main problem was in the theory of measurement, and not in the theory related to matter. The main crux of Einstein’s special theory of relativity was the comprehension of the fact that all the dimensions of space and time are dependent on judgments that whether two events those are far off occur together. This hypothesis led Einstein towards the development of a theory which was based on two basic hypotheses: one that laws of physics are identical in all inertial positions. This is called as the principle of relativity. Second postulate is called as the principle of variance, according to this principle; the light’s speed is worldwide stable in a vacuum. Hence, Einstein was capable of providing reliable and accurate explanation of physical actions and measures in varying inertial positions without assuming about the matter or radiation’s nature, or their interaction. Practically, Einstein’s argument was not understood by any one.
Early Reactions to Einstein
Einstein’s work was not appreciated by others, not because it was very tough or difficult to understand, but the main problem that people faced was from Einstein’s viewpoint towards the theories and the affiliation between theory and experiment. Although Einstein believed that the sole foundation of information is experience and practice, he also maintained that scientific theories are developed by physical instinct, and the grounds on which theories are laid cannot be linked to an experiment rationally. According to Einstein, the definition of a good theory is the one that needs least number of postulates for physical confirmation. The innovation in Einstein’s postulates made it difficult for all his colleagues to understand his work.
Not many people supported Einstein. His biggest supporter was Max Planck who was a physicist from Germany. Einstein stayed at the patent agency for 4 years till the time he became famous in the physics society. He rapidly progressed upward in the educational German speaking world. In 1909, Einstein had his first meeting at the Zurich University. He then moved to the University of Prague dominated by German speaking people. He then came back to the Swiss Polytechnic in Zurich in 1912. Eventually Einstein was selected at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin as the director.
The General Theory of Relativity
In 1907 before Einstein left his job at patent office, he started working on the theory of relativity. He started by defining the equivalence principle which states that the accelerations of the frame of reference is equal to gravitational fields. For instance people while travelling in a lift are unable to make a decision that the force that they feel is felt by the elevator’s invariable acceleration or by the gravitation of the elevator. Until the year 1916, relativity theory was not available. According the general theory of relativity, the connection bodies had been attributed to the forces of gravity, are elaborated as the power of bodies on the space and time dimensions.
On the grounds on general theory of relativity, Einstein gave reasons for the changes in the orbital movement of planets that were not elaborated previously. He also told about the movement of starlight in the surroundings of a huge body like sun. Einstein became famous in 1919, when this prediction of Einstein was confirmed throughout the eclipse of the sun.
For the remaining lifetime of Einstein, he spent most of time to focus on his theory more. The last attempt of Einstein which was the theory related to the unified field was not completely successful, was an effort to comprehend the physical connections that included all weak, strong and electromagnetic interactions. This was all an adjustment of the geometry of space and time.
It was felt by most of Einstein’s classmates that these attempts were wrong. During 1915 and 1930 a new concept was in progress in the field of physics related to the basic trait of matter, also known as the quantum theory. According to this theory light has a dual character; it has the characteristics of both particle and wave, which Einstein previously considered compulsory. Also the uncertainty principle which says that accuracy in the process of measurement is restricted. In addition to this, it consisted of a new denial, at the basic level, of the idea of exact measurement. However, Einstein was not in favor of such ideas and he remained an opponent of these notions till his death.
World Citizen
Einstein became famous worldwide after 1919. He got many awards and prizes. In 1921, different scientific societies throughout the world awarded Einstein the Nobel Prize in physics. Wherever he travelled globally, that became an event. He was always followed by media. Einstein used media to add his views on society and politics.
Einstein supported pacifism and Zionism movement. While the World War I was taking place Einstein was one of the academics of Germany that criticized Germany’s participation in the war openly. He was attacked many times by Germans because of his continuous support toward Zionists and pacifist’s goals. Einstein’s theories including the relativity theory was criticized publically.
Einstein left Germany and went to United States when Hitler gained power. He got a place in New Jersey at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. On behalf of Zionism world Einstein continued his efforts. Einstein had to abandon pacifist because of the danger face by mankind put forward by the Nazi rule in Germany.
Einstein worked together with many other scientists in 1939 and wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, giving the option of making an atomic bomb and the possibility that the government of Germany was planning such route. As the letter was signed only by Einstein, helped in building the atomic bomb although Einstein had no participation in the whole work process and he was unaware about it.
Einstein participated actively in the international disarmament cause after the war. Einstein maintained his support with Zionism but he rejected the offer to become the president of Israel. In late 1940’s in US Einstein emphasized on the importance of making sacrifices to safeguard the freedom of politics. Einstein left this world on 18th April, 1955 in Princeton.
Some of Einstein’s efforts have been considered impractical. Einstein’s proposals had been very well managed and nicely planned and just like his theories that seemed motivated by the intuition of sound which comprised of wise and cautious observational assessment. Einstein was interested in politics and social issues too but it was science that really caught his interest and he believed that it was only the universe’s nature that mattered in the end. Relativity was found in his writings. He wrote, The Special and General Theory , About Zionism, Builders of the Universe, Why War?, The World as I See It, The Evolution of Physics and Out of My Later Years in the years 1916, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1938 and 1950 respectively. In the year 1987, Einstein’s papers had begun to get published in multiple volumes.
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Albrecht von Haller
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One of the greatest and most influental biologists of the 18th century, Swiss scientst Albrecht von Haller is often credited as the “father of experimental physiology”. His contributions ranged across anatomy, physiology, embryology, botany and poetry.
Early Life and Career:
Born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1708, Albrecht von Haller, as a child prodigy, wrote several metrical translations from Ovid, Horace and Virgil when he was hardly fifteen. He studied the form and function of one organ after the other, launching anatomy as an experimental science, and also enforcing dynamic rules to the study of physiology.
Haller analyzed the irritability of muscle and the sensibility of nerves, studying circulation time and the automatic action of the heart. He gave the first to give detailed explanation of respiration.
His publicaton “Elementa Physialogiae Carports Hamani” (Elements of Physiology, 1757-66) proved to be one of the influential works on the subject. Haller consistently broadened the field of anatomy, relating it to physiology by experimentation, and implemented dynamic rules to complex physiological problems.
The approach of Albrecht von Haller was precise, analytical and objective. He was the first person to discover that only nerves produce sensation and only those parts of the body connected to the nervous system can undergo a sensation. Probably his most notable contribution was the formulation of the method of physiological research.
Later Life and Death:
Albrecht von Haller’s health began substantially declining after 1773. He died on December 12, 1777. He was 69 years old.
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Alessandro Volta
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Alessandro Volta is one of the most famous Italian physicists who is highly regarded for his invention of the electric cell as well as the 1777 discovery of methane.
Early Life and Education:
Volta was raised in a strict Catholic family. He got his early education from a Jesuit school. He was adored by his teachers who thought Volta had all the abilities to become a good Jesuit priest.
Volta was very keen about studying electricity which was in its earliest stages at the time. He envisioned that there is a net neutral condition in a body in which all electrical attractions are neutralized. This effect could be transformed by some external source which later changes the relative configuration of the particles. Volta believed that in such an electrically unstable state, the body gets electrically charged.
Contributions and Achievements:
With this rather weak concept of an electrically charged body, Volta experimented extensively to study electrical induction. He was successful in creating some devices that were able to store electric charge. Subsequently, he gained fame and received grants to visit other countries. He also saw other famous scientists around this time. Volta accepted a teaching job at the University of Pavia where he stayed for about forty years.
Influenced by the efforts of Dc Saussure, Volta developed an interest in atmospheric electricity. He made certain modifications to the electrical instruments made by the Swiss geologist, making them more refined and precise. He came up with methods to measure the so-called “electrical tension”, later named as the volt.
Volta modified another instrument called the eudiometer, which measured the volume and composition of gases. He was successful in finding out that ordinary air contains about 21% of oxygen. The modified version of the instrument also helped Lavoisier on his legendary work regarding the composition of water. Volta found out that the inflammable gas which creates bubbles in marshes was methane, which is now used as a fuel.
Volta initially rejected the Galvani’s idea of animal electricity. When he carried out the experiment himself, he was amazed that the same effect, momentary electric current, which was discovered by Galvani, can be achieved using metals and not dead frogs. Volta made it clear that electric currents could be generated by appropriately connecting metals or wires. Using zinc and copper wires and saline solutions, Volta successfully construced the first electric battery, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important breakthroughs in the history of science and mankind.
Later Life and Death:
Alessandro Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago, Lombardy, Italy (now called “Camnago Volta”). He died on March 5, 1827 at the age of 82.
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Alexander Fleming
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Scottish biologist and inventor Alexander Firming is widely regarded for his 1928 discovery of penicillin, a drug that is used to kill harmful bacteria. His work on immunology, bacteriology, and chemotherapy is considered groundbreaking and highly influential.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6, 1881 to Hugh Fleming and Grace Stirling Morton, Alexander Fleming was the third of the four children. He attended medical school in London, England and graduated in 1906. Fleming assisted in battlefield hospitals in France during World War I (1911-1918), where he observed that some soldiers, despite surviving their initial battlefield wounds, were dying of septicemia or some another infection only after a few years.
Contributions and Achievements:
Once the war was over, Fleming looked for medicines that would heal infections. The antiseptics of World War I were not totally efficient, and they primarily worked on a wound’s surface. Spraying an antiseptic made things even worse if the wound was deep.
Fleming came back to his laboratory in 1928 after a long vacation. He carried out an experiment and left several dishes with several bacteria cultures growing in them. After some time, he observed that some of the dishes were contaminated with a fungus, which ruined his experiment. He was about to discard the dishes, but he noticed that in one dish, the bacteria failed to grow in an area around the fungus.
He successfully isolated the fungus and established it was from the Penicillium group or genus. Fleming made his discovery public in 1929, however to a mixed reaction. While a few doctors thought penicillin, the antibiotic obtained from the Penicillium fungus, might have some importance as a topical antiseptic, the others were skeptical. Fleming was sure that the penicillin could also function inside the body. He performed some experiments to demonstrate that the genus of fungus had germ-killing power, even when it was diluted 800 times. Fleming tried to cultivate penicillin until 1940, but it was hard to grow, and isolating the germ-killing agent was even harder. He was unsure if it would ever work in a proper manner.
Luckily, a German Chemist, Ernst Chain, discovered the process to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing agent in penicillin some time later. Another Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey found out the ways of its mass production. During World War I, the goverments of U.S. and Great Britain funded Florey and Chain, therefore the penicillin almost became the magic spell that cured many diseases. Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Personal Life and Death:
Fleming married his first wife, Sarah, who died in 1949. Their only child, Robert Fleming, went on to become a general medical practitioner. Fleming married for the second time to Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, with whom he worked at St. Mary’s, on 9 April 1953. She also died in 1986.
Fleming died of a heart failure in London in 1955.
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Alexander Graham Bell
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Only few people in this world leave their footprints on the sands of history, and these men of honor never die. One such grand personality is the greatest innovator of all times Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the first practical telephone. His other major inventions include: optical communications, hydrofoils, metal detector and aeronautic.
Early Years of Life
Graham bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He was the only child, of Professor Alexander Melville Bell, out of the three, who didn’t die due to tuberculosis at a young age. He received his early education at home from his father; however he then got admitted to Royal high School, Edinburgh, which he left at the age of 15, due to poor performance.
Bell moved to London to live with his grand father and enrolled at the Western House Academy, Scotland. For further studies he joined University of Edinburgh. His first invention came at the age of 12, when he built a homemade de-husking machine to be used at his neighbor’s mill. In return, he was given a small workshop within the mill which he used to carry out further experiments.
At the age of 23, Bell’s brother’s widow and his parents shifted to Canada, to stay with a family friend. After a short stay there, they purchased a farm near Brantford, where Bell built his own workshop in the carriage house. After setting up his workshop, Bell continued his experiments with electricity and sound based on the work of Helmholtz.
Telephone
By 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding; there was a great need to find an inexpensive way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line.
At that time, Bell had made great progress at both his Boston laboratory as well as at his family home in Canada and his work on harmonic telegraph entered a decisive stage. Bell got financial support from two wealthy patrons but he did not have the basic knowledge to continue with the experiment. He still he did not give up and kept trying.
Bell hired Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer, as his assistant. In 1875, an accident during the experiment led to the sound powered telephone, which was able to transmit voice like sounds. At last, after the patent issue made by Elisha Gray on March 10, 1876, Bell succeeded in making his telephone work.
The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877. Bell company engineers brought about numerous improvements to the telephone making it the most successful product ever.
Bell further carried out his experiments in communication. He came up with the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light, which was a precursor of fiber-optics. He helped the deaf to learn new speech techniques. Altogether he received 18 patents in his name out of which he shared 12 with his collegues.
Final years:
On August 2, 1922 Bell died of diabetes at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. He was buried at the Beinn Bhreagh Mountain.
During his funeral every phone in North America was silenced in honor of the great inventor.
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Alfred Binet
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Alfred Binet, one of the most influential French psychologists and scientists, is known for his extensive research related to the mental capacity of humans. He literally revolutionized the fields of education and psychology, especially in regard to intelligence testing. Binet’s findings were way ahead of his time, and although he did not quite realise the true worth of his contributions, his name is cemented in the world of psychology.
Binet also authored many publications about psychophysics and creativity, including the legendary “L’Année psychologique”, which is still regarded as an important psychology journal.
Early Life and Education:
Born in July 1857, in Nice, France to a physician father and artist mother, Binet’s parents got divorced when he was quite young. He was mostly raised by his mother. At 15, he received several awards for his extraordinary skills in literary composition and translation at the prestigious Louis-le-Grand school. Binet took law and medicine as his favorite subjects. He acquired a degree in law but chosen not to pursue a career in any of these subjects.
While in his mid-twenties, Binet was given permission as a reader at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. There, he studied about the developments and trends in psychology. He was inspired by the works of Theodule Ribot and John Stuart Mill, and that boosted his enthusiasm for sensory and associationistic psychology.
Contributions and Achievements:
Binet met Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital in the early 1880s. He extensively studied, researched and published his works on hypnosis and hysteria. While asserting a controversial theory, he gradually comprehended the nature of suggestibility on psychological experimentation.
In 1884 he got married to Laure Balbiani, the daughter of the famous embryologist Edouard-Gérard Balbiani. They had two daughters together, Madeleine and Alice. Binet gave up his position at the Salpêtrière in 1890. He carried out home experiments with his daughters and observed their behavior and responses in a systematic approach. Subsequently, he published his work explaining these experiments that dealt with individual differences and measuring intelligence. His daughter’s ability to differentiate the relative size of collections premised conservation studies by Jean Piaget.
Binet volunteered at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Sorbonne, where he was made a director in 1894. He worked with Henry Heaunis and Theodore Simon to lay down the psychology journal “L’Année psychologique”. The journal is widely considered to be one of the most important contributions in the history of psychology.
The approaches of Binet’s experimental research also addressed schoolchildren. French physical chemist Victor Henri briefly helped him with the investigations of visual memory and research regarding individual psychology. He advocated that the intelligence of a person, and the individual differences in intelligence of more than one persons, could well be measured. He became a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child. Binet also performed his services to a Commission on the Education of Retarded Children for the French government. The landmark development of mothods related to the intelligence quotient (IQ) tests also took place during this time. In an effort to find out the inadequacies that influence mental subnormality, Binet and Simon devised an instrument.
The research emphasis of Alfred Binet on the variable intelligence of children offered a fundamental model for measuring and understanding the individual differences of both typically and atypically developing children.
Later Life and Death:
Alfred Binet also studied human sexual behavior (he coined the term “erotic fetishism”) and the palm reading abilities of the famous Paris chiromancer Valentine Dencausse. He died on October 18, 1911.
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Alfred Kinsey
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Widely considered as the most important sex researcher in the history, American biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote two influential books on the nature of human sexuality: “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”. Kinsey was also the founder of the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (now named after him) at Indiana University.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in June 1894, Alfred Kinsey’s father taught engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. Kinsey graduated from Columbia High School, Hoboken, and his father insisted him to acquire a degree in engineering at Stevens. After two years, Kinsey recognized that engineering was not his passion, so he was transferred to Bowdoin College, Maine to study biology.
Contributions and Achievements:
Kinsey finally got a B.S. in biology and psychology in 1916. After that, he was listed in a doctoral program in zoology at Harvard University, where he got his Sc.D. in 1919. He took a teaching position in the department of zoology at Indiana University where he remained for the remainder of his career.
Kinsey had already become a big name in entomology by the mid-1930s. His research on gall wasps is considered as the pivotal point in the field of entomology. Meanwhile his interest in human sexuality bore fruit when, in 1938, the Indiana University publication, Daily Student, issued an editorial calling for extensive information about and testing for venereal diseases, a serious health problem that had then stormed the nation.
Kinsey requested permission to design a noncredit course on marriage with about hundred enrolled participants, in which several issues pertaining to sexuality were addressed. Soon he gave up his research on gall wasps and concentrated fully on human sexuality. His projects gained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Research Council in 1942 so established the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana. He conducted interviews from 5,300 males and 5,940 females on which he based his groundbreaking works.
His publication about male sexuality was issued out in 1948 which sold over a half million copies. The female version, one the other hand, was printed five years later, however to a less warm reception.
Later Life and Death:
The research work of Alfred Kinsey almost ended after the release of “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”. He had allegedly offended thousands of Americans and the U.S. congress exerted pressure on Dean Rusk, the incharge of the Rockefeller Foundation, to unilaterally terminate the financial support of the institute.
After failing to raise funding from other means, Kinsey unfortunately gave up his extraordinary efforts that revolutionized sexuality research. The institute, however, survived and is still functioning as an independent organization under Indiana University.
Alfred Kinsey died on August 25, 1956 of a heart ailment and pneumonia. He was 62 years old.
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Alfred Nobel
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The foundation of the Nobel Prize-that has been honoring people from all around the world for their great accomplishments in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace-was laid by none other than Alfred Nobel. He was a Swedish scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist. He was a great genius who invented dynamite and many other explosives. He also constructed companies and laboratories in more than 20 countries all over the world.
Early Life:
Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the third out of the four sons to the Swedish family. His father, Immanuel Nobel, an engineer and a prosperous arms manufacturer, encouraged his four sons to pursue mechanical fields. When Alfred was just nine years old, his family moved to Saint Petersburg in 1842, where his father started a “torpedo” works. Here young Alfred received his early education by private tutors. He studied chemistry with Professor Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin.
At the age of 18 he traveled to United States where he spent four years studying chemistry and also worked for sometime under John Ericsson. During this time he also went to Paris where he was first introduced to nitroglycerin, a volatile, explosive liquid first made by an Italian scientist, Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. With the end of the war his father’s weapon’s business collapsed leaving the family poor. As a result the family had to rely on the earnings of his mother, Andriette Ahlsell Nobel who worked at the grocery store.
Contributions and Achievements:
After the family business got bankrupt, Alfred devoted himself to the study of explosives and sought a way to make the aggressive explosion of liquid nitroglycerin somehow more controllable. In 1863 he succeeded in exploding nitroglycerin from a distance with a gunpowder charge, and two years later he patented the mercury fulminate detonator which is a critical component for the development of high explosives. Nobel then built up factories in Hamburg and Stockholm, and soon New York and California.
Unfortunately his name became controversial after many serious accidents in the transit and use of his intrinsically unstable product, including an 1864 explosion at their factory in Heleneborg in Stockholm that killed Nobel’s younger brother Emil, among other casualties.
In order to improve the image of his business, Nobel put all his efforts to produce a safer explosive. In 1866 he discovered that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent still substance like kieselguhr (porous clay) it became safer and more convenient to handle. He called this mixture dynamite and received a patent in 1867. The same year he demonstrated his explosive for the first time at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England. After a few months he also developed a more powerful explosive by the name of ‘Gelignite’, (also called blasting gelatin). He made this by absorbing nitroglycerin into wood pulp and sodium or potassium nitrate.
Later Life:
During November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and established the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. The executors of his will formed the Nobel Foundation to fulfill his wishes. The statutes of the foundation were formally adopted on June 29, 1900 and the first prize was awarded in 1901.
This great man died of a stroke on 10 December 1896 at Sanremo, Italy and was buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.
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Alfred Wegener
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The name of the German geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener is synonymous with the theory of continental drift. He was the first person to provide significant evidence for a consistent and logical hypothesis that realized a broad variety of natural phenomena.
Early Life and Education:
Wegener was born in Berlin to an evangelical minister. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Innsbruck, and Berlin and acquired a doctorate in astronomy. As an student, he dreamed of exploring the wonders of Greenland. Wegener also had much interest in the relatively unknown science of meteorology.
Contributions and Achievements:
While preparing for an expedition to the Arctic, Wegener practised backbreaking exercise. He also mastered kiting and ballooning for taking better weather observations. Even in 1906, he achieved a world record of an uninterrupted flight for 52 hours, with his brother Kurt.
Subsequently, Wegener was selected as a meteorologist to a Danish expedition to northeastern Greenland. After his return, he took a job as a junior teacher of meteorology at the University of Marburg. In a few years, he published his first textbook on the thermodynamics of the atmosphere. He also went to a second expedition to Greenland in 1912 with the Danish expeditioner J. P Koch. This trip turned out to be the longest crossing of the icecap ever completed by foot.
Alfred Wegener got married to Else Köppen, the daughter of another famous meteorologist, W. P. Köppen. After the death of his father-in-law, Wegener succeeded Mr. Köppen as the director of the Meteorological Research Department of the Marine Observatory at Hamburg. He also accepted a teaching position of meteorology and geophysics at the University of Graz, Austria in 1926.
Wegener lost his life in 1930 while conducting a third expedition to Greenland in 1930, reportedly due to a severe heart attack. Last seen alive on his 50th birthday in 1930, he was hailed as one of the greatest arctic explorers ever and a groundbreaking meteorologist. Today, Wegener is widely regarded as the most important proponent of the theory of continental drift.
Much of the evidence that made Wegener put forward the theory was related to the continents bordering the South Atlantic. Besides the implicative ‘jigsaw fit’, there was a paleontological evidence for a possible direct connection between them. However, the popular belief of the incidental sinking of a land bridge beneath the ocean was rejected mainly due to the principle of isostasy, which says that the higher topography of the Earth is compensated by the presence of mostly irreversible continental crustal rocks. Several geologic links between the continents were also found that were more credibly made clear by former contiguity.
Wegener also provided a few paleoclimatological arguments related to both polar wandering and continental drift. Regrettably, he was unsuccessful in presenting a credible mechanism for continental drift, one of the main reasons his views were ignored and criticized until the plate tectonics revolution of the late 1960s.
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Amedeo Avogadro
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The Italian scientist, Amedeo Avogadro is most famous for his contributions to theory of moles and molecular weight, including what is known as Avogadro’s law. In respect of his contributions to the molecular theory, the number of molecules in one mole was renamed Avogadro’s number.
Avogadro’s Life:
Amedeo was born in Turin, Italy, on 9th August, 1776 in a noble family of lawyers. His father, Count Filippo Avogadro was a well-known lawyer and civil servant. Amedeo followed his father’s footsteps and earned a doctorate of law in 1796 and began to practice. Soon after, he developed interest in natural philosophy and mathematics. Despite his successful legal career he left it to teach mathematics and physics at liceo (high school) in Vercelli in 1809.
In 1820 he was appointed as the professor of mathematical physics at the University of Turin. Unluckily, his post was short lived, since political turmoil suppressed the chair and Avogadro lost his job by July, 1822. The post was however reestablished in 1832, and Avogadro took his position back in 1834. Here he remained until his retirement in 1850.
Not much is known about Amedeo’s private life and his political activity; despite his unpleasant aspect (at least as depicted in the rare images found), he was known to be dedicated to a sober life and a religious man. He was happily married and blessed with six sons.
Avogadro’s Contributions to the Scientific Field:
In 1811 Avogadro theorized that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules. He further established that relative molecular weights of any two gases are similar to the ratio of the densities of the two gases under the constant conditions of temperature and pressure. His suggestion is now known as the Avogadro’s principle. He also cleverly reasoned that simple gases were not formed of solitary atoms but were instead compound molecules of two or more atoms. (Avogadro did not actually use the word atom; at the time the words atom and molecule were used almost interchangeably. He talked about three kinds of “molecules,” including an “elementary molecule”—what we would call an atom.) Thus Avogadro was able to resolve the confusion that Dalton and others had encountered regarding atoms and molecules at that time.
Avogadro’s findings were almost completely neglected until it was forcefully presented by Stanislao Cannizarro at the Karlsruhe Conference in 1860. He demonstrated that Avogadro’s Principle was not only helpful to determine molar masses, but also, indirectly, atomic masses. Avogadro’s work was mainly rejected before due to earlier established conviction that chemical combination occurred due to the similarity between unlike elements. After the electrical discoveries of Galvani and Volta, this similarity was in general attributed to the attraction between unlike charges.
The number of molecules in one mole is now called Avogadro’s number taking the value of 6.0221367 x 1023. The number was not actually determined by Avogadro himself. It was given his name due to his outstanding contribution to the development of molecular theory. This Italian scientist died on July 9th, 1856 in Turin.
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Anders Celsius
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Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer who is known for inventing the Celsius temperature scale. Celsius also built the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1740, the oldest astronomical observatory in Sweden.
Early Life and Career:
Born in Uppsala, Sweden, Anders Celsius was raised a Lutheran. His father, Nils Celsius, was an astronomy professor. Celsius completed his education in his home town; north of Stockholm. He showed an extraordinary talent in mathematics from childhood. He studied at Uppsala University where, like his father, he joined as a professor of astronomy in 1730.
Contributions and Achievements:
In his efforts to build a astronomical observatory in Sweden, Celsius visited several of the famous European astronomy sites from 1732 to 1734. At the time, English and French astronomers debated about the actual shape of the earth. To resolve this dispute, teams were sent to the “ends” of the world to assess the precise local positions. Pierre Louis de Maupertuis headed the expedition to the north and Celsius joined as his assistant.
The expedition to Lapland, the northernmost part of Sweden, continued from 1736 to 1737. Newton’s theory about the flattening of the earth at the poles was finally confirmed in 1744 after all measurements were taken.
Celsius went back to Uppsala after the expedition. He is considered to be the first astronomer to analyze the changes of the earth’s magnetic field at the time of a northern light and assess the brightness of stars with measuring tools.
At Uppsala Observatory, Celsius favored the division of the temperature scale of a mercury thermometer at air pressure of 760mm of mercury into 100°C, where 100 was taken as the freezing point and 0 as the boiling point of water.
Due to the elaborated fixation of the measuring environment and methods, this account was thought to be more precise compared to that of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit and Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur.
Celsius was an avid admirer of the the Gregorian calendar, which was adapted in Sweden in 1753, just nine years after his death. “Degree Celsius”, the unit of temperature interval, has been named after this brilliant scientist.
Later Life and Death:
Celsius became the secretary of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala in 1725 where he remained until his death. He died of tuberculosis in 1744.
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Andre Marie Ampère
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The French physicist and mathematician, Andre Marie Ampère is mainly credited for laying down the basis of electrodynamics (now known as electromagnetism). He was the first person to demonstrate that a magnetic field is generated when two parallel wires are charged with electricity and is also known for inventing the astatic needle, a significant component of the contemporary astatis galvanometer.
Education and Career:
Andre Marie was born in Lyon, France on 20 January 1775. He grew up at the family property at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon. His father, Jean-Jacques Ampère was an affluent businessman and local government official. Young Ampère spent most of his time reading in the library of his family home, and developed a great interest in history, geography, literature, philosophy and the natural sciences. His father gave him Latin lessons and encouraged him to pursue his passion for mathematics.
At a very young age he rapidly began to develop his own mathematical ideas and also started to write a thesis on conic sections. When he was just thirteen, Ampère presented his first paper to the Academie de Lyon. This paper consisted of the solution to the problem of constructing a line of the same length as an arc of a circle. His method involved the use of infinitesimals, but unfortunately his paper was not published because he had no knowledge of calculus then. After some time Ampère came across d’Alembert’s article on the differential calculus in the Encyclopedia and felt the urge to learn more about mathematics.
Ampère took few lessons in the differential and integral calculus from a monk in Lyon, after which he began to study the works of Euler and Bernoulli. He also acquired a copy of the 1788 edition of Lagrange’s Mecanique analytique, which he studied very seriously.
From 1797 to 1802 Ampère earned his living as a mathematics tutor and later he was employed as the professor of physics and chemistry at Bourg Ecole Centrale. In 1809 he got appointed as the professor of mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique, a post he held until 1828. He was also appointed to a chair at Universite de France in 1826 which he held until his death.
In 1796 Ampère met Julie Carron, and got married in 1799.
Contribution:
During 1820, the Danish physicist, H.C Ørsted accidentally discovered that a magnetic needle is acted on by a voltaic current – a phenomenon establishing a relationship between electricity and magnetism. Ampère on becoming influenced by Ørsted’s discovery performed a series of experiments to clarify the exact nature of the relationship between electric current-flow and magnetism, as well as the relationships governing the behavior of electric currents in various types of conductors. Moreover he demonstrated that two parallel wires carrying electric currents magnetically attract each other if the currents are in the same direction and repel if the currents are in opposite directions.
On the basis of these experiments, Ampère formulated his famous law of electromagnetism known as Ampère’s law. This law is mathematical description of the magnetic force between two electrical currents.
His findings were reported in the Académie des Sciences a week after Ørsted’s discovery. This laid the foundation of electrodynamics.
Death:
Ampère died at Marseille on 10 June, 1836 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him.
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Andre Marie Ampère
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The Flemish physician Andreas Vesahus (also Andreas Vesal, André Vesalio or Andre Vesale) is widely considered to be the founder of the modern science of anatomy. He was a major figure of the Scientific Revolution. Vesahus’s book “De Humani Commis Fabrica” (On the Structure of the Human Body) is one of the most important works about human anatomy.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Brussels, Belgium in a family of physicians and pharmacists, Andreas Vesalius’s father was court apothecary to Charles V of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor. Vesalius learned medicine from the University of Louvain and the University of Paris. He later obtained his medical degree from the University of Padua in 1537. After his graduation, Vesalius became very interested in anatomy.
Contributions and Achievements:
During that time, scholars thought that the work of the ancient Greek physician Galen was an authority when it came to human anatomy. As Greek and Roman laws had disallowed the dissection of human beings, Galen had evidently reasoned out analogies related to human anatomy after studying pigs and apes. Vesalius knew that it was absolutely essential to analyze real corpses to study the human body.
Vesalius resurrected the use of human dissection, regardless of the strict ban by the Catholic Church. He soon began to realize that Galen’s work was an evalution of the dissection of animals, not human beings. Vesalius once demonstrated that men and women have the same number of ribs, contrary to the biblical story of Adam and Eve which tells that Eve was brought into existence from one of Adam’s ribs, and that men had one less rib as compared to women. Vesalius proved that belief wrong.
Vesalius published his influential book aboout human anatomy “De Humani Commis Fabrica” (The Structure of The Human Body) in 1543. It contained over 200 anatomical illustrations. The work was the earliest known precise presentation of human anatomy. It disgraced several of Galen’s doctrines, for instance the Greek belief that blood has the ability to flow between the ventricles of the heart, and that the mandible, or jaw bone, was made up of more than one bones. Particularly, his visual representation of the muscles was found to be very accurate. The seven volumes of the book laid down a solid understanding of human anatomy as the groundwork for all medical practice and curing.
Later Life and Death:
Andreas Vesalius was appointed as a court physician to Charles V of Spain and his family. Vesalius’s bravery and intelligence, however, made many conservative physicians and Catholic clergy his worst enemies. They charged him of being involved in body snatching.
He was accused of murder in 1564 for the dissection of a Spanish noble who, his disputants said, was still alive. Vesalius was also accused of atheism. King Philip II, however, reduced his sentence to a pilgrimage of penitence to the Holy Land. Regrettably on his way back, his vessel was badly harmed by a storm. Vesalius was rescued from the sea, but he died shortly thereafter.
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Antoine Lavoisier
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Widely credited as the “father of modern chemistry”, Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist and a central figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution. He formulated a theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and co-wrote the modern system for the nomenclature of chemical substances.
Early Life and Education:
After having a formal education in law and literature, Lavoisier studied science under some of the most well-known figures of the day. He helped develop the first geological map of France and the main water supply of Paris in 1769 at a young age of 25. This earned him a membership of the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1768. The same year he managed to purchase a part-share in the ‘tax farm’, a private tax collection agency.
Contributions and Achievements:
Lavoisier started working on such processes as combustion, respiration and the calcination or oxidation of metals in 1772. His influential research helped discard the old prevailing theories which dealt with absurd combustion principle called Phlogiston. He gave modern explanations to these processes. His concepts about the nature of acids, bases and salts were more logical and methodical. Lavoisier introduced a chemical element in its modern sense and demonstarted how it should be implemented by composing the first modern list of the chemical elements.
His revolutionary approaches helped many chemists realize the fundamental processes of science and implement the scientific method. This proved to be the turning point in scientific and industrial chemistry. Lavoisier was hired by the Government to continue his research into a number of practical questions with a chemical bias, for instance the production of starch and the distillation of phosphorus.
Louis XVI arranged the Gunpowder Commission in 1775 to ameliorate the supply and quality of gunpowder and cope up with the inadequacies which had affected France’s war efforts. Lavoisier, as a leader of the Commission, presented its reports and monitored its implementation. He dramatically increased the output so that France could even export gun powder, which turned out to be a major factor in France’s war effort in the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
Lavoisier also applied his scientific principles to agriculture when he bought some land at Frenchines, near Blois, central France. His efforts bore fruit after short span of time and he described his observations in the 1788 book “Results of some agricultural experiments and reflections on their relation to political economy”, which is considered highly influential in agriculture and economics.
Later Life and Death:
Regardless of his extraordinary services to the nation and to mankind, Antoine Lavoisier’s connections to the fax agency proved to be fatal to him, for he died in May 1794 during the reign of terror. The Revolutionaries guillotined some 28 tax farmers, including Lavoisier and his father-in-law.
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Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
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While living organisms have been extensively studied for centuries, the discovery that organisms are made up of cells is comparatively new to the world. One of the reasons behind this could be the absence of modern technology laboratory equipment. The 1595 invention of the microscope made the cells visible for the first time.
The Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, commonly known as “the Father of Microbiology”, was one of the first microscopists in history. He committed himself to the discovery and research related to the thus-far invisible world of biology, notable among them the discovery of protozoa and the first-ever description of red blood cell.
Early Life and Education:
Born on October 24, 1632 in Delft, The Netherlands, van Leeuwenhoek was entirely self-taught and did not receive a formal degree. His primitive approach, dismissing any type of scientific dogma, made him think freely, and directed him only towards his own passion and interests.
Contributions and Achievements:
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a salesman by profession who traded household linen. He often took magnifying glasses to judge the quality of cloth. Leeuwenhoek employed his own lenses of diamond shavings, which he got from Delft-diamond cutters. He constructed his own microscopes which were basically simple instruments consisting of a single lens. The product, containing two metal plates set to each other with a fixed lens in between, was however with high precision, and able to perform magnifications of around 300x.
The object intended to be magnified was put on top of a movable metal holder, and focusing took place by way of a screw provided at the back. The whole thing was less than 10 cm in size.
Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes were actually very strong magnifying glasses, having considerable similarities with the composite microscopes of the time. It was Leeuwenhoek’s passion, skill and the quality to illuminating the objects properly that made him discover the microscopic objects. He analyzed things like tooth plaque, stagnant water, baker’s yeast, sperm and blood.
Reinier de Graaf, a Delft physician, brought van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society, where he published his uniquely detailed findings in Dutch, consisting of only 200 letters.
Later Life and Death:
Leeuwenhoek gained worldwide fame with these observations, however he wrote in 1716 that he “did not strive for fame, but [was] driven by an inner craving for knowledge”. This great scientist died on August 16, 1723 at the age of 90.
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Antonio Meucci
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Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (1808-1889) was an Italian inventor and was as well an associate and friend to Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian nationalist. Many people would say and question that it was not Alexander Graham Bell who first invented telephone but Antonio Meucci did. He is known best as a voice communication apparatus developer which numerous sources count and consider as the first used telephone.
In his home at State Island, N.Y., Meucci set up a voice communication link that connected its laboratory to his bedroom located in the second floor. He then proposed a patent caveat to the US Patent Office for his telephonic device in 1871, but electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound was not mentioned in his patent caveat. Rather, Alexander Graham Bell was endowed a patent in 1876 for the electromagnetic transmission of vocal sound in his telephonic device by wavelike electric current.
Early Life and Academic Background
On April 13 1808, an inventor was born at Via dei Serragli 44 in the San Frediano region of Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which is now found in the Italian Republic. Antonio Meucci was the eldest child of the nine children to Domenica Pepi and Amatis Meucci. Antonio’s mother was mainly the housekeeper and his father at times local police member and government clerk. Unfortunately, there were four out of the nine of Meucci’s siblings that did not survive or get through childhood.
In November 1821, Meucci at 15 was admitted to Florence Academy of Fine Arts where he became the youngest student who took up mechanical and chemical engineering. Two years later and due to insufficient funds, he stopped full-time schooling. The financial crisis did not stop him from continuing his studies by working part-time as an assistant gate-keeper and customs official for the government of Florentine. Later on, Antonio Meucci became employed as a stage technician at the Teatro della Pergola and assisted Artemio Canovetti.
In the year 1834, Meucci put up a kind of acoustic telephone to be able to communicate between the control room and the stage at the Teatro della Pergola. This type of telephone was built basing on the pipe telephone principles utilized on ships and still currently functions.
On August 7, 1837 Meucci married Esterre Mochi, a costume designer who happened to work at the same theatre where he worked part time.
From 1833 to 1834, Antonio Meucci was imprisoned for the period of three months with Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi because he was accused to be a part of the conspiracy which involved the Italian unification movement.
Career in Science
Meucci and his wife immigrated to Cuba in 1835 where he accepted a job at which was at that time, the greatest theater in the Americas. In Havana, he created a water purification system and he reconstructed the Gran Teatro.
As Meucci’s contract with the Governor expired in 1848, he was asked by a pal’s doctors to take a job at Franz Anton Mesmer’s therapy systems on rheumatic patients. That made him developed a renowned method of using electric shocks to give remedy to illness and consequently experimentally developed a piece of equipment in which one could use to hear the inarticulate voice of a person. The device was called by him as “telegrafo parlante” or talking telegraph. The fame which reached Samuel F. B. Morse in the U.S. inspired Meucci to make inventing his way of living.
On April 13, 1850, Meucci and his wife moved to United States and lived in the Clifton borough of Staten Island, New York. Meucci then decided that they would settle down there for the rest of their lives. In Staten Island, Meucci helped numerous countrymen obligated to the Italian Unification movement and who had broken out political persecution. He spent his savings in Cuba to build a tallow candle factory which became the first of its kind in the U.S. to intentionally give jobs to the numerous Italian exiles. However, in 1854, his wife Ester became an invalid because of rheumatoid arthritis. Despite it, Antonio Meucci continued with his experiments.
Meucci studied the electromagnetic voice communication principles for a lot of years and in 1856, he was able to finally recognize his dream of broadcasting his voice through wires. He set up a telephone-life piece of equipment in his house to be able to communicate with his, that time, ill wife. Several notes of Meucci supposedly written in 1857 give description to the basic principles of electromagnetic transmission of sound and voice or the telephone.
Meucci constructed allegedly the electromagnetic telephones. He structured a working model, supposedly an electromagnetic, but was not an acoustic version, which he made a way of making a connection with his basement laboratory and second floor bedroom. More importantly, he built this to be in touch with his wife. Between the years 1856 and 1870, Meucci was able to develop more than 30 various types of telephones basing on this prototype.
Meucci intended to pursue on developing his prototypes yet he lacked budget to support it and his candle factory became bankrupt. He looked for some Italian capitalists who are very willing to back up financially the project but because of the military expeditions in Italy, investment was unstable for everyone in the country. What Meucci did was publish his invention in the New York Italian-language newspaper even though no copy of these reports has been found.
Meucci did not give up his invention because on December 12, 1871, he was able to set up an agreement with Sereno G. P. Breguglia Tremeschin, Angelo Antonio Tremeschin, and Angelo Zilio Gandi to represent the Telettrofono Company. He was then funded to apply for full patency. His lawyer then submitted a caveat entitled “Sound Telegraph” on December 28, 1871 in the US Patent Office.
Despite all these, the caveat submitted by Meucci was not granted patent because it did not describe an electric telephone. They went on trial and Meucci’s invention and work, like several other inventors during his time, was structured mostly on the basis of earlier acoustic principles. Even though earlier experiments were presented as evidence, the final case was dropped eventually due to his death on October 18, 1889.
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Archimedes
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One of the greatest names from olden days that will always be remembered is that of Archimedes who was a great mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. His outstanding contributions in the field of science brought about significant changes to the scientific world. Some of his notable contributions to the field of math and science include the finding and development of the laws and principles of mechanics, buoyancy, hydrostatics, specific gravity, the lever, and the pulley; in addition, he discovered ways to measure a circle and the volume of a solid.
Early Days:
Archimedes was born in 287 BC in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. His father, Phidias was an astronomer. Archimedes is said to be a relative of Hiero II, the then king of Syracuse and presumably lived a royal life. He spent most of his life in Syracuse except for the time he went to Alexandria, Egypt to receive his education. Belonging to a Greek family young Archimedes was always encouraged to get education and be knowledgeable. Besides math and science his other major interests included: poetry, politics, astronomy, music, art and military tactics.
Opportunity came when he got the chance to continue his studies in a famous school of mathematics founded by Euclid. Here he got the pleasure to study astronomy, physics and mathematics with other geniuses and big minds of that era. Under the guidance of two great mathematicians and scholars: Conon of Samos, and Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Archimedes grew up to be a great scientist.
Famous Discoveries and Inventions
The Story of the Golden Crown
Archimedes was given the task to determine the purity of the gold crown made for King Hiero II. In the process he discovered the way to find out the density of gold and successfully proved that silver was mixed with the gold crown. This is how he devised a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape.
The Archimedes Screw
Another great discovery by Archimedes is his famous ‘Archimedes Screw’. This is still a famous tool in Egypt used for irrigation. This screw was mainly invented to remove water from the hold of large ship; however it is also helpful for handling light, loose materials such as ash, grain, sand etc.
The Claw of Archimedes
Also known as ‘the ship shaker’, The Claw of Archimedes is a great weapon designed by Archimedes for the purpose of defending his home city Syracuse.
Contribution to Mathematics
Archimedes is also famous for his contributions to the filed of mathematics. These include: the use infinitesimals in a way that is similar to modern integral calculus, the mathematical prove of the formula for area of a circle, the solution to the problem as an infinite geometric series etc.
Death
Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC when he was killed by a Roman soldier. The Roman soldier killed him while he busy working and experimenting on his ideas.
This great scientist and mathematician passed away but his contributions led the world towards scientific development and betterment of the human race.
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Aristotle
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When we talk about Philosophy, the first name that comes into our mind is that of Aristotle (384 BC- 322 BC) who followed a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live in.
Early Life and Contributions:
One of the prominent names of history, this famous personality was a Greek philosopher, was born in Stagira in North Greece, the son of Nichomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. He was trained first in medicine, and then in 367BC was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato. He stayed at Plato’s Academy until about 347. He has also been under the supervision of Alexander the Great.
Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in his time as his writings constitute a first at creating a broad system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Besides this his piece of work also includes other subjects, including physics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, government and ethics.
Though a bright pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato’s teachings, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the Academy. After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent some time traveling, and possibly studying biology, in Asia Minor and its islands. He returned to Macedonia in 338 to tutor Alexander the Great, after Alexander conquered Athens, Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a school of his own, known as the Lyceum. After Alexander’s death, Athens revolted against Macedonian rule, and Aristotle’s political situation became unstable. Therefore to keep away from being put to death, he fled to the island of Euboea, where he died soon after.
Legacy:
Now talking about Aristotle’s work and achievements, he was very versatile and his views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only for a few times. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic. A complete account of Aristotle’s contributions to science and philosophy is beyond the scope of this exhibit, but a brief summary can be made, whereas Aristotle’s teacher Plato had located ultimate reality in Ideas or eternal forms, knowable only through reflection and reason but on the other hand Aristotle saw final authenticity in physical matter, predictable through experience.
Matter has the potential to assume whatever form a sculptor gives it, and a seed or embryo has the potential to grow into a living plant or animal form. In living creatures, the form was known with the soul, plants had the lowest kinds of souls, animals had higher souls which could feel, and humans alone had rational, reasoning souls. In turn, animals could be classified by their way of life, their actions, or, most importantly, by their parts.
Though Aristotle’s work in zoology was not without faults, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time, and remained the vital authority for many centuries after his death. His observations on the anatomy of octopus, cuttlefish, crustaceans, and many other marine invertebrates are extremely correct, with amazing results. He described the embryological development of a chick, and distinguished whales and dolphins from fish, plus he also noticed that some sharks give birth to live young. Aristotle’s books also discuss his detailed observations that he has been doing throughout his life.
We all have come across the classification of animals into different types and the readers will be amazed to know that Aristotle’s classification of animals grouped together is used in a much broader sense than present-day biologists use. He divided the animals into two types, those with blood, and those without blood (or at least without red blood). These distinctions correspond closely to our distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates. The blooded animals, corresponding to the vertebrates, whereas the bloodless animals were classified as cephalopods (such as the octopus), crustaceans, insects, shelled animals and zoophytes also known as plant-animals.
Aristotle’s thoughts on earth sciences can be found in his thesis Meteorology, the word today means the study of weather, but Aristotle used the word in a much broader sense, covering, as he put it, “all the affections we may call common to air and water, and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts.” In it he discussed the nature of the earth and the oceans and explained the entire hydrologic cycle. The sun moving as it does sets up processes of change, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapor and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth.
He has also discussed winds, earthquakes, thunder, lightning, rainbows, meteors, comets, and the Milky Way. Aristotle was of the view that the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations die and are ruined.
In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a deep influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His followers called him Ille Philosophus (The Philosopher), or “the master of them that know,” and many accepted every word of his writings, or at least every word that did not contradict the Bible as eternal truth. All aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today.
Despite the far-reaching appeal that Aristotle’s works have traditionally enjoyed, today modern scholarship questions a considerable portion of the Aristotelian quantity as genuinely Aristotle’s own. Aristotle is said to have written 150 philosophical treatises. The 30 that survive touch on a huge range of philosophical problems, from biology and physics to morals to aesthetics to politics. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues, it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have endure but whatever has lasted is still a source of inspiration for the learners and will continue to be.
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Arnold Orville Beckman
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American chemist, musician, college professor, industrialist and philanthropist, Arnold Orville Beckman is known for his instruments such as the electronic pH meter (a device for measuring acidity) and a variable resistance device called a Helipot®, which developed the study and understanding of human biology. His invention of the pH meter led to the formation of Beckman Instruments. He also funded the first silicon transistor company, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley.
Early Life, Education and Career:
Born in Cullom, Illinois on April 10, 1900, Beckman was the son of a blacksmith. His interest in science developed at the age of nine, when he found a chemistry textbook in the attic and began doing the experiments. He also became interested in music at a young age. While in his teens and during his college days, Beckman played piano forming his own dance band and also accompanied the silent movies at the local theater to help finance his family and education.
Beckman attended the University of Illinois, where in 1922 he completed his graduation in chemical engineering and the following year his masters in physical chemistry. He started a PhD program at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 1924, but decided to return to New York and his fiancée, Mabel Meinzer. They married in 1925 and returned in Beckman’s Model T to California, where Beckman completed his PhD in photochemistry from Caltech in 1928. The same year he became a member of the faculty there and taught chemistry from 1929 to 1940.
Beckman’s interest in electronics and his ability in designing measuring instruments made him very popular within the chemistry department. With the approval of Robert Millikan, Caltech’s president, Beckman began accepting outside consulting work. One of the clients, Sunkist was having problems. He wanted to know what the acidity of the product was at any given time, and the methods then in use, such as litmus paper, were not working well. Beckman built the first commercially successful electronic pH meter (originally called acidimeter) in 1935. Beckman’s rechristened National Technical Laboratories (NTL) began promoting the acidimeter through scientific-supply catalogs.
His direct involvement with his company spanned a period of almost fifty years. He continued with inventing and building scientific instruments, including the Beckman DU ultraviolet spectrophotometer (1940) and the Beckman IR-1 infrared–visible spectrophotometer (1942). His company changed its name in 1950 to Beckman Instruments, Inc. After he retired in 1983, Beckman focused on charity. He established several foundations and contributed huge amounts of dollars to scientific study and education.
He was given esteemed honors and awards for his accomplishments. In 1987 he became the 65th inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, OH, and in 2004 he earned its Lifetime Achievement Award. In1988 he won the National Medal of Technology. The following year the former American President, George H. W. Bush presented Beckman the National Medal of Science Award.
He died on May 18, 2004 at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, CA.
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Arthur Eddington
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Sir Arthur Eddington was an eminent English astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He is noted for his grounbreaking research work in astrophysics. Being the first person to investigate the motion, internal structure and evolution of stars, Eddington is widely considered to be one of the greatest astronomers of all time.
Early Life and Education:
Born on December 28, 1882 in Kendal, Cumbria, Arthur Eddington’s father was the head of a local school. Eddington was a bright student and he won an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating three years later, he accepted a teaching position, and after a few months, Eddington became the Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Contributions and Achievements:
Eddington visited Malta in 1909 to find out the longitude of the geodetic station of the place. He also visited Brazil as the head of the eclipse expedition. He became the Plumian Professor of Astronomy in Cambridge in 1913, where he taught for about 31 years.
He published his first book, “Stellar Movements and the structure of the Universe”, in 1914. It laid the groundwork for scientific exposition. “The Internal Construction of the Stars”, another work by Eddington was published in 1926, which still remains one of the best-selling books about astronomy. His “Mathematical Theory of Relativity” was the earliest work in English language that explained the mathematical details of Einstein’s theory of gravitation.
Eddington discovered in 1926 that the inward gravitational pressure of a star must maintain the outward radiation and gas pressure to remain in equilibrium. He also demonstrated that there was an upper limit on the mass of a star. Eddington discovered mass-luminosity relationship, which implies that the the size of a star is directly proportional to its luminosity, making the mass of a star to be decided upon its intrinsic brightness.
In “Fundamental Theory”, which was published after his death, Eddington introduced his calculations of many of the constant of nature, particularly the recession velocity constant of the external galaxies, the ratio of the gravitational force to the electrical force between a proton and an electron, and the number of particles in the universe.
Later Life and Death:
Arthur Eddington became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1906, and eight years later, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914. He was knighted in 1938.
Eddington died in Cambridge, England on November 22, 1944 after an unsuccessful surgical operation. Eddington Memorial Scholarship and Eddington Medal were established after his death, in his honor.
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Avicenna
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Also popularly known as ‘Avicenna’, Ibn Sina was indeed a true polymath with his contributions ranging from medicine, psychology and pharmacology to geology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and philosophy. He was also a poet and an Islamic scholar and theologian. His most important contribution to medical science was his famous book al-Qanun, known as the “Canon” in the West. This book is an immense encyclopedia of medicine including over a million words and like most Arabic books is richly divided and subdivided. It comprises of the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources.
Early Life:
This great scientist was born in around 980 A.D in the village of Afshana, near Bukhara which is also his mother’s hometown. His father, Abdullah an advocate of the Ismaili sect, was from Balkh which is now a part of Afghanistan. Ibn Sina received his early eduction in his home town and by the age of ten he became a Quran Hafiz. He had exceptional intellectual skills which enabled him to overtake his teachers at the age of fourteen. During the next few years he devoted himself to Muslim Jurisprudence, Philosophy and Natural Science and studied Logic, Euclid, and the Almeagest.
Ibn Sina was an extremely religious man. When he was still young, Ibn Sina was highly baffled by the work of Aristotle on Metaphysics so much so that he used to leave all the work and pray to God to guide him. Finally after reading a manual by a famous philosopher al-Farabi, he found the solutions to his difficulties.
Contributions and Achievements:
At the age of sixteen he dedicated all his efforts to learn medicine and by the time he was eighteen gained the status of a reputed physician. During this time he was also lucky in curing Nooh Ibn Mansoor, the King of Bukhhara, of an illness in which all the renowned physicians had given up hope. On this great effort, the King wished to reward him, but the young physician only acquired consent to use his exclusively stocked library of the Samanids.
On his father’s death, when Ibn Sina was twenty-two years old, he left Bukhara and moved to Jurjan near Caspian Sea where he lectured on logic and astronomy. Here he also met his famous contemporary Abu Raihan al-Biruni. Later he travelled to Rai and then to Hamadan, where he wrote his famous book Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb. Here he also cured Shams al-Daulah, the King of Hamadan, for severe colic.
From Hamadan, he moved to Isfahn, where he finished many of his epic writings. Nevertheless, he continued to travel and the too much mental exertion as well as political chaos spoilt his health. The last ten or twelve years of his life, he spent in the service of Abu Ja’far ‘Ala Addaula, whom he accompanied as physician and general literary and scientific consultant. He died during June 1037 A.D and was buried in Hamedan, Iran.
Besides his monumental writings, Ibn Sina also contributed to mathematics, physics, music and other fields. He explained the concept and application of the “casting out of nines”. He made several astronomical observations, and devised a means similar to the venire, to enhance the accuracy of instrumental readings. In physics, his contribution comprised the study of different forms of energy, heat, light and mechanical, and such concepts as force, vacuum and infinity.
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B. F. Skinner
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Burrhus Frederic Skinner, more commonly known as B. F. Skinner, was an American psychologist, philosopher, scientist and poet. An important advocate of behaviourism, Skinner is known for inventing the operant conditioning chamber, and for his own experimental analysis of behavior. He is widely considered as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, Skinner’s father was a lawyer. Skinner went to Hamilton College, New York, as he wanted to become a writer. After getting his B.A. in English literature in 1926, Skinner attended Harvard University, where he later received a PhD in 1931. After becoming disenchanted with his literary skills, and inspired by John B. Watson’s Behaviorism, he acquired a degree in psychology, which led to the development of his influential operant behaviorism.
Contributions and Achievements:
B. F. Skinner was a prominent researcher in Harvard University until 1936. He accepted teaching positions at the University of Minnesota and Indiana University. In 1948, he returned to Hardvard as a tenured professor.
Skinner devised the operant conditioning chamber. He introduced his own philosophy of science known as “radical behaviorism”. His brand of experimental research psychology is highly regarded, and deals with the experimental analysis of behavior. Skinner’s analysis of human behavior enhanced his work “Verbal Behavior”, which has lately seen a boost in interest experimentally and in applied settings. Skinner’s science also made other advances in education through the work of his students and colleagues, particulary in special education. He was a prolific author who wrote about 21 books and 180 articles.
Skinner worked out the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He also figured out the cumulative recorder to assess the rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement. Although Skinner’s work reach back toward the founding of educational psychology, and forward into its modern era, they arguably never attained their true potential.
Later Life and Death:
B. F. Skinner died of leukemia on August 18, 1990. He was 86 years old.
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Barbara McClintock
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Barbara McClintock made a great name as the most distinguished cytogeneticist in the field of science. Her breakthrough in the 1940s and ’50s of mobile genetic elements, or “jumping genes,” won her the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. Among her other honors are the National Medal of Science by Richard Nixon (1971), the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal by the Genetics Society of America (all in 1981) and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1982).
Early Life, Education and Career Achievements:
Barbara McClintock was born on June 16, 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was the third child of Sara Handy McClintock and Thomas Henry McClintock, a physician. After completing her high school education in New York City, she enrolled at Cornell University in 1919 and from this institution received the B.Sc degree in 1923, the M.A. in 1925, and the Ph.D. in 1927.
When McClintock began her career, scientists were just becoming aware of the relationship between heredity and events they could actually examine in cells under the microscope. She served as a graduate assistant in the Department of Botany for three years from 1924-27 and in 1927, following completion of her graduate studies, was employed as an Instructor, a post she held until 1931. She was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship in 1931 and spent two years as a Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving the Guggenheimn Fellowship in 1933, she spent a year abroad at Freiburg. She returned to the States and to the Department of Plant Breeding at Cornell the following year. McClintock left Cornell in 1936 to take the position of an Assistant Professorship in the Department of Botany at the University of Missouri. In 1941 she became a part of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and began a happy and fruitful association which continued for the rest of her life.
In 1950, Dr. McClintock first reported in a scientific journal that genetic information could transpose from one chromosome to another. Many scientists during that time assumed that this unconventional view of genes was unusual to the corn plant and was not universally applicable to all organisms. They were of the view that genes generally were held in place in the chromosome like a necklace of beads.
The importance of her research was not realized until the 1960s, when Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod discovered controlling elements in bacteria similar to those McClintock found in corn and in 1983 McClintok received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of mobile genetic elements. Her work has been of high value assisting in the understanding of human disease. “Jumping genes” help explain how bacteria are able to build up resistance to an antibiotic and there is some indication that jumping genes are involved in the alteration of normal cells to cancerous cells.
Death:
McClintock died in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992.
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Beatrix Potter
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Beatrix Potter may be a familiar name in children’s literature, but what a lot do not know is that she is a notable woman of science as well. Her stories about Peter Rabbit and a lot of other fictional characters she created served as an outlet in her frustration to break into a career in science.
Early Life and Education
She was born Helen Beatrix Potter on July 28, 1866 in London as the older of the two children of Rupert Potter and Helen Leech. Rupert Potter was a lawyer and the Potters lived a comfortable life. Her parents mingled with politicians, writers and artists, and enjoyed drawing and painting immensely. This is why Beatrix has always possessed a keen eye for details which showed in the art she created from her younger years to adulthood.
Beatrix Potter may have come from a well-off family, but she did not grow up to be like the other wealthy ladies of the same age. She spent most of her time at home under the care of a governess while her brother Bertram was sent to some of the finest schools known. When he was home however, they spent a lot of time together playing with creatures that they found around their property and in the woods where they explored. They would often bring these creatures home and draw or paint them. Their collection included a hedgehog, some rabbits, bats and mice, as well as a few insects. She grew up to be a very shy girl and would rarely share her thoughts with anyone. She wrote in a secret diary using a code that only she can understand.
Beatrix’s interest in natural science was spurned when her uncle who was a chemist gave her the permission to use his microscope and other equipment. She would study and inspect plants, insects and other animals, and she would draw each of them in great detail.
Notable Contributions
It was in South Kensington Museum that Beatrix Potter further developed a keen interest in a lot of natural sciences. She was eager to learn more about botany, mycology and entomology, among others.
What fascinated Beatrix the most were fungi. She started a detailed study of them when she turned 21. Her drawings showed in great detail how lichens, a common type of fungi found on rocks and trees, were actually not one but two different organisms that lived together. Her studies showed that this was actually a union between an alga and a fungus. She was the first Briton to recognize this fact and was also among the first few in the world who did. This was how she formulated her conclusion of symbiosis. Through symbiosis, two different organisms are able to live together with each of them benefitting the other in some way. In this case, the fungus provided a haven for the alga. It was responsible for gathering the water and minerals that they needed to complete the process of photosynthesis. In turn, the alga is the one that converted the sunlight into nourishment which is basically the photosynthesis process.
It took her 13 long years to complete her research and finalize her paper on the things she discovered. Of course, her theory was not given the support that it needed and botanists she showed her work to refused to even discuss the drawings she made. The only time she was given the permission to present her work to The Linnaean Society of British Scientists was when her uncle interceded for her. She submitted her study “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae” but was not allowed to read it herself because only men were invited to their meetings. The organization at that time was not yet open to the thought of accepting women in their midst.
Other Achievements
It was very frustrating for Beatrix Potter not to be accepted in the science circles. Because of this she started to concentrate on her drawing and writing instead. She had always been a self-taught artist and used different media in her work. She had the ability to illustrate using pencils, oils, watercolor, pen and ink. She also followed her father’s footsteps in developing her talent in photography.
She became famous for the characters that she told stories about in the children’s books she wrote and illustrated with Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle Duck being among some of the most well-loved. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902 when she was 36 years old. All in all, she had 28 books published, all of which are still read by children all over the world. Over 150 million copies of her books have been sold with all of them translated into 35 different languages.
As her books gained popularity, she channeled all the profit towards a large property called Hill Top. Found in England’s Lake District, this was her first farm. She enjoyed the quiet and solitude that the property brought her which allowed her to work more efficiently. Aside from being a farmer and landowner, she also became recognized as a sheep breeder. She never lost her love for nature and became an advocate of traditional farming and the preservation of the wild environment surrounding the area.
This was where she found William Heelis, a handsome solicitor who was 5 years younger. He became Beatrix’s legal adviser and eventually, Beatrix’s husband of 30 years. The marriage did not bear them any children.
She continued buying patch after patch of land as she continued to enjoy living surrounded by nature. The British Natural Trust eventually became recipient to her donation of 4,000 acres of land which includes 15 farms and cottages. By doing so, she hoped to further pursue her dream to provide land for the creatures that she grew to love.
Beatrix Potter died of bronchitis in 1943, leaving behind a legacy across different fields of study. Upon her death, the secret diary she kept as a child was also released, setting forth a story of frustration for not being given the chance to pursue her passion for science early on.
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Benjamin Franklin
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The American author, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin was indeed a man of multiple talents. He was also one of the significant Founding Fathers of the United States who for later generations served as both a spokesman and a model for the national character. As a scientist, he was one of the prominent figures in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his findings and theories regarding electricity. His inventions include: the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass ‘armonica’. He devoted most of his life towards the development of his people and left an ineffaceable mark on the emerging nation.
Early Years of Life:
Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 17, 1706. He was the fifteenth child of Josiah Franklin, candlemaker and a skillful mechanic and Abiah Folger (Josiah’s second wife). He received his primary education from Boston Latin School. At the age of ten he left school because of the poor financial conditions of his family and continued his education through voracious reading. When he was twelve was apprenticed to his older brother James, a printer who taught him the printing trade. Franklin always wanted to be independent and hated being ordered about so he ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was seventeen. There he established his own printing office in partnership with Hugh Meredith in 1728.
Life as a Scientist:
Benjamin Franklin was an extraordinary scientist and inventor. His creations that received a lot of recognition include: lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. His inventions also comprised of social innovations, such as paying forward. All his efforts towards science were directed towards enhancing competence and bringing human improvement. One such improvement was his effort to expedite news services through his printing presses.
Electricity
Franklin began his investigations on electricity and was the first person to discover he principle of conservation of charge. He also conducted his famous kite experiment, in which he flew a kite with the wire attached to a key during a thunderstorm. From this experiment he further established that laboratory-produced static electricity was similar to a previously unexplained and frightening natural phenomenon.
Wave Theory of Light
Franklin was among the very few scientists who greatly supported the Christiaan Huygens’ wave theory of light. This theory was later proved to be true after experiments performed by other scientists in the 18th century.
Meteorology
Franklin also noted the behavior of winds and he found out storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This concept gained a great significance in meteorology.
Heat Conductivity
Franklin also conducted his experiments on the non-conduction of ice which received a great acceptance by other popular scientists such as Michael Faraday.
DEATH:
At the age of eighty-four this famous personality died on April 17, 1790 and was buried at Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.
Franklin was a true philosopher who was interested in all facets of the natural world. He learned through his own experimentation and his conversation with those who shared his interests.
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Benjamin Thompson
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Sir Benjamin Thompson, count von Rumford was an American-born British physicist and inventor who was a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. One of the leading figures in the history of thermodynamics, his work rejected the popular belief that heat is a liquid form of matter and laid down the modern theory that heat is a form of motion. Benjamin Thompson also performed services for military and drew designs for warships.
Personal Life:
Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, Benjamin Thompson never received formal education. Instead, he joined a store as an apprentice. At nineteen, he married a rich widow named Sarah Walker and lived in Rumford. When the Revolutionary War started, he sided with the British. He also spied for the British Army.
After the war, he went to England, and later to Germany in 1783. In recognition of his civilian and military services, he was given the title of a Count.
He returned to England in 1799. He was made a member of the Royal Society due to his extraordinary scientific accomplishments. Thompson died near Paris in 1814. He was 61 years old.
Contributions and Achievements:
While serving for the military in 1798, Thompson noted that during the process of boring cannons, the metal turned red hot and even boiled the water used to keep it cool. The old explanation was that, if the metal is broken to pieces, the caloric is liberated from the metal. This gives rise to heat.
Thompson rejected this because, even when filing is not made, heat is emitted by simple friction. Actually, he demonstrated that the amount of heat involved in boring was so much that if it were poured back, it could melt the metal. Otherwise stated, more caloric could be achieved from the metal than it could possibly bear.
Thompson’s view was that the heat was due to the mechanical motion of the borer. He showed that the quantity of heat was equal to the motional energy of the borer. He made it clear that heat is a form of energy. Thompson even assessed how much heat was produced by a given amount of motion. He was the first scientist to measure the mechanical equivalent of heat (MEH).
Thompson’s figure of 5.57 Joules was considered too high; only 50 years the first logical value of 4.16 Joules was measured. He also examined the insulating properties of several objects such as wool, fur and feathers.
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Blaise Pascal
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French philosopher and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential mathematical writers of all time. He was also an expert in many fields, including various languages, and a well-versed religious philosopher.
Early Life and Contributions:
Born at Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, Pascal’s father was Étienne Pascal, a counselor of the king who later became the president of the Court of Aids at Clermont. His mother died in 1626. The Pascal family settled in Paris in 1631.
At a tender age of 12, Pascal began participating in the meetings of a mathematical academy. He learned different languages from his father, Latin and Greek in particular, but Pascal Sr. didn’t teach him mathematics. This increased the curiosity of young Pascal, who went on to experiment with geometrical figures, even formulating his own names for standard geometrical terms.
Pascal started working on a book, Essay on Conics. The book was published in 1640, and its highlight was the “mystic hexagram”, a theorem related to the collinearity of intersections of lines. It also had hundreds of propositions on conic sections, and influences from Apollonius and his successors. The book gained publicity not only because of the writer’s young age, 16, but also due to its unique accounts about tangency, and several other qualities.
Mathematical and Scientific Achievements:
Pascal’s contributions to hydrostatics, particularly his experimentations with the barometer and his theoretical work on the equilibrium of fluids, were made public one year after his death. The development of probability theory is often considered to be the most significant contributions in the history of mathematics. The Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids by Pascal is an extension to Simon Stevin’s research on the hydrostatic paradox and explains what may be termed as the final law of hydrostatics; the famous Pascal’s principle. Pascal is known for his theories of liquids and gases and their interrelation, and also his work regarding the relationship between the dynamics of hydrodynamics and rigid bodies.
Post-Port Royal, perhaps Pascal’s most important to mathematics dealt with the issuess related to the cycloid; a curve, with the area of which the best mathematicians of the day were occupied. Pascal introduced most of his theorems without proof, thus issuing a challenge to his contemporaries, for instance Christopher Wren, John Wallis and Christian Huygens, who happily accepted and figured them out. He also put forward his own solutions, “Amos Dettonville”, an assumed alias. Later, many mathematicians often referred to him by this alias.
The mathematical theory of probability became popular when a communication between Pascal and Pierre de Fermat disclosed that both had concluded to almost similar results. Pascal designed a treatise on the subject, which was also published after his death, though only a few parts of it have survived. Pascal was always concise and sharp when it came to mathematics.
Death:
Blaise Pascal died of tuberculosis on 19 August, 1662 at a young age of 39.
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C. V. Raman
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One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It is immensely surprising that Raman used an equipment worth merely Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.
Early Life:
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College, Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the subject was published in 1906.
Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907, after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much occupied due to the job, he still managed to spare his evenings for scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent the entire nights. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.
Contributions and Achievements:
On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to discover the reason of the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.
There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan (who later became the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi), gave him the news that Professor Compton has won the Nobel Prize on scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his opinion.
Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds was studied. Thanks to the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists.
Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision, the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.
Later Life and Death:
Sir C.V. Raman became the Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1924. A year later, he set up Raman Research Institute near Bangalore, where he continued the scientific research until his death which was caused by a strong heart attack on November 21, 1970. His sincere advice to aspiring scientists was that “scientific research needed independent thinking and hard work, not equipment.”
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Carl Bosch
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Carl Bosch was a prominent German industrial chemist and entrepreneur. Notable for the development of the Haber-Bosch process for high-pressure synthesis of ammonia, he was one of the founders of IG Farben, which became one of the world’s largest chemical companies. Bosch won the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for formulating chemical high-pressure methods.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Cologne, Germany to a rich gas supplier, Carl Bosch’s uncle was the legendary industrialist Robert Bosch who helped develop the first spark plug. He attended the Technical College of Charlottenburg and the University of Leipzig for six years, from 1892 to 1898. Bosch later accepted an entry level job at BASF, a leading German chemical company.
Contributions and Achievements:
Carl Bosch started working to adapt the laboratory process for synthesizing ammonia for commercial production in 1909.
He formulated the process that bore his name, in which hydrogen is manufactured on an industrial scale by passing steam and water over a catalyst at high temperatures. The Haber-Bosch process turned out to be the most commonly used big-scale process for nitrogen fixation. Bosch was appointed the president of I.G. Farbenindustrie AG.
Bosch shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Friedrich Bergius for his work on the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods. He became a successor to Max Planck in 1935 as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
Later Life and Death:
Carl Bosch died after a prolonged illness on April 26, 1940 in Heidelberg, Germany. He was 65 years old.
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Carl Friedrich Gauss
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Johann Friedrich Carl Gauss, more commonly known as Carl Friedrich Gauss, was a German mathematician, widely known as one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He made crucial contributions to geometry, statistics, number theory, planetary astronomy, the theory of functions, potential theory, optics and geophysics.
Early Life and Education:
Born on April 30, 1777 in Brunswick, Germany to a very poor family, the father of Carl Friedrich Gauss was a gardener and brick layer. His mother was, however, very keen to educate her son. Gauss was a child prodigy in mathematics. The Duke of Brunswick was very impressed with his computing skills when he was only 14, so his stay at the Brunswick Collegium Carolinum, Hanover was generously financed.
Gauss attended the University of Göttingen from 1795 to 1798. He earned his doctorate in 1799 at the University of Helmstedt.
Contributions and Achievements:
Gauss was made the director of the Göttingen Observatory in 1807, as well a professor of mathematics at the same place. During his tenure, he spent much of his time establishing a new observatory. He also worked with Wilhelm Weber for almost six years making a primitive telegraph device which could send messages over a distance of 1500 meters. A a statue of Gauss and Weber was later built in Göttingen.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was a prolific author who wrote more than 300 papers, mostly in Latin. He also knew Russian and other foreign languages. He was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1801, mainly due to his his calculations of the orbits of the asteroids Ceres and Pallas. He also won the Copley Medal in 1838.
Later Life and Death:
Carl Friedrich Gauss was appointed a Geheimrat; a privy councilor, and he was also featured on the 10 Deutsche Mark note. He died on February 23, 1855 in Göttingen, Germany. He was 77 years old.
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Carl Sagan
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Carl Sagan, also known as the “the astronomer of the people”, was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, author and researcher. He made crucial contributions in popularizing astronomy to the public. He authored over 600 scientific papers and several books about astronomy and natural sciences. He also gained worldwide fame for narrating and writing the popular 1980 television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”.
Early Life and Education:
Carl Sagan was born in New York in 1934 to a garment worker. When he was four, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This became a turning point in his life and little Sagan developed an early interest in skyscrapers, science, space and the stars. His parents encouraged his growing interest in science by gifiting him chemistry sets and books. After graduating from Rahway High School in 1951, he went on to acquire three different science degrees.
Sagan was a lecturer and researcher at Harvard University until 1968. He then joined Cornell University in Ithaca, where he became a full Professor in 1971, and later, the director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He remained at Cornell until 1981.
Contributions and Achievements:
Saga authored more than 20 books about space and the universe. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work. His TV series Cosmos still remains one of the most-watched shows in television history. Sagan helped NASA with U.S. space missions to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Particularly, his discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus is highly regarded. He also worked on understanding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter and seasonal changes on Mars.
The 1997 film Contact has been inspired by Sagan’s book of the same name. Contrary to the popular belief that aliens would be destructive to mankind, Sagan advocated that aliens would be friendly and good-natured.
Sagan is known to be one of the earliest scientists to propose that there might be life on other planets. He encouraged NASA to explore the solar system for signs of life. He received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1994.
Later Life and Death:
In his last written works, Sagan contended that the possibilities of extraterrestrial space vehicles visiting Earth are vanishingly small.
Carl Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996 at the age of 62.
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Carolus Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus (Latinized: Carolus Linnaeus; originally Carl Nilsson Linnæus) was a Swedish botanist, naturalist, physician and zoologist. He was the first person to lay down the principles to determine the natural genera and species of organisms, and to form a uniform system for naming them (also known as binomial nomenclature). Linnaeus is considered to be the founding father of modern taxonomy as well as ecology.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Roeshult, Sweden to a Lutheran minister, Carolus Linnaeus frustrated his father by showing no interest in the priesthood. When he entered the University of Lund in 1727 to study medicine, his parents were quite excited, but within a year, he was transferred to the University of Uppsala, where he took botany. Linnaeus acquired his medical degree from the University of Harderwijk, Netherlands. He received further education at the University of Leiden.
Contributions and Achievements:
Carolus Linnaeus put out his work “Systema Naturae” in 1735, the first edition of his classification of living things. He came back to Sweden in 1738 and practised medicine. In 1740, he took a teaching position at the University of Uppsala.
Linnaeus, primarily known as a naturalist and botanist, was a leading figure in the history of entomology. He laid down the binomial system of nomenclature, which became the basis for the moderm classification of living organisms. Widely known as the “father of biological systematics and nomenclature”, Linnaeus also devised the wing vein-based system for separation of orders, and set up the chronological starting point for the naming of insects.
Later Life and Death:
Carolus Linnaeus used to travel extensively in Europe. He collected and named several specimens from different countries of the world. His 1758 work “Systema Naturae 10th edition” is known to be the starting point for naming of insects. All names prior to it are considered outdated. Linnaeus was ennobled in 1761, and was later known as “Carl von Linne”.
He died of stroke in Uppsala, Sweden, on June 10, 1778.
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Charles Babbage
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Do you ever wonder who you have to thank for the powerful desktop or laptop you are now using for practically everything you do? You might say all thanks should be given to the computer companies of today but in fact, you have Charles Babbage to thank. The name might not be familiar to you just yet but read on because pretty soon, “Charles Babbage” will be on your mind every time you use your computer.
Who is Charles Babbage?
Charles Babbage was born on Dec. 26, 1791 in England. He was a polymath and became a mathematician, mechanical engineer, inventor, and philosopher. He had a lot of contributions to different scientific fields but his most famous work is probably coming up with the idea of a programmable computing device.
In fact, Charles Babbage is considered the “father of the computer” and is given credit for coming up with the first ever mechanical computer. It was very simple but it served as the blue print for other, more complex machines. Of course he had other works to his name in other fields and this is the reason he was often referred to as pre-eminent among other polymaths of his generation.
Try to pay a visit to the London Science Museum and you will find parts of his uncompleted works. Back in 1991, experts constructed a functioning difference engine basis on Babbage’s original designs. The engine was built to conditions that were around during the 19th century and the success of the completed difference engine indicated that the machine of Babbage would have functioned just fine.
His early life
There is some dispute about the birthplace of Charles Babbage but as stated in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Babbage was born at 44 Crosby Row at Walworth Road in London, England. A blue plaque has been placed along the junction of Walworth Road and Larcom Street to commemorate the birth of this brilliant man.
An obituary printed in The Times said he was born on Dec. 26, 1792 but a relative of Babbage wrote in to state that Babbage was actually born a year before in 1791. A baptismal certificate found in St. Mary’s Newington, London indicates that he was baptized on Jan.6, 1792 which supports the relative’s claim about the year of birth.
Charles Babbage was just one of four children born to Betsy and Benjamin Babbage. His father was a banker and he was the partner of William Praed. Together they founded Praed’s & Co. of Fleet Street London in 1801.
When he was 8 years of age, Charles Babbage was sent to Alphington near Exeter for schooling and to recover from a fever that nearly ended his life. For some years, he attended the King Edward VI Grammar School located in Totnes South Devin but he was in such poor health that he had to make the switch to private tutors.
Sometime later, he made his way to the 30-student Holmwood academy located in Bake Street in EinField Middlesex and he was placed under the tutelage of the reverend Stephen Freeman. The academy had a library where Babbage’s love of mathematics blossomed. As he was attending classes in the academy he was also learning from two other private tutors. At the age of about 16 or 17 Babbage went back to Totnes to study and had a tutor from Oxford. It was under this tutor that he learned enough about classic math to be admitted to Cambridge.
At Cambridge
Babbage went to Trinity College in Cambridge on Oct. 1810 and by that time he already taught himself some aspects of contemporary math. It was for this reason that he felt somewhat let down by the standard math instruction they had at Cambridge.
While in Cambridge, he teamed up with such notable names like John Herschel, George Peacock, and other friends to form the Analytical society. He was also a member of other clubs such as the Ghost club where they investigated supernatural happenings. The Extractors Club that he was a member of made it their mission to liberate members from the madhouse in the event that anyone was ever committed to one.
He transferred to Peterhouse in 1812 where he became the top mathematician although he did not graduate with honors. He did receive a degree without having to go through any examinations and that was in 1814. He was able to defend a thesis that was considered blasphemous with respect to the preliminary public disputation.
After Cambridge
It was easy for Charles Babbage after he left Cambridge for he was a most brilliant student. He became a lecturer at the Royal Institution where he talked about astronomy in the year 1815. A year after that, he was elected to become a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. In the same year, he became a candidate for a teaching job at the HaileyBury College and he went with recommendations from people like John Playfair and James Ivory. He lost the spot to Henry Walter.
Babbage and his machines
His machines were considered as one of the very first mechanical computers ever to be invented. The fact that they were not actually used for computing was not due to a design flaw. Rather, it was to be blamed on lack of funding and some personality problems.
Babbage was the director in charge of building steam-powered machines and they did achieve some success; they also suggested that calculations could be done mechanically. For ten years after that, the government funded his projects which amounted to about £ 17,000 but it happened that the treasury lost faith in him and the funding stopped.
While the machines he came up with were mechanical and bulky they had a basic design that is similar to the modern computer. It is for this reason why he is often looked at as one of the pioneers of computers.
Death
Charles Babbage died on Oct. 18, 1871. He is buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Cause of death was “renal inadequacy”. One half of his brain is preserved in Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons while the other half can be viewed in the London Science Museum.
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Charles Darwin
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Charles Darwin, widely considered as one of the greatest and most revolutionizing scientists in history, was the British naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution. Pre-Darwin, it was thought that each species of life on earth came individually and that none had ever changed its form. He confuted this notion and demonstrated from his research that evolution is the law of nature and all living things on earth have descended from common ancestors who lived millions of years ago. He proved that animals and plants have evolved in an orderly manner and keep on evolving even today.
Early Life:
Born at Shrewsbury in 1809, Darwin was raised by his eldest sister from the tender age of eight. Young Darwin had a passion for gathering up even insects and minerals and he used to experiment with them. When Darwin was 16, he joined Edinburg University to study medicine. However, he was too gentle and tender to become a proper physician. Anatomy, in particular, sickened him. He hated the surgical operations, because they had to be performed without any anesthetics at that time. This made Darwin a great failure as a medical student.
Darwin said goodbye to Edinburg in 1828 and sought admission in Cambridge to study Theology. There, he also disregarded his studies and was more interested in beetles than theology. He was lucky to attain his degree anyhow. At Cambridge, he managed to make valuable friends, even befriending the professors of botany and geology.
Contributions and Achievements:
Darwin got his big break in 1831. A naturalist was needed to travel along on a scientific expedition – a voyage around the world in the brigantine HMBS Beagle under the supervision of Captain Fits Roy. Luckily, some of his Cambridge fellows also recommended him for the place. The voyage took around five years.
Throughout this voyage, Darwin collected bones of extinct animals. He was curious about the relationship between the extinct animals and the existing ones. The unusual marine iguana, the tortoises and the finches on the Galapagos Islands in the pacific made him perplexed, since similar, yet rather distinct, forms of the same animals were found on separate islands. These observations led to his legendary ideas on evolution.
After the return, Darwin moved to London for a while and compiled an account of his travels. Darwin got married to his cousin Emma Wedgowood in 1839. The coupled moved to Downe House in Kent in 1844. There, Darwin got a letter from the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had made similar observations about evolution separately. A collaborative report by Darwin and Wallace was published in 1858. Darwin publicized the theory of evolution in his famous book, “The Origin of Species by Natural Selection”, in 1859. The book, which asserted that all the varied forms of life on earth could, in the course of time, have evolved from a common ancestry, was a huge success. Darwin also commented that in the struggle for life, only the ‘fittest’ creatures would survive while others fail.
The book became controversial due to its conflict with the religious belief about the creation of the world. However, in later years, it was embraced by all biologists. Darwin’s another book, “The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication”, came out in 1868. It is considered to be his second most significant work. The book maintains that man, by selective breeding, could make rather different breeds of pigeons, dogs, and some species of plants also. His work also included “The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects”, “Insectivorous Plants”, “The Power of Movement in Plants”, “Descent of Man”, and “The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms”.
Later Life and Death:
Charles Darwin died at 74 and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, fairly near to the tomb of Sir Issac Newton. Out of his 10 children, of whom seven survived him, four became prominent scientists. Three of his sons went on to become fellows of the Royal Society, just like their legendary father.
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Charles Lyell
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Sir Charles Lyell was the most famous lawyer and geologist of his time. One of the most important British scientists in history, Lyell wrote “Principles of Geology”, a landmark work in geology that explores James Hutton’s doctrine of uniformitarianism.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Kinnordy, Scotland to a botanist father who possessed considerable literary tastes, Charles Lyell graduated from Oxford in 1821, and joined the bar in 1825. He soon realized that his ambitions were more towards science, so, in 1827, he finally chose geology over the law.
Contributions and Achievements:
The first volume of his legendary book “Principles of Geology” was published in 1830. The third and last volume was published three years later. It is considered to be a work of synthesis, supported by his own personal observations on his travels.
Lyell’s primary belief was that all the the past changes of the earth can be detailed by the forces now acting. The notion became the fundamental basis of modern geology. It is very difficult to explain how odd it appeared at that time.
His another work, “Antiquity of Man”, was published in 1863, and discussed the proofs of the long existence of human beings on the earth. Lyell’s geological approach tends to be an assessment of evolutionism in the wider sense. He was one the earliest men to embrace Darwin’s theory of natural selection in biology.
Lyell’s geological contributions ranged from volcanoes and geological dynamics through stratigraphy, paleontology, and glaciology to subjects that would now be considered as parts of prehistoric archaeology and paleoanthropology.
Later Life and Death:
In 1866, Charles Lyell was made a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Lyell died on February 22, 1875. He was 77 years old. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was an eminent French physicist. He formulated the Coulomb’s law, which deals with the electrostatic interaction between electrically charged particles. The coulomb, SI unit of electric charge, was named after him.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Angoulême, France to a wealthy family, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was the son of Henri Coulomb, an inspector of the Royal Fields in Montpellier. The family soon moved to Paris, where Coulomb studied mathematics at the famous Collège des Quatre-Nations. A few years later in 1759, he was enrolled at the military school of Mézières. He graduated from Ecole du Génie at Mézières in 1761.
Coulomb worked in the West Indies as a military engineer for almost nine years. When he came back to France, he was quite ill. During the French Revolution, Coulomb lived in his estate at Blois, where he mostly carried out scientific research. He was made an inspector of public instruction in 1802.
Contributions and Achievements:
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb formulated his law as a consequence of his efforts to study the law of electrical repulsions put forward by English scientist Joseph Priestley. In the process, he devised sensitive apparatus to evaluate the electrical forces related to the Priestley’s law. Coulomb issued out his theories in 1785–89.
He also developed the inverse square law of attraction and repulsion of unlike and like magnetic poles. This laid out the foundation for the mathematical theory of magnetic forces formulated by French mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson. Coulomb extensively worked on friction of machinery, the elasticity of metal and silk fibres and windmills. The coulomb, SI unit of electric charge, was named after him.
Later Life and Death:
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb died on August 23, 1806 in Paris. He was 70 years old.
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Christiaan Huygens
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Christiaan Huygens was a mathematician, physicist and astronomer who formulated the wave theory of light. He also discovered the pendulum clock, centrifugal force and the true shape of the rings of Saturn (as well as its moon, Titan). Huygens is credited as the first theoretical physicist to use formulae in physics.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1629 to a poet father, Constantijn Huygens, who also worked for the Princes of Orange, Christiaan Huygens studied law in Leiden and Brenda. He soon found out that he was more interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy. As a kid, Huygens loved to experiment with windmills and other machines and to watch the ripples produced by throwing a stone into water.
Huygens was already in contact with leading scholars of the time, even at an early age. Mersenne, the famous French polymath, wrote to his father that his child had the potential to “even surpass Archimedes”.
Contributions and Achievements:
Christiaan Huygens made many extraordinary contributions in diverse fields. His efforts in mathematics included his work regarding squaring the circle. When it came to physics, in addition to his landmark Huygens–Fresnel principle, he extensively researched free fall, pendulum motion and the pendulum clock. Huygens also improved sea clocks, which proved to be very helpful in finding out the position of ships at sea.
As a fan of Descartes, Huygens preferred to carry out new experiments himself for observing and formulating laws. Christiaan started to grind lenses for microscopes and astronomical telescopes. During one of these experiments, he found out the ring of Saturn, and also the Titan, the first moon of a planet ever to be detected.
Huygens was honored with a doctorate in 1655. In 1666, he was made the first director of the Royal Academy of Science.
Later Life and Death:
Christiaan Huygens was seriously ill in the last five years of his life. He died on March 8, 1695. He was 65 years old. Huygens was buried in Grote Kerk.
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Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
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The German biologist, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard is renowned for her embryonic development of fruit flies. Her contribution earned her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with American geneticists Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis. In the Nobel Banquet Speech held on 10 Dec 1995, she said:
“The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative in our hands – and has revealed to us some of its innermost secrets and tricks for developing from a single celled egg to a complex living being of great beauty and harmony. … None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.”
In 1986, she was honored with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the top credit awarded in German research. She also won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991. Since 2001 she has been member of the Nationaler Ethikrat (National Ethics Council of Germany) for the ethical assessment of new developments in the life sciences and their influence on the individual and society.
Oxford University awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Science degree during June 2005.
Early Life, Career and Contribution:
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was born on October 20, 1942, in Magdeburg,Germany. She is the daughter of Rolf Volhard, an architect, and Brigitte Volhard, a musician and painter. She completed her degrees in biology, physics, and chemistry from Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in 1964, a diploma in biochemistry (1968) and a doctorate in biology and genetics (1973) from Eberhard-Karl University of Tubingen. Nüsslein-Volhard was married briefly as a young woman and never had any children.
After finishing her postdoctoral fellowships in Basel, Switzerland, and Freiburg, Germany, she accepted her first independent research position at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany began her collaboration with Wieschaus in the late 1970′s at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 1981, she returned to Tübingen, where since 1985 she has served as director of the genetics division of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
Wieschaus and Nüsslein-Volhard chose the fruit fly because of its amazingly rapid embryonic development. Together they designed a new genetic tool, saturation mutagenesis, which involved mutating adult fly genes and observing the effects on their offspring. Using a dual microscope, which permitted them to examine one specimen at the same time, the collaborators eventually identified, among about 20,000 genes in the fly’s chromosomes, approximately 5,000 genes important to early development and 139 genes essential to it. They also acknowledged three types of fruit fly genes that generate the blueprint for the insect’s body plan. In awarding the prize to the collaborator, the Nobel Assembly predicted that their discoveries would “explain congenital malformations in man.”
By the late 1990′s her studies of zebra fish mutants had founded a system for studying the process of blood creation and provided imperative insights into human disease.
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Clarence Birdseye
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For people who thank the heavens every day for the convenience that is frozen foods, you may also want to thank the man behind the invention. His name is Clarence Frank Birdseye II and he just happens to be the founder of the modern frozen food industry. So every time you take that bag of frozen veggies or other frozen food from the icebox, you should give a little thanks to Birdseye as well. Without him, you would not be enjoying the convenience of frozen foods.
Who is Clarence Birdseye?
Clarence Birdseye was an American inventor, naturalist, and entrepreneur. He made one of the biggest innovations and contributions to the food industry when he found a way to flash-freeze food. He did this all on his own and he is the man responsible for the flash-freezing method that is still used up to this day. His is one invention that will stick around for ages which is proof of how useful it is.
His Early Years
Clarence Birdseye was born on December 9, 1886 in Brooklyn, NY. His parents were Ada Jane Underwood and Clarence Frank Birdseye I. he was the 6th of 9 other kids. He was a student at Amherst College but only for a brief amount of time as he dropped out around the year 1908 although the exact date is unclear. It wasn’t because he was mentally slow by any means but he and his family really did not have the funds for college. He moved out west to work for the USDA.
He also began a career working as a taxidermist. He got a job in Arizona and New Mexico and his title was “assistant naturalist”. This job required him to kill coyotes. He also worked with entomologist Willard Von Orsdel King in 1910 and 1911. On the job, Birdseye would catch about several hundred small mammals and King would remove ticks from them for research purposes. This was how he found out that ticks were the cause of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
He moved on to another field assignment in 1912 and kept the spot until 1915. This job took him to Labrador in Canada (then known as Dominion of Newfoundland). This was where he really developed an interest in preserving and freezing food (most especially fast freezing). He had some dealings with the Inuit and they taught him how to ice fish underneath very thick ice layers. Given the -40C weather, he found that the fish was iced almost in an instant and tasted fresh when thawed. He thought of the frozen food served in New York and knew that they were of poor quality compared to the frozen fish enjoyed by folks in Labrador and got the idea of applying his new found knowledge in starting a lucrative business. His records from that time period are held in the Special Collections section in Amherst College.
His Flash-freezing Method
Back in the day, the freezing method they used was commonly performed at higher temperatures which and this was how freezing was brought about. However, freezing was done at a slower rate which meant that ice crystals were given time to grow. It is now common knowledge that using the fast freezing method results in smaller ice crystals which means that less damage is brought to the tissues of the food. When using the slow freezing methods on food, fluids leak from the cells and this causes tissues to be damaged by the crystals. This is why food that is frozen using the slow freezing method often has a mushy or dry feel to it. Birdseye changed all that and saved the people from mushy and dry textured food for the years to come.
In the year 1922, he began a series of fish-freezing studies at the Clothel Refrigerating Company. He established his own company soon after and called it Birdseye Seafoods Inc. what they did was they froze fish fillets using chilled air that was as cold as -43C. Two years later, in 1924, his company filed bankruptcy as there was a lack of consumer interest in their product but that did not stop him. In that same year, he came up with a brand new process that made for commercially viable quick-freezing which involved packing fish inside cartons then putting them between two refrigerated surfaces under pressure to free the food. With this new invention he also started a new company which he called General Seafood Corporation.
Development of His Invention
In the year 1925, his new company moved to Gloucester in Massachusetts where he made use of his new invention. He called it the double belt freezer where brine was used to chill a couple of stainless steel belts that carried packaged fish so they froze so much more quickly. He applied for a patent for his invention and it was given the US Patent #1,773,079 and this marked the very beginning of a flourishing frozen foods industry.
He was a man of vision so he created other machines and took out patents on them as well. These new machines he patented cooled foods even more quickly so that only the smallest ice crystals formed in the food and cell membranes did not endure any damage. In 1927, he decided to extend the process past fish and started flash-freezing other food items as well. That year, they also froze vegetables, chicken, meat, and fruits.
Birdseye didn’t keep the company but sold it to Goldman Sachs and Postum Company instead. Together with the patents, he got paid around $22 million which was a massive amount at that time. His company was eventually given the name General Foods Corp. and that founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company. Clarence Birdseye wasn’t completely out of the picture since he still worked for the company and never really stopped coming up with newer and better frozen food technology.
His Death
He died on 7 October 1956 at the Gramercy Park Hotel at 69. His cause of death was a heart attack. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea just off the area in Gloucester in MA.
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Claude Bernard
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Claude Bernard was an eminent French physiologist, noted for his groundbreaking research regarding the function of the pancreas, the liver and the vasomotor nerves. Widely credited as one of the founders of experimental medicine, he played a vital role in laying down the basic rules of experimentation in the life sciences.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Saint-Julien, a small village near Villefranche-sur-Saône in France in 1813, Claude Bernard studied in the Jesuit school.
Contributions and Achievements:
Claude Bernard worked at the laboratory of Francois Magendie at the Collège de France in 1811, where he wrote his legendary work “The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life”, which laid the groundwork for modern homeostasis by presenting the concept of the internal environment of the organism. He was the one of the earliest physilogists to explain the role of the pancreas in digestion, as well as the glycogenic function of the liver. Bernard also extensively worked on the regulation of the blood supply by the vasomotor nerves.
Bernard advocated that medical knowledge, similar to other genres of scientific knowledge, has room for systematic experiments. He formulated the principle of scientific determinism, which states that identical experiments should produce identical results. His another book, “Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine” (1865) virtually brought about the use of animal testing.
Later Life and Death:
Claude Bernard was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1868. He died in Paris on February 10, 1878. Bernard was the first person in France to be given a public funeral. He was 64 years old.
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Claude Levi-Strauss
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Claude Levi-Strauss was a French social anthropologist and a leading exponent of structuralism. Often known as “the “father of modern anthropology”, he revolutionized the world of social anthropology by implementing the methods of structuralist analysis developed by Saussuro to the field of cultural relations.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1908 to French parents, Claude Levi-Strauss spent his childhood in Paris. He studied philosophy and law at the University of Paris and became a secondary school teacher. He was appointed the professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 1934, where he conducted his field research on the Indians of Brazil. He also taught at the New School, the University of Paris and the Collège de France.
Contributions and Achievements:
During his stay at the New School for Social Research in the 1940s, the famous Russian formalist Roman Jakobson introduced Claude Levi-Strauss to the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, the legendary Swiss linguist. He foresaw the importance of semiology for cultural analysis and studied the coded relations related to social interactions. He shared his findings in such works as “The Elementary Structures of Kinship” (1949), “Tristes Tropiques” (1955), “Structural Anthropology” (1958), “The Savage Mind” (1962), “Mythologiques” (4 volumes; 1964-72) and “The Raw and the Cooked” (1970).
Levi-Strauss advocated that language preconditioned human culture, as evidenced in the “symbolic order” of religious and social life and aesthetics. He believed that cultural patterning is influenced by the huge reservoir of unconscious and universal structures of mind.
The most important contribution made by Levi-Strauss during his anthropological investigations was the difference between “hot” and “cold” societies. Cultures in Western Europe that altered significantly and remained open to greatly divergent influences were termed as “hot”, while the cultures that changed marginally over time were “cold”. An ideal example of a “cold” society was said to be in the Amazon Indians. He suggested a savage mind and a “civilized” mind shared the same structure and the human characteristics are the same in every region of the world.
Later Life and Death:
Claude Levi-Strauss was appointed the member of the Académie Française in 2008, and one year later, the Dean of the Académie in 2009. He died on October 30, 2009. Levi-Strauss was 100 years old. He was buried in the village of Lignerolles, France.
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Daniel Bernoulli
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Not many people must have heard of Daniel Bernoulli perhaps because he did not bring about the significant changes men like Einstein and Newton brought to the scientific world. Nevertheless his contributions earned him a great name during his time. Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss physician, doctor and mathematician. He is most prominent for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, particularly fluid mechanics, and for his exceptional work in probability and statistics. Bernoulli’s theorem is the foundation of many engineering applications, such as aircraft wing design.
Academic Life and Career
Daniel was born in a family of leading mathematicians on 8th of February, 1700 in Groningen. His father Johann Bernoulli was also a mathematician and so was his older brother Nicolaus(II) Bernoulli and his uncle Jacob Bernoulli. His father encouraged him to pursue a business career but little Daniel was always fascinated with mathematics; however, when Daniel turned thirteen his father sent him to Basel University to study philosophy and logic. He graduated in 1715 and a year later received his Master’s degree. Later upon his father’s wishes he studied medicine on the condition that his father would teach him mathematics privately, which they continued for some time. During 1718, he spent time studying medicine at Heidelberg and Strasbourg in 1719. In 1720 he returned to Basel to complete his doctorate in medicine. He also went to Venice to study medicine. Here he worked on mathematics and his first mathematical work was published in 1724 with the support of Goldbach. This mathematical work was named as Mathematical exercises. In the same year he went to St. Petersburg as professor of mathematics, but was unhappy there, and a temporary illness in 1733 gave him an excuse for leaving. He returned to the University of Basel, where he consecutively held the chairs of medicine, metaphysics and natural philosophy until his death.
Contribution to Mathematics, Statistics and Physics
His most prominent work titled as ‘Hydrodynamica’, which was published in 1738, was a milestone in the theory of the flowing behavior of liquids. His work was based on the principle of conservation of energy, which he had studied with his father in 1720. In this Bernoulli developed the theory of watermills, windmills, water pumps and water propellers. He was the first to distinguish between hydrostatic and hydrodynamic pressure. His Bernoulli Principle on stationary flow has remained the general principle of hydrodynamics and aerodynamics even today and is the basis of modern aviation.
He is also the author of Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis (Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk) which is the basis of economic theory of risk aversion, risk premium and utility.
He is one of the earliest writers who made an attempt to devise the kinetic theory of gases and used the idea to explain Boyle’s law. He has also worked on elasticity with his close friend Leonhard Euler and helped his friend with development of the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation. Bernoulli’s principle is of significant use in aerodynamics.
Death
Daniel Bernoulli died on March 17, 1782 in Basel, Switzerland. Bernoulli won or shared 10 prizes of the Paris Academy of Sciences, with Euler.
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David Bohm
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David Joseph Bohm, more commonly known as David Bohm, was an American-born British quantum physicist who was a leading expert in the fields of theoretical physics, neuropsychology and philosophy. He is regarded as one of the most greatest and most influential theoretical physicists of the 20th century.
Early Life and Education:
David Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Jewish parents. His father owned a local furniture store. Bohm graduated from Pennsylvania State College in 1939. After attending the California Institute of Technology in 1940, he acquired a doctorate in theoretical physics at the University of California, Berkeley under Robert Oppenheimer.
Contributions and Achievements:
David Bohm, a scientist-philosopher, was a rare combination of the spirit of science and philosophy. He was considered to be one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists and the most influential among the new thinkers. He was a committed researcher and seeker who was intensely absorbed in the problems of the foundations of physics, studied the theory of relativity and developed an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics in order to eliminate the philosophical paradoxes that seemed to be prevalent in quantum mechanics and developed a metaphysics, the philosophy of the implicate order, to steer humanity to a new profound vision of reality.
He followed the great tradition of Aristotle, in developing first a physics and finding that it was inadequate to explain the dynamic process of matter, life and consciousness, developed a metaphysics of the implicate and explicate order. The implicate-explicate order is the philosophical conclusion he had drawn from his life long research and musings in physics. Like Einstein-though for different reasons, Bohm has never been reconciled to the current quantum mechanics’ interpretations and proposed a hidden order which was at work beneath the seeming chaos and lack of continuity of individual particles of matter described by quantum mechanics.
Later Life and Death:
Bohm continued his work in quantum physics past his retirement in 1987, writing the posthumously published “The Undivided Universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory (1993)”, in collaboration with his friend Basil Hiley. He died of a heart failure in Hendon, London, on 27 October 1992. Bohm was 74 years old.
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Dian Fossey
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Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932- December 27, 1985) was a well-known American Zoologist that was best known for her extensive study of gorillas that took about 18 years to complete. What was so fascinating about Dian Fossey was that she had no problem going out of her comfort zone and moving Rwanda where she would study the gorillas in their rainforest habitat. She was encouraged the famous anthropologist Louis Leakey to work in Rwanda and this was where she spent most of her time doing her work. She was murdered in 1985 and until today her murder remains an open case.
She was known as one of the foremost primatologists back when she was still alive and she helped for the group called “Leakey’s Angels: which unsurprisingly, also counted Jane Goodall and Birute Galdikas as the other two members. Fossey focused on gorillas, Goodall fixated on the chimpanzees, and Birute specialized in orangutans and it was Leakey who sent them out to study these great apes in their natural habitats.
The early life and education background of Dian Fossey
Dian Fossey was well-known as a primatologist and as a naturalist and she developed a love for animals at a very young age. She was born in January 16, 1932 in San Francisco CA, where she grew up with her mom and her step-dad. Throughout her young life, she was a great horse-woman and dreamed of one day becoming a veterinarian. She enrolled in the University of California to study pre-veterinary medicine courses and while she was a very good student, base science subjects like chemistry and physics weren’t really her cup of tea. She later moved to San Diego state where she majored in occupational therapy instead.
After she graduated from her occupational therapy course in 1953, she spent several months as a hospital intern in California but made the move to Louisville in Kentucky where served as the director of the occupational therapy department at the Kosair Crippled Children’s hospital, this was in 1955. She lived on a farm located in the outskirts of the city and this is where she spent a lot of her down time tending to farm animals but her happiness didn’t last because she eventually became restless and yearned to see what the world had to offer and this is when she set her sights on seeing Africa.
Trip to Africa
But in September 1963, Fossey finally made her way to Africa. She spent her entire life-savings for the trip and even took out an $8000 bank loan which was sizeable at that time. She made her way to Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and the Congo but she also saw lots of other places on her trip. It was only a matter of time before she met up with Mary Leakey and her husband Louis Leakey- they were both archaeologists and one of the most famous husband-and-wide teams in scientific history.
She also met up with wildlife photographers Joan and Alan Root who were busy with a documentary on gorillas in Africa. It was this couple who brought her along to one of their trips to look for the gorillas and this was when Fossey fell in love with the great apes which she talks about at great length in her autobiography.
The start of her career
she went back home to Kentucky with great reluctance but it was also when she met up with Louis Leakey once more and it was he who suggested that just like Jane Goodall and her chimps in Tanzania, she too could undertake a long-term study of the gorillas in Rwanda. She studied Swahili and undertook an auditing class on the subject of primatology as she waited the 8 months it would take for her funding and her visa to be ready and in December 1966, she finally arrived at Nairobi.
She took time to acquire a vehicle she named “Lily” and even took a trip to the Gombe Stream Research Center to meet up with Jane Goodall and see first-hand how she interacted with her subjects. Alan Root helped her obtain her permits to work in the Virunga Mountains and how to track gorillas. It was all uphill from there. In the early 1967s, Dian Fossey began her 18-year long field study of the apes in the Congo. She lived in tents and existed canned food; once a month, she would trek down the mountain to where her jeep was and go on a two hour drive to restock in the village of Kikumba.
Dian Fossey’s work in Africa
On the year 1967, she spearheaded the founding of the Karisoke Research Center which was a rather remote camp nestled in the rainforest found in the Ruhengeri province. It took quite a whole for her to get to know the gorillas in this new area because they had never before been studied and only looked at men as poachers. Not only did she have to content with the remote location but she also had to deal with research students that left due to the fact they could not handle the extreme coldness and darkness of the camp.
She was vehemently opposed to poaching and while it was an outlawed activity in Rwanda, it was a law that was interpreted very loosely. Not only did she work to prevent the poaching of gorillas that were to be exported to zoos but she also cared for injured and sick primates should they come to her attention. Aside from her opposition to poaching, she was also against the idea of tourists coming to see the primates since they were susceptible to human diseases. These days, her foundation acknowledges responsible tourism and even promotes it as a good way to help the preservation of her beloved gorillas.
Her autobiography and legacy
Dian Fossey was found hacked to death on December 1985 and though no one has been convicted, the finger points to poachers as the culprits. Her autobiography Gorillas in the Mist became a best seller though and was later turned into a movie. Her foundation lives in and has even extended operations to help gorillas in other African states.
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Dmitri Mendeleev
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Dmitri Mendeleev revolutionized our understanding of the properties of atoms and created a table that probably embellishes every chemistry classroom in the world.
Early Life and Contributions:
Dmitri Mendeleev was born at Tobolsk, Siberia in 1834. He studied science at St. Petersburg and graduated in 1856. In 1863 Mendeleev was appointed to a professorship and in succeeded to the Chair in the University. The Russian chemist and science historian L.A. Tchugayev has characterized him as “a chemist of genius, first-class physicist, a fruitful researcher in the fields of hydrodynamics, meteorology, geology, certain branches of chemical technology and other disciplines adjacent to chemistry and physics, a thorough expert of chemical industry and industry in general, and an original thinker in the field of economy.
His greatest accomplishment, however, was the stating of the Periodic Law and the development of the Periodic Table. From early in his career, he felt that there was some type of order to the elements, and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students.
Legacy:
Mendeleev was one of the first modern-day scientists in that he did not depend completely on his own work but rather was in correspondence with scientists around the world in order to receive data that they had collected. He then used their data along with his own data to arrange the elements according to their properties. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements for which in , The Nobel Committee for Chemistry recommended to the Swedish Academy to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Mendeleev for his discovery of the periodic system.
Besides his work on general chemical concepts as discussed earlier, Mendeleev spent much of his time working to improve technological advances of Russia. Many of his research findings dealt with agricultural chemistry, oil refining, and mineral recovery. Dmitri was also one of the founding members of the Russian Chemical Society and helped open the lines of communication between scientists in Europe and the United States.
Mendeleev also pursued studies on the properties and behavior of gases at high and low pressures, which led to his development of a very accurate differential barometer and further studies in meteorology. He also became interested in balloons, which led to a rather dangerous adventure as he made a solo rise, without any prior experience, whereas his family was rather concerned too but ultimately he completed his observations and found a way of transportation through his efficient working.
In another department of physical chemistry, he investigated the expansion of liquids with heat, and devised a formula similar to Gay-Lussac’s law of the uniformity of the expansion of gases, while as far back as 1861 he anticipated Thomas Andrews’ conception of the critical temperature of gases by defining the absolute boiling-point of a substance as the temperature at which cohesion and heat of vaporization become equal to zero and the liquid changes to vapor, irrespective of the pressure and volume. Mendeleev is also given credit for the introduction of the metric system to the Russian Empire. He invented pyrocollodion, a kind of smokeless powder based on nitrocellulose.
This work had been commissioned by the Russian Navy, which however did not adopt its use. Once in an attempt at a chemical conception of the Aether, he put forward a hypothesis that there existed two inert chemical elements of lesser atomic weight than hydrogen. Of these two proposed elements, he thought the lighter to be an all-penetrating, all-pervasive gas, and the slightly heavier one to be a proposed element, coronium.Mendeleev devoted much study and made important contributions to the determination of the nature of such indefinite compounds as solutions.
Talking about Mendeleev’s publications, from his first book entitled “Chemical Analysis of a Sample from Finland” to his final work, “A Project for a School for Teachers” and “Toward Knowledge of Russia”, Mendeleev’s records enlightening his research findings and beliefs reach the number of over 250. His most famous publications include Organic Chemistry, which was published when he was 27 years old. This book won the Domidov Prize and put Mendeleev on the forefront of Russian chemical education.
Later Life:
Throughout the remainder of his life, Dmitri Mendeleev received numerous awards from various organizations including the Davy Medal from the Royal Society of England, the Copley Medal, the Society’s highest award, and honorary degrees from universities around the world and continued to be a popular social figure until his death at the age of seventy two in Petersburg.
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E. O. Wilson
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Edward Osborne Wilson, more commonly known as E. O. Wilson, is an American biologist who is widely considered to be the world’s leading authority on ants. One of the leading figures in sociobiology, he is often dubbed as “the father of sociobiology”.
A notable author and researcher, Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize twice. He is also noted for his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas related to religious and ethical subjects.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1929 in Alabama, E. O. Wilson showed an interest in science from an early age. He always hoped to become a biologist. Wilson received his BS and MS degrees from the University of Alabama.
Contributions and Achievements:
Wilson earned his doctorate in biology from Harvard University in 1955. He carried out various research studies and was awarded many prizes. He published his most controversial book, “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” in 1975 that gained him countrywide acclaim and recognition. John Paul Scott had coined the term “sociobiology” during a conference on social behavior and genetics. Wilson thoroughly discussed the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviors in his book, for instance nurturance, aggression and altruism.
When Wilson started taking ants as his main focus of research, he generalized his conclusions to the behavior of primates including human beings. This created much controversy and several scholoars rejected this view. In recent years, however, research done in Africa in the field of chimpanzees has established that he was not quite wrong.
E. O. Wilson has been harshly criticized by liberal thinkers as well as the members of the Psychology Division of Women in the American Psychological Association. The primary contentions are however emotional, and not empirical. Wilson did not try to state that human nature was purely inherited. Several of his detractors misinterpreted his claims.
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Edward Jenner
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Also known as the “Father of Immunology”, Edward Anthony Jenner was an English scientist and is famous for his discovery of smallpox vaccine. This was the first successful vaccine ever to be developed and remains the only effective preventive treatment for the fatal smallpox disease. His discovery was an enormous medical breakthrough and has saved countless lives. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox an eliminated disease.
Early Life and Career
Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749, in Berkely, Gloucestershire, England. His father (who died when Edward was just five years old) was a preacher for the parish. He received his training at Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire from eight years as an apprentice to Daniel Ludlow (a surgeon). During his training, an interesting thing happened that led to his famous discovery in the later years. He overheard a girl say that she could not get the dreaded Smallpox disease because she had already had another disease known as Cowpox. This evoked a desire inside Jenner to carryout a research on this information.
As a child, Jenner was a keen observer of nature and in 1770 after completing his training he went to St George’s Hospital, London to study anatomy and surgery under the well-known surgeon John Hunter and others. After finishing his studies, he returned to Berkeley to set up a medical practice where he stayed until his death.
Jenner and others formed a medical society in Rodborough, Gloucestershire, for the purpose to read papers on medical subjects and dine together. He also published papers on angina.
Discovery of Smallpox Vaccine
Jenner worked in a rural society where most of his patients were farmers or worked on farms with cattle. In the 18th century Smallpox was considered to be the most deadly and persistent human pathogenic disease. The main treatment was by a method which had brought success to a Dutch physiologist, Jan Ingenhaus and was brought to England in 1721 by Lady Mary Wortly Montague, the wife of the British Ambassador to Turkey. This method was well known in eastern countries, and involved scratching the vein of a healthy person and pressing a small amount of matter, taken from a smallpox pustule of a person with a mild attack, into the wound. The risk of the treatment was that the patient often contracted the full disease, with fatal results.
In 1788 a wave of smallpox swept through Gloucestershire and during this outbreak Jenner observed that those of his patients who worked with cattle and had come in contact with the much milder disease called cowpox never came down with smallpox. Jenner needed a way of showing that his theory actually worked.
In 1796 Jenner conducted an experiment on one of his patients called James Phipps, an eight year old boy. After making two cuts in James’ arm, Jenner worked into them a small amount of cowpox puss. Although the boy had the normal reaction, of a slight fever, after several days, he soon was in good health. When, a few weeks later Jenner repeated the vaccination, using smallpox matter, the boy remained healthy. This is how Jenner’s vaccination treatment was born, named after the medical name for cowpox, vaccinia.
In 1798 after carrying out more successful tests, he published his findings: An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Known by the Name of Cow Pox.
Death
Jenner was found in a state of apoplexy in January 1823, with his right side paralyzed. He never fully recovered, and finally died of an apparent stroke on 26 January 1823 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England.
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Edward Teller
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Edward Teller was a Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the production of the first atomic bomb as well the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, Hydrogen bomb. He is also known for his extraordinary contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, surface physics and spectroscopy (particularly the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects).
Early Life and Education:
Born in Budapest in a rich Hungarian Jewish family, Edward Teller earned a degree in chemical engineering at the Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe. He received his Ph.D. in particle chemistry from the University of Leipzig in 1930.
Contributions and Achievements:
Teller accepted a teaching position at the University of London in 1934. After joining George Washington University as a professor, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen after a few years in 1941. He became a part of the the Manhattan Project duting World War II. A few of his brilliant contributions included work on the first nuclear reactor, analysis of the effects of a fission explosion and research on a potential fusion reaction.
Teller was a recipient of the the Enrico Fermi Award, Albert Einstein Award, the National Medal of Science and the Harvey Prize from Technion-Israel Institute.
He was an active campaigner for civil defense since the 1950′s. Teller also worked as a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institute, where he studied the international and national policies of energy and defense. A few of the notable books he has written include “Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics Better a Shield Than a Sword”, “Pursuit of Simplicity” and “Energy from Heaven and Earth”.
Later Life and Death:
Edward Teller died in Stanford, California on September 9, 2003. He was 95 years old. The same year he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Edwin Herbert Land
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Photography is a field where a lot of great minds come together to come up with one technological breakthrough after another. One man who had a lot to offer to the field of photography is Edwin Herbert Land. If you have ever taken a snapshot with a Polaroid camera or if you have polaroid pictures in your room, then he is the man you have to thank.
Who is he?
Edwin Herbert Land was as American scientist and inventor and he is best known for being one of the co-founders of Polaroid Corporation. He was responsible for a lot of photography-related inventions such inexpensive filters that polarized light, his retinex theory for color vision, and his practical system for in-camera instant photos.
His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in just 60 seconds or even less.
His Early Life
Edwin Land was born to Martha and Harry Land in Bridgeport, Connecticut where his parents owned a scrap yard. Edwin was of Eastern European Jewish descent by way of both of his parents, and he attended the Norwich Free Academy located in Norwich, Connecticut. It was a semi-private high school where he graduated in 1927. As a matter of fact, the very library from his school was named after him after he died since it was funded by grants given by his family members.
After high school, he went on to Harvard where he studied chemistry but after he finished his freshman year, he left his school and went to New York City instead. It was in New York City that he invented the very first cheap filters that had the ability to polarize light; the Polaroid film. Given that he wasn’t affiliated with any educational centers at the time he didn’t have the tools necessary for the project and needless to say it was rather difficult for him to come up with the filters.
What he did was he sneaked into the Columbia University laboratories during late hours so he could have use of their lab equipment. He also went to the New York City Public library to scour scientific literature for works that touched on polarizing materials and substances. He had his “eureka” moment when he realized that instead of working to grow a large-scale crystal made of a polarizing substance , it was easier for him to make a film that contained millions of micron-sized crystals instead. These crystals could then be coaxed to align with each other.
After he developed that polarizing film, he went back to Harvard University but he didn’t quite finish his studies nor get his degree. Perhaps the problem was that as soon as he found a certain solution to a problem, he lost all interest to write down his findings or find a way to prove his vision to other parties concerned. His instructor had to prod his wife to get answers for his homework problems. She would then take it upon herself to write the answers so he could submit it and receive credit.
His Company
It was in the year 1932 that he put up the Land-Wheelwright laboratories with his physics instructor from Harvard; a man named George Wheelwright. The lab was put up so they could commercialize the polarizing technology that he came up with. Wheelwright came from a family that had money and he agreed to put up the funds for the business venture. After some number of early successes with coming up with polarizing filters for shades and photo filters, their lab received funding from investors from Wall Street so they could expand their business.
The larger company was given the name “Polaroid Corporation” 5 years after in the year 1937.
Land didn’t rest on his laurels through because he went on to make further developments to his products and came up with sheet polarizers which he placed under the Polaroid trademark. Given that the initial application for his product was for use in sunglasses and scientific work, he found other uses for it. Pretty soon, he was using it for things like color animation, glasses in full-color 3D movies, controlling light brightness through windows, a component for LCDs, and so much more.
During WWII, he worked in many military projects and came up with dark-adapt goggles, passively guided smart bombs, and target finders. He also came up with the vectograph which was a special stereoscopic viewing system which revealed the enemy even if they were camouflaged.
On February 21, 1947, he came up with an instant camera and a related film. He called it the “Land Camera” and it went on sale commercially just two years after it was invented. The Polaroid company originally came out with just 60 of the cameras and 57 units were put up for sale at Jordan Marsh in Boston. They thought people wouldn’t go for it and they’d have enough left in stock so they could come up with a second batch but they were wrong; all camera units were sold on just the first day.
During his years with the company, he was quite notorious for coming up with marathon research sessions. When Land came up with an idea, he wouldn’t stop experimenting and brainstorming until he had a working solution. In fact, he would forget to eat if food wasn’t brought to him and he was reminded to eat. As the company grew, he had teams and teams of assistants working different shifts right by his side. As one team wore out, another was brought in so he could work uninterrupted. That was how much of an obsessive worker he was.
His Death
Edwin H. Land bid farewell to the world on March 1, 1991 in Cambridge, MA. He lived to the ripe old age of 81 and upon his death, his trusted personal assistant got rid of all his personal papers and his notes. His body was laid to rest at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge as well.
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Edwin Hubble
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Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who is known for playing a vital role in the development of extragalactic astronomy. Hubble substantiated the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way in 1925 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He is widely regarded as the most influential observational cosmologist of the 20th century.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1889 at Marshfield, a small city in Webster County, Missouri, Edwin Powell Hubble was a bright boy since his childhood days. He used to be a great athlete in school. After studying mathematics and astronomy at Chicago University, he received a Rhodes Scholarship. He studied law at Oxford University and became a high-school teacher.
After a few months, he dumped both teaching and law, and realized that he can’t live without astronomy, his first love. After doing one year service for army in the First World War, Hubble secured a job at the Mount Wilson Observatory In California. There, he had access to a very expensive and world’s largest Newtonian telescope with a mirror 100 inches (2.5 m) in diameter.
Contributions and Achievements:
Hubble developed an interest in “nebulae”; cloudy objects in the sky during night. He made an excellent observation that these clouds were not entirely made up of clouds of gas, but also consisted of clouds of stars, usually arranged in spirals.
It was revealed in in 1920 that the Sun was part of the Milky Way or the Galaxy; a vast group of stars. This made Hubble wonder if the nebulae were also a part of this group or not. After much research, he was able to demonstrate that the Universe was something much bigger than the imagination of any astronomer can comprehend.
Hubble had captured photographed hundreds of nebulae, and by 1924, declared that several of these consisted of stars and could be called galaxies. He categorized the galaxies into different types according to the structure of their spirals, something that was later proved to be wrong. While studying the constellation of Andromeda, the largest visible galaxy in the sky, he found out that it contained a variable star. Hubble concluded the Andromeda nebula was much distant to earth as compared to any other known star, making it outside the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery made him world-famous and proved the concept of “single galaxy universe” wrong.
This landmark discovery was followed by the findings of more Cepheid variables in other nebulae and Hubble successfully measured their distances. To his surprise, they were even more distant than the Andromeda nebula. With these conclusions, he demonstrated that the universe was much, much bigger.
Hubble discovered the asteroid 1373 Cincinnati in 1935. His famous book The Observational Approach to Cosmology and The Realm of the Nebulae was also published around the same time.
Later Life and Death:
Edwin Hubble spent much of his later life trying to prove astronomy as a field of physics.
He died on September 28, 1953 of a stroke in San Marino, California. He was 63 years old.
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Elizabeth Blackwell
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Early Life:
Elizabeth Blackwell born on 3rd February 1821, was the first female doctor in the United States. She was the first openly identified woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in educating women in medicine in the United States, and was prominent in the emerging women’s rights movement.
Talking about Elizabeth’s educational life, she was rejected by all the leading schools to which she applied and almost all the other schools as well. When her application arrived at Geneva Medical College at Geneva, New York, the administration asked the students to decide whether to admit her or not. The students, reportedly believing it to be only a practical joke, approved her admission.
At first, she was even kept from classroom medical demonstrations, as unsuitable for a woman but very soon the students started getting impressed by her ability and persistence. Finally she graduated first in her class in 1849, becoming the first woman doctor of medicine in the modern era. She worked in clinics in London and Paris for two years, and studied midwifery at La Maternité where she contracted “purulent opthalmia” from a young patient. When Blackwell lost sight in one eye, she returned to New York City in 1851, giving up her dream of becoming a surgeon.
After returning to New York City, she applied for several positions as a physician, but was rejected because she was a woman. Blackwell then established a private practice in a rented room, where her sister Emily, who had also pursued a medical career, soon joined her. Their modest dispensary later became the New York Infirmary and College for Women, operated by and for women. Dr. Blackwell also continued to fight for the admission of women to medical schools. In the 1860s she organized a unit of female field doctors during the Civil War where Northern forces fought against those of the South over, among other things, slavery and secession.
Contributions and Achievements:
Dr. Blackwell did not give up and continued her efforts to open the medical profession to women. In 1857, Blackwell along with her sister Emily founded their own infirmary, named the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. During the American Civil War, Blackwell trained many women to be nurses and sent them to the Union Army. Many women were interested and received training at this time. Her articles and her autobiography also attracted widespread attention and inspired many women.
She also began to see women and children in her home. As she developed her practice, she also wrote lectures on health, which she published in 1852 as The Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls.
Blackwell was an early outspoken opponent of circumcision and in said that “Parents should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral health. She was a proponent of women’s rights and pro-life. Her female education guide was published in Spain, as was her autobiography. Blackwell also had ties to the women’s rights movement from its earliest days. She was proudly proclaimed as a pioneer for women in medicine as early as the Adjourned Convention in Rochester, New York in, two weeks after the First Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls.
In 1856, she adopted Katherine “Kitty” Barry, an orphan of Irish origin, who was her companion for the rest of her life.
Later Life:
In 1907 Blackwell was injured in a fall from which she never fully recovered. She died on 31 May 1910 at her home in Hastings in Sussex after a stroke. She was buried in June 1910 in Saint Mun’s churchyard at Kilmun a place she loved in Argyllshire, in the Highlands of Scotland.
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Emil Fischer
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Emil Hermann Fischer, more commonly known as Emil Fischer, was an eminent German chemist. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his influential research regarding the purines and the carbohydrates.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Euskirchen near Bonn, Germany in 1852, Emil Fischer’s father, Lorenz Fischer, was a local businessman who wanted his son to become a chemist. Emil Fischer started attending the University at Bonn in 1871, where took the classes of Rudolf Clausius and August Kekule. In 1874, he received his doctorate from the University of Strasbourg under Adolph von Baeyer.
Contributions and Achievements:
Fischer also assisted Baeyer in his research laboratory. He accompanied Baeyer to Munich in 1875, becoming a Privatdozent in 1878, and an assistant professor in 1879. Three years later, he assumed the position of Professor and Director of the Chemistry Institute at Erlangen in 1882. Fischer was also a successor to A. W. von Hofmann, as a director of the Chemistry Institute of Berlin.
Following his stay at Baeyer’s laboratory, Fischer implemented the classical chemical methods into organic chemistry, in an effort to demonstrate the structure of biological compounds for instance sugars, proteins and purines. He also worked on the organic synthesis of (+) glucose.
Fischer had three sons; two of whom became medical doctors and died as soldiers during World War I. Hermann Fischer, his third son, became a famous biochemist.
Later Life and Death:
Emil Fischer studied the enzymes and the chemical substances in the lichens in his later years. He formulated a “Lock and Key Model” in 1890 for the visualization of the substrate and enzyme interaction. Fischer died in Berlin on July 15, 1919. He was 66 years old.
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Emil Kraepelin
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Emil Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist who is widely considered to be the founder of modern psychiatry and psychopharmacology. He suggested that the primary origin of psychiatric disease was related to biological and genetic malfunction. Kraepelin also devised a classification system for mental illness that helped shape later classifications.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1856 in Germany, Emil Kraepelin chose a career in psychiatry when he was only 18 years old. He started studying the influence of acute medical diseases on psychiatric unwellness when he was a third-year medical student. After finishing his medical training in Wurzburg, Germany, he took a position at the Munich Clinic. There, he had a good opportunity to explore brain anatomy, memory and learning.
Kraepelin was awarded his first chairmanship at the age of 30 years in Dorpat.
Contributions and Achievements:
Kraepelin’s differentiation between “dementia praecox” (now schizophrenia) and “manic—depression” (bipolar disorder) was a turning point in the history of psychiatry. He held the belief that biological and genetic disorders cause psychiatric illnesses. He vocally rejected the conflicting approach of Sigmund Freud, who considered and treated mental disorders as secondary to psychological factors.
Kraepelin suggested that the classification of psychiatric diseases should be based on common patterns of symptoms, instead of the mere similarity of symptoms. After his extensive observation of patients, he formulated the outcome, criteria of course and prognosis of mental illness.
Kraepelin’s fundamental concepts on the etiology and diagnosis of psychiatric disorders laid the groundwork for every major diagnostic system of today, particularly the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (1CD) system and the American Psychiatrics Association’s DSM-IV.
Later Life and Death:
The last edition of Emil Kraepelin’s Textbook of Psychiatry was made public in 1927, roughly one year after his death in 1926. It comprised of four volumes and was ten times bigger as compared to the first edition of 1883.
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Emile Berliner
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Emile Berliner (formally known as Emil Berliner) was an inventor best known for developing the disc record gramophone. He founded The Berliner Gramophone Company in 1895, The Gramophone Company in London, England, Deutsche Gramophone in Hanover, Germany and Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada.
Early Life and Career:
Emile Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany on the 20th of May 1851. He was one of thirteen children born to Samuel and Sarah Berliner. Following a few years of school in Hanover, Berliner was sent to Wolfenbuttel from which he graduated in 1865 at the age of fourteen. Berliner then spent several years there after doing odd jobs in Hanover to help support the large Berliner family. He migrated to the United States of America in 1870, where he lived in Washington, D.C. and officially turned a citizen in 1881. He became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and invented an improved telephone transmitter. In 1886 Berliner began experimenting with methods of sound recording. He was granted his first patent for what he called the “gramophone” in 1887. Berliner’s other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth; an acoustic tile and an early version of the helicopter.
Berliner started to compose as well. He expressed his love for America and the opportunities it had afforded him in a patriotic song which became a smash hit of its day: The Columbian Anthem- a song debuted in Washington on Washington’s Birthday at the 1897 national council of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As a composition it ranks easily with the best national hymns ever written.
Berliner turned his attention to the violin. It is well known that antique violins are consistently more brilliant over their entire range than new instruments. Berliner determined that the new instrument did not vibrate freely because the fibers of the wood under the bridge took much time to adjust to the uneven pressures transmitted by the strings through the bridge to the instruments body.
In 1909 he donated funds for an infirmary building at the Starmont Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Washington Grove, Maryland, dedicated to the memory of his father. Berliner was president of the Washington Tuberculosis Association for some years. In 1920 Berliner endowed a silver cup as an annual award by the Tuberculosis Association to the city whose school children were most engaged in his health crusade.
In 1899, Berliner wrote a book, Conclusions that speaks of his agnostic ideas on religion and philosophy.
Berliner was also awarded the Franklin Institute’s John Scott Medal in 1897, and later the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1913 and the Franklin Medal in 1929.
Death:
Emile Berliner died of a heart attack at the age of 78 and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Through his innovations and inventions, he left invaluable legacies in communications, acoustics, and aeronautics to America and to the rest of the world.
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Enrico Fermi
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Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist, is well-known for his achievements in both theoretical and experimental physics. This is an exceptional achievement in a period where scientific accomplishments have focused on one aspect or the other. He is mainly remembered for his work on the advancement of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for “his discovery of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for the discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.”
Early Years and Career:
Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy on 29th September, 1901. His father, Alberto Fermi was a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and his mother, Ida de Gattis was a school teacher. He received his early education from a local grammar school and at an early age developed a great interest in physics and mathematics. Fermi’s aptitude for physics and mathematics was highly encouraged by Adolfo Amidei, one of his father’s friends, who gave him several books on physics and mathematics, which he read and understood quickly.
In 1918, Fermi joined the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Here he spent four years and gained a doctor’s degree in physics in 1922, with Professor Puccianti. A year later he was awarded a scholarship from the Italian Government and spent few months with Professor Max Born in Göttingen. With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he moved to Leyden to work with P. Ehrenfest. The same year he returned to Italy where he served for two years as a Lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence. From 1927 to 1938, Fermi served as the Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome. During 1939, he was employed as the Professor of Physics at Columbia University, N.Y until 1942. Later on in 1946, accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, a position which he held till his death.
Contributions and Achievements:
In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the Fermi statistics.
It was during his time in Paris, Fermi and his team marked major contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. In 1934, while at the University of Rome, Fermi carried out his experiments where he bombarded a variety of elements with neutrons and discovered that slow moving neutrons were particularly effective in producing radioactive atoms. Not realizing he had split the atom, Fermi told people about what he thought were elements beyond uranium. In 1938, Fermi won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on nuclear processes.
He continued to conduct nuclear fission experiments at Columbia University. In 1940, Fermi and his team proved that absorption of a neutron by a uranium nucleus can cause the nucleus to split into two nearly equal parts, releasing numerous neutrons and huge amounts of energy. This was the first nuclear chain reaction. Later in 1944 this work was carried forward to New Mexico, and on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated at Alamogordo Air Base.
Death:
Fermi’s historic accomplishments caused him to be recognized as one of the great scientists of the 20th century. He died of cancer at the University of Chicago on 28 November 1954.
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Ernest Rutherford
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The British physicist and chemist, Ernest Rutherford is known for his remarkable orbital theory of the atom in his discovery of Rutherford dispersion with his famous Gold Foil experiment. He is also known as the “father of nuclear physics”. He was honored with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for his exploration into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances. Today he is ranked high among many other famous scientists like Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
Early Life and Education:
Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, Spring Grove near Nelson, New Zealand. He was the fourth child and the second son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha Thompson, an English schoolteacher. Ernest studied in a Government school and after he completed his schooling he won a scholarship to Nelson Collegiate School, where he was a well-liked boy and an ardent footballer. He was awarded his second scholarship in 1889 to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand. Here he completed his graduation with a B.A. in 1892 and an M.A. in 1893 with first-class bi-honors in mathematics and physics. His interest in research made him stay another year at the college where he completed his B.Sc. The same year he won his third scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under Professor J.J Thomson. Later he left for Canada when he was given the opportunity to take the chair of physics at McGill University in Montreal.
In 1900 Rutherford married Mary Newton, only daughter of his landlady in Christchurch.
Contribution to the Field of Physics:
In a span of just three years Rutherford successfully marked out a wholly new branch of physics called radioactivity.
At Cavendish Laboratory, he discovered a detector for electromagnetic waves, an essential feature being a creative magnetizing coil containing tiny bundles of magnetized iron wire. He and Professor Thomson worked together and studied the behavior of ions observed in gases, the mobility of ions with respect to the force of the electric field, and on related topics like the photoelectric effect.
While experimenting on radioactivity during 1899, Rutherford discovered two distinctive types of radiation emitted by thorium and uranium which he named alpha and beta. These rays were distinguished on the basis of penetrating power.
At McGill Rutherford was accompanied by a young chemist, Frederick Soddy and together they investigated three groups of radioactive elements–radium, thorium, and actinium. In 1902 they reached to the conclusion that radioactivity was a course of action in which atoms of one element spontaneously disintegrated into atoms of a completely different element, which also remained radioactive. This view was however not accepted by chemists who strongly believed in the concept that matter cannot be destructed.
In 1903 he named the radiation discovered by Paul Villard, a French chemist as gamma. He found out that this radiation had a much greater penetration power than alpha and beta.
Rutherford received a great appreciation for his work by the Royal Society, which elected him a fellow in 1903 and awarded him the Rumford medal in 1904.
At Manchester, Ernest along with the support of H. Geiger developed a method for detecting a single alpha particle and counting the number emitted from radium. In 1909 along with H. Geiger and Ernest Marsden he carried out the Geiger–Marsden experiment which enabled him to understand the nuclear nature of atoms. This experiment led to the foundation of Rutherford model of the atom in 1911 through which he explained that a very small positively-charged nucleus was orbited by electrons. This was his greatest contribution to physics.
In 1919, which was his last year at Manchester became the first person to transform one element into another when he converted nitrogen into oxygen through a nuclear reaction. In 1921, Rutherford and his associate Niels Bohr (who postulated that electrons moved in specific orbits), gave their theory about the existence of neutrons. This theory was proved in 1932 by his colleague James Chadwick, who in 1935 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this innovation.
Death:
This great physicist died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937, following a short illness, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Ernst Haeckel
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Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 – 1919) was a philosopher, professor, physician, naturalist, biologist and artist.
Early Life and Contributions:
After receiving a degree in medicine in 1857, Haeckel obtained a doctorate in zoology from the University of Jena and taught zoology there. Haeckel’s contributions to zoological science were a mixture of sound research and assumptions often with insufficient evidence. He was a renowned figure whose popularity with the public was substantially higher than it was with many of his scientific peers.
Legacy:
Although best known for the famous statement “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, he also invented many words commonly used by biologists today, such as phylum, phylogeny, and ecology. On the other hand, Haeckel also stated that “politics is applied biology”, a quote used by Nazi propagandists. The Nazi party, rather unfortunately, used not only Haeckel’s quotes, but also Haeckel’s justifications for racism, nationalism and social Darwinism.
Haeckel also proposed the idea that all multicellular animals derived from a theoretical two-layered (ectoderm and endoderm) animal, the Gastraea, a theory that provoked much discussion. He engaged in much valuable research on marine invertebrates, such as the radiolarians, jellyfish, calcareous sponges, and medusae, and wrote a series of monographs on these groups based largely on specimens brought back by the Challenger Expedition.
He was also the first to divide the animal kingdom into unicellular and multicellular animals. An ardent Darwinist, Haeckel made several zoological expeditions and founded the Phyletic Museum at Jena and the Ernst Haeckel Haus, which contains his books, records, and other effects.
An effective popularizer of science, Haeckel produced numerous tree diagrams, showing evolutionary relationships between different species. Modern scientists and science historians have varied on the value of these diagrams but many also praised his work and creativity. Haeckel also produced artwork, much of it quite beautiful, starting with his atlas of radiolarians, published in 1862.
It has been argued that what he saw was influenced by Jugendstil, the Art Nouveau form popular in Germany at the time. Whether or not artistic style influenced Haeckel’s illustrations, his illustrations certainly influenced later art forms, including light fixtures, jewelry, furniture, and even a gateway to the Paris Word Fair in 1900. In 1906 the Monist League was formed at Jena with Haeckel as its president. The League held a strong commitment to social Darwinism in which man was seen as part of nature and in no way qualitatively distinct from any other organic form.
Later in his career, Haeckel produced Art Forms in Nature, a work that he published in a series of 10 installments. Designed to interest the general public in naturalism, Haeckel’s own illustrations of animals, plants and microscopic organisms were introduced. In 1913, he published a set of photographs titled Nature as an Artist, aimed at countering allegations that his illustrations could be misleading. Today, however, many scientists and science historians share the conviction that his images were often highly contrived, beautiful as they may be.
Haeckel was the first person known to use the term “First World War”. Shortly after the start of the war Haeckel wrote:
“There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared “European War” will become the first world war in the full sense of the word.”
The “European War” became known as “The Great War”, and it was not until 1931, with the beginning realization that another global war might be possible, that there is any other recorded use of the term “First World War”.
He was one of the first to consider psychology as a branch of physiology. His chief interests lay in evolution and life development processes in general, including development of nonrandom form, which culminated in the beautifully illustrated art forms of nature.
Although Haeckel’s ideas are important to the history of evolutionary theory, and he was a competent invertebrate anatomist most famous for his work many speculative concepts that he championed are now considered incorrect but still he has been admired greatly for his work.
Death:
Haeckel died on Aug. 9, 1919, Germany, leaving behind his great inventions for others to serve as a source of inspiration.
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Ernst Mach
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Ernst Mach was a physicist. He was involved in the description and photographs of spark shock-waves. Later on he was involved in ballistic shock-waves. He described the passing of sound through a barrier caused by the compression of air in front of bullets and shells. He used “schlierenmethode” along with his son to photograph the shadow of the invisible shock waves. Ernst studies, in the field of experimental physics, concentrated on the interference, diffraction, polarization and refraction of light in different media under external influences
Early Life and Career:
Ernst Mach was born on February 18th, 1838 in Chirlitz, a part of Brno in the Czech Republic. His father was a graduate from Prague University. He was a tutor to the noble Brethon family in Zlin. Ernst was an Austrian physicist and philosopher and he is remembered for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves. As a philosopher of science, he influenced logical positivism and through his criticism of Newton, a forerunner of Einstein’s relativity. Mach received his education at home from his parents. He then entered a Gymnasium in Kremsier , where he studied for three years. In 1855, he became a student at the University of Vienna. He received his doctorate in physics in 1860. There he conducted studies on kinesthetic sensation, the feeling associated with movement and acceleration. Between 1873 and 1893 he developed optical and photographic techniques for the measurement of sound waves and wave propagation.
Mach also made many contributions to psychology and physiology including his anticipation of gestalt phenomena, the discovery of Mach bands, an inhibition-influenced type of visual illusion, and his discovery of a non-acoustic function of the inner ear which helped control human balance.
Mach also became well-known for his philosophy, a type of phenomenal recognition sensations as real. This position seemed incompatible with the view of atoms and molecules as external, mind-independent things. Mach was reluctance to acknowledge the reality of atoms was criticized by many as being incompatible with physics.
One of the best-known of Mach’s ideas is the so-called “Mach’s principle,” concerning the physical origin of inertia. This was never written down by Mach. However it was given a graphic verbal form, attributed by Philipp Frank to Mach himself.
Mach contributed to knowledge of perception, especially in his Beiträge zur Analyze der Empfindungen (1897; trans. C. M. Williams, The Analysis of Sensations; and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical, 1959). He was among the first to use visually ambiguous figures as research tools, for separating what we now call it ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ processing. Mach’s views on mediating structures inspired B. F. Skinner’s strongly inductive position, which paralleled Mach’s in the field of psychology
Mach’s principal works in English
The Science of Mechanics (1893)
The Analysis of Sensations (1897)
Popular Scientific Lectures (1895)
The Principles of Physical Optics (1926)
Knowledge and Error (1976)
Principles of the Theory of Heat (1986)
Death:
In 1898 Mach suffered from cardiac arrest. In 1901 he retired from the University of Vienna and was appointed to the upper chamber of the Austrian parliament. On leaving Vienna in 1913 he moved to his son’s home in Vaterstetten, near Munich, where he continued writing and corresponding until his death on February 19th, 1916.
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Ernst Mayr
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Ernst Walter Mayr, more commonly known as Ernst Mayr, was a German-born American who made decisive and groundbreaking contributions to avian taxonomy, evolution and population genetics. Widely credited as the world’s greatest evolutionary biologist in history, Mayr was fondly called the “Darwin of the 20th century”.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Kempten, Germany on July 5, 1904 to a jurist father, Ernst Mayr showed an early interest in ornithology. His father died when he was just 13. He attended the University of Greifswald in 1923. Mayr acquired his doctorate in ornithology from the University of Berlin in 1926; he was only 21 years old.
Contributions and Achievements:
Mayr stayed at the university to lead expeditions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, where he explored the variations among animals and plants on different islands. He joined the American Museum of Natural History, New York as a curator in 1932, where he wrote over 100 journal articles on the subject of bird taxonomy.
He published his famous book “Systematics and the Origin of Species” in 1942, which heavily contributed to population genetics and the evolutionary synthesis. He favored the Darwin’s evolution by natural selection rather than than Gosse’s divine creation.
Ernst Mayr approached the concept of species by saying that a species is not merely a group of morphologically closer individuals, but a group that breeds only among themselves, excluding all others. The theory of peripatric speciation by Mayr is considered a major mode of speciation in ornithology.
Later Life and Death:
In 1953 Mayr became Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, retiring in 1979 as professor emeritus. He died in Bedford, Massachusetts on February 3, 2005. He was 100 years old.
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Ernst Werner von Siemens
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German inventor and industrialist of the 19th century, Werner von Siemens was the pioneer of the electro industry and brought about a great technological advancement with many of his important discoveries. He earned a prominent position among the multitude of awards for achievements in science and technology.
Early Life, Education and Career:
Ernst Werner von Siemens was born at Lenthe, Hanover, Germany, on 13 December 1816, the oldest of four brothers. Siemens did not complete his schooling and joined the army to undertake training in engineering. For three years he was a pupil in the Military Academy at Berlin. In 1838 he earned his living as lieutenant in the artillery, and six years later he accepted the post of supervisor of the artillery workshops. In 1848 he had the task of defending the port of Kiel against the Danish fleet, and as commandant of Friedrichsort built the fortifications for the defense of Eckernforde harbor. The same year he was entrusted with the laying of the first telegraph line in Germany, which between Berlin and Frankfort-on-Main, and with that work his military career came to an end. His invention of the telegraph that used a needle to point to the right letter, instead of using Morse code led to formation of the electrical and telecommunications company Siemens as we know today.
In 1847, Siemens accompanied by mechanic Johann Georg Halske, established Siemens & Halske, a company that manufactured and repaired telegraphs. The company built offices in Berlin, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and other major cities, and in due course emerged as one of the major electrical manufacturing companies in Europe.
Besides the telegraph Siemens made outstanding contributions to the expansion of electrical engineering and is therefore known as the founding father of the discipline in Germany. In 1880 he designed the world’s first electric elevator. In 1866 he independently discovered the dynamo-electrical principle and developed interest in the growth of the self-excited dynamo and electric-traction. In 1867 he delivered an important paper on electric generators before the Royal Society. During late 1877 Siemens received German patent No. 2355 for an electromechanical “dynamic” or moving-coil transducer, which was adapted by A. L. Thuras and E. C. Wente for the Bell System in the late 1920s for use as a loudspeaker.
Siemens married twice in his life. His first marriage was to Mathilde Duman in 1852 and had two children, Arnold von Siemens and Georg Wilhelm von Siemens. Almost two years after the death of his first wife, he remarried Antonie Siemens, a distant cousin in 1869. Children from second marriage were Hertha von Siemens and Carl Friedrich von Siemens.
Death:
Werner von Siemens died on December 13, 1892, a week before his seventy-sixth birthday, at Charlottenburg, Germany.
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Erwin Schrödinger
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Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, more commonly known as Erwin Schrödinger, was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist. One of the founders of quantum mechanics, he is known for the Schrödinger equation and his brilliant contributions to the wave theory of matter. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Paul Dirac in 1933.
Early Life and Contributions:
Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna, Austria in 1887. He actually had a Bavarian family that had settled in Vienna long ago. Exceptionally talented and highly educated, he learned almost everything, including the history of Italian painting and most of the recent theories related to theoretical physics.
He became an artillery officer in World War I. He took several positions at Stuttgart, Breslau, and Zurich from 1920 onwards. Zurich proved to be the most productive period for Schrödinger. The tremendous discovery of the Schrodinger Wave Equation took place in 1926. It explained how the quantum state of a physical system changes in time.
Schrödinger went to Berlin in 1927 as the successor of Max Planck. Berlin used to be a center of scientific activity, but he was soon made to leave for Oxford, from where he went to Princeton, and then got back to Austria.
Later Life and Death:
When the Anschluss was over, Erwin Schrödinger made an escape to Italy and then made it to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin. He worked there until his retirement in 1955. He continued to write several important papers. Schrödinger died of tuberculosis in 1961.
He was 73 years old. The Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics was in Vienna was named after him in 1993.
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Euclid
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The famous Greek scientist and mathematician Euclid (300 BC) is best known as the author of the Elements, the oldest book consisting of geometrical theorems which is considered to be a standard for logical exposition.
Historical Introduction:
Not much is known aobut Euclid personally. There have been speculations whether he was a creative mathematician himself or merely collected the work of others. Much data about Euclid is recounted by Proclus, a 5th-century-AD philosopher. Euclid and Archimedes are often considered contemporaries. Euclid’s mathematical education is thought to be obtained from Plato’s pupils in Athens.
No work about geometrical theorems older than the Elements of Euclid has survived. The Elements superseded all earlier writings. This made it hard for historians to find out the earlier mathematicians whose works were could have been more significant in the development of Greek mathematics than Euclid’s. The Greek mathematician Thales is known to have discovered a number of theorems in 600 B.C. that appear in the Elements.
Eudoxus was given credit for the discovery of the method of exhaustion. Book XII of the Elements uses this method. While earlier mathematics may have been initiated by concrete problems, for instance finding out areas and volumes, by the time of Euclid mathematics had grown into an abstract construction, an intellectual occupation for philosophers as compared to scientists.
The Elements
The Elements is a collection of 13 books. Each book contains a sequence of propositions or theorems, around 10 to 100, introduced with proper definitions. For instance in Book I, 23 definitions are followed by five postulates, after which five common notions or axioms are included.
Other Contributions and Accomplishments:
Majority of the work of Euclid is known only through references by other writers. The Data is on plane geometry. The word “data” implies “things given”. The treatise consists of 94 propositions related to the kind of problem where certain data is presented about a figure and from which other data can be deduced. For instance, if a triangle has one angle given, the rectangle contained by the sides including the angle has to the area of the triangle a given ratio.
The Latin and Arabic manuscript translations of the Elements were also done, but it was not until the first printed edition, published in Venice in 1482. The work was very influential in Western education. The first comprehensive English translation was made in 1570. The most important mathematical period in England, around 1700, Greek mathematics was examined most passionately. Euclid was widely respected by all major mathematicians, including Isaac Newton.
The developing prepotency of the sciences and mathematics in the 18th and 19th centuries earned Euclid a crucial place in the curriculum of schools and universities throughout the Western world. The Elements was considered educational as a primer in logic.
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Evangelista Torricelli
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Early Life:
Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian man, and a physicist by occupation, initially studied at Jesuit schools in Faenza, near Ravenna. He was so good as a Physicist and a Mathematician that he was sent to Rome for further studies under Benedetto Castelli’s direction. Torricelli was introduced to Galileo by Benedetto Castelli and there Torricelli spent his time being Galileo’s assistant and secretary for a last few months of Galileo’s life. After Galileo passed away in January 1942, Torricelli was offered a position as a court mathematician and philosopher, Galileo’s old position, by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. This position was held by Torricelli till his death.
Contributions and Achievements:
Torricelli, also known as the father of hydrodynamics by Ernst Mach, was very famous for his study of the motion of fluids. He also carried out experiments of gases although the term was not invented by then. This led him to invent the Mercury Barometer, most important of his inventions. The invention took place by conducting an experiment on the air pressure and vacuum. Back then, the nature of vacuum was a debatable issue. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and scientist, believed that vacuum could not exist as he said, “Nature abhors a vacuum.”
On the other hand, Galileo believed that vacuum could exist and he explained the mechanism of the suction in a water pump that it was the vacuum that produced the action, and not the air pressure of the liquid being pumped.
Galileo also felt the air was weightless. The debaters noticed that the suction pumps, regardless of the size and power, in mines could not raise water for more than eighteen bracci which is about 30 feet or 9 m. Why did the water not flow to the maximum if nature really abhorred vacuum? That’s when Torricelli invented the barometer while explaining the phenomenon. Barometer was a great invention in the field of physics of atmosphere and the behavior of gases. He also contributed to meteorology by suggesting wind was caused by differences in the density of air, which is caused by the variations in the air temperature, and not by ‘Exhalations’.
To represent the mechanism of the suction pump in a small tube, he took heavier liquids like honey, sea water and mercury etc. instead of pure water. Torricelli used relatively smaller tubes, which were sealed at one end, for conducting the experiment with mercury. He filled about a meter of such tube with mercury and sealed the open end with his thumb before inverting the tube. He then submerged the tube into the dish of mercury. On inverting, the mercury in the tube dropped half way down and left an empty space at the top and a column of mercury in the tube about one and one-third bracci in height.
The dispute about the nature of vacuum was settled when Torricelli represented the experiment in this way: The weight of air pushing down on the dish of mercury prevented the mercury in the tube from falling out completely and the mercury was not pulled by the mercury. The weight could retain about thirty inches of mercury in the tube. Torricelli observed that such pumps could cause the water to move upwards, by evacuating the air pressure above a column of water, but that the water would move up only as far as the air pressure below pushed it up. The water came to a stop when the weight of the water exceeded the power of the air pressure below no matter how hard the pump worked. This also came to Torricelli’s notice that the height of the mercury varied by the passage of time.
It was due to changes in the air pressure overtime that this happened. A French scientist Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) visited Torricelli in 1644 and took with him the idea of mercury barometer to his friend Blaise Pascal. Pascal also agreed to the fact that the air pressure and the altitude were inversely proportional. It was shown by Pascal practically that the barometric pressure did indeed decrease as one ascended a mountain. This showed that Torricelli’s theory was absolutely correct.
Vincenzo Antinori drew an analogy a few years later that Torricelli’s invention of Barometer was to Physics what the invention of telescope was to Physics. Torricelli had also made improvements to the telescope which was an instrument used by Galileo for astronomy. Torricelli could grind lenses with such accuracy that he produced some of the finest telescopes.
Torricelli contributed a great deal to the field of mathematics which was an important contribution in the scientific history. He worked on the equations of curves, solids, and their rotations to fill in the missing parts between the Greek geometry and Calculus based on the works Francesco Cavalieri’s “of indivisibles. Calculus was given its first complete formulation by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, along with the works of René Descartes, Pierre de Fermat, Gilles Personne de Roberval and others.
Later Life:
Torricelli carried on with the tradition of Italian scientific pioneering, although he was not as good as his older contemporary Galileo. The tradition did not last long after his death and by the mid of seventeenth century or the beginning of the next century, Northern Europe had become the center of scientific progress.
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Francesco Redi
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Francesco Redi was an Italian scientist, physician, academician and poet. He was the first person to prove that spontaneous generation did not cause the growth of maggots in decaying meat, but they appeared from eggs deposited by flies.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Arezzo, Central Italy in 1626, Francesco Redi received a Jesuit education. He acquired a degree in medicine and philosophy from the University of Pisa in 1647.
Contributions and Achievements:
After staying in Naples, Venice, and Rome for a while, Francesco Redi visited Florence in 1654, where he succeeded his father as a court physician to Ferdinando II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He became a member of the Accademia della Crusca in 1655. He was appointed the administrator of the famous Accademia del Cimento, a fraternity of the finest Italian scientists who upheld the scientific tradition of Galileo.
Redi soon gained a reputation throughout Europe as one of the most reputed biologists after he published “Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti” in 1668 (English: Experiments on the Generation of Insects). The work still remains highly influential in history for effectively rejecting the widely popular belief of spontaneous generation.
Later Life and Death:
Francesco Redi died in his sleep on March 1, 1697. He was 71 years old.
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Francis Bacon
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Francis Bacon, a leading proponent of natural philosophy and scientific methodology, was an English lawyer, philosopher and scientist. Having written highly influential works on law, state and religion, politics and science, Bacon was an early pioneer of the scientific method who created “empiricism” and inspired the scientific revolution.
Early Life and Education:
Born on January 22, 1561 in Strand, London, Francis Bacon’s father, Nicholas Bacon, was a famous English politician and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Bacon was mostly homeschooled in his early years. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1573 when he was merely 12. He also attended the University of Poitiers.
Contributions and Achievements:
Francis Bacon is often called the father of modern science. He initiated a massive reformation of every process of knowledge for the advancement of learning divine and human. As the creator of empiricism, Francis Bacon formulated a set of empirical and inductive methodologies, for setting off a scientific inquiry, known as the Baconian method. His call for a plotted procedure of inquiring things, with an empiricist naturalistic approach, had a profound impact on the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science.
Bacon also served as the philosophical inspiration behind the progress of the Industrial age. He always suggested that scientific work should be done for charitable reasons, and for relieving mankind’s misery with the invention of useful things.
Bacon also authored several books and essays that advocated reformations of the law, and many of them regarding religious, moral and civil meditations.
Later Life and Death:
Francis Bacon was appointed a Lord Chancellor in 1618. Unfortunately, he was accused of bribery and was forced to resign, after which Bacon retired to his estate continuing with his literary, scientific, and philosophical work. He died of pneumonia in Highgate, London in 1626. Bacon was 65 years old.
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Francis Crick
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Highly regarded for his discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule with his colleague James D. Watson, Francis Crick was a scientific genius. He was a British molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist who jointly won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Maurice Wilkins mainly for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids.
Early Life:
Francis Crick was born June 8, 1916 in Northampton, England, the elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins. He received his early education at Northampton Grammar School and, after the age of 14, Mill Hill School in London (on scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry with great interest. When he turned eighteen, Crick entered the University College, London, where he graduated with his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 1937.
In the same year he started research for a Ph.D. under Prof E. N. da C. Andrade, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939. For the period of the war he worked as a scientist for the British Admiralty, mainly in connection with magnetic and acoustic mines. He left the Admiralty in 1947 and began studying biology.
Contributions and Achievements:
At Cambridge he began his Ph.D. work at the Strangeways Laborator with Arthur Hughes and they together examined the physical properties of cytoplasm in the cultured fibroblast cells. After two years he joined the Medical Research Unit at Cavendish Laboratory where he worked with Max Perutz and John Kerdrew on protein structure. He ended up doing his Ph. D work on x-ray diffraction of proteins.
An important influence in Crick’s career was his companionship, beginning in 1951, with James D. Watson at Cambridge. Both of them with their colleague Maurice Wilkins, they tried to expose the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Crick and Watson combined their respective knowledge of x-ray diffraction and phage and bacterial genetics and revealed the structure of DNA in 1953. They also published their discovery in the April 25 edition of the journal Nature.
Crick became best recognized for his work in the discovery of the double helix and since then he has made many other discoveries. After his finding of the double helix, Crick got busy in studying the relationship between DNA and genetic coding with Vernon Ingram. During this study, they discovered the role of the genetic material in determining the specificity of proteins. In 1957, Crick along with Sydney Brenner initiated his work to determine how the sequence of DNA bases would specify the amino acid sequence in proteins.
Crick “established not only the basic genetic code, but predicted the mechanism for protein synthesis” (McMurray, 427). His work led to many RNA/DNA discoveries and also helped in the formation of the DNA/RNA dictionary. During 1960 Crick examined the structure and possible functions of certain proteins related with chromosomes called histones. In 1976 Crick decided to leave Cambridge Laboratories to take the position of Kieckhefer Professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California. It was there that Crick began his project of the study of the brain.
Besides winning the Nobel Prize in 1953 and Albert Lasker Award in 1960, Crick has won the 1962 Gardener Foundation Award, the 1972 Royal Society’s Royal Medal, and the 1976 Royal Society’s Copley Medal. He was also approved as a Visiting Lecturer at Rockefeller Institute in 1959 and as a Visiting Professor for Harvard University during 1959 and 1960.
Death:
He died of cancer on 28 July, 2004 in San Diego. His death is regarded as the ‘death of a golden era in biology’.
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Francis Galton
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Sir Francis Galton was an English explorer, anthropologist, eugenicist, geographer and meteorologist. He is noted for his pioneering research on human intelligence and his statistical concept of correlation. He is often called the “father of eugenics”. Galton also invented many statistical tools such as surveys and questionnaires.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Sparkbrook, England, the maternal grandfather of Francis Galton was Erasmus Darwin. Charles Darwin was a grandson of Erasmus, so this makes Galton and Darwin cousins. Galton studied at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1810, however he never graduated.
Contributions and Achievements:
Galton made several trips to Africa, and in 1853, he published “Tropical South Africa”. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1856. Galton spent much his life developing eugenics, which aims to modify the physical and mental make-up of the human species by selected parenthood.
Galton published “Hereditary Genius” in 1869. He explained an index of correlation as a measure of the degree to which the two diverse objects were related. However, he was unsuccessful in realizing the complexity of the mathematics involved. He published “Natural Inheritance” in 1889 which heavily influenced Karl Pearson.
Galton wrote more than 340 papers and books. He was the inventor of scientific meteorology and he was the first person to develop the first weather map as well as the Galton Whistle for evaluating differential hearing ability.
Later Life and Death:
Galton was awarded the Royal Medal in 1876 and the Copley Medal in 1910. He was knighted in 1909. He died in January 1911 in Greyshott House, Surrey.
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Frank Hornby
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Despite not having formal training when it comes to engineering, Frank Hornby managed to excel in toy invention based on engineering principles. These toy lines include Hornby Model Railways, Dinky Toys, and Meccano. Apart from being an inventor, he was also a politician and businessman and he is the man behind the British toy company named Meccano Ltd. Apart from his involvement in inventing new things, he also had the monthly publication called Meccano Magazine. It was because of his inventions as well as initiatives made him a millionaire in 1930.
Early Life and Personal Background
Born on the 15th of May in 1863, Frank Hornby hailed from Liverpool, England. He was the son of John Oswald Hornby and Martha Hornby. His father had been a provisions merchant and this may have roused his awareness on many different things as well as how they worked. When he was 16, Frank quit school and began to work as the cashier in his father’s business. He had his own family when he married Clara Walker Godefroy who was a school teacher. Together they had two sons and a daughter. In 1899, his father’s business had to be closed down but after that, he became David Hugh Elliot’s bookkeeper for the meat importing venture he had in Liverpool.
Hornby had his own home workshop and his experiments and inventions began there. He began to make toys for his own sons back in 1899, and he used simple materials—the main one initially being sheet metal. While the pieces of those toys were not interchangeable at first, he was able to realize later on that being able to make several individual pieces which can be put together can result in making a different model which can be built from the very same components. This was made possible by his realization that perforations on the individual pieces can be used not just for bolting things together permanently but can also be used as the bearings for shafts and axles. Because of this, complex mechanisms became much simpler. Initially, Frank made his own nuts and bolts but later found an alternative source.
When the year 1900 was about to end, Frank finally had pieces which he knew was worth marketing. He patented his unique invention a year later in January known as the “Improvements in Toy or Educational Devices for Children and Young People” where he even had to borrow five pounds from his then employer, David Elliot, for the patenting costs. That same year he began to look for companies which would manufacture his products. However, the final products were not satisfactory to him and the poor finish did not gain much attention.
Elliot saw potential in Hornby and believed in his skills. He offered Hornby the empty space near the office where they worked and this started their partnership in business.
Mechanics Made Easy
Hornby called his venture “Mechanics Made Easy” and he even gained positive backup from Henry Selby Hele-Shaw, head of Liverpool University’s Department of Engineering, and he was then able to get the supplies he needed to complete the parts for his inventions. Elliot made the financing aspect of their venture possible, and sets from Mechanics Made Easy were made available in 1902. The sets they sold had 16 different pieces or parts, which were then accompanied by a leaflet explaining how to make 12 different models.
The early years were not all successful, but in 1970 the part suppliers could no longer meet the demands. In 1903, they only sold 1,500 sets and no profit was made yet. They kept introducing new parts and in 1904 they had six sets which were packaged with the standard instruction materials in English and French in their own tin boxes. Two news sets more were introduced in 1905, and a year later they were able to make their first profit.
The success started in 1907, and when their business was growing Hornby decided to leave the job he held as Elliot’s employee so he could begin manufacturing his own parts in a different location. Three years later with the help of a loan granted to the partners, they were able to start manufacturing their own toy parts in 1907 as well.
Initiatives and Final Years
He was able to register his Meccano trademark and use this registered name for all of his products. In 1908, shortly after their boom in production, Meccano Ltd. was established and Hornby’s business partner Elliot decided not to join the company, making Hornby its sole proprietor. The company began to export to many different countries and with the help of his son Hornby was able to establish a new place for his inventions when they put up Meccano Ltd Paris. They also had their office in Berlin and apart from inventing toys based on engineering principles, Hornby also made clockwork motors.
Other than Meccano, Hornby did not stop at just making mechanical toys for that line. He also made the educational “Hornby System of Mechanical Demonstration” in 1907, the Clockwork lithographed tinplate O scale trains in 1927, the Dinky Toys in 1934, and the Hornby Dublo model railway which was introduced in 1938 two years after Hornby died. Even after his death, the monthly publication called Meccano Magazine remained in circulation for 60 years. Meccano became so popular because of his inventions and innovations that he even made the Meccano Guild which is the guild for all the Meccano clubs from all over the globe.
Because of his inventions and simplified mechanisms which he used for toys and educational kits, his inventions were loved all over the world and gave him back a great profit. Come 1930, he had already become a millionaire and owned a mansion in Maghull. On a daily basis, he was chauffeured by a limousine, and a few years later he even tried his hand in politics. He was elected as a Conservative MP in 1931 for the Everton constituency.
Today, his inventions and legacy live through the Meccano models and collectible toys which he came up with based on his knowledge of engineering principles and mechanisms.
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Franz Boas
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Widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential anthropologists ever, Franz Boas was a German-American scientist, who is also known as the “Father of Modern Anthropology”. He was the first person to implement the scientific method into the study of human cultures and societies.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Minden, Westphalia, Franz Boas showed an early interest in both nature and natural sciences. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, and finally got his Ph.D. in physics with a minor in geography from the University of Kiel in 1881.
Boas worked in Baffinland, Canada, from 1883 to 1884, while from 1885 to 1886; he conducted field research in several museums on the North Pacific Coast of North America. He was also an important part of a project involving the cultures of Native Americans which lasted almost one year.
Contributions and Achievements:
Franz Boas was the most important figure in 20th century North American anthropology. He laid down the four-field structure of the discipline around cultural, physical, linguistic and archaeological disciplines pertaining to the American Indian. He also trained many professional anthropologists. Boas made memorable contributions to the changes in immigrant head form undercut eugenics arguments and lessened the significance of anthropometric measures of race.
The archaeological works of Franz Boas were almost cursory. While studying culture, his theoretical contributions dealt with the critique of evolution. He destroyed the rationalist theories of human nature. His historical particularism, his insistency on stringent ethnographic method, and his stress on “the native point of view” were pivotal to the development of modern anthroplogy.
Later Life and Death:
Franz Boas oversaw the Columbia Anthropology Department for more than four decades. Boas died on 21 December, 1942. He was 84 years old.
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Frederick Sanger
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Frederick Sanger is an English biochemist who twice received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; in 1958 for his discovery of the structure of the insulin molecule, and in 1980 for his collaborative work on base sequences in nucleic acids with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert. He is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential biochemists in history.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1918 in Rendcombe, England, Frederick Sanger’s father was a medical practitioner. He understood the significance of science and the scientific method from an early age. He focused on chemistry and physics in the beginning, but was later attracted to the emerging field of biochemistry.
He received an undergraduate degree and PhD in biochemistry from St John’s College, Cambridge, England.
Contributions and Achievements:
After graduation, Frederick Sanger joined the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the university as a researcher. Sanger is the fourth person in history to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. He received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking research on protein structure.
Sanger was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry once again in 1980, this time sharing it with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert for determining the amino acid sequences of DNA information. His later contributions constitute the basic genetic principles utilized by almost every biotechnology application. He has received many other honors for his extraordinary work on genetics and biotechnology.
Later Life:
Sanger retired in 1983 to his house in Swaffham Bulbeck near Cambridge. He rejected the knighthood as he did not wanted to be addressed as “Sir”. However, he accepted the award of O.M. (Order of Merit) in 1986.
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Frederick Soddy
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Frederick Soddy(1877 – 1956) a polymath whose pioneering discoveries founded the fledgling science of nuclear chemistry, was also a prescient environmental economist, and contributed to solutions of long unanswered questions in mathematics. He first proves that the newly observed phenomenon of radioactivity arose from decay, or change, of certain unstable, or heavy, elements into others. He also demonstrated that some elements possess isotopes, or forms with a different atomic structure. His work with Ernest Rutherford at McGillwas rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 1921, for elucidatingnuclear decay:showing how alpha, beta, and gamma radiation were generated.
Education:
The biography of Soddy demonstrates that great achievements can come from even those of unremarkable background. This graduate of a regional institution, Eastbourne College, located on England’s southeastern coast, and another regional college, the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, went on to illuminate the invisible subatomic world. He studied and did research at Oxford, in Merton College, and was offered a job at McGill. Here hecollaborated with Ernest Rutherford, examining the mysterious action of radioactivity, a manifestation of nature which had only been discovered a half decade previously.
Research:
Scientists recognized by then the production of radiation from some elements under some conditions, without understanding the mechanism. In pursuit of the secret, Soddy used the rather basic tools available to him. Hand-blown glass bulbs were among those tools, carefully made and then evacuated to create what is known as a vacuum tube. Soddy used a radium sample sealed inside a thin glass container, which was sealed inside an evacuated tube. The evacuated tube should have remained entirely empty if most elements were in the interior container, but radium is not just any element. The radium’s atomic nuclei, holding only tenuously onto some of their large number of electrons and protons, shed them a bit at a time; for example, in the form of two protons, and two electrons. This, as it happens, is how helium is constituted. This is exactly what Soddy and Rutherford found. They noticed that after the radium had been in this sealed environment for some time, the supposedly empty vacuum tube contained something; something with the spectral signature of helium. The very existence of the element helium was a relatively recent discovery, having been inferred from spectroscopic observations of a solar eclipse in 1868.
Soddy’s inferred from these factsthat the radium was coming apart from a material with many particles, decomposing into elements of smaller atomic weight. This is the basis of most of nuclear science today. In the process of decomposition, heavy atomic weight, unstable, elements releases energy in the form of what are termed alpha, beta, and gamma particles.
Soddy’s bio includes the additional discovery that elements; even elements other than the heavy ones, could exist with other numbers of electrons. These, at the suggestion of a fellow scientist named Margaret Todd;he named isotopes, from the Greek root for ‘same’. Isotopes are the basis of much nuclear medicine today.
Other contributions:
Soddy eerily foresaw the potential good and horror arising from radioactive power, and was distressed by Hiroshima. He rightly noted that this power could be harvested with greater efficiency than from coal. He also foresaw that economies based on non-renewable fuels were ultimately self-destructive.
Soddy additionally solved an unsolved problem of Descartes’ – using a poem to explain his proof. He died just short of a respectable 80 years old.
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Friedrich August Kekulé
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Friedrich August Kekulé was a German scientist who came into this world on the September 7, 1829. He birth place was Darmstadt, Germany. Initially, he use to study at the local gymnasium but later on he got admitted in the University of Giessen to study architecture as per his father’s desires. It was observed at school that he was a great mathematician and was also profusely good at drawing. Chemistry was a complex subject with difficulties of organic molecular structures but it was Kekulé’s mathematical talents, exceptional memory and his intellect for space that he was so outstanding at mysterious structural problem.
Kekulé’s family was well to do and supported him with his studies and sent him to Paris. There he became friends with a renowned chemist named Charles Gerhardt. The theories of Gerhardt became foundation for his valency theory. He also worked with Charles Wurtz and Jean Baptiste Dumas who owned an only organic chemistry school in Europe that gave competition to the schools in Germany. When he was done with his studies in Paris, he moved to London and assisted John Stenhouse with his work. He also worked with Reinhold Hoffmann and William Williamson later. Kekulé worked at Heidelberg from the year 1855 to the year 1858.
Contributions and Achievements
At the end of 1858 he served as a chemistry professor at Ghent his scientific profession ended at the University of Bonn. This was the place where he had worked from 1867 till 1896 which was the year of his death. During this extensive period, Kekulé made great contributions to the field of organic chemistry and also to the German chemical industry. His students from Europe came to take chief professorships and to lead industrial labs.
Kekulé was pedantic but not a great experimentalist. He was really good at solving the problems that were related to the architecture of the new organic molecules that were being isolated by flora and fauna being created in the labs. Kekulé revealed that the clandestine of the organic chemistry was in the carbon atom and its tetravalency. Carbon has an exclusive capability of linking many isomeric combinations into long chains.
Kekulé’s best giving to organic chemistry was his key to the problem of benzene structure (C6H6). In 1865, he explained the solution to this brainteaser in the following words, “There I sat and wrote my Lehrbuch, but it did not proceed well, my mind was elsewhere. I turned the chair to the fireplace and fell half asleep. Again the atoms gamboled before my eyes. Smaller groups this time kept modestly to the background. My mind’s eyes, trained by visions of a similar kind, now distinguished larger formations of various shapes. Long rows, in many ways more densely joined; everything in movement, winding and turning like snakes. And look, what was that? One snake grabbed its own tail, and mockingly the shape whirled before my eyes. As if struck by lightning I awoke. This time again I spent the rest of the night working out the consequences.” The ring structured benzene is the emergence of Kekulé’s dream. Kekulé departed from this world on July 13, 1896.
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Friedrich Wöhler
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Early Life and Education:
Friedrich Wöhler was a German Chemist who was born in 1800 in Eschersheim, Prussia. In 1820, he started his studies in the field of medicine at Marburg University but he was very soon transferred to another university that is the University of Heidelberg. In 1923, his M.D. was received by him and then he started studying chemistry. It was for more than a year that he studied in Stockholm with a very well-known chemist, Jöns Berzelius. Inorganic Chemistry caught him by interest at that time.
Contributions and Achievements:
By 1828, Wöhler could heat aluminum chloride and potassium, mixed together in a platinum container, and withdrew aluminum. This was all based on Hans Christian Oersted’s work. A similar technique was used by Wöhler for the production of beryllium and a wide range of aluminum salts. Calcium Carbide was created by him very soon and he was also very close in detecting vanadium.
Berzelius’ theory called ‘Vitalism’ was disapproved by Wöhler. The theory said that there were just two categories in which the compounds fell namely organic and inorganic. It was a supposition that it was only in the tissues of the living creatures where organic compounds could be formed. This was where a main force could change them. It would not be possible for an organic matter to be synthesized, based on the above theory, from inorganic reactants. It was Berzelius’ belief that the rules for inorganic compounds could not be applied to the organic compounds. A teacher of Wöhler named Leopold Gmelin clung to this theory of Berzelius.
In 1828, when he was conducting an experiment with ammonium cyanate, he had to heat lead cynate and ammonia solution to form crystals of urea. It was determined by Wöhler that the elements in urea and the elements in ammonium cyanate are the same and they are also in the same proportion. They are called isomers. Organic compounds were produced by Wöhler from inorganic reactants. Very soon, Wöhler’s discovery became irrelevant as it was found that cynate was an organic matter itself. But this definitely made other chemists optimistic about developing organic substances from inorganic substances. Once again, vitalism was disapproved of when a chemist named Adolf Kolbe created acetic acid by combining the elements oxygen, carbon and hydrogen in 1845. It was finally then that Berzelius’ theory of vitalism was discredited.
Wöhler then started studying the metabolism of the body by experimenting with, both, his knowledge of chemistry and medical training. After the death of his wife in 1832, he went to Germany to work at the Liebig’s laboratory with Justus von Liebig. Together, they carried out a research study on bitter almonds which are the source of the poisonous cynate. They verified that the pure oil from the bitter almonds did contain any poisonous element of hydrocyanic acid. Benzaldehyde oil and the reactions caused by it were also studied by them.
At that time they discovered that the benzoyl group of atoms did not change when various experiments were conducted on it. They called it ‘radicals’. This theory proved to be very important in the field of organic compounds. Wöhler was offered a job at the University of Göttingen in 1836. He carried on to his research of aluminum and cyanides and he was the first one to create silicon nitride and hydride, silicon, titanium and boron.
Later Life:
Wöhler became occupied in the later years of his life. He had a position as a pharmacy and chemistry professor. He had to manage the laboratories and he also served as the inspector general, in Hanover, Germany, for all the pharmacies. He also translated some books and research papers of Berzelius into German. Along with that he started his studies on meteorites in geology. His students worldwide sent him illustrations and samples and he would publish around 50 papers on the subjects. Many textbooks and papers were published by him throughout his life and his students numbered around 8,000. Some of his students were Rudolph Fittig and Jewett. Charles Hall who was Jewett’s student came up with a commercially practical way of producing aluminum that left behind Wöhler’s way. Wöhler passed away in 1882 in Gottingen.
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Fritz Haber
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Fritz Haber was a German physical chemist. He was winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his successful work on nitrogen fixation. Fritz Haber is also well known for his supervision of the German poison gas program during World War I. His name has been associated with the process of synthesizing ammonia. He is also known as the “father of chemical warfare”.
Early life and Career:
Fritz Haber was born on the 9th of December 1868 in Prussia. He was the son of a prosperous German chemical merchant. He was educated in Berlin, Heidelberg, and Zurich. After studying he started working for his father. Haber left his father’s business later on and started doing research in organic chemistry at the University of Jena.
Haber, along side Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid. He got recognition for his research in electrochemistry and thermodynamics. He also authored several books from his research.
Haber invented a large-scale catalytic synthesis of ammonia from elemental hydrogen and nitrogen gas, reactants which are abundant and inexpensive. Although ammonia and its exploitation can destroy life, Haber did not have any reason to performing his research. Haber serves the world in many ways. Not only was ammonia used as a raw material in the production of fertilizers, it was also absolutely essential in the production of nitric acid. Nitric acid is a raw material for the production of chemical high explosives and other ammunition necessary for the war.
Another contribution of Haber was the development of chemical warfare. With great energy he became involved in the production of protective chemical devices for troops. Haber devised a glass electrode to measure hydrogen concentration by means of the electric potential across a thin piece of glass. Other electrochemical subjects investigated by Haber include that of fuel cells, the electrolysis of crystalline salts, and the measurement of the free energy of oxidation of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon. His failure at obtaining gold from sea paved the way for the extraction of bromine from the ocean.
He married Clara Immerwahr, a fellow chemist. She opposed his work on poison gas and committed suicide with his service revolver in their garden. He married, a second time, a girl named Charlotte and had two children from her and settled in England. Haber’s son from his first marriage, Hermann, emigrated to the United States during World War II.
In his studies of the effects of poison gas, Haber noted that exposure to a low concentration of a poisonous gas for a long time often had the same effect (death) as exposure to a high concentration for a short time. He formulated a simple mathematical relationship between the gas concentration and the necessary exposure time. This relationship became known as Haber’s rule.
Death:
Haber died on the 29th of January 1934. His work, however, is a great contribution to this developed world.
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Galileo Galilei
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Some names in the history of inventions can never be forgotten as they bless us with their numerous creative inventions that have now become a need of every man. Among such great personalities one name that is always remembered is that of Galileo Galilei.
Early Life:
This renowned scientist was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa. Galileo was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and flautist who played a vital role in the Scientific Revolution. This great man was the first to use a refracting telescope to make imperative astronomical discoveries. His accomplishments also include improvements to the telescope and support for Copernicanism. No doubt for this reason Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy, “father of modern physics,” and “the Father of Modern Science.” In praise of Galileo Stephen hawking said “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.
Contributions and Achievements:
Galileo started his career with the motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, as the subject of kinematics. Further coming to Galileo’s career path and his immense learning, in 1609 Galileo learned about the invention of the telescope in Holland. From the barest description he constructed a vastly superior model with his efficient observation.
As a professor of astronomy at University of Pisa, Galileo was required to teach the conventional theory of his time that the sun and all the planets revolved around the Earth. Later at University of Padua he was exposed to a new theory, proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, that the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun. Galileo’s observations with his new telescope convinced him of the truth of Copernicus’s sun-centered or heliocentric theory. Galileo’s support for the heliocentric theory got him into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church in 1615. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as “false and contrary to Scripture”, and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In 1633 the Inquisition convicted him of heresy and forced him to recant (publicly withdraw) his support of Copernicus.
They sentenced him to life imprisonment, but because of his advanced age allowed him serve his term under house arrest at his villa in Arcetri outside of Florence. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.
Therefore his originality as a scientist lay in his method of inquiry. First he reduced problems to a simple set of terms on the basis of everyday experience and common-sense logic. Then he analyzed and resolved them according to simple mathematical descriptions. The success with which he applied this technique to the analysis of motion opened the way for modern mathematical and experimental physics. Isaac Newton used one of Galileo’s mathematical descriptions, “The Law of Inertia,” as the foundation for his “First Law of Motion.”
Later Life:
Galileo became blind at the age of 72. His blindness has often been attributed to damage done to his eyes by telescopic observations he made. The truth is he was blinded by a combination of cataracts and glaucoma. Galileo died at Arcetri in 1642, the year Isaac Newton was born leaving behind his resourceful creations.
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Georg Ohm
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Georg Simon Ohm, more commonly known as Georg Ohm, was a German physicist, best known for his “Ohm’s Law”, which implies that the current flow through a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference (voltage) and inversely proportional to the resistance. The physical unit of electrical resistance, the Ohm, also was named after him.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1789 in the university town of Erlangen, Bavaria, his younger Martin Ohm also became a famous mathematician. Georg Ohm studied mathematics and physics at Erlangen University. For economical reasons, he had to do some teaching jobs while studying, which he found quite bothering.
Contributions and Achievements:
When higher degrees of political instability were observed in the early 1800s were seen in Bavaria as the struggle against Napoleon rose, Ohm chose to leave native Bavaria in 1817 for Cologne, where he attained a Readership at the university. Ohm started passionately working on the conductivity of metals and the behavior of electrical circuits. So much that he quit teaching in Cologne and got settled in his brother’s house in Berlin.
After extensive research, he wrote “Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet”, which formulated the relationship between voltage (potential), current and resistance in an electrical circuit:
I = EIR
After initial criticism, most particularly by Hegel, the noted creator of German Idealism, who rejected the authenticity of the experimental approach of Ohm, the “glory” finally came in 1841 when the Royal Society of London honored him with the Copley Medal for his extraordinary efforts. Several German scholars, including an adviser to the State on the development of telegraphy, also recognized Ohm’s work a few months later.
The pertinence of Ohm’s Law to electrolytes and thermoelectric junctions and metallic conductors, was demonstrated recognized soon enough. The law still remains the most widely used and appreciated of all the rules related to the behavior of electrical circuits.
Later Life and Death:
Georg Ohm was made a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1842, and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1845.
Ohm died on July 6, 1854. He was 65 years old.
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George Gaylord Simpson
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George Gaylord Simpson was one of the greatest and most influential paleontologists of all time. He made crucial contributions to evolutionary theory and played a vital role in developing the understanding of intercontinental migrations of extinct mammals.
Early Life and Education:
George Gaylord Simpson was born in Chicago in 1902. He grew up in Denver and graduated from the University of Colorado. He earned a doctorate from Yale University in 1926. Simpson worked at the American Museum of Natural History for almost three decades.
Contributions and Achievements:
Simpson taught at the universities of Columbia, Arizona and Harvard. He was a prolific author, having published about 500 books and articles about topics as diverse as primitive Mesozoic mammals of the American west, to Tertiary faunas of North and South America, to statistics, taxonomy and evolution. Some of his major works include “Tempo and mode in evolution” (1944), “The meaning of evolution” (1949) and “The major features of evolution” (1953).
He is widely considered to be one of the founders of the Synthetic Theory of Evolution. Simpson was physically a weak and frail person, but he was a indefatigable field geologist.
Later Life and Death:
George Gaylord Simpson worked as a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona until his retirement in 1982. He died on October 6, 1984. He was 82 years old.
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George Washington Carver
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George Washington Carver was an American agricultural chemist, agronomist and botanist who developed various products from peanuts, sweet potatoes and soy-beans that radically changed the agricultural economy of the United States. A son of a slave woman, George won several awards for his brilliant contributions, such as the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. He spent most of his career teaching and conducting research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Early Life and Education:
Born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, George Washington Carver’s master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant who had bought both George’s parents, Mary and Giles. His master was a kind-hearted man who, after the abolition of slavery, raised George as his own kid and furthered his intellectual pursuits. George attended various schools before receiving his diploma at Minneapolis High School at Kansas.
George was, however, rejected at Highland College due to racial discrimination. He learned art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa in 1890, where his art teacher recommended George to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College. He became the first black student, and later the first black faculty member, at the place.
Contributions and Achievements:
After acquiring his B.S. degree, George completed his master’s degree at the same college, conducting field research at the Iowa Experiment Station. His successful work in plant pathology and mycology gained him countrywide acclaim and fame as a prominent botanist.
Carver was a farmer’s scientist. He taught farmers how to grow better plants, while even utilizing farm waste products. He turned corn stalks into building materials. Carver found dyes in the rich clay soil. He manufactured more than 100 products from sweet potatoes. His favorite plant was the peanut. He invented over 300 ways to use the peanut, as soap, plastic, shampoo and even shoe polish.
Carver never patented any of his inventions, as he believed knowledge should be free. As a result, many industrialists developed commercial products from his laboratory inventions and made millions.
Later Life and Death:
George Washington Carver died by falling down a flight of stairs on January 5, 1943 in Tuskegee, Alabama. He was 79 years old.
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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a mathematician, naturalist and author whose beliefs and theories greatly influenced the way other naturalists after his time thought. He is said to be the father of natural history for the latter part of that century.
Early Life and Education
Georges-Louis Leclerc was born on September 7, 1707 into a wealthy family in Montbard, France. His father was Benjamin Francois Leclerc, a local official who was in charge of salt tax and his mother was Anne Cristine Marlin who was also part of a family of minor local officials. Marlin, unlike other women at that time, was a very curious woman and was fond of learning about new things. This trait caused Leclerc to often claim that his curious and intelligent disposition came from her.
He was named after Georges Blaisot, his godfather, who was also an uncle of his mother. He was the Duke of Savoy’s tax collector. Upon his death, he left a considerable amount of fortune to the Leclercs as he remained childless at the time of his birth. They then bought an estate that gave his father the title of Lord of Buffon and Montbard. From then on, he was known as Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon. They moved to Dijon into a new mansion as his father became one of the ad visors in the Parliament of Burgundy. He inherited the entire estate when he turned 25.
Because they were well off, Leclerc never lacked the education that was considered a privilege for other kids his age. He attended the Jesuit Institute College des Godrans where he studied mathematics. He immediately showed a high degree of curiosity about almost everything he learns and often found the need to question a lot of things that were taught to him. Despite his obvious passions, his father insisted that he study law, which he started doing in 1723. He then attended Angers University in 1728 where he continued studying mathematics, as well as medicine and botany.
In 1752, he married Francoise de Saint-Belin-Malain, but she died 17 years later in 1769. She bore him one son in 1764, who died by guillotine in 1794.
Most Important Contributions
In 1727, while still attending College des Godrans, Leclerc learned about the theory on binomials and its formula that gives you the power of any binomial without having to multiply a long series of numbers. The same year, he theorized that the sun’s collision with a comet caused the formation of the planets. This has of course been proved to be impossible, but this marked a new era in science as it was the pioneering theory about the creation that did not involve God in the equation. It was stated from a purely scientific point of view and relied solely on the laws of physics that were set during that period of time.
Leclerc did not restrict himself to specific fields of expertise. He continued to explore different aspects that surrounded plant physiology, physics, astronomy and even ship construction. With each field of learning also came a lot of questions from him, as he analyzed and doubted a lot of the dogmas that were believed in and taught during his time. He recorded his discoveries and theories in a series of writings that discussed everything from the body structure and living habits of bats from South America and continued on to discuss the possible causes of being cross-eyed, a condition scientifically known as strabismus. There were 36 volumes all in all, with the entire collection called as Histoire Naturelle, Generale et Particuliere, which meant Natural History, General and Particular in English. The series was written as a form of encyclopedia and was completed over a 37-year period from 1749 to 1786.
Leclerc had a solid belief in organic change, but was not entirely able to discuss how these changes occurred and how they were completed. He religiously claimed that he published another set of writings called Les Epoques de la Nature in 1788 which again became controversial because of the way he openly negated the church’s claims that the world has been in existence for 6,000 years at that time. He theorized that this planet has been around long before that.
In 1777, Leclerc decided to do an experiment by dropping a needle on a lined piece of paper or floor. This was an experiment that showed how the probability of this needle crossing any of the lines on the floor or paper is in direct relation to pi’s value. This experiment on probability is now famously called as Buffon’s Needle.
Leclerc was acknowledged by several experts that came after him as someone who introduced a lot of ideas during his time with the highest scientific spirits. Ernst Mayr was quoted as saying that Leclerc was the first one to point out a lot of loopholes in the way evolution was taught. He was also seen to have brought about the early stages of comparative anatomy because of his beliefs in the unity of type. He made the first correlation between parent and child, saying that there are traits that are passed onto the offspring.
Other Contributions and Achievements
Leclerc was the one who translated Fluxions by Isaac Newton into French. He did the same thing for Vegetable Staticks by Stephen Hale. He showed his affinity with natural science when he became the administrator and director of the finest botanical garden in all of France, the Jardin des Plantes formerly known as Jardin du Roi, in 1739. While still holding this position, he was dubbed as a count in 1773. He held this position until his death. He died on April 16, 1788 in Paris, France.
Leclerc was not exactly the most popular scientist during his time mostly because he went against a lot of people, even those who have been scientists long before him. Because of this, his intelligence was not entirely celebrated by many. He continuously challenged the known authorities in chemistry, biology, mathematics, geology and theology. He did not respond to criticism either as he sees this to be beneath his dignity.
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Gertrude Elion
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“Don’t be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it. In my day I was told women didn’t go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn’t.” – Gertrude B. Elion
American pharmacologist and biochemist, Gertrude B. Elion is famous for her scientific discovery of drugs to treat leukemia and herpes and to prevent the rejection of kidney transplants. This discovery earned her Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 which she shared with George H. Hitchings, her long-time boss and collaborator at Burroughs-Wellcome, and also Sir James W. Black. After receiving the Nobel Prize she once said:
“People ask me often (was) the Nobel Prize the thing you were aiming for all your life? And I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn’t get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.”
She is holder of 45 patents, 23 honorary degrees, and a lengthy list of other honors. She was unmarried.
Early Life, Education and Career:
Gertrude Elion was born in New York City on January 23, 1918 to immigrant parents. She completed her graduation from Hunter College with a B.A. degree in chemistry in 1937. During this time she also planned to become a cancer researcher but for several years worked as a lab assistant, food analyst (tested pickles and berries for quality at the Quaker Maid Company), and high school teacher while studying for her Masters degree at night. She completed her M.S. in chemistry from New York University in 1941.
When World War II broke out, there was an urgent need for women at scientific laboratories so she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (now GlaxoSmithKline). She never obtained a formal Ph.D., but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D from Polytechnic University of New York in 1989 and honorary SD degree from Harvard University in 1998.
While working with H. Hitchings, Elion helped develop the first drugs to combat leukemia, herpes, and AIDS, and established new research methods to produce drugs that could target specific pathogens. The medicines she developed include acyclovir (for herpes), allopurinol (for gout), azathioprine (which limits rejection in organ transplants), purinethol (for leukemia), pyrimethamine (for malaria), and trimethoprim (for meningitis and bacterial infections).
During 1967 she occupied the position of the head of the company’s Department of Experimental Therapy and officially retired in 1983. Despite her retirement, Elion continued working almost full time at the lab, and oversaw the adaptation of azidothymidine (AZT), which became the first drug used for treatment of AIDS.
Death:
Gertrude Elion died in North Carolina on February 21, 1999. She was always admired by a number of students and colleagues for her brilliancy and dedication to science.
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Gerty Theresa Cori
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The name of Gerty Theresa Cori is acknowledged among the greatest women achievers of the 20th century. This American biologist is known for her discoveries in biochemistry, especially carbohydrate metabolism. Her contributions in the field of biology led her to be the first American woman to achieve the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which she shared with her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay.
Life, Education and Career:
Gerty Theresa Cori was born on August 15, 1896 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Until the age of ten she was educated at her home after which she was enrolled in a Lyceum for girls. As a child Gerty became interested in science and mathematics and entered the Realgymnasium at Tetschen, from which she graduated in 1914, and then joined the Medical School of the German University of Prague. Here she met Carl Ferdinand Cori, a fellow student who shared her hobbies of skiing, gardening and mountain climbing and her interest in laboratory research. Both of them worked together and during 1920 published the results of their first research collaboration, completed their graduation, and got married.
Gerty Cori’s first research position was as an assistant in the Karolinen Children’s Hospital in Vienna. In 1922 Carl Cori immigrated to the United, having accepted a job at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, New York. Gerty Cori stayed behind for a few months, meanwhile working as an assistant pathologist at the Institute and later rising to assistant biochemist. After six months, Gerty got a job at the same institute as Carl, and she joined him in Buffalo. In 1928 they became U.S. citizens.
In 1931 Carl Cori took the position of chairman of the Department of Pharmacology of the Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was employed too, as a research associate, regardless of her equivalent degrees and comparable research experience. In 1943 she was appointed as an associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and two months after she received her Nobel Prize in 1947, she got promoted to the rank of professor of Biological Chemistry.
During the 1930s and 1940s both husband and wife began studying carbohydrate metabolism and continued the research in their laboratory at Washington University. Their laboratory gained an international standing as an important center of biochemical advancements. In 1947 the Cori’s won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their pivotal studies in elucidating the nature of sugar metabolism.
In 1947 Gerty Cori showed the symptoms of myelofibrosis, a disease she fought for 10 years, refusing to give up her research until the last few months of her life. She died on October 26, 1957.
Besides the Nobel Prize she was also honored with the Garvan Medal for women chemists of the American Chemical Society as well as membership in the National Academy of Sciences. The crater Cori on the Moon is named after her. She also shares a star with her husband on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
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Gottfried Leibniz
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (also known as von Leibniz) was a prominent German mathematician, philosopher, physicist and statesman. Noted for his independent invention of the differential and integral calculus, Gottfried Leibniz remains one of the greatest and most influential metaphysicians, thinkers and logicians in history. He also invented the Leibniz wheel and suggested important theories about force, energy and time.
Early Life and Education:
Gottfried Lelbniz was born in Leipzig, endeavor Germany to influential parents. His father, a professor of moral philosophy at the city’s university, died when Leibniz was only six. His mother was the daughter of a rich local lawyer.
Leibniz was a childhood prodigy. He became fluent in Latin and studied works of Greeks scholars such as when he was only twelve. He entered the University of Leipzig when he was fourteen, where he took philosophy, mathematics and law.
After graduation, he applied for a doctorate in law, but was refused due to his young age. Leibniz chose to present his thesis to the University of Altdorf, where professors were so impressed that they immediately awarded him the degree of Doctor of Laws and gave him a job of professorship.
Contributions and Achievements:
Gottfried Leibniz was a great polymath who knew almost everything that could be known at the time about any subject or intellectual enterprise. He made important contributions to philosophy, engineering, physics, law, politics, philology and theology.
Probably his greatest achievement was the discovery of a new mathematical method called calculus. Scientists use to deal with quantities that are constantly varying. Newton had devised a similar method for his work on gravity. Therefore, there was a harsh debate about who had been first.
Newton began working on his version in 1665, but Leibniz published his results in 1684, almost three years before Newton. However, the consensus is that they discovered the method simultaneously.
Leibniz also discovered the binary number system and invented the first calculating machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. When it came to metaphysics, he formulated the famous theory of monads which explained the relation between soul and the body. Leibniz is often known as the founder of symbolic logic as he developed the universal characteristic, a symbolic language in which any item of information can be represented in a natural and systematic way.
Later Life and Death:
Gottfried Leibniz died in Hanover on November 14, 1716. He was 70 years old.
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Gottlieb Daimler
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Early Life and Contributions:
Gottlieb Daimler was born in Schorndorf in Germany in 1834. He was an engineer, industrial designer, industrialist, pioneer of the modern internal combustion engine and a workaholic before the term was invented. A persistent perfectionist, he drove himself and his co-workers mercilessly. Daimler was a cosmopolitan man, instrumental in founding auto industries in Germany, France and England. His core ability was engines, and he didn’t care whether they were powering cars, boats, trams, pumps or airships. He is also known for inventing the first high-speed petrol engine and the first four-wheel automobile.
Talking about Daimler’s early life, his father wanted his son to become a municipal employee, but the young, mechanically inclined Daimler instead apprenticed himself to a gunsmith. After four years of his apprenticeship Daimler worked in a steam-engine factory and eventually completed his schooling at the Stuttgart Polytechnic. He spent the next three decades working as an engineer and technical director of engine development for several companies.
It was during this period that he worked with Nikolaus August Otto, the inventor of the four-cycle internal combustion engine, and Wilhelm Maybach, who become Daimler’s lifelong collaborator.
Daimler’s and Maybach’s dream was to create small high speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. They designed a precursor of the modern petrol engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler and considered the first motorcycle and, in the next year, to a stagecoach, and a boat. They are renowned as the designers of this Grandfather Clock engine. This helped push them ahead of other inventors who were emerging as competitors. In 1882 Daimler and Maybach set up a factory in Stuttgart to develop light, high-speed, gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. Their aim from the start appears to have been to apply these engines to vehicles.
In 1890 Daimler and Maybach formed the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in Stuttgart, but they left the company only a year later in order to concentrate on various technical and commercial development projects. A Daimler-powered car won the first international car race–the 1894 Paris-to-Rouen race. Of the 102 cars that started the competition, only fifteen completed it, and all finishers were powered by a Daimler engine.
Legacy:
The success of the Paris-to-Rouen race may also have been a factor in Daimler’s and Maybach’s decision to rejoin the Daimler Motor Company in 1895. In the following year, the Daimler Company produced the first road truck, and in 1900 the company produced the first Mercedes automobile (named for the daughter of the financier backing Daimler).
The man who is widely credited with pioneering the modern automobile industry apparently did not like to drive and may never have driven at all. Certainly Gottlieb Daimler was a passenger in 1899 during a rough, bad weather journey that accelerated his declining health and contributed to his death the following spring of heart disease on March 6, 1900, in Stuttgart, Germany, after a lifetime as an inventor in the forefront of automobile development. Daimler’s auto company merged with the Benz Company (also of Germany) in 1926, forming the Mercedes-Benz automobile company later.
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Gregor Mendel
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Early Life:
Johann Gregor Mendel, a Moravian man who was a scientist by occupation and was born in 1822 in Hyncice, Czechoslovakia on July 22nd. His father was a peasant and his grandfather was a gardener. Mendel was initially taught by a local priest but later on he was admitted in an Institute of Philosophy in Olmutz. But he was not financially well to do therefore in 1843, he terminated his studies and went back to the monastery in Brunn.
Mendel thought that monastery was the best place for him to study without worrying about how he’d finance his studies. He was made in charge of the garden at the monastery and named himself Gregor. He became a priest in 1847. After four years he went to University of Vienna where he studied physics, chemistry, botany and physics. When he returned to the monastery after completing his studies, he took a position as a teacher of natural sciences at the Technical School at Brno.
Contributions and Achievements:
Mendel used to conduct his very famous hereditary experiments in his free time. He did something no one had ever done before and no one ever had analyzed statistically the experiments of breeding. It was Mendel’s knowledge of natural sciences and his studies that helped him carry out these experiments. He usually chose to work with pea plants and selected only those ones that were cultivated in controlled atmosphere and were a pure variety. He cross bred many seeds and then found out results of the seven most evident seeds and variations.
It was concluded by Mendel that short plants created only short heighted off springs while tall plants gave both short and long plants. He also discovered that only one third of the long heighted plants gave long heighted off springs so he figured out that long plants were of two types, ones that gave bred true plants and the others that did not bred true plants.
Mendel continued with his experiments. He thought that he’d find more about the off springs by cross breeding the plants of different sizes. He thought that by crossing a long plant and a small plant, a plant of medium size would be produced but later on he found out that was not true. Mendel crossed different plants and calculated the results. He planted some plants with the cross of long and short plants and then planted the seeds of some long plants and pollinated some of them himself.
As a result, the naturally pollinated plants from the cross of short-long plants were long and the ones of long plants that were unnaturally pollinated sprouted short. The tallness of the plant which is said to be the most overpowering feature was said to the dominant trait while the shortness was known as the recessive trait. The results did not vary whether a male plant was used or a female plant. This investigation of Mendel’s took more than eight years to finish and it almost included 30,000 plants or more.
The law of segregation which is the first heredity law was based on his observation about the breeding of plants. The law states that the units of heredity also known as genes are found in pairs and that the paired gene is divided when the cell is divided. Each member is received by the egg and the sperm and paired gene is present in either half the eggs or sperm.
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Guglielmo Marconi
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The Italian inventor and physicist, Guglielmo Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun for their development of practical wireless telegraphy. He once said:
“Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.”
His development of a radio telegraph system led to the esbalishment of many associated companies all over the world.
Early Life:
Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874. He was the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, a wealthy Italian landowner, and his Irish wife, Annie Jameson. He received his education privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. As a young boy he was fascinated with physical and electrical science and studied the earlier mathematical work of James Clerk Maxwell, the experiments of Heinrich Hertz and research on lightning and electricity conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge.
Contributions and Achievements:
Marconi was convinced that communication among people was possible via wireless radio signaling. He started conducting experiment in 1895 at his father’s home in Pontecchio, where he was soon able to send signals over one and a half miles. During this period, he also carried out simple experiments with reflectors around the aerial to concentrate the radiated electrical energy into a beam instead of spreading it in all directions.
In 1896 Marconi traveled to England in order to get a patent for his apparatus. Later that year he was granted the world’s first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. After successfully demonstrating the system’s ability to transmit radio signals in London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, he established the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited in July 1897. This company was re-named as Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company Limited in 1990.
In 1899 he established a wireless link between Britain and France across the English Channel. Further he established permanent wireless stations at The Needles, Isle of Wight, Bournemouth, and later at the Haven Hotel in Poole, Dorset. The following year he received his patent for “tuned or systonic telegraphy.”
During December 1901 Marconi proved that wireless signals were unaffected by the curvature of the earth. He transmitted the first wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall and St, Johns, New Foundland, a distance of 2100 miles.
The next year he demonstrated “daylight effect” relative to wireless communication and also he patented his magnetic detector, which was the standard wireless receiver for many years. In December he successfully transmitted the first complete message to Poldhu from stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Cape Cod Massachusetts.
In 1905 and 1912 Marconi patented his horizontal directional aerial and patented a “timed spark” system for generating continuous waves respectively.
Later Life:
In 1914, he took the position of a Lieutenant in the Italian Army. Later he was promoted to Captain and in 1916 was appointed as a Commander in the Navy, receiving his Italian Military Medal in 1919 for his war service. He also used his systems for the workings of the military. During this time he continued with his experiments, establishing the world’s first microwave radiotelephone link in 1932, and later introducing the microwave beacon for ship navigation.
Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937 following a series of heart attacks.
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Hans Bethe
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Hans Bethe was a German-born American theoretical physicist who is credited as one of the founders of quantum physics. His scientific research helped understand the atomic processes responsible for the properties of matter and of the forces regulating the structures of atomic nuclei. He played a substantial role in the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II, and later, in the early 1950s, the larger hydrogen bomb.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Strasbourg, Germany in 1906, Hans Bethe was a child prodigy in mathematics. He acquired a degree in physics from JWG University, Frankfurt, and earned his doctorate from the University of Munich. Later, he also worked in Cambridge, England and Enrico Fermi’s laboratory in Rome, Italy.
In 1939, Hans Bethe married Rose Ewald, the daughter of his university professor Paul Peter Ewald.
Contributions and Achievements:
Hans Bethe accepted J. Robert Oppenheimer’s invitation to become a part of the Manhattan Project, performing as director of the theoretical physics division. His wife had, however, strict reservations about Bethe’s job. His role was to define how the atomic bomb would function and what effects it would produce. Utilizing his vast knowledge of nuclear physics, electromagnetic theory and shock waves, Bethe collaborated with Richard Feynman to work out a formula to calculate the efficiency of a nuclear weapon. He also made decivise contributions to the feasibility and design of the uranium and the plutonium atomic bombs.
Later, Bethe worked extensively on the investigation of the feasibility of producing fusion bombs and helped design the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s. After the war, he preached and actively campaigned for disarmament. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1967 for his research regarding the production of energy in stars.
Later Life and Death:
Hans Bethe became a prominent political activist in his later life, while he was still actively involved in his scientific researches.
Bethe died of congestive heart failure on March 6, 2005. He was 98 years old.
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Hans Christian Oersted
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Hans Christian Oersted was a Danish physicist and chemist who revolutionized the arena of electromagnetism by discovering that the electric currents can produce magnetic fields. His 1820 discovery of piperine, the pungent component that causes the hotness of pepper, and his 1825 formulation of metallic aluminum, are considered significant contributions in the history of chemistry.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Rudkøbing to a chemist father, Hans Oersted, surrounded by scientific apparatus, showed an early interest in science. After attending the University of Copenhagen, he traveled throught Europe to meet some of the leading scientists of the world. Oersted received his doctorate in 1799.
Contributions and Achievements:
Oersted learnt a lot during the tours and, in 1806, he took a job at his old university. He also gave lectures which were quite popular among the public. During one such lecture in April 1820, Oersted carried out an experiment that was never performed before. He placed a compass underneath a wire and then turned on electric current. The needle of the magnetized compass showed movement.
Oersted recognized the significance of what he had just done. Earlier, it was believed that electricity and magnetism were two different forces. Oersted had demonstrated that they were interconnected. Some scientists, influenced by this experiment, continued with the modern field of “electromagnetism”. Their research resulted in several new scientific theories and various vital inventions like the dynamo and the electric motor.
Oersted was made a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1822.
Later Life and Death:
In 1829, Hans Christian Oersted established “Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt” (English: College of Advanced Technology), which is now known as the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
Oersted died at Copenhagen, Denmark in 1851. He was 73 years old. He was buried in the Assistens Cemetery.
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Hans Selye
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Hans Hugo Bruno Selye, more commonly known as Hans Selye, was one of the most influential endocrinologists who is known for his research he effects of stress on the human body.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Vienna in 1907, Hans Selye attended the German University of Prague as well as the universities of Paris and Rome.
Contributions and Achievements:
In his second year of medical school, Selye started to work on his theory of the influence of stress on a person’s capacity to handle the pressures of injury and disease. He found out that patients with an assortment of ailments demonstrated lots of similar symptoms, which he associated with their effort to cope up with the stress of being ill.
Selye termed this collection of symptoms as the “general adaptation syndrome”. He earned worldwide acclaim for his extraordinary contributions and he was named “the Einstein of medicine”.
Selye defined “stress” in 1936 in his first scientific paper. He wrote over 1700 scholarly papers and 39 books about stress. His work has been mentioned in millions of publications in nearly all major languages of the world. Selye’s two major books The Stress of Life (1956) and Stress Without Distress (1974) were best-sellers and sold in millions of copies worldwide.
As a physician and endocrinologist, he had three earned doctorates and 43 honorary doctorates.
Later Life and Death:
Hans Selye also worked as a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the Université de Montréal. During his stay, he showcased the role of emotional responses in creating or fighting much of the wear and tear felt by human beings in their lifespan.
Selye died in 1982 in Montreal, where he had spent much of life researching the subjects related to stress.
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Harriet Quimby
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Harriet Quimby is classified among the most famous American female aviators. Her career as a pilot did not last long but was undeniably heroic. She was the first American lady to become a licensed pilot and the first woman to fly across the English Channel. She was also a movie screenwriter. Even though she died very young, Harriet played a key influence upon the role of women in aviation.
Life and Career:
Harriet was born in Arcadia, Michigan on May 1, 1875. It is said that her parents, William and Ursula were wealthy and educated her in America. Her only sibling was her older sister Kittie, while there were others before them who died due to various diseases. During the early 1900s, Harriet and her family moved to San Francisco, California and there in 1902, she took a job as a writer for the Dramatic Review. The following year she moved to New York City where she began writing for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly and more than 250 of her articles were published over a span of nine years. Her articles ranged in scope from household tips (“Home and the Household”) to advice for women on ways to find employment, budget their income, live prudently on a modest income in a safe apartment and ways to repair their automobiles themselves.
Harriet had always dreamed of becoming a journalist, but her plans changed after she attended the Belmont Park International Aviation Tournament on Long Island, New York in 1910. There she met Matilde Moisant and her brother John (a well-known American aviator and operator of a flight school at Mineola), who was mainly responsible for developing her interest in aviation.
Along with her friend Matilde, Harriet learned to fly at a school in Hempstead, New York, becoming the first U.S. woman to earn a pilot’s certificate. Matilde soon followed and became the nation’s second certified female pilot. Soon after Harriet received her pilot license, she joined the Moisant International Aviators, an exhibition team. With the Moisant group she traveled to Mexico and became the first woman to fly over Mexico City.
In 1912 Harriet borrowed a 50-horsepower Bleriot monoplane from Louis Bleriot and began preparations for an English Channel flight. Her consultant, Gustav Hamel, unsure of a woman’s ability to make such a flight, offered to dress in her purple flying suit and make the flight for her. She refused and on April 16, 1912 flew from Dover, England, to Hardelot, France (about 25 miles south of Calais). She made quite a name and returned successfully to U.S.
Death:
After three months, on July 1, 1912 Harriet made her last flight at the Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet where she met with a tragic accident. She was flying in the Bleriot with William Willard when suddenly the plane went into a nose dive. Willard was thrown from his seat after which the aircraft flipped over, throwing Harriet out too. Both Quimby and Willard fell and died at Dorchester Harbor. Ironically the aircraft landed with little damage.
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Hedy Lamarr
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A lot of inventors are primarily known for their breakthroughs and contributions to the field of science. However, there is a beautiful Hedy Lamarr who is known mostly for being an elegant actress. She was one of the MGM stars during the “Golden Age” and she was a well-known face in those years. Apart from being a crowd darling, she helped invent spread-spectrum communication techniques as well as frequency hopping which is a necessary part of wireless communication back then before mainstream computers were famous. This technology is still used today, and it was the Austrian actress inventor who contributed to its pilot development.
Early Life
Hedy Lamarr was the screen name for which the actress was known by. She was born on the 9th of November in 1914 to parents Emil Kiesler and Gertrud or “Trude” Kesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her birth name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She was of Jewish descent since her mother was a Budapest native who originally came from the “Jewish haute bourgeoisie,” while her father who was born in Lemberg was a secular Jew.
Career—in Entertainment and Science
She was 17 when she first appeared in a film which was called Geld Auf Der Strase—a German project. Her career in entertainment made a strong presence in the Czechoslavakian and German productions during those days. The film called Extase from 1932 Germany brought Hedy to the attention of Hollywood producers. A few years later, she became an MGM contract star.
When she entered Hollywood, this was when she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and her first film came out in 1938. It was called the Algiers. Lamarr had a successful career in entertainment and was known as “the most beautiful woman in films” back in those days. She even had an autobiography called “Ecstacy and Me” which discussed her private life as well as details about the film Extase which became notorious for sensual scenes.
Her first husband was Friedrich Mandl, the man who was reputed as the third richest in Austria at the time. He had objected to the distribution of Extase and said it was exploitation of the expression on Hedy’s face. In Lamarr’s autobiography, she had described her husband as an extremely controlling man who prevented her growth in her acting career. She also felt imprisoned in their castle-like home where parties were held and which notable people like Hitler and Mussolini attended. Also in her autobiography, she had stated that she devised a plan to escape the controlling marriage and said she disguised herself as her maid and then left for Paris where she subsequently blossomed as an actress.
George Anthiel, an avant-garde composer who happened to be Lamarr’s neighbor when she lived in California was the son of German immigrants. He had been experimenting with the automated controls of musical instruments especially for the music he made for the Ballet Mecanique. It was during the Second World War when Lamarr and Antheil discussed how radio-controlled torpedoes being used in the naval wars could be intercepted by broadcasting a particular interference at the signal’s frequency control which would ultimately get the torpedo off course.
Together with Anthiel, Lamarr developed the “Secret Communications System” which was designed to help counter the Nazis. They achieved this feat by manipulating the radio frequencies at irregular intervals during reception or transmission. Their invention formed a kind of unbreakable code which prevented classified information and message transmissions from being intercepted by those who aren’t their allies.
Lamarr earned her knowledge about torpedoes from Mandl and she used her knowledge from him to help develop this invention. With Anthiel who incorporated the use of a piano roll, they were successfully able to pull off frequency hopping. They used the 88 piano keys to randomly change the signals within the range of 88 frequencies.
It was in 1942 when the patent for the invention of Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey (her married name then) was granted. However, the early version of the frequency hopping technique they created was met with opposition by the United States navy and therefore was not adopted. Their idea was not used by the navy until 1962 when the military used it for a Cuban blockade after the patent had already expired.
In 1997, the invention was honored because the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr credits—although belated, for her contributing work for the technology. Today, the work done by Lamarr and Anthiel is the basis for the modern spread-spectrum communication technology. It is the idea behind Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connections, and CDMA. Later in her life, Lamarr expressed her wanting to join the National Inventors Council. However, it was said by the NIC member Charles Kettering that she could help with the war efforts better if she would use her celebrity status for selling war bonds.
Later Years and Death
In April of 1953 Lamarr became a naturalized American citizen at the age of 38. Her “Ecstasy in Me” autobiography had earned negative reviews especially after her account of having had sexual intercourse with a man inside a brothel she was hiding in when Mandl was searching for her after her escape. According to her, these accounts had been falsely made by the ghost writer Leo Guild.
Even in her older age come the 1970s, she had been offered scripts, commercials for television, and even stage projects. None of these offers, however, appealed to her and these years became her years of seclusion. In 1981 and with her failing eyesight, she chose to retreat to Miami Beach in Florida.
In January 2000, Lamarr died in Florida due heart problems, namely arteriosclerotic heart disease, chronic valvular heart disease, and heart failure. Because of her contributions especially to the world of entertainment, she was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Despite not being highly recognized for her contributions in the field of science since women were not treated as equally back then, her invention together with Anthiel had paved its way to modern times and continues to persevere to this day.
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Heinrich Hertz
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The great German physicist, Heinrich Hertz made possible the development of radio, television, and radar by proving that electricity can be transmitted in electromagnetic waves. He explained and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by Maxwell. He was the first person who successfully demonstrated the presence of electromagnetic waves, by building an apparatus that produced and detected the VHF/UHF radio waves. His undertakings earned him the honor of having his surname assigned to the international unit of frequency (one cycle per second).
Early Life and Career:
Born on February 22, 1857 in Hamburg, Germany, Hertz came from a wealthy, educated and incredibly successful family. His father, Gustav Ferdinand Hertz, was a lawyer and later a senator. He developed interest for science and mathematics as a child while studying at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums of Hamburg. He studied sciences and engineering in the German cities of Dresden, Munich and Berlin under two eminent physicists, Gustav R. Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz.
Hertz earned his PhD from the University of Berlin in 1880 and worked as an assistant to Helmhotz. Though he devoted his thesis to the nature of electromagnetic induction in rotating conductors, his research as Helmholtz’s assistant focused on mechanical hardness and stress, a field in which he wrote a number of influential papers. In 1883, Hertz took up the chance to move up a step on the academic ladder. He moved to the University of Kiel as a Lecturer, where he continued his research on electromagnetism. From 1885 to 1889 he served as a professor of physics at the technical school in Karlsruhe and after 1889 held the same post at the University in Bonn.
During 1886, he married Elizabeth Doll, daughter of his colleague Dr. Max Doll. They had two daughters, Joanna and Mathilde.
Contribution:
When Hertz began conducting experiments at the University of Bonn, he was aware of the revolutionary work that was left behind by British scientist James Clerk Maxwell, who had produced a series of mathematical equations that predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. This challenged experimentalists to produce and detect electromagnetic radiation using some form of electrical apparatus.
Hertz took up that challenge and in 1887 confirmed Maxwell’s theories about the existence of electromagnetic radiation. He proved that electricity can be transmitted in electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light and possess many other properties of light.
While carrying out his experiment on electromagnetic waves, Hertz also accidentally discovered the photoelectric effect in which light falling on special surfaces can generate electricity.
Apart from the electromagnetic or electric waves (“Hertzian waves”), Hertz also showed that their velocity and length could be measured and that light and heat are electromagnetic waves.
Early Death:
During 1892, Hertz was diagnosed with first a head cold and then an allergy. Since then his health remained poor. He died of blood poisoning at the age of 36 in Bonn, Germany on January 1, 1894, and was buried in Ohlsdorf, Hamburg.
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Henri Becquerel
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Whenever we study or talk about radio activity, the name Henri Becquerel at once clicks to our minds. He was the discoverer of radioactivity, for which he also won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Early Life:
Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a Professor of Applied Physics and had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence. He entered the Polytechnic in 1872 and ultimately became a professor in the same institute of the Applied Physics.
Contributions and Achievements:
The early research of Becquerel was almost entirely in optics. His first extensive investigations dealt with the rotation of plane-polarized light by magnetic fields. He next turned to infra-red spectra, making visual observations by means of the light released from certain phosphorescent crystals under infra-red illumination. He then studied the absorption of light in crystals. With these researches, Becquerel obtained his doctorate from the Faculty of Sciences of Paris in 1888 and election to the Academy of Sciences in 1889. Thus at the age of forty three, Becquerel was established in the rank and liability, his years of active research behind him and all that for which he is still now remembered.
Talking about the invention of radioactivity Becquerel decided to investigate whether there was any connection between X-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. The glow of X-ray emission put Becquerel in mind of the light in his study although he had not done much active research in the last few years. He had inherited from his father a supply of uranium salts, which phosphoresce when exposed to light. When the salts were placed near to a photographic plate covered with opaque paper, the plate was discovered to be fogged.
The phenomenon was found to be common to all the uranium salts studied and was concluded to be a property of the uranium atom. Finally Becquerel showed that the rays emitted by uranium caused gases to ionize and that they differed from X-rays in that they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. In this way his spontaneous discovery of radioactivity took place as like most physicists, he had a better understanding of the nature of matter that brought him closer to reaching this final philosophical goal.
Nowadays it is generally considered that Becquerel discovered radioactivity by chance, but it is truer to say that he was looking for an effect so similar to radioactivity that he must have discovered it sooner or later, and he was so great a scientist that he quickly realized the importance of his evidence. It is also known that Becquerel discovered one type of radioactivity beta particles which is due to high-speed electrons leaving the nucleus of the atom.
Becquerel also authored detailed studies of the physical properties of cobalt, nickel, and ozone, studied how crystals absorb light, and researched the polarization of light. He is the namesake of the Becquerel, the basic unit of radioactivity used in the international system of radiation units, referred to as “SI” units. From handling radioactive stones he developed serious and recurring burns on his skin, which may have been a contributing factor in history.
Besides being a Nobel Laureate, Becquerel was elected a member of the Academe des Sciences de France and succeeded Berthelot as Life Secretary of that body. He was a member also of the Accademia dei Lincei and of the Royal Academy of Berlin, amongst others. He was also made an Officer of the Legion of Honour. Becquerel published his findings in many papers, principally in the Annales de Physique et de Chimie and the Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences.
Death:
The famous scientist died in 1908 at Croissic in Britanny and is still remembered up till now among the outstanding Physicists.
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Henrietta Swan Leavitt
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American astronomer, Henrietta Swan Leavitt is renowned for her discovery of the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables. This major discovery became the starting point for the ability of astronomers to determine the distance of stars from the earth. Her work transformed human understanding of the relative brightness and variability of stars.
On her discovery, Henrietta Swan Leavitt quoted:
“A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods.”
Early Life, Education and Career Achievements:
Born on July 4, 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Leavitt was the daughter of George Roswell Leavitt, a Congregationalist minister and his wife Henrietta Swan Kendrick. When she was a child, her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio.
Leavitt attended Oberlin College in 1885 and in 1892 graduated from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women (now known as Radcliffe College). After her graduation, Leavitt remained in school an additional year to take further astronomy courses. She then traveled in America and in Europe during which time she lost her hearing. Three years after graduation, she became a volunteer research assistant at Harvard College Observatory under the astronomer Edward Pickering, who had initiated a research program on the measurement of stellar magnitudes. Seven years later, in 1902, Pickering hired Leavitt to the Observatory’s permanent staff at $.30 per hour, and she worked there until her death.
As an assistant at Harvard College Observatory, though she was talented enough, she was given little theoretical work. Pickering did not like his female staff to pursue such endeavors. Instead, she was given the position of chief of the photographic photometry department and was assigned the tedious task of cataloguing “variable” stars, whose brightness appears to ebb and flow in predictable patterns.
While investigating the Magellanic Clouds (neighbor-galaxies of the Milky Way), Leavitt revealed 1,777 new variable stars. More importantly, in 1912, by comparing different photographs of the same variable star, Leavitt established that stars of the “Cepheid” type had bright-dim cycle periods inversely proportionate to their magnitude (the stronger the star, the slower its cycle).
Leavitt found out that the variable stars’ cycles must depend not on how dazzling they appear (“apparent” luminosity), but how bright they really are (“intrinsic” or “absolute” luminosity). Later, Leavitt devised a period-luminosity ratio that applies to all Cepheid stars and which enabled astronomers to calculate the distance from Earth to any visible Cepheid star in the universe.
Death:
Pickering did not allow Leavitt to follow up on her ground-breaking discovery, and continued to treat her as a mere lab assistant. Her efforts would have won her a Nobel Prize but she died of cancer in 1921 at age fifty-three. The asteroid 5383 Leavitt and the crater Leavitt on the Moon are named after her to honor deaf men and women who have worked as astronomers.
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Henry Bessemer
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Sir Henry Bessemer was a prominent British engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He developed the first cost-efficient process for the manufacture of steel in 1856, which later led to the invention of Bessemer converter.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Charlton, Hertfordshire on January 19, 1813, Henry Bessemer’s father, Anthony Bessemer, was an engineer and inventor, who was also appointed a member of the French Academy of Science, for making amendments to the optical microscope.
Bessemer was mostly self-taught who exhibited extraordinary inventive skills since childhood. He learnt mettalurgy at his father’s type foundry, helping in the production of gold chains.
Contributions and Achievements:
Henry Bessemer’s early invention of a group of six steam-powered machines for manufacturing bronze powder gained him wealth and fame. He also made other inventions in his early days, including an advanced sugarcane-crushing machine.
Bessemer is best known for devising a steel production process that inspired the Industrial Revolution. It was the first cost-efficient industrial process for the big-scale production of steel from molten pig iron by taking out impurities from pig iron using an air blast. Bessemer’s process still continues to inspire the production of modern steel.
The Royal Society of London elected Bessemer into fellowship in 1877. Two years later, in 1879, he was knighted. Throughout his career, he registered more than 110 patents.
Later Life and Death:
Henry Bessemer continued his research and made several inventions in the later years of his life. He died on March 15, 1898 in London. Bessemer was 85 years old.
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Henry Cavendish
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A natural philosopher, the greatest experimental and theoretical English chemist and physicist of his age, Henry Cavendish (10 Oct. 1731 – 24 Feb. 1810) was distinguished for great accuracy and precision in researches into the composition of atmospheric air, the properties of different gases, the synthesis of water, the law governing electrical attraction and repulsion, and calculations of the density (and hence the weight) of the Earth.
Early Life:
Cavendish attended Cambridge University from 1749 to 1753, but left without a degree. He engrossed himself in scientific studies but did not bother to publish a number of his important discoveries as Cavendish was sociable only with his scientific friends. Even the only existing portrait of him was sketched secretly. He approached most of his investigations through quantitative measurements.
Contributions and Achievements:
He was the first to recognize hydrogen gas as a distinct substance for which he calculated their densities as well as the densities of several other gases. He showed that it produced dew, which appeared to be water, upon being burned. He also found it to be much less dense than air. Cavendish also investigated the products of fermentation, showing that the gas from the fermentation of sugar is indistinguishable from the “fixed air” characterized as a constituent of chalk and magnesia by Black ( in modern language, carbon dioxide). In his study of the methods of gas analysis Cavendish made one amazing observation.
He was glinting air with excess oxygen (to form oxides of nitrogen) over alkali until no more absorption took place and noted that a tiny amount of gas could not be further reduced, “so that if there is any part of the phlogisticated air of our atmosphere which differs from the rest, and cannot be reduced to nitrous acid, we may safely conclude that it is not more than 1/120 part of the whole.” As is now known, he had observed the noble gases of the atmosphere.
In addition to his achievements in chemistry, Cavendish is also known for the Cavendish experiment, the first to measure the force of gravity between masses in a laboratory and to produce an accurate value for Earth’s density. The apparatus he was working with was devised by the Rev. John Michell, though he had the most important parts reconstructed to his own designs, it depended on measuring the attraction exercised on a horizontal bar, suspended by a vertical wire and bearing a small lead ball at each end, by two large masses of lead. His work and constant observation led others to accurate values for the gravitational constant (G) and Earth’s mass.
Based on his results, one can calculate a value for G of 6.754 × 10?11N-m2/kg2, which compares favourably with the modern value of 6.67428 × 10?11N-m2/kg2.
Cavendish compared the electrical conductivities of equivalent solutions of electrolytes and expressed a version of Ohm’s law. He was not the first to profound an inverse-square law of electrostatic attraction, but Cavendish’s exhibition, based in part on mathematical reasoning, was the most effective. He founded the study of the properties of dielectrics and also distinguished clearly between quantity of electricity and what is now called potential.
Cavendish’s work and reputation have to be considered in two parts, the one relating to his published work, the other to the large amount he did not publish. During his lifetime he made notable discoveries in chemistry and physics mainly for which he is known the best and recognized.
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Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, practical philosopher and and natural scientist, known for his doctrines of Transcendentalism. He is noted for his book “Walden”, a statement of simple living in a natural environment. His another important work, “Civil Disobedience”, is often cited as a vigorous advocate of civil liberties.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau studied philosophy, science and mathematics at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. After he graduated in 1837, Thoreau became a schoolteacher briefly before opening a grammar school himself with the help of his brother.
Contributions and Achievements:
Thoreau’s work consists of more than 20 volumes. A few of his extraordinary contributions include books and essays about natural history and philosophy, in which he analyzed the major sources of modern day environmentalism; ecology and environmental history.
His philosophy of nonviolent resistance inspired such later figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Leo Tolstoy. Thoreau highlighted the theories for human culture appropriated by the American natural environment. He is often classified as an individualist anarchist and a major source of inspiration for anarchists worldwide.
Thoreau’s two legendary acts, his two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond and his imprisonment for civil disobedience, typify his doctrines of New England Transcendentalism.
Later Life and Death:
Thoreau spent the last years of his life at a home on Belknap Street, Westborough, where he had moved along with his family in 1850. He stayed there until his death of tuberculosis in 1862.
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Henry Ford
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Henry Ford was an American industrialist and inventor who formulated the assembly-line methods for automobile manufacturing, which led to faster production at lower costs. One of the most popular figures in history, Ford’s inspired the Industrial Revolution in the United States and worldwide.
Early Life and Education:
Born on a farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan, Henry Ford had two brothers and two sisters. His father gave him a pocket watch when he was fifteen. Even at such a young age, Ford reassembled it and gained the reputation of a watch repairman. When his mother died in 1876, he refused to take over the family farm. Ford became an apprentice machinist in 1879. He also worked for Westinghouse company as a steam engine repairman.
Contributions and Achievements:
Henry Ford built his first steam engine when he was only fifteen. He constructed his first internal combustion engine in 1893 and his first automobile in 1896. Ford changed the way automobiles were designed and built, bringing in the assembly-line factories for the mass production of vehicles that later led to lower prices, and therefore caused a storm in automobile ownership throughout the United States and abroad. He created his first gasoline-driven buggy or Quadricycle in 1893 which was entirely self-propelled.
Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and was president of the company from 1906 to 1919. He resumed his post from 1943 to 1945. The gross sales of his company exceeded 250,000 in 1914. The total sales went over 450.000 1916. Ford became the vice president of the Society of Automotive Engineers when it was established in 1905. The institute was formed to systematize automotive parts in the United States.
Later Life and Death:
Henry Ford fell ill and went into retirement in 1945. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage two years later in 1947. Ford was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. He was 83 years old.
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Henry Moseley
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The British physicist, Henry Moseley is known for his establishment of truly scientific basis of the Periodic Table of the Elements by sorting chemical elements in the order of their atomic numbers. In his short career, he contributed a lot towards the science of physics through his research. Many scientists believe that if Moseley had survived a bit longer he would have contributed a great deal to the knowledge of atomic structure and also earned the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Early Life:
Henry was born in Weymouth, Dorset, on the southwestern coast of England on November 23, 1887. He belonged to a rich, aristocratic, and scientifically accomplished family. Henry Nottidge Moseley, his father was a biologist and also a professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Oxford. Henry’s mother, Amabel Gwyn-Jeffreys Moseley was the daughter of the biologist and conchologist John Gwyn Jeffreys. It was not a surprise when Henry showed his interest in zoology.
Moseley was always a very bright student. He received a King’s scholarship to attend Eton College where he excelled in mathematics, and was introduced to the study of x rays by his physics teacher. In 1910, he graduated from Trinity College of the University of Oxford after which he earned a position in the laboratory of Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester under the supervision of professors such as Sir Ernest Rutherford.
Contributions and Achievements:
In 1913, while working at the University of Manchester, Moseley observed and measured the X-ray spectra of various chemical elements obtained by diffraction in crystals. Through this he discovered a systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number. This discovery is now known as the Moseley’s law. Before his finding, atomic numbers had been thought of as an arbitrary number, based on sequence of atomic weights. Moseley also predicted a number of missing elements and their periodic numbers in the Periodic Table.
His method in early X-ray crystallography was able to sort out many chemical problems promptly, some of which had confused chemists for a number of years. Both the apparent irregularities in the location of elements such as argon and potassium and the positioning of the rare earth (inner transition) elements in the periodic table could now be elucidated on the basis of atomic number.
Moseley is also known for the development of of early X-ray spectrometry equipment which he learnt to design with the help of William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg at the University of Leeds. This device basically consisted of glass-bulb electron tube in which the ionization of electrons caused the emission of X-rays photons finally resulting in photographic lines.
Later Life:
In 1914, Henry Mosely planned to continue his physics reasearch at Oxford so he resigned from his position at Manchester. His plans were never materialised because when the first World War broke out he decided to enlist in the British Army. On August 10, 1915 he was shot dead during the Battle of Gallipoli, in Turkey.
This great physicist died very young at the age of twenty-seven but his contribution to the scientific world will never be forgotten.
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Hermann Rorschach
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Hermann Rorschach is a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed what we now know as the Rorschach inkblot test. The Rorschach inkblot test is a personality projection test where individuals are shown one of ten inkblots at a time while taking note of what they think and see in each of the images.
Early Life, Education and Career
Hermann Rorschach was born on November 8, 1884 in Zurich, Switzerland. He was the eldest of three children. He was only 12 years old when his mother died in 1897. Seven years after that, his father also died. He was a local art teacher and was very keen on encouraging his son to use his creativity to express himself effectively. In fact, H.F. Ellenberger, a medical historian and psychiatrist, described Rorschach’s childhood as very artistic and intellectual.
Rorschach spent his youth in a place in Northern Switzerland called Schaffhausen and immediately showed a fascination for inkblots when he was in high school. In fact, a Swiss childhood game called Klecksography that involved making pictures out of random inkblots proved to be Rorschach’s favorite, that his friends started calling him “Klecks”.
Before graduating in high school, Rorschach was torn between aiming for a career in science and a career in art. He even wrote to Ernst Haeckel, the famous German Biologist, to ask for his advice. Of course, Haeckel responded that Rorschach would be better off in pursuing a career in science.
Rorschach attended Academie de Neuchatel in 1904 and studied geology and botany. After just a single term, he transferred to Universite de Dijon to take French classes.
In 1904, he finally went to the University of Berne to attend medical school. He specialized in psychology and travelled throughout Zurich, Berlin and Nuremberg to complete his studies. He finally graduated in 1909 at the University of Zurich.
He married his Russian classmate from medical school, Olga Stempelin, in 1910. He was working in a mental institution in Switzerland at that time. In 1913, he decided to leave his job and left for Russia with his wife. After just a year in Russia, he decided to go back to Switzerland where he worked at the Walden Psychiatric University as one of the residents. His wife was temporarily detained in Russia but was able to travel back to Switzerland eventually. They had a daughter named Elizabeth who was born in 1917 and a son named Wadin who was born in 1919.
In 1915, he became the associate director for the Herisau Asylum.
The Rorschach Inkblot Test
While he was still studying, Rorschach had started wondering why different people reacted differently to certain stimuli. This was also the period when there was a lot of excitement on the continuous development of psychoanalysis. He was instantly reminded about the inkblots that he had played with as a child and was curious to find out why different people interpreted the same inkblots differently.
The psychiatrist Szyman Hens had already been using inkblots to study the fantasies that his patients had. Rorschach took a great interest in this concept when he found out about it. He also took into consideration the methods of his acquaintance, Carl Jung. Jung was tapping into random people’s unconscious minds by using a series of word association tests.
There were other speculations on other influences that Rorschach may have had on his the concepts he applied in his inkblot tests as well. There was a popular book of poems that was published by a German doctor named Justinus Kerner in 1857 that was said to have gotten its inspiration from an inkblot. Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, had also previously used inkblots for a creativity test.
Because Rorschach was interested in both art and psychoanalysis, he suddenly realized that the two could actually be combined. He started showing random inkblots to people just to see what their responses would be. He then created the Rorschach Inkblot test to study and analyze how patients would react and what associations they would form from random stimuli.
To test the system, he tried it on 300 patients with 100 of them as control subjects. The test involved showing each patient a series of 10 inkblot cards, half of them in black and white and the other half with colors. Each patient is then asked what they associate each inkblot with as Rorschach took notes of each patient’s answer. Once done with all the inkblots, these were shown to each patient again as they are asked to explain the answers that they gave previously. The answers were evaluated based on location, content, quality and conventionality. From the data he gathered, he was able to draw conclusions about the social behavior of each patient.
In 1921, he published the book Psychodiagnostik. This was one of the bases for his continuously developing inkblot test.
His Death and Further Developments
Hermann Rorschach died suddenly on April 2, 1922 of peritonitis in Herisau, Switzerland at the young age of 37. It is believed that this was the result of a ruptured appendix. He left behind his wife and two kids and was still holding the position of Associate Director at the Herisau Asylum during his death.
Despite his early death, the impact that his inkblot test had created remained. The German psychologist Bruno Klopfer saw the importance of the studies that Rorschach started and picked up where he left off. He started to make improvements on the test’s scoring system. He also became an advocate of the importance of projective personality tests, eventually causing them to be a popular psychological and psychiatric tool.
By the 1960s, Rorschach’s inkblot test became the most widely used projective personality test in the United States. In fact, it was ranked eighth in a long list of tests used all over the US for outpatient mental health care.
Rorschach’s inkblot test still faces a lot of controversy and criticism to this day. Despite this fact, it is still one of the primary tests used in hospitals, schools, jails and courtrooms and is used to decide on parental custody rights, assess the emotional issues of children, and determine if a prisoner is eligible for parole or not.
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Hermann von Helmholtz
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Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand Helmholtz, more commonly known as Hermann von Helmholtz, was a German physicist, physician and philosopher who made many groundbreaking contributions to physiology, electrodynamics, optics, meteorology and mathematics. He is highly regarded for his statement of the law of the conservation of energy, as well as his theories of vision.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Potsdam, Prussia, Hermann von Helmholtz’s father was a gymnasium headmaster who had also studied philosophy and philology. Helmholtz acquired his degree in medicine from Berlin in 1842, as per his father’s wishes. He served as a surgeon in the military until 1847.
Contributions and Achievements:
Hermann von Helmholtz published his famous physics treatise on the “Conservation of Energy”, in which he traces incidentally the history of the idea as formulated by Mayer, Joule and himself. In 1850, he was appointed as the Professor of Physiology and General Pathology at Koenigsberg. He invented the ophthalmoscope one year later in 1851.
He accepted another teaching position at Bonn in 1885, while he took the chair of Physiology at Heidelberg in 1859. Helmholtz’s finding regarding human sight earned his fame and he also investigated the mechanical causes of vocal sounds.
His contributions to electricity and magnetism brought out his belief that classical mechanics was perhaps the ideal mode of scientific reasoning. He became the first German scientist to value the great work of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell in electrodynamics. Helmholtz took the mathematics of electrodynamics to new heights of excellence.
He was made the Professor of Physics at Berlin in 1871. He was also awarded the title of nobility, “von Helmholtz”, in 1883. The theory of the conservation of energy which he formulated is considered as one of the broadest and most important generalizations ever known in the history of science.
Later Life and Death:
Hermann von Helmholtz spent his later life trying to cut down all of electrodynamics to a minimum set of mathematical principles, however without success.
Helmholtz died on September 8, 1894. He was 73 years old.
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Homi Jehangir Bhabha
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An Indian born scientist who played an important part in contribution to The Quantum Theory was born on October 30, 1909 in Bombay. His name is Homi Jehangir Bhabha. He was the first one to become the Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India.
Early Life:
Bhabha belonged to a wealthy Parsi family that was very influential in the west of India. He got a doctorate degree from the University of Cambridge in 1934 after he had completed his studies from the Elphinstone College and graduated from the Royal Institute of Science that resided in Bombay. All this time he worked along with Neil Bohr that led them to discover the quantum theory. Bhabha also did some work with Walter Heitler and they made a breakthrough in the cosmic radiation’s understanding by working on cascade theory of electron showers. In 1941, Bhabha got elected for his work in the Royal Society.
Contributions and Achievements:
Bhabha went back to India in 1940 and started his research in Banglore at an institute in India named The Indian Institute of Science about the cosmic rays. He was given a position as a director at an institute in Bombay known as Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He was a skillful manager and it was due to his prominence, devotion, wealth and comradeship with Jawaharlal Nehru, PM of India that he was able to gain a leading position for allocating the scientific resources of India.
Bhabha was the first one to become the chairperson of India’s Atomic Energy Commission in the year 1948. It was under his direction that the scientists of India made their way into making an atomic bomb ant the first atomic reactant was operated in Bombay in the year 1956. Bhabha also led the first UN Conference held for the purpose of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, 1955. It was then predicted by him that a limitless power of industries would be found through nuclear fusion’s control. He promoted nuclear energy control and also prohibition of atomic bombs worldwide. He was absolutely against India manufacturing atomic bombs even if the country had enough resources to do so. Instead he suggested that the production of an atomic reactor should be used to lessen India’s misery and poverty. A post in Indian Cabinet was rejected by him but he served as a scientific advisor to PM Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Bhabha got many rewards and award from Indian as well as foreign universities and he was an associate of various societies of science including a famous one in the US known as National Academy of Sciences. Bhabha was killed in an air crash accident on January 24, 1966 in Switzerland.
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Humphry Davy
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Sir Humphry Davy, widely considered to be one of the greatest chemists and inventors that Great Britain has ever produced, is highly regarded for his work on various alkali and alkaline earth metals, and for his valuable contributions regarding the findings of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine.
Early Life and Education:
Humphry was born on December 17, 1778 at Penzance, Cornwall to a wood carver. He was naturally a gifted and sharp boy who could write impressive fiction and poetry. At sixteen, he lost his father. After the tragic event, Gregory Watt, son of the famous Scottish inventor James Watt, came to visit him and subsequently became a lodger in the house of Mrs. Davy, his mother. They became great friends and their strong relationship have had an important influence on the later career of Davy. Mr. Davies Gilbert was a huge source of inspiration and encouragement for Davy, who later went on to introduce him to the notice of the Royal Institution in London.
Contributions and Achievements:
Dr. Thomas Beddoes, an emiment English physician and scientific writer, founded the “Pneumatic Institution” in Bristol, and Davy became associated with it in 1756. Within one year, Davy wrote his legendary publications “Essays on MAI and Light, with a New Theory of Respiration” and “Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration”. Both of these works instantly gained worldwide recognition. Davy was not only the first scientist to reveal the peculiar exhilarating or intoxicating properties of nitrous oxide gas, but his “Researches” also featured the results of various interesting experiments on the respiration of carburetted hydrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbonic acid and nitrous gases.
Davy delivered his first lecture at the Royal Institution in 1801 and instantly became a popular figure there. His tenure as a lecturer was immensely successful. During his second Bakerian lecture at the Royal Society in 1807, he made public his tremendous achievement – the decomposition by galvanism of the fixed alkalies. He performed a demonstration that these alkalies are simply metallic oxides. These discoveries are said to be the most important contribution made to the “Philosophical Transactions” (of the Royal Society) since Sir Isaac Newton.
Other important books of Davy include “Elements of Chemical Philosophy” (1812), “Elements of Agricultural Chemistry” (1813) and “Consolations in Travel” (1830).
Later Life and Death:
Davy was knighted in 1812, after which he married a rich widow named Mrs. Apreece. He was also made a baronet in 1818 for outstanding contributions to his country and mankind; most importantly, his invention of the safety-lamp. He was promoted to the president of the Royal Society in 1820 and he performed his duties for consecutive seven years.
His health began to decline in 1827 which became the cause of his resignation. Davy died at Geneva on May 29, 1829.
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Ibn Battuta
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Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, was a Moroccan Muslim scholar and traveler. He is known for his traveling and going on excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of almost thirty years. This covered nearly the whole of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors. After his travel he returned to Morocco and gave his account of the experience to Ibn Juzay.
Early life and Career:
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, was born in Tangier, Morocco, on the 24th of February 1304 C.E. (703 Hijra) during the time of the Marinid dynasty. He was commonly known as Shams ad-Din. His family was of Berber origin and had a tradition of service as judges. After receiving an education in Islamic law, he chose to travel. He left is house in June 1325, when he was twenty one years of age and set off from his hometown on a hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a journey that took him 16 months. He did not come back to Morocco for at least 24 years after that. His journey was mostly by land. To reduce the risk of being attacked, he usually chose to join a caravan. In the town of Sfax, he got married. He survived wars, shipwrecks, and rebellions.
He first began his voyage by exploring the lands of the Middle East. Thereafter he sailed down the Red Sea to Mecca. He crossed the huge Arabian Desert and traveled to Iraq and Iran. In 1330, he set of again, down the Red Sea to Aden and then to Tanzania. Then in 1332, Ibn Battuta decided to go to India. He was greeted open heartedly by the Sultan of Delhi. There he was given the job of a judge. He stayed in India for a period of 8 years and then left for China. Ibn Battuta left for another adventure in 1352. He then went south, crossed the Sahara desert, and visited the African kingdom of Mali.
Finally, he returned home at Tangier in 1355. Those who were lodging Ibn Battuta’s grave Western Orient lists could not believe that Ibn Battuta visited all the places that he described. They argued that in order to provide a comprehensive description of places in the Muslim world in such a short time, Ibn Battuta had to rely on hearsay evidence and make use of accounts by earlier travelers.
Ibn Battuta often experienced culture shock in regions he visited. The local customs of recently converted people did not fit his orthodox Muslim background. Among Turks and Mongols, he was astonished at the way women behaved. They were given freedom of speech. He also felt that the dress customs in the Maldives and some sub-Saharan regions in Africa were too revealing.
Death:
After the completion of the Rihla in 1355, little is known about Ibn Battuta’s life. He was appointed a judge in Morocco and died in 1368. Nevertheless, the Rihla provides an important account of many areas of the world in the 14th century.
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Ibn Rushd
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Early Life:
Abu Walid Mohammad Ibn Rushd born in 1128 C.E. in Cordova has been held as one of the greatest thinkers and scientists of the history. A product of twelfth-century Islamic Spain, he set out to integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. A common theme throughout his writings is that there is no inappropriateness between religion and philosophy when both are properly understood.
His contributions to philosophy took many forms, ranging from his detailed commentaries on Aristotle, his defence of philosophy against the attacks of those who condemned it as different to Islam and his construction of a form of Aristotelianism which cleansed it, as far as was possible at the time, of, Neoplatonic influences.
Contributions and Achievements:
Ibn Rushd’s education followed a traditional path, beginning with studies in Hadith, linguistics, jurisprudence and scholastic theology. Throughout his life he wrote extensively on Philosophy and Religion, attributes of God, origin of the universe, Metaphysics and Psychology but he excelled in philosophy and jurisprudence and was nicknamed “the jurisprudent philosopher.” The role of the philosopher in the state was a topic of continual interest for Ibn Rushd.
His thought is genuinely creative and highly controversial, producing powerful arguments that were to puzzle his philosophical successors in the Jewish and Christian worlds. He seems to argue that there are two forms of truth, a religious form and a philosophical form, and that it does not matter if they point in different directions. He also appears to be doubtful about the possibility of personal immortality or of God’s being able to know that particular events have taken place. There is much in his work also which suggests that religion is inferior to philosophy as a means of attaining knowledge, and that the understanding of religion which ordinary believers can have is very different and impoverished when compared with that available to the philosopher.
In philosophy, his most important work Tuhafut al-Tuhafut was written in response to Al-Ghazali’s work. Ibn Rushd was criticized by many Muslim scholars for this book, which, nevertheless, had a deep influence on European thought, at least until the beginning of modern philosophy and experimental science. His views on fate were that man is neither in full control of his destiny nor is it fully predetermined for him. Al Rushd’s longest commentary was, in fact, an original contribution as it was largely based on his analysis including interpretation of Quranic concepts. Ibn Rushd’s summary the opinions (fatwa) of previous Islamic jurists on a variety of issues has continued to influence Islamic scholars to the present day, notably Javed Ahmad Ghamidi.
At the age of 25, Ibn Rushd conducted astronomical observations in Morocco, during which he discovered a previously unobserved star. He was also of the view that the Moon is opaque and obscure, and has some parts which are thicker than others, with the thicker parts receiving more light from the Sun than the thinner parts of the Moon. He also gave one of the first descriptions on sunspots.
Ibn Rushd also made remarkable contributions in medicine. In medicine his well-known book Kitab al-Kulyat fi al-Tibb was written before 1162 A.D Its Latin translation was known as ‘Colliget’. In it Ibn Rushd has thrown light on various aspects of medicine, including the diagnoses, cure and prevention of diseases and several original observations of him.
He wrote at least 67 original works, which included 28 works on philosophy, 20 on medicine, 8 on law, 5 on theology, and 4 on grammar, in addition to his commentaries on most of Aristotle’s works and his commentary on Plato’s The Republic. A careful examination of his works reveals that Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was a deeply Islamic man. As an example, we find in his writing, “Anyone who studies anatomy will increase his faith in the omnipotence and oneness of God the Almighty”. He believed that true happiness for man can surely be achieved through mental and psychological health, and people cannot enjoy psychological health unless they follow ways that lead to happiness in the hereafter, and unless they believe in God and His oneness.
Death:
Ibn Rushd died in Marakesh in 1198 where he was buried. Three months later, his body was moved to Qurtuba, the tribune of his thought. It leaves no room for any doubt about the important influence that th
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Irene Joliot-Curie
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Irene Joliot-Curie is one name that is always mentioned when we discuss the discovery of radioactivity and neutron. She was a French physicist who along with her husband Joliot-Curie, a well-known French physicist, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for their synthesis of new radioactive elements.
Early life, Education and Career:
Irène Joliot-Curie was born on 12 September 1897, in Paris. She was the daughter of the French physicists, Marie Sk?odowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. For a few years of her childhood Irene was educated by her mother, but later completed her studies at the University of Paris. Beginning in 1918 she assisted her mother at the Institute of Radium of the University of Paris while studying for her own doctoral degree. In 1925 she graduated with a thesis on the alpha rays of polonium. The same year she met Frédéric Joliot, assisting also at the Institute of Radium. The following year they both got married and took the name of Joliot-Curie. They had two children; one daughter, Helene and one son, Pierre.
Subsequent to their marriage the Joliot-Curies formed a great scientific team. Irene’s scientific research focused on natural and artificial radioactivity, transmutation of elements, and nuclear physics. During 1926 – 1928 she helped her husband in improving his laboratory techniques. Starting in 1928 Irène and Frédéric carried out their research on the study of atomic nuclei and published together.
Together they specialized in the field of nuclear physics. In 1934 their combined work led to the discovery of artificial radioactivity. By bombarding boron, aluminum, and magnesium with alpha particles, the Joliot-Curies produced isotopes of the generally stable elements nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon and aluminum that decompose spontaneously, with a more or less long period, by release of positive or negative electrons. For this work they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. Irene would not stop there, however, and went on to accomplish many other honors.
During 1936 she served in the French Cabinet as Undersecretary of State for Scientific Research. In 1937 she was appointed as a Professor in the Faculty of Science in Paris, and in the following year her research on the heavy elements played a vital role in the discovery of uranium fission. In 1939 Irene was employed as an Officer of the Legion of Honor. From 1946 – 1951 she was a member of the French Atomic Energy Commission. After 1947 she served as the Director of the Institute of Radium, and in 1948 she contributed to the creation of the first French atomic pile.
Irene Joliot-Curie had a great interest in the intellectual development of women, and therefore served as the members of the Comite National de l’Union des Femmes Francais, and the World Peace Council. Moreover she was also very concerned with the installation of a large center for nuclear physics at Orsay, and she personally worked out the plans for its construction. Her work on this facility would be carried on by her husband after her death.
Death:
Irene Joliot-Curie died on 17 March 1956, in Paris, from leukemia contracted in the course of her work.
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Isaac Newton
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Isaac Newton, universally considered to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time, was an English mathematical and physicist, widely known for his outstanding contributions to physics, mathematics and optics. He also invented the calculus, and formulated the three laws of motion and the universal theory of gravitation. Newton proved that sunlight is the combination of several colors. He performed as the master of the Royal Mint in London and as the president of the Royal Society of London.
Early Life and Education:
Born on January 4, 1643, Newton was so frail at the time of his birth that the housemaids were unsure that the baby would live any longer. Isaac Sr. had died a few months before his birth, while his mother, Hannah Ayscough, married again to another man, Reverend Barnabas Smith, with whom she had three more children.
His mother left little Newton to live with her new husband while he was raised by his maternal grandmother. Newton had mostly a solitary childhood, though at 12, he joined the grammar school at Grantham. At school, once he had a fight with another boy, and whilst he was weaker, he still managed to win the fight and banged the opponent’s nose on the church wall. This kind of vindictive behavior endured throughout his lifetime.
Creating sundials, wooden objects and drawings were some of his favorite hobbies at school. He made a model windmill with a mouse on a treadmill for supplying power. A four-wheeled cart was also one of his creations which was powered by rotating a crank he had set up.
His mother called Newton back to manage the family farm when he was 17. He was never good at the job, though. A young Newton showed more interest in creating models and reading books. Luckily enough, his schoolmaster at Grantham, and his uncle William Ayscough, utterly impressed with Newton’s skill and determination, suggested his mother to let him stay at the school.
After finishing school in June 1661, Newton went on to join Cambridge University. There, he was annoyed with the traditional Aristotelian curriculum and shunned many of the assigned books, instead concentrating on his studies about science, mathematics and philosophy. He carefully and devotedly read books by Galileo, René Descartes, Euclid and Johannes Kepler. Within a year, he was able to record original insights in his notebooks.
Contributions and Achievements:
Not long after his graduation in 1665, the Cambridge closed down due to the plague epidemic for almost two years. Newton, therefore, returned to home where he came up with the calculus, which he termed as the “fluxional method.” Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was immensely impressed with his work. Newton got his master’s degree in 1668, and assumed Barrow’s position after his resignation. His lectures were said to be too difficult for the students.
His contributions during 1669 and the early 1770s were mostly related to optics. He put forward a theory of colors. He also constructed a reflecting telescope which magnified objects 40 times. For this invention, he was honored by The Royal Society, where he was made a member in January 1672. An article was published during this time about his theory of colors in February 1672. When Robert Hooke challenged him in an inappropriate manner, Newton was furios. He had experimented with colors extensively for several years and was confident about his peculiar ability and research.
Newton published his legendary publication “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” in 1687, a masterpiece that introduced the world to the three laws of motion and the universal principle of gravitation.
His another notable rival was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who claimed to have invented the calculus first. As Newton’s Principia came after Leibniz’s calculus, some started to think that Newton borrowed his method from Leibniz. The truth was that Newton had invented the calculus between 1665 and 1666, but he was reluctant to publish his work for years, while Leibniz introduced his work in 1684. Leibniz actually received letters from Newton in 1671 and 1676 regarding mathematics, and he was either directly or indirectly influenced by Newton. The feud settled down in 1716 after Leibniz’s death.
Newton is also credited with the generalized binomial theorem, valid for any exponent.
Later Years and Death:
Newton soon got bored with academia, so he became the warden of the Royal Mint in 1696. He revolutionized its operations and was made a master of the Mint in 1700. He was also selected as the president of the Royal Society from 1703 until his death. Queen Anne knighted Newton in 1705. In his final years, Newton suffered from several physical illnesses. He died on March 20, 1727 in London, England.
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Ivan Pavlov
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Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was an eminent Russian physiologist and psychologist who devised the concept of the conditioned reflex. He conducted a legendary experiment in which he provided training to a hungry dog to drool at the sound of a bell, something which was related to the sight of food.
Pavlov also formulated a similar conceptual theory, highlighting the significance of conditioning and associating human behavior with the nervous system. He won the 1904 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking research on digestive secretions.
Early Life and Education:
Ivan Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia. As a young child, he suffered a serious injury, due to which Pavlov spent much of his childhood with his parents in the family home and garden, acquiring various practical skills and a deep interest in natural history. He developed a strong interest in science and the possibility of using science to ameliorate and modify society.
He studied medicine at university under a famed physiologist of the time, S. P. Botkin, who taught him a great deal about the nervous system.
Contributions and Achievements:
Ivan Pavlov conducted neurophysiological experiments with animals for years after receiving his doctorate at the Academy of Medical Surgery. He became fully convinced that human behavior could be understood and explained best in physiological terms rather than in mentalist terms. The legendary experiment for which Pavlov is remembered was when he used the feeding of dogs to establish a number of his key ideas.
Moments before feeding, a bell was rung to measure the dogs’ saliva production when they heard the bell. Pavolv found out that once the dogs had been trained to associate the sound of the bell with food, they would produce saliva, whether or not food followed. The experiment proved that the dogs’ physical response, salivation, was directly related to the stimulus of the bell, hence the saliva production was a stimulus response. The continued increased salivation, even when the dogs had experienced hearing the bell without being later fed, was a conditioned reflex.
The entire process is a prime example of classical conditioning, and it is primarily related to a physical and spontaneous response to some particular conditions that the organism has acquired through association. Behaviorist theory has massively applied these landmark ideas for the explanation of human behaviour.
Later Life and Death:
Ivan Pavlov died on February 27, 1936 in Leningrad, Soviet Union, from natural causes. He was 86 years old.
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J. J. Thomson
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Sir Joseph John Thomson, more commonly known as J. J. Thomson, was an English physicist who stormed the world of nuclear physics with his 1897 discovery of the electron, as well as isotopes. He is also credited with the invention of the mass spectrometer. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted two years later in 1908.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1856 in Cheetham Hill near Manchester, England, J. J. Thomson was the son of a Scottish bookseller. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. He received his BA in 1880 in mathematics, and MA in 1883.
Contributions and Achievements:
J. J. Thomson was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society 1865. He was a successor to Lord Rayleigh as Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics. His favorite student Ernst Rutherford later succeeded him in 1919. The early theoretical work of Thomson broadened the electromagnetic theories of James Clerk Maxwell’s, which revolutionized the study of gaseous conductors of electricity, as well as the nature of cathode rays.
Inspired by Wilhelm Röntgen’s 1895 discovery of X-rays, Thomson demonstrated that cathode rays were actually some speedily moving particles. After measuring their speed and specific charge, he concluded that these “corpuscles” (electrons) were about 2000 times smaller in mass as compared to the hydrogen ion, the lightest-known atomic particle. The discovery, made public during Thomson’s 1897 lecture to the Royal Institution, was labeled as the most influential breakthrough in the history of physics since Sir Isaac Newton.
Thomson also researched on the nature of positive rays in 1911, which significantly helped in the discovery of Isotopes. He proved that isotopes could be broke by deflecting positive rays in electric and magnetic fields, which was later named mass spectrometry.
J. J. Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1906. He was knighted in 1908. He published his autobiography “Recollections and Reflections” in 1936. Thomson is widely considered to be one of the greatest scientists ever, and the most influential pioneer of nuclear physics.
Later Life and Death:
J. J. Thomson was made the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1918, where he remained until his death. He died on August 30, 1940. He was 83 years old. Thomson was buried close to Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
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J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as “the father of the atomic bomb”, was an American nuclear physicist and director of the Los Alamos Laboratory (Manhattan Project). With a project so big that involved the hard work of hundreds of gifted scientists, it may appear quite undue to give so much credit on the shoulders of Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is, however, still the sole creator and inventor of the nuclear bomb to most people in the world.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1904 in New York City to a rich Jewish father, Oppenheimer became one of the brightest students at Harvard University at a youthful age of seventeen. He also went to Cambridge University in England for higher studies, where Ernest Rutherford, the famous British chemist and physicist, was his teacher. Oppenheimer acquired his Ph.D. from University of Göttingen in Germany.
Although he spent most of his time carrying out research and publishing books about quantum theory and theoretical physics, he was probably more interested in the classics and Eastern philosophy. In 1929, Oppenheimer topped in all the units at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. Most of the times, Oppenheimer had almost no time for his personal life. The growing popularity of Nazism in Germany during the 1930s, however, became a major event in his life, as it led him towards politics and resistance against the European fascist movement.
Oppenheimer subsequently joined left-wing politics, and became associated with several left-leaning organizations, which were somehow linked to the Communist Party.
Contributions and Achievements:
Niels Bohr and other European scientists informed their American contemporaries about the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s successful attempt of splitting the atom in 1939. President Roosevelt was much concerned that the Nazis may utilize this extraordinary technology to create an atomic weapon. This fear led him to institute the Manhattan Project in 1941.
Oppenheimer was appointed the scientific director of the project. He advised that the project be housed at Los Alamos in New Mexico. After extensive hard work and rigorous struggle, the first nuclear bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, with the power of approximately 18,000 tons of TNT, at Alamogordo Air Force Base in southern New Mexico.
Within one month, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. The event almost instantly ended the war, after which Oppenheimer was made the chairperson of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Later Life and Death:
Oppenheimer, due to his conscience and regrets over making such horrible weapons of mass destruction, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1949. The bomb is often thought to be the Truman administration’s answer to the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb. Due to this unexpected move, Edward Teller, his colleague at Los Alamos, was made the director of the new project. Oppenheimer’s patriotism was also questioned and he was even accused of “communist sympathies” due to his past political affiliations.
For the rest of his life, he shunned politics and performed his duties as the director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. Oppenheimer died of cancer in Princeton in 1967.
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Jagadish Chandra Bose
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Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose is one of the most prominent first Indian scientists who proved by experimentation that both animals and plants share much in common. He demonstrated that plants are also sensitive to heat, cold, light, noise and various other external stimuli. Bose contrived a very sophisticated instrument called Crescograph which could record and observe the minute responses because of external stimulants. It was capable of magnifying the motion of plant tissues to about 10,000 times of their actual size, which found many similarities between plants and other living organisms.
Contributions and Early Life:
The central hall of the Royal Society in London was jam-packed with famous scientists on May 10, 1901. Everyone seemed to be curious to know how Bose’s experiment will demonstrate that plants have feelings like other living beings and humans. Bose chose a plant whose mots were cautiously dipped up to its stem in a vessel holding the bromide solution. The salts of hydrobromic acid are considered a poison. He plugged in the instrument with the plant and viewed the lighted spot on a screen showing the movements of the plant, as its pulse beat, and the spot began to and fro movement similar to a pendulum. Within minutes, the spot vibrated in a violent manner and finally came to an abrupt stop. The whole thing was almost like a poisoned rat fighting against death. The plant had died due to the exposure to the poisonous bromide solution.
The event was greeted with much appreciation, however some physiologists were not content, and considered Bose as an intruder. They harshly knocked the experiment but Bose did not give up and was quite confident about his findings.
Using the Crescograph, he further researched the response of the plants to fertilizers, light rays and wireless waves. The instrument received widespread acclaim, particularly from the Path Congress of Science in 1900. Many physiologists also supported his findings later on, using more advanced instruments.
Jagadish Chandra Bose was born on 30 November, 1858 at Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh. He was raised in a home committed to pure Indian traditions and culture. He got his elementary education from a vernacular school, because his father thought that Bose should learn his own mother tongue, Bengali, before studying a foreign language like English. Bose attended Cambridge after studying physics at Calcutta University. He returned to India in 1884 after completing a B.Sc. degree from Cambridge University.
Later Life and Death:
Bose authored two illustrious books; ‘Response in the Living and Non-living’ (1902) and ‘The Nervous Mechanism of Plants’ (1926). He also extensively researched the behaviour of radiowaves. Mostly known as a plant physiologist, he was actually a physicist. Bose devised another instrument called ‘Coherer’, for detecting the radiowaves.
Prior to his death in 1937, Bose set up the Bose Institute at Calcutta. He was elected the Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920 for his amazing contributions and achievements.
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James Chadwick
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Early Life:
James Chadwick was English and he was a Physicist by profession. He was born on October 20, 1891 in Manchester. His parents Anne Mary Knowles Chadwick and John Joseph had him as their eldest son. Chadwick got admitted in Victoria University, Manchester. He was more interested in studying mathematics but instead he was admitted in the field of physics mistakenly. Chadwick was pretty bashful as a person so he did not make any attempt to amend the error. In 1911, he passed out of the Honors School of Physics as a Graduate. He further continued his studies at the same school in the laboratory of Ernest Rutherford.
Rutherford gave his atom’s planetary theory at the same place. Chadwick was acquainted to Niels Bohr and Hans Geiger at the department off Physics. In 1913, a degree of Master’s was received by Chadwick after which he was honored with the Exhibition Scholarship of 1851. He used that scholarship to finance his education at Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt which was the first institution of research in Germany in Charlottenburg near to Berlin. The institute worked under Geiger. One of his early works included the development of beta particles’ energy range. This gave helped Wolfgang Pauli to suggest the existence of neutrino.
Discovery of Neutron and Other Contributions:
Chadwick served many years in a civilian camp in World War I in Ruhleben. His fellowship was used by him at Caius College and Gonville after he returned to England to work at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge with Rutherford. He was the pioneer at using the direct method to determine nucleus’s electric charge. He gained a position as research director in 1922 as Rutherford’s subordinate. They spent a lot of time together experimenting of element alteration and also attempted to split up nucleus of a certain element to form other elements.
There was a certain irregularity faced by both of them and they found out that every element had an atomic mass and an atomic number. And in all cases the atomic masses were more than the atomic numbers. Rutherford said this might be due to the existence of proton mass particles but with impartial charge. But they were unable to find any such particle. Later, Chadwick found out in Joliot-Curies’ work that after beryllium is kept open to alpha particles it becomes radioactive. Chadwick showed in an experiment that when a nitrogen particle is exposed to radiations then it makes then recoil with a large amount of energy and that such thing could happen only by the collision of particles that are uncharged and have the approximate protons’ mass. In 1935, he received a Nobel Prize by proving that the neutron existed.
Chadwick held Lyon Jones’s position at the Liverpool University from the year 1935 to 1948. Then from 1943 to 1946, he provided services to the British Mission as the Head of Project of Manhattan. He was also present at the first atomic test in the desert of New Mexico.
Later Life:
In 1945 he got knighted and also got elected as the Caius and Gonville College Master in 1948. He retired from this position somewhere in 1959. It was after three years that he retired from his post at the Atomic Energy Authority of United Kingdom where he had worked since 1957. He passed away on July 24, 1974 in Cambridge.
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James Clerk Maxwell
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Early Life:
James Clerk Maxwell was born on June 13, 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was a physicist by profession and he gave out very important theories on electromagnetism. He has been very intelligent as a child. From the very beginning he solved many complex problems of geometry. It was due to both Maxwell’s heredity and surrounding that he was a genius and observed things and both these factors influenced his life very strongly.
Maxwell’s family was also well known for their extraordinary accomplishments. He spent his childhood living with his family and other relatives in a country house where the weather was warm and healthy. His mother passed away when he was young and as a result he grew more closer to his father. Maxwell was never one of the achievers. It was said that he had strange ways and it was majorly due to his bashfulness and his country ways. But along with his shyness came many other traits like he had an amazing imagination and he almost made any experiment possible that everyone thought was impossible. He also had the art of public speaking and explained extremely complex things to people in a very simple way.
James Clerk Maxwell belonged to the families of Maxwell and Clerk. A house in Edinburgh and country side land was inherited by his father. Maxwell was born before their house was built and soon after they were born his parents moved. Maxwell’s father was a lawyer by profession. Maxwell was interested in science and also in making mechanical tools and devices. Maxwell, at a very young age, was involved in everything his father did. He had a different way of learning things and no one could teach him the way he learnt. This problem was faced by him after his mother died.
After much problems, he was admitted in Edinburgh Academy by his aunt and father. His first year at school was very difficult. His fellows at school gave him a hard time and mocked him for the way he dressed up or spoke. They even gave him a nickname, “Drafty”. But later on he proved to be a very intelligent boy and his fellows cooled down a bit.
Maxwell was highly interested in geometry and at a very young age of fifteen he wrote his findings about ovals and double foci ellipses. His father presented the findings to a Professor named Forbes who taught at Edinburgh Royal Society. Although many things presented by Maxwell were already there but still the Professor was amazed that all these findings came from such a young boy who had very less experience of studies.
At the age of 16, he joined a university at Edinburgh in 1847. He wrote two more papers and gave them out Edinburgh Royal Society. After graduating from Edinburgh, his father got him admitted at Peterhouse but soon after that he got himself transferred to because he thought he could get a fellowship there. He went to Trinity from 1851 to 1854. After graduation, he was offered a fellowship. Then he went to Marischal College so that he could be close to his father who was unwell. But his father passed away soon and then he took a position in 1855 at Marischal.
He married Katherine Dewar in 1858.
Contributions and Achievements:
After leaving Marischal due to a merger, he started working in London at the King’s College. He did some remarkable work there and later he resigned in 1865. After that he spent most of his time working on his book at his country house.
To stay in touch in academics, he did some consulting and checking work for the University of Cambridge. It was his efforts that laid the foundation for the development of Cavendish Laboratory as he encouraged them to teach heat and electromagnetism courses. He was the first professor at the Cavendish Laboratory. He spent eight years over there and worked on the experiment papers of Henry Cavendish. In 1879, Maxwell started becoming ill and he could barely walk after he returned to Cambridge. Maxwell finally passed away in Cambridge on November 5, 1879 due to abdominal cancer.
Maxwell further worked on the work of James Prescott Joule and introduced his kinetic theory and electromagnetic fields’ theory. It was recognized by both the researchers that heat wasn’t a fluid like it was once thought to be and gas molecules’ velocity was measured by both of them.
Maxwell gave a new light of understanding to the theories. Joules demonstrated only the communities of science that could be measured or proven while Maxwell went ahead with models of mathematics that left no queries behind and no questions unanswered. He also took help of the statistics to explain the high possibility of how the projected laws would express the matter’s behavior. Due to this law determinism was taken away looking at the possibility of this law. This is what showed a new light to modern physics. It was only due to this law that relativity theory of Einstein was developed.
Maxwell experimented to calculate the exact velocity of molecule of gas and found out the faster the molecule move, more the heat was generated which meant that the movement and heat created were directly proportional to each other. The experiment showed heat as unquestionably as a movement of particle property and not as a liquid moving from one thing to another. It was also proved that heat could control the particles’ movement.
Maxwell explained a query of Faraday’s magnetic and electric field’s theory with some extremely complicated mathematical calculations that even Faraday’s could not explain himself. It was explained by him that there was a force field that surrounded particles that were charged. A mathematical mode 1 was created by him through he showed that the magnetic fields and electric fields worked together. This is why he introduced the term “Electromagnetic”.
This was a very essential discovery in the field of chemistry as later on it helped in the invention of an electron. The electron was discovered by Joseph John Thomson when he was carrying out an experiment on an electromagnetic field to find out its effects on gases by using the principle of Maxwell. Also, investigations on light’s effects on elements were based on the work of Maxwell. It was Maxwell’s work on the velocity of vacillation of fields of electromagnetism which said that light was to be considered as a radiation of electromagnetic form. This had quite a different impact on the theories of light.
Maxwell was a man of capabilities out of this world. His inventions in the field of heat and light can prove his capabilities. He was not a distant person and he highly appreciated others who had extraordinary capabilities and could not ignore them. Josiah Willard Gibbs was a man who was not getting attention that he deserved so Maxwell created a model based on Gibbs’ work that was three dimensional and named it after Gibbs. This work was done by him in his dying days.
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James Dwight Dana
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The field of geology is studded by a lot of notable names that anyone would recognize in a heartbeat. One great name though that isn’t heard of very often is that of James Dwight Dana’s. During his time, he made massive contributions to the field of geology, mineralogy, volcanology, and zoology. He was one of the people who pioneered the study of mountain-building, the origin and structures of all the continents and oceans, and volcanic activity. Indeed, he was a man that proved to be relentless in his desire to understand the earth and he was one of the reasons why the modern world knows so much about the earth and how it came to be. Indeed, he was a man that did wonderful work and one name that deserves to be remembered and lauded.
Early life
James Dwight Dana was born in Utica, NY, way back on February 12, 1813. His parents were Harriet Dwight and James Dana who worked as a merchant. Through his mother’s side of the family, he was related to the Dwight Family of New England who were missionaries and educators. Some of his relatives included Henry Otis Dwight and Harrison Gray Otis Dwight. James Dwight showed an interest in science at a very young age and this interest was fostered by one of his teachers in Utica high school. The teacher was fay Edgerton and she had a big role towards making sure that young James developed his interest in science. In the year 1830, he graduated high school and enrolled in in Yale College where he got the chance to study under the elder Benjamin Silliman. He graduated from Yale College three years after in the 1833 and spent the next two years of his life working as a teacher to midshipmen in the navy to whom to taught math to. He got the chance to sail to the Mediterranean while he was teaching.
His career
In the years 1836 and 1837, James Dwight Dana took on a job as assistant to Benjamin Silliman who was a professor at Yale and headed the chemical department. Four years after his assistant post, he moved on to become a mineralogist and a geologist for the US Exploring Expedition which was headed by Capt. Charles Wilkins. The expedition took him all the way to the Pacific Ocean where he found enough material to keep him occupied for the next 13 years of his life. The expedition ended in 1942 and he had notebooks filled with sketches, maps, diagrams, and views of Castle Craggs and well as Mount Shasta. In the year 1849, his sketch of Mounts Shasta was engraved and published in the American Journal of Science an Arts- a publication spearheaded by Silliman in the early 1800s. The publication also published a rather lengthy article based on Dana’s geological notes from 1841. The article talked about rocks, minerals, and the geology of the Shasta region using scientific terms. The year 1844 was an exciting year for James Dwight Dana because not only did he become a resident of New Haven but it was also the year he got married to Henrietta Frances Silliman- she was the daughter of Benjamin Silliman.
In the year 1850, he was given a big honor and was appointed as the successor to his father-in-law and became a Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale. Dana held on to this teaching spot until 1892. But teaching wasn’t all he did during those years because in 1846, he joined the American Journal of Science and Arts and took on the role as joint editor. During the later years of his life though, he moved on to become chief editor but he was also a contributor and published works on the subject of geology and mineralogy.
Notable works
It has to be said that he managed to accomplish a lot but he had a couple of contributions that really stood out. For instance, his 1849 publication of Mount Shasta was in response to the gold rush in California. After all, he was the pre-eminent geologist in the US during his life and he really was just one of the very few observers who had knowledge of the terrain in northern CA. Dana was the guy who wrote that given the geography and geology of the area, it was very likely that gold could be found in northern CA.
James Dwight Dana was also responsible for giving the world information about the volcanic landscape and activity in Hawaii. It was in the years 1880 and 1881 that he went on the first geological study of volcanoes in Hawaii and he was the same guy who theorized that the chain of volcanoes in the area consisted of two strands known as the “loa” and the “kea” strands. That wasn’t his first and last visit though because in 1890, he went with C.E. Dutton, a fellow geologist, and again published a manuscript about the island that was the most detailed study anyone had ever seen at that time. For decades, his manuscript was the definitive source for Hawaii’s volcanoes.
Publications
Dana was a prolific writer but some of his best works are his System of Mineralogy (1837), Manual of Geology (1863), and his manual of Mineralogy (1848). He also had a very interesting manuscripts published which were entitled Science and the Bible which he wrote in an effort to reconcile science with some biblical texts. Not only did his works get a lot of attention and used in schools but he also received a lot of awards like the Copley Medal in 1877 from the Royal Society, the Wollaston medal in 1874 from the Geological Society of London, and the Clarke medal in 1882 from the Royal Society of New South Wales.
The final journey
James Dwight Dana died on April 14, 1895. He had a son named Edward Salisbury Dana who was also a well-known and brilliant mineralogist during the years 1849-1935.
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James Prescott Joule
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James Prescott Joule was an English physicist who studied the nature of heat and established its relationship to mechanical work. He therefore laid the foundation for the theory of conservation of energy, which later influenced the First Law of Thermodynamics. He also formulated the Joule’s laws which deal with the transfer of energy.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Salford, Lancashire on December 24, 1818, James Prescott Joule’s father was a rich brewer. Joule was mostly homeschooled. He studied arithmetic and geometry under John Dalton at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He was later taught by famous scientist and lecturer, John Davies.
Contributions and Achievements:
James Prescott Joule analyzed the nature of heat, and established its relationship to mechanical energy. His efforts had a profound influence on the theory of conversation of energy (the First Law of Thermodynamics). He collaborated with Lord Kelvin on the formulation of the absolute scale of temperature, and carried out extensive research on magnetostriction; a property of ferromagnetic materials that makes them modify their shapes when exposed to a magnetic field.
Joule was the first scientist to identify this property in 1842 during an experiment with a sample of nickel. He established the relationship between the flow of current through a resistance and the heat dissipated, which was later termed as Joule’s law. He is also credited with the first-ever calculation the velocity of a gas molecule. The derived unit of energy or work, the Joule, is named after him.
Joule was elected to the Royal Society of London and was given a Copley award. He also served as the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Later Life and Death:
James Prescott Joule died on October 11, 1889 in Sale, Greater Manchester, England. He was 70 years old.
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James Watson
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James Dewey Watson was an American geneticist and biophysicist. Noted for his decisive work in the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, the hereditary material associated with the transmission of genetic information. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962.
Early Life and Education:
James Watson was born in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois and his father was a tax collector of Scottish ancestry. He attended the University of Chicago, Indiana University and the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge with Francis Crick. He was appointed a faculty member at Harvard University, and a few years later, the director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Contributions and Achievements:
James Watson gained worldwide fame and prominence as the joint author of the four scientific papers between 1953 and 1954 (which he co-wrote with fellow scientist Francis Crick) that laid down the double helical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a megamolecule that is the fundamental substance in the process of genetic replication. This discovery won Watson and Crick (with Maurice Wilkins) the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1962.
During the 1960s, Watson became one of the most celebrated science writers, as he published his textbook “Molendor Biology of the Gene” in 1965, and his best-selling autobiographical book “The Double Helix” in 1968. Watson became the undisputed leading voice in the whole of American science. He epitomized the scientific creativity in 20th century science, giving rise to molecular biology and its two applied offsets; biotechnology and the “Human Genome Project”.
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Jane Goodall
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“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”
This famous quote is by a lady who has been interested in animals all of her life. Dame Valerie Jane Goodall was born in London in 1934. Jane Goodall is the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps’ environment and gaining their confidence as in one of her project she said that:
“Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.”
Early Life and Education:
As a child she was given a lifelike chimpanzee toy named Jubilee by her mother. Jubilee started her early love of animals. Today, the toy still sits on her dresser in London. As she writes in her book, Reason For Hope: “My mother’s friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares.” Jane was a bright student as she is the one of only nine people to receive a PhD degree in Ethology without first obtaining a BA or B.Sc.
Were it not for fate, Goodall may have ended up being a secretary instead of the champion of animals she now is as went to secretarial school and then had a series of jobs at Oxford University and for a film studio that made documentary films until by chance a friend invited her to travel to Kenya. She saved her money by working as a waitress until she could afford to travel by boat to Kenya. She sailed from London to Africa on the passenger liner The Kenya Castle. Two months after arriving there she met Louis Leakey, a famous anthropologist and his wife, Mary.
After a period of working with the Leakeys in the Uvalde Gorge, Leakey recognized in Goodall the right qualities to do an in depth study of chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
Contributions and Achievements:
Dr. Goodall’s research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were passive vegetarians. While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively “fishing” for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of tool making.
Humans had long distinguished us from the rest of the animal kingdom as “Man the Toolmaker”. In response to Goodall’s revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, “We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!” Over the course of her study, Goodall found evidence of mental traits in chimpanzees such as reasoned thought, abstraction, generalization, symbolic representation, and even the concept of self, all previously thought to be uniquely human abilities.
But the most disturbing thing was the tendency for aggression and violence within chimpanzee troops. Goodall observed dominant females deliberately killing the young of other females in the troop in order to maintain their dominance, sometimes going as far as cannibalism. These findings revolutionized contemporary knowledge of chimpanzee behaviour, and were further evidence of the social similarities between humans and chimpanzees, albeit it in a much darker manner.
Goodall also set herself apart from the traditional conventions of the time by naming the animals in her studies of primates, instead of assigning each a number. Numbering was a nearly universal practice at the time, and thought to be important in the removal of one’s self from the potential for emotional attachment to the subject being studied.
Later Life:
Jane was the international recipient of the 1996 Caring Award for Scientific Achievement. She also received the National Geographic Society’s prestigious Hubbard Medal ‘for her extraordinary study of wild chimpanzees and for tirelessly defending the natural world we share. She has also appeared in an episode of Nickelodeon’s animated series and is also a character in Irregular Web comic Steve and Terry theme. A parody of Goodall featured as a diamond-hoarding chimpanzee slave driver in an episode of The Simpsons.
Today, Jane Goodall spends much of her time lecturing, sharing her message of hope for the future and encouraging young people to make a difference in their world.
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Jean Piaget
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Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who is known for conducting a systematic study of the acquisition of understanding in children. He is widely considered to be the most important figure in the 20th-century developmental psychology.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean Piaget’s father, Arthur Piaget, taught medieval literature at the University of Neuchâtel. Piaget showed an early interest in biology and the natural world. He attended the University of Neuchâtel, and later, the University of Zürich.
Even as a young student, Piaget wrote two philosophical papers that were unfortunately rejected as adolescent thoughts.
Contributions and Achievements:
It has been believed that no theoretical framework has had a bigger influence on developmental psychology than that of Jean Piaget. He founded the International Centre of Genetic Epistemology at Geneva and became its director. He made extraordinary contributions in various areas, including sociology, experimental psychology and scientific thought.
Piaget took ideas from biology, psychology and philosophy and investiagted the method by which children learn about the world. He based his conclusions about child development on his observations and conversations with his own, as well as other children. By asking them ingenious and revealing questions about simple problems he had devised, he shaped a picture of their way of viewing the world by analyzing their mistaken responses. He forumalted a outstandingly well-articulated and integrated theory of cognitive development.
Piaget was a highly prolific author who wrote about 70 books and more than 100 articles about human psychology. His theoretical conceptualizations have induced a vast amount of research.
Later Life and Death:
Jean Piaget was honored with the Balzan Prize for Social and Political Sciences in 1979. The following year, he died on September 16, 1980. He was 84 years old.
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
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Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck, more commonly known as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, was a legendary French biologist who advocated that acquired characters are inheritable. Though his theory of heredity has been refuted by modern genetics and evolutionary theory, nevertheless Lamarck is widely regarded as one of the most influential naturalists and an important forerunner of evolution.
Early Life and Career:
Born in Bazentin, Picardy, France in 1768 to an aristocrat father, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck started studying botany, and issued his first work, “la Flore Française”, in 1778. The book gained him fame and with his good friend and naturalist Georges Buffon, he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1779.
Lamarck was apppointed an associate botanist in 1783. He soon gained worldwide acclaim after beginning a career in 1788 at the prestigious botanical garden, Jardin du Roi, Paris (now Jardin des Plantes). As the garden was reorganized in 1793, he gave some great ideas to setup the structure of the new Museum of Natural History. The same same year, Lamarck was selected as the professor of the Chair of Invertebrate Zoology.
Lamarck’s brilliant contributions to science comprise of extraordinary work in botany, paleontology, geology, meteorology and chemistry. A few of his famous publications include “Système des Animaux sans vertèbres” (1801) and “Recherche sur l’organisation des espèces” (1802). He was appointed a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1779.
Later Life and Death:
Lamarck went blind and died a poor man in Paris on December 18, 1829.
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Jim Al-Khalili
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Jim Al-Khalili is a famous British physicist and author of Iraqi descent. A professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey, Al-Khalili gained fame for writing a popular science book named “Blackholes, Wormholes and Time Machines”. He often appears on several television shows to explain scientific ideas.
Early Life and Education:
Jim Al-Khalili was born in Baghdad in 1962. He had Iraqi father and an English mother. After studying physics at the University of Surrey, he acquired a B.Sc. degree in 1986. He did his Ph.D. in nuclear reaction theory in 1989. In the same year, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at University College London.
Contributions and Achievements:
After returning to Surrey in 1991, Jim Al-Khalili became an expert and notable author on mathematical models of exotic atomic nuclei. As a prominent broadcaster, he frequently appears on television and radio. He has written countless articles for the British press.
Al-Khalili was honored with the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for science communication in 2007. He is also a member of the British Council Science and Engineering Advisory Group as well as the Royal Society Equality and Diversity Panel. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008.
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell
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Entering the professional world as a woman has never been easy. It is not because women are inefficient or lack quick learning power, but simply because she is not a man. For ages women have stayed and worked at their homes. Although today things have modernized to a great extent, the world still carries over some of these inferior feelings towards women. Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an exception to these feelings, setting a great example for other women. She is a bright and talented woman in one of the most male-dominated fields, Science. She is a British astrophysicist who is famous for her discovery of the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle.
Early life, Education and Career:
Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born on July 15, 1943 in Belfast, Northen Island. Her father was an architect for the Armagh Observatory, where Jocelyn spent much time as a child. At a young age she read a number of books on astronomy and her interest in the subject was encouraged by the staff of the Armagh Observatory. She attended Lurgan College and went on to earn a Physics degree at Glasgow University, Scotland in 1965. In 1969 completed her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where under the supervision of Antony Hewish, she also constructed and operated a 81.5 megahertz radio telescope. She studied interplanetary scintillation of compact radio sources.
In 1967 Bell, while analyzing literally miles of print-outs from the telescope, noted a few unusual signals which she termed as “scruff”. These “bits of scruff” seemed to indicate radio signals too fast and regular to come from quasars. Both Jocelyn and Hewish ruled out orbiting satellites, French television signals, radar, finally even “little green men.” Looking back at some papers in theoretical physics, they determined that these signals must have emerged from rapidly spinning, super-dense, collapsed stars. The media named these as collapsed stars pulsars and published the story.
In 1968, soon after her discovery, Bell married Martin Burnell (divorced 1993). Her husband was a government worker, and his career took them to various parts of England. She worked part-time for many years while raising her son, Gavin Burnell. During that period she began studying almost every wave spectrum in astronomy and gained an extraordinary breadth of experience. She held a junior teaching fellowship from 1970 to 1973 at the University of Southampton where she developed and calibrated a 1-10 million electron volt gamma-ray telescope. She also held research and teaching positions in x-ray astronomy at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in London, and studied infrared astronomy in Edinburgh.
Jocelyn did not share the Nobel Prize awarded to Hewish for the discovery of pulsars, but has received numerous awards for her professional contributions. She was first chosen as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1969 and has served as its Vice President. Among many of her awards she received the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1987 and the Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989. She also won the Oppenheimer Prize and The Michelson Medal.
She is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College. Also Jocelyn is the current President of the Institute of Physics.
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Johannes Kepler
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Johannes Kepler is one name that will always be remembered in the field of astronomy. He was the chief founder of contemporary astronomy and also a great mathematician and astrologer. The German astronomer was the first person to explain planetary motion. His three laws on planetary motion were codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. They also served as the basis for Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Moreover his publication Stereometrica Doliorum formed the foundation of integral calculus, and he also made imperative advances in geometry.
Early Life:
Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt in Swabia, in southwest Germany. He had six siblings, three of which died already at an early age. His father, Heinrich Kepler was a soldier and mother, Katharina Guldenmann was a healer and herbalist. His Grandfather Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of the town but by the time Kepler was born, the family had become very poor. As a child Kepler led a very unfortunate life; recovering from smallpox at the age of four with crippled hands and eyesight permanently weakened. He also lost his father when he was just five years old.
In 1576 the family moved to Leonberg where Johannes began his schooling first in the German School and then the Latin School. In 1583 he passed the exam in Stuttgart and the following year he went to seminar Adelberg, a convent school. After two years he was accepted at a higher seminar in Maulbronn, also a convent school. Upon achieving a scholarship he joined the University of Tuebingen in 1589 where he studied philosophy under Vitus Müller and theology under Jacob Heerbrand.
Contributions and Achievements:
Johannes excelled in mathematics and proved himself as a skilled astrologer, casting horoscopes for fellow students. Under the guidance of Michael Maestlin, Tübingen’s professor of mathematics, he gained knowledge about both the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system of planetary motion. He became a Copernican at that time. In 1594 shortly before finishing his studies, he went to Graz as teacher of mathematics and astronomy and remained there until 1600.
In 1600 he met the great mathematician and court astronomer, Tycho Brahe in Prague. Tycho Brahe was working for Emperor Rudolf II and had the most accurate empiric data and precise measuring instruments of his time. Kepler became his assistant and saw the opportunity to test his astronomical theories empirically. The team work of the two men was disturbed because of differing point of views; Brahe was more convinced of the geocentric world view and Kepler more of the heliocentric one. Both of them worked together on planets and Brahe also gave Kepler the task to define the motion of the planet Mars.
During 1601 the emperor Rudolph II appointed him to succeed his patron as imperial mathematician. The first works completed by him at Prague were, nevertheless homage to the astrological proclivities of the emperor. In De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus (1602) he declared his purpose of preserving and purifying the grain of truth which he believed the science to contain. In 1604 Astronomia pars Optica appeared, in which he treated both atmospheric refraction and lenses. In 1606 he published De Stella Nova which was about the new star that had appeared in 1604.
Five years later, in 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, which contained his first two laws on planetary motion. In 1612 he moved to Linz where he served as a teacher at the district school and provided astrological and astronomical services. In 1619 he published Harmonice Mundi where we find his third law besides his derivation of the heliocentric distances of the planets and their periods from considerations of musical harmony.
Kepler married twice in his life. His first marriage was to Barbara Müller on April 27, 1597. Later after the death of his wife he remarried On October 30, 1613 to Susanna Reuttinger.
Death:
He died in Regensburg, Germany on November 15, 1630. Like many geniuses, Kepler has never known fame or fortune, but his determination and persistence led to many discoveries that enable us to understand the universe today.
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John Bardeen
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John Bardeen was an eminent American physicist, who won the Nobel Prize twice. In 1956, with fellow scientists William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattainhe, Bardeen shared the award for the invention of the transistor. He received the award for the second time in 1972, with Leon N. Cooper and John R. Schrieffer, for formulating the theory of superconductivity. Bardeen thus revolutionized the fields of electronics and magnetic resonance imaging.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1908, John Bardeen’s father was a Professor of Anatomy and the first Dean of the Medical School at the University of Wisconsin. He acquired a BS degree in electrical engineering from the same university in 1928, and after one year, his MS degree in 1929.
Following a few years of research work in geophysics, Bardeen took another degree in mathematical physics from Princeton University, receiving a Ph.D. in 1936.
Contributions and Achievements:
After years of research work at the universities of Minnesota and Harvard, in addition to the Naval Ordonnance Lab in Washington DC, John Bardeen finally joined the solid state physics group at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1945. He developed an interest in semiconductor research and collaborated with Brattain and Shockley to discover the transistor effect in semiconductors in 1947. His efforts laid the foundation for the modern age of electronics and computers.
Bardeen left Bell Labs and accepted a teaching position at University of Illinois in 1951. At this place, he worked with with Cooper and Schrieffer to formulate the first successful microscopic theory of superconductivity, which was later termed as the BCS theory. Bardeen was awarded the Nobel Prize twice for his efforts, and he remains the only person in history to have two prizes in the same domain.
He revolutionized the fields of electrical engineering and solid slate physics. The transistor is often recognized as the most influential invention of the twentieth century.
Later Life and Death:
Bardeen died of heart disease on January 30, 1991 in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had come to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for medical treatment. He was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery. John Bardeen was named by Life Magazine among the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century.
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John Dalton
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The scientific field has witnessed the emergence of many great physicists and chemists; but it is incomplete without the mention of the great British chemist, meteorologist and physicist John Dalton. His tremendous efforts led to the evolution of modern atomic theory. He was the first person to record color blindness. He also carried out his research to explain the shortage of color perception.
Early Life:
Dalton was born into a modest Quaker family in Cumberland, England around 5th September 1766. He got his early education from his father and his teacher, John Fletcher of the Quakers’ school at Eaglesfield, on whose retirement in 1778 he himself began teaching. He spent most of his life teaching and giving public lectures. After serving ten years at a Quaker boarding school in Kendal, in 1793 he took another teaching position in the rapidly increasing city of Manchester. There he taught math and natural philosophy at the “New College” until 1800, when he resigned due to worsening financial condition of the college. Afterwards he gave private tuitions for mathematics and natural philosophy.
Most of the credit of Dalton’s interests in mathematics and meteorology goes to Elihu Robinson, an experienced meteorologist and instrument maker who greatly influenced his initial years of life. At Kendal, Dalton proposed solutions of problems and questions on various subjects to the Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Diaries, and starting in 1787 he maintained a meteorological diary in which during the succeeding fifty-seven years he entered over 200,000 observations.
His first separate publication was Meteorological Observations and Essays (1793), which explained many of his later discoveries; but in spite of the originality of its content, the book met with only a limited attention. Another work by him was published in 1801 as Elements of English Grammar.
Contributions and Achievements:
In 1794 John joined the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, which provided him with an exciting academic environment and laboratory services. After few weeks he presented his first paper on “Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colors” before the society. In this paper he explained that the shortage in color perception was caused by discoloration of the liquid medium of the eyeball. He himself was a victim of color blindness and was the first one to discover the concept. As a result ‘Daltonism’ became synonymous with color blindness.
Dalton’s greatest interest was in meteorology and he maintained daily records of local temperature, wind, humidity and atmospheric pressure using instruments that he devised himself. By 1800 he was appointed the secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and published a series of papers entitled “Experimental Essays on the constitution of mixed gases; on the force of steam or vapor of water and other liquids in different temperatures, both in Torricellian vacuum and in air; on evaporation; and on the expansion of gases by heat.”
In 1803, he published his gas law which is now known as ‘Dalton’s law.’ In this law he basically stated that the total pressure exerted by a gaseous mixture is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of each individual component in a gas mixture.
He calculated atomic weights of elements and assembled them in a table which consisted of six elements namely hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus. He calculated these weights from percentage compositions of compounds using an arbitrary system to determine the probable atomic structure of each compound.
John Dalton’s Atomic theory has three principles that remain relatively unchanged. First, Elements are made of the smallest particles called atoms. Second, all atoms for a particular element are identical. Third, atoms of different elements can be told apart by their atomic weight. Fourth, atoms of different elements can combine in a chemical reaction to form chemical compounds in fixed ratios. Finally, atoms can not be created, destroyed, or divided as they are the smallest particles of matter. Even though some of its postulates were opposed by many scholars and scientists, Dalton’s Atomic Theory stills holds a lot of significance as it created a basis for current science.
Death:
Dalton died of a stroke on 27 July, 1844 and was buried in Manchester in Ardwick cemetery.
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John Locke
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John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, often considered as one of the greatest and most influential Enlightenment thinkers in history.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Somerset, England in 1932, John Locke’s father was a prominent country lawyer. He was raised in a rural house in Belluton. Locke attended the famous Westminster School in London, and was later admitted to Christ Church, Oxford. He acquired a bachelor’s degree in 1656 and a master’s degree in 1658. He also obtained a bachelor of medicine in 1674.
Contributions and Achievements:
John Locke is widely considered to be one of the greatest English philosophers and a leading figure in the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. He also made crucial contributions to education, theology, medicine, physics, economics, and politics. Locke’s empiricist epistemology (he was the founder of empiricist theory of knowledge) inspired Berkeley, Hume, and the later years of empiricism.
Locke’s political philosophy is often noted with shaping both the American Constitution and the French Revolution and laid the groundwork for liberal political thought. He was the first person to explain the self through a continuity of consciousness. He proposed that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Some of the Locke’s most noted works are “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, “Two Treatises of Government”, and “A Letter Concerning Toleration”.
Later Life and Death:
Locke never married in his lifetime. He died in 1704 at the age of 72. He was buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver, Essex.
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John Logie Baird
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Early Life:
John Logie Baird is a very famous Scottish inventor who was born in 1888 in Scotland. He played a vital role in the invention of the television and it was his invention of photomechanical television that broadcasted the transmission live for the first time ever. He studied at the University of Glasgow and also at Royal Technical College. It was due to his unstable health that he could not participate in World War I and he was enforced to give up his electric engineering post. After that he tried out many activities and tried to figure out his areas of interest as he had declared himself as a “Professional Amateur”.
Contributions and Achievements:
It was after his nervous breakdown that he started paying attention to electronics. Marconi’s explanation about the travelling of radio waves was his area of concentration. He was almost sure that visual signals could also be transmitted through the same process. With his firm believe he started working on his project. The basic design of Baird contained a scanning disk named Nipkow disk after its German inventor, Paul Nipkow, which was developed in 1884. This device was made up of a disk made out of cardboard that had square holes in it in series, spirally placed. The Nipkow disk scanned light and dark areas when it spun with the photoelectric cell. This process converted into electrical signals. When two such disks worked in synchronization, the signals were again translated into visual images.
Baird made innovations in this idea of Nipkow and added a feature to it which could transmit signals through electromagnetic waves instead of cable wires. The innovation was not appreciated and financed much by the investors. Throughout this time, Baird took odd jobs such salesman for razor blade and a shoe shiner just to earn enough money to support himself and buy his tools. Many of his inventions involved the use of household items like string, bicycle lamps, cake tin and knitting needles etc. Finally on October 2, 1925 he accomplished in transmitting the picture of the dummy of ventriloquist from his attic’s one end to another. He got really excited and ran to the nearest shop to convince a boy to be a part of his television transmission. This invention gave fame to Baird in a jiffy also arouse interest of the investors. A television signal was sent by him from London to Glasgow in 1927 and from London to New York later in 1928. The only problem was this design produced poor quality image. Vladimir Zworykin’s design of cathode ray tube substituted Baird’s design. Baird still helped in developing improved designs of televisions. He also helped with the colored television and large and wide screen projection which he thought would later be used for movie projection for public. Baird passed away in 1946 when he was 58.
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John Napier
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Early Life and Education:
John Napier was a very famous mathematician of his time and he was born in 1550 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was Sir Archibald Napier. Logarithms and the decimals’ modern notations were introduced by him. He was very bright and he got admitted in the University of St. Andrews only when he was thirteen years old. It is also said that he had probably also studied at some universities in France and Italy etc.
Napier came back to his homeland by 1571 and got married to Elizabeth Stirling the very next year. At the castle of Gartnes, Napier had enough time to explore his interests in the field of religious politics, agriculture and mathematics.
Contributions and Achievements:
A Calvinist was set to drive away Catholicism from Scotland at any cost. There was a scheme named as Spanish Blanks against which Napier revolted with a certain book called A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1594). Napier set up four new kinds of weapons to make the struggle more powerful. The weapons included an artillery piece, a kind of battle vehicle that was covered with plates of metal and had tiny opening for emitting odious smoke and firepower and two kinds of burning mirrors. The vehicle was driven by men inside.
Soon the Catholic or Spanish conquest was over and that led Napier to get back to his work. He promoted the use of common salt and manure for soil improvement in agriculture. In math, he made remarkable discoveries that were accurate and were accepted all over the world. His technique of calculation of log got published in 1614 Mirifici logarithmorum canonis description. The technique was found to be really accurate that his work was translated into different languages and also widely printed. It helped in the trigonometric calculations in astronomy and navigation. His work about the computation of logarithm in 1920 Mirifici logarithmorum canonis constructio was published even after his death.
A copy of Napier’s work of 1614 was sent to a professor of Gresham College, Henry Briggs. Briggs made Napier’s method even easier by setting log of 1 at zero. Napier agreed with it but left the responsibility of setting up the new logarithm table by Briggs’ plan on Briggs. It was published in 1624 and was called table of common logarithms.
For more than twenty years, Napier worked on a very complex that held a great value to physical science. A device named Napier’s rods or bones shows creativeness of his mind in the field of mathematics. Many mathematical functions like multiplication and division could be done mechanically. This device helped in analog computers and slide rules. Rabdologiae; seu Numerationes per Virgulas libri duo is the work published about his work in two volumes in 1617. He passed away the same year on the 4th of April.
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John Needham
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John Turberville Needham, more commonly known as John Needham, was an English naturalist and Roman Catholic cleric. He was the first clergyman to be appointed a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He is also noted for his theory of spontaneous generation and the scientific evidence he had presented to support it.
Early Life:
Born in London in 1713, John Turbeville Needham was a Catholic and but he did become a priest. He was in fact ordained in 1738, however he preferred to spend his time as a teacher and tutor.
Contributions and Achievements:
John Needham established Académie impériale et royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles in 1773 and remained its director until 1780. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1768. He carried out microscopical observations with Buffon in 1748. Needham later conducted a learned correspondence with Bonnet and Spallanzani on the issue of generation.
He faced harsh criticism from Voltaire, because he had tried to establish that tiny microscopic animals, or “anguilles” in his own words, can be developed spontaneously by natural forces, yet in a sealed container. Voltaire, who firmly believed in pre-existing germs, thought that Needham’s ideas could possibly create much controversy as they appeared to endorse materialism and atheism.
Needham also made important contributions to botany and explained the mechanics of pollen.
Later Life and Death:
John Needham died on December 30, 1781. He was 68 years old.
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John Ray
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John Ray was a highly influential English naturalist and botanist whose contributions to taxonomy are considered groundbreaking and historic. He is also well-known in the world of botany for the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1627 in a small village of Black Notley, Essex, John Ray’s father was a blacksmith. Ray entered the Cambridge University at the young age of sixteen.
Contributions and Achievements:
John Ray was selected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1649. However, he lost the position thirteen years later when, in 1662, he declined to take the oath to the Act of Uniformity after the Restoration. With full support of his former stundent and fellow naturalist, Francis Willoughby, Ray made several trips throughout Europe with him, carrying out research in the fields of botany and zoology.
Ray formulated the fundamental principles of plant classification into cryptogams, monocotyledons and dicotyledons in his landmark works “Catalogus plantarum Angliae” (1670) and “Methodus plantarum nova” (1682). Other major publications of Ray include “Historia generalis plantarum” (3 volumes, 1686-1704) and “The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation” (1691), both of which became quite influential during the time.
The zoological contributions of Ray include the developement of the most natural pre-Linnaean classification of the animal kingdom. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667. Ray endorsed scientific empiricism as compared to the deductive rationalism of the scholastics.
Later Life and Death:
In his later years, Ray moved to his native village, where he remained until his death in 1705. He was 77 years old. The Ray Society was established in his honor in 1844.
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John von Neumann
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Von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis. Along with Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb. Von Neumann wrote 150 published papers in his life; 60 in pure mathematics, 20 in physics, and 60 in applied mathematics. His last work, published in book form as The Computer and the Brain, gives an indication of the direction of his interests at the time of his death.
Early life and Career:
John von Neumann was born on December 28, 1903. He was a Hungarian-American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields. The eldest of three brothers, von Neumann was born Neumann Janos Lajos. Von Neumann’s ancestors had originally immigrated to Hungary from Russia. John was a child prodigy who showed an aptitude for languages, memorization, and mathematics. By the age of six, he could exchange jokes in Classical Greek, memorize telephone directories, and displayed prodigious mental calculation abilities. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Pázmány Peter University in Budapest. That time he was 22 years of age. At the same time, he earned his diploma in chemical engineering from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. John Neumann married twice. He married Mariette Kövesi in 1930, just before emigrating to the United States. They had one daughter. He then divorced her in 1937 and married Klari Dan in 1938.
In 1937, von Neumann became a naturalized citizen of the US. This was after migrating with his mother and brothers. In 1938, von Neumann was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize for his work in analysis.
Von Neumann also created the field of cellular automata without the aid of computers, constructing the first self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. Throughout his life von Neumann had a respect and admiration for business and government leaders; something which was often at variance with the inclinations of his scientific colleagues.
Von Neumann’s interest in meteorological prediction led him to manipulating the environment by spreading colorants on the polar ice caps to enhance absorption of solar radiation, thereby raising global temperatures.
Von Neumann’s principal contribution to the atomic bomb itself was in the concept and design of the explosive lenses needed to compress the plutonium core of the Trinity test device. Von Neumann’s hydrogen bomb work was also played out in the realm of computing, where he and Stanislaw Ulam developed simulations on von Neumann’s digital computers for the hydrodynamic computations. During this time he contributed to the development of the Monte Carlo method, which allowed complicated problems to be approximated using random numbers.
Von Neumann’s first significant contribution to economics was the minimax theorem of 1928. This theorem establishes that in certain zero sum games with perfect information, there exists a strategy for each player which allows both players to minimize their maximum losses.
An astoundingly creative mathematician, John von Neumann has played a rather important role in post-war economic theory.
Death:
John Neumann died in February 8, 1957 (aged 53) in Washington, D.C., United States.
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Jonas Salk
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“Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process, and nature in marking man’s papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive.”
This famous saying is by Jonas Salk, born in New York City on October 28, 1914, who is among the most respected medical scientists of the century. Though his first words were reported to be dirt, his early thoughts were not on studying germs but on going into law. He became interested in biology and chemistry, however, and decided to go into research. He went to New York University medical school for training.
Contributions and Achievements:
While attending medical school at New York University, Salk was invited to spend a year researching influenza. The virus that causes flu had only recently been discovered and the young Salk was eager to learn if the virus could be deprived of its ability to infect, while still giving immunity to the illness. Salk succeeded in this attempt, which became the basis of his later work on polio.
His actual work to cure polio started when in America in the 1950s, summertime was a time of concern and worry for many parents as this was the season when children by the thousands became infected with the crippling disease, polio. This burden of fear was lifted forever when it was announced that Dr. Jonas Salk had developed a vaccine against the disease. The vaccine proved successful as everybody who received the test vaccine started producing anti-bodies against the virus so that nobody else became inflicted with polio and no side effect was observed.
Jonas Salk published the results in the Journal of the American Medical Association the following year and a nationwide testing was made.
It was during this time that worst polio eruption happened. It was Salk’s former mentor Thomas Francis Jr. that helped and directed the mass vaccination of schoolchildren. Salk became world-famous overnight, but his discovery was the result of many years of painstaking research. In 1947 Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. While working there with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Salk saw an opportunity to develop a vaccine against polio, and devoted himself to this work for the next eight years.
The March of Dimes, hoping to boost publicity and donations to fund vaccination programs, praised Salk to the point of offending his colleagues. He had applied the findings of others in a successful made the public blind to that. bid to prevent disease. Other researchers and doctors grumbled that he hadn’t found anything new; he had just applied what was there. But the timing of his successful vaccine at the peak of polio’s devastation
In the years after his discovery, many supporters, in particular the National Foundation “helped him build his dream of a research complex for the investigation of biological phenomena. It was called the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and opened in 1963 at California. Salk believed that the institution would help new and upcoming scientists along their careers as he said himself, “I thought how nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work there.” This was something that Salk was deprived of early in his life, but due to his achievements, was able to provide for future scientists.
Under Salk’s direction, the Institute began research activities in and gradually expanded its faculty and the areas of their research interests. Salk’s personal research activities included multiple sclerosis and autoimmune diseases, cancer immunology, improved manufacture and standardization of killed poliovirus vaccine, and another development in which Salk also engaged in research to develop a vaccine for more recent plague, AIDS. To further this research, he co-founded The Immune Response Corporation, to search for a vaccine, and patented Remune, an immune-based therapy.
In 1966, Salk described his ambitious plan for the creation of a kind of Socratic academy where the supposedly alienated two cultures of science and humanism will have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that day to be Jonas Salk Day making people realize that Salk always had a passion for science. It was because of this that he finally chose medicine over law as his career goal. Even after his great discovery, he continued to undertake vital studies and medical research to benefit his fellowman. Under his vision and leadership, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been in the forefront of basic biological research, reaping further benefits for mankind and medical science.
The New York Times referred to him as the “Father of Biophilosophy”. As a biologist, he believes that his science is on the frontier of tremendous new discoveries and as a philosopher, he is of the view that humanists and artists have joined the scientists to achieve an understanding of man in all his physical, mental and spiritual complexity. Such interchanges might lead, he would hope, to a new and important school of thinkers he would designate as biophilosopher.
His definition of a “bio-philosopher” is “Someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives.
Death:
Salk died at age 80 on June 23, 1995. A monument at the Institute with a statement from Salk captures his vision, “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”
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Joseph Banks
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Sir Joseph Banks was an eminent English naturalist, explorer and botanist, noted for his promotion of natural sciences. He also remains the longest serving president of the Royal Society of London.
Early Life and Education:
Born in London on January 4, 1743 in a rich family, Joseph Banks inherited a sizeable fortune when his father, William Banks, a famous doctor, died. He took admission in Christ Church, Oxford, in 1760. When he left the college in 1763, he had an extensive knowledge of natural history, particularly of botany.
Contributions and Achievements:
Joseph Banks was selected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766. He joined Captain Cook on his 1763 voyage around the world. Dr. Solander, a friend of Banks, also accompanied him as a naturalist. After their return, both wanted to publish a botanical work as they had acquired huge collections of natural objects from the expedition. Due to Solander’s unexpected death, they were unable to complete it. Banks also toured Iceland in 1772.
Banks became the president of the Royal Society in 1777, where he remained until 1820. He was known as a prominent endorser of travelers and scientific men. Many voyages of discovery were approved and carried out under his supervision. He was the first person to introduce the Western world to acacia, mimosa, eucalyptus and Banksia, a genus named after him. About 80 other species of plants were also named after him. Banks also established the fact that marsupial mammals were more primitive than placental mammals.
Joseph Banks was knighted in 1781. He was made a member of the Privy Council in 1797. He was also appointed an associate of the Institute of France In 1802. Two of his most famous publications include “Short Account of the Cause of the Disease in Corn called the Blight, the Mildew, and the Rust,” (1803) and “Circumstances relative to Metino Sheep” (1809).
Later Life and Death:
Joseph Banks died in London in 1820. He was 77 years old and left no family. Banks was buried at St Leonard’s Church, Heston.
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Joseph Lister
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Acknowledged as the “Father of Antiseptic Surgery”, Joseph Lister’s contributions paved the way to safer medical procedures. His introduction of the antiseptic process dramatically decreased deaths from childbirth and surgery and changed the way the medical industry looked at sanitation and proper hygiene.
Early Life and Education
Joseph Lister was born on April 5, 1827 in Upton, Essex, England. His father, Joseph Jackson Lister, was not only a wine merchant, but was also an amateur scientist. He was the second among three children.
Coming from a family of Quakers, the young Joseph Lister also attended Quaker Schools in London and Hertfordshire. Quaker Schools put in a great amount of emphasis in the sciences, giving him a strong foundation in what was to be his chosen profession. He observed the first surgical procedure that used anesthesia in 1846. He then attended the University of London where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1847. Later on, he qualified to become a medical student and eventually earned his Bachelor’s degrees in Medicine and Surgery. Because of his exceptional performance, he was awarded with two university gold medals and easily became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1852. He then became the dresser for Professor of Clinical Surgery James Syme in Edinburgh, and eventually became his house surgeon. He married Syme’s daughter, Agnes, who became his laboratory partner because of her great interest in medical research.
His Greatest Contribution
Joseph Lister has always been aware that the number of deaths after surgery was not caused by the operation itself, but by what follows after the procedure. Because there was an alarming rate of “ward fever” after surgery, Lister wondered what could be causing this event.
Comparing patients who had simple fractures to those who had compound fractures, he concluded that the infection was coming from the outside, as the problem only occurred to those who had open wounds as compared to those who did not have any flesh wound. Lister started adding hygienic practices before conducting any operation, making sure that his hands were clean and his clothes fresh. At that time, it was common for doctors to walk around covered in blood as this served as a status symbol for them. Lister’s untraditional methods were scoffed at.
Looking at research done by Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and microbiologist known for his vaccination, fermentation and pasteurization principles, he agreed with the latter’s belief that germs are usually contracted from the air. Because Lister was a wine merchant’s son, he knew that wine went bad because the fermentation process was not done properly, and not because germs spontaneously came to life within the wine as evolutionists believed. Applying this thought to open wounds, he knew that the only solution was to find a way to kill the germs before they get the chance to enter the wound, preventing the infection to occur.
Carbolic acid was then being used as an effective disinfectant for sewers. Upon confirming that it was safe to be used on human flesh, Joseph Lister saw it as the solution to the problem. He started using it to wash his hands, as well as the instruments he needed in every operation. He started covering his patients’ wounds with a piece of lint covered in carbolic acid. He also devised a machine that sprayed the air with carbolic acid to get rid of airborne germs. He refined his techniques until he had enough proof that everything he did was successful, and went on to publish everything he discovered in a medical journal called The Lancet in 1867.
As expected, it took a long time for other people in the medical field to accept Lister’s findings. A lot of them were incredulous at the thought that organisms too small to be seen were causing all the post-operation deaths. Some found it tiring to have to go through the sterilization process before performing an operation. And although some of them tried Lister’s methods, majority of them did it incorrectly that their efforts proved to be useless. He was now a Professor of Clinical Surgery in Edinburgh, and he continued to modify his system to achieve better results despite the negative feedback.
It took 12 long years before Lister’s system gained widespread acceptance. Those who emulated Lister’s example in Munich gained astounding success, with the death rate caused by infection after surgery dropping from 80% to almost zero. The English doctors were among the last to accept the brilliance of Lister’s methods, only winning them over when he was appointed as Professor of Surgery in London’s King’s College Hospital in 1877. By 1879, his findings had gained widespread acceptance around the globe.
Other Achievements
Joseph Lister was the Queen’s surgeon for many years, and introduced the use of rubber drainage tubes after trying it on her. He also showed that sterilized materials could be left inside a patient’s body as needed and used and left sterilized silver wire inside the body to keep broken bones together. And since the silk thread used in internal stitching causes more damage when pulled out after some time, Lister started using sterilized catgut, as this would eventually dissolve.
Queen Victoria dubbed him Sir Joseph Lister in 1883. He became Lord Lister of Lyme Regis in 1897, and was the first to become a British peer for services to medicine. He was given the Order of Merit in 1902, and was made Privy Councilor.
He became the Vice President of the Royal College of Surgeons and President of the Royal Society. He was also President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He helped establish the British Institute of Preventative Medicine in 1891, which was later on called The Lister Institute in his honor.
With all his achievements, he finally retired in 1893, shortly after his wife died in 1892. He still entertained requests for his advice and services from time to time, although he was left a bit melancholic after losing his life partner. Joseph Lister died in Walmer, Kent, England on February 10, 1912 at the age of 84.
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Joseph Priestley
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Joseph Priestley was an English scientist, philosopher, theologian and clergyman who authored more than 150 publications. He is noted for his groundbreaking contributions to experimental chemistry, electricity and the chemistry of gases, as well as his extraordinary work regarding liberal political and religious thought.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Birstall Fieldhead, England, Joseph Priestley proved to be a very intelligent child from an early age. He learned mathematics, logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy. Priestley also learnt more than six different languages including Latin, Hebrew and Greek.
Contributions and Achievements:
Joseph Priestley is highly regarded for his work with the chemistry of gases. As a friend of Benjamin Franklin, Priestley contacted him regarding his theories of electricity. He later experimented with distinguishing various types of “air”.
Before him, scientists thought that the air on Earth consisted of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Priestley brought 10 more gases to this list, such as nitrogen, hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and oxygen. He also invented soda water.
Priestley wrote several theological, philosophical and political essays. He made the English press and government furious with his theories regarding “rational Christianity” and “Laissez-Faire Economics”. Priestley, along with his family, narrowly escaped hundreds of raging protesters who attacked their home in 1791.
Later Life and Death:
Joseph Priestley fled to the United States in 1794. He died in Northumberland, Pennsylvania on Feb 6, 1804. He was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
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Justus von Liebig
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Justus von Liebig was a German chemist, who is widely credited as one of the founders of agricultural chemistry. He made crucial contributions to the analysis of organic compounds, and, in his early years, also published several works on the use of inorganic fertilizers in several languages. He discovered that nitrogen was an essential plant nutrient, and presented his famous Law of the Minimum which explained the effect of individual nutrients on crops.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Darmstadt, Germany on May 12, 1803, Justus von Liebig’s father was a chemical manufacturer whose shop had a small laboratory. Young Liebig loved to perform experiments at the place. After learning pharmacy for about six months, he acquired a degree in chemistry from the Prussian University of Bonn. Liebig received his doctorate from the University of Erlangen in Bavaria in 1822.
Contributions and Achievements:
Liebig worked on the serious explosive silver fulminate, a salt of fulminic acid. During the same time, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler was also studying cyanic acid. Liebig and Wöhler collaborated to establish that cyanic acid and fulminic acid were two different compounds having the same composition. The concept of “isomerism” was later recognized by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius.
Liebig revolutionized organic analysis using a five-bulb device called the “Kaliapparat”. He understated the importance of humus in plant nutrition and maintained that plants feed upon nitrogen compounds, carbon dioxide from air, and some minerals found in the soil. He was the first person the invent a nitrogen-based fertilizer. Liebig also devised the Law of the Minimum. Liebig was one of the true forefathers of modern agriculture.
Later Life and Death:
Justus von Liebig was made a baron in 1845. He died on April 18, 1873. Liebig was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof, Munich.
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Karl Landsteiner
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Karl Landsteiner an Austrian-born American immunologist, physician and pathologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 for Physiology or Medicine for detecting the major blood groups and creating the ABO system of blood typing that revolutionized the process of blood transfusion and medical practice related to it.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1868 in Vienna, Austria to a journalist father, Karl Landsteiner was a bright student who was allowed to study medicine when he was merely seventeen years old. He acquired a degree in medicine from the University of Vienna. Landsteiner envisioned that the future of medicine was in research, so he preferred to become a research scientist rather than an ordinary medical practitioner.
Contributions and Achievements:
Karl Landsteiner was the first biologist to identify different blood types and to sort out blood into groups. Before him, scientists thought that the blood of every person was the same. Blood transfusion was often considered dangerous. When it did not work, it was believed that the blood from the donor “clumped together” in the recipient’s body and resulted in his death. Landsteiner demonstrated that there are certain differences in the structure of human blood types.
After working hard for almost one year testing several blood samples, Karl Landsteiner announced in 1901 that there were three major human blood groups: A, B and C (which was later called O). One year later in 1902, Landsteiner’s three fellow scientists discovered a fourth blood type named AB.
The role of Landsteiner’s contributions in medicine is crucial and thousands of lives were saved in hospitals during World War I, and are still being saved to this day. Blood types are used by the police and criminologists to solve crimes by examining blood samples at crime scenes.
Later Life and Death:
Karl Landsteiner was a notoriously private person who disliked publicity and rarely gave interviews and speeches, although much in demand. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1929.
Landsteiner died of a heart attack in 1943 while still performing his duties at his laboratory at the age of 75. He was honored with a Lasker Award in 1946, three years after his death.
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Katharine Burr Blodgett
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American scientist, Katharine Burr Blodgett is known for numerous important contributions to the field of industrial chemistry. She is mainly acknowledged for her invention of the color gauge and non-reflecting or “invisible” glass.
Early life, Education and Career:
Born in Schenectady, New York on January 10, 1898, Katharine or Katie (her nickname) was the second child of Katharine Burr and George Blodgett, a patent lawyer for the General Electric Company. Her father was killed only a few weeks before she was born. Her father’s death left more than sufficient amount of wealth to the family. After Katie’s birth, the family moved to New York City, then to France in 1901, and then back to New York City in 1912. Here she completed her schooling from the Rayson School and developed an early interest in mathematics. She completed high school at the age of fifteen and earned a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College and received her B.A. degree in 1917. Her interest in physics began when she attended college. After college, Blodgett decided that a career in scientific research would allow her to further pursue her interest in both mathematics and physics. During her vacations, Katie traveled to upstate New York in search of employment opportunities at the Schenectady GE plant. Some of her father’s former colleagues in Schenectady introduced Katie to research chemist Irving Langmuir. While showing his laboratory, Irving Lengmuir recognized Katie’s aptitude and advised her to continue her scientific education. Following his advice she went on to pursue master’s degree in science and was the first woman to be ever awarded a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University.
After her masters she became the first woman to be hired as a scientist at GE. Langmuir encouraged her to participate in some of his earlier discoveries. First, he put her on the task of perfecting tungsten filaments in electric lamps (the work for which he had received a patent in 1916). He later asked Katie to concentrate her studies on surface chemistry. Her most important contribution came from her independent research on an oily substance that Langmuir had developed in the lab. The then existing methods for measuring this unusual substance, were only accurate to a few thousandths of an inch but Katie’s way proved to be accurate to about one millionth of an inch. Her new discovery of measuring transparent objects led to her invention of non-reflecting glass in 1938. This invisible glass proved to be a very effective device for physicists, chemists, and metallurgists. It has been put to use in many consumer products from picture frames to camera lenses and has also been exceptionally helpful in optics.
During the Second World War Katie made another outstanding breakthrough: the smoke screens. The smoke screens saved many lives by covering the troops thereby protecting them from the exposure of toxic smoke.
Katie’s work was acknowledged by many awards, including the Garvan Medal in 1951. She earned honorary degrees from Elmira College in 1939, Brown University in 1942, Western College in1942, and Russell Sage College in 1944. She was nominated to be part of the American Physical Society and was a member of the Optical Society of America.
Death:
Katharine Burr Blodgett died in her home on October 12, 1979
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Konrad Lorenz
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“Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.”
“Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.”
The above quotations reflect the intellectual thinking of the great Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist, Konrad Zacharias Lorenz. His exceptional work on animal behavior earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, which he shared with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. Lorenz examined animals in their natural environments and concluded that instinct plays a key role in animal behavior. This observation challenged behavioral animal psychology, which defined all behavior as learned. He is the author of several books, some of which, such as King Solomon’s Ring and On Aggression became very popular during his time.
Life, Career and Achievements:
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was brought up in Vienna and at the family’s summer estate in Altenberg, a village on the Danube River. He was the younger son of Adolf Lorenz, a successful and wealthy orthopedic surgeon, and Emma Lecher Lorenz, a physician who assisted her husband. From a very early age Konrad was fond of keeping and observing animals.
Lorenz completed his schooling from one of Vienna’s best secondary schools. He graduated from the University of Vienna as Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1928 and was appointed an assistant professor at the Institute of Anatomy until 1935. He also began studying zoology, in which he was awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1933 by the same university.
From 1935 to 1938, he made studies of geese and jackdaws (many of his significant scientific papers are based on this work). From his observations Lorenz established the concept of imprinting, the process by which an animal follows an object, normally its biological mother. He found that for a short time after hatching, chicks are genetically inclined to identify their mother’s sound and appearance and thereby form a permanent bond with her.
Lorenz also put forward an innate releasing mechanism theory. He alleged that an animal’s innate behavior pattern (“innate releasing mechanism”) will remain dormant until a stimulating event (“releaser”) prompts it.
In 1940 he was appointed as the professor of psychology at the University of Königsberg. World War II (1939-1945) soon interrupted his academic career. He served as a doctor in the German army until his capture by the Russians in 1944. Four years after his release, he returned to Altenberg (his family home) and wrote the popular account of his work, translated as King Solomon’s Ring (1949), which was followed by Man Meets Dog (1950). The Max Planck Society established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Buldern, Germany, during 1950. In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen.
In 1969, he became the first person to receive the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 1973 he became a Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine “for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns” with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.
Lorenz left the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued his research and writing in Altenberg and Grünau im Almtal in Austria.
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Kristian Birkeland
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Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland is known as the person responsible for explaining the natural phenomenon Aurora Borealis in great detail. He accomplished this by inventing two other scientific feats that were ahead of their time – the Birkeland-Eyde process and the electromagnetic cannon.
Early Life and Education
Kristian Olaf Birkeland was born on December 13, 1867 in Oslo which was called Christiana at that time. His parents were Reinart and Ingeborg Birkeland.
When he was 18, he completed his first ever scientific paper, showing his great interest and potential in the scientific field.
In May 1905, he married Ida Charlotte Hammer. But because it was said that Birkeland prioritized his work more than anything else, the marriage did not bear them any children. They eventually filed for divorce in 1911.
The Aurora Phenomenon
To come up with more accurate data, Kristian Birkeland organized a series of expeditions to Norway. He concentrated on the high-latitude regions and compiled magnetic field data through the number of observatories that he and his team established in the entire region covered by the phenomenon. This series of expeditions known as the Norwegian Polar Expedition was completed over the period of 1899 to 1900. From this series a lot of light was shed on the Aurora Borealis phenomenon. Using the magnetic field data they gathered, the polar region’s electric current pattern was finally explained.
A lot of his findings were also accomplished when the x-ray was discovered. He reasoned that there has to be a connection between magnets and cathode rays, and that this same connection could explain how the auroras are formed. His theory was that the sunspots on the solar surface shoot out energetic electrons towards the earth. The geomagnetic field then guides these electrons towards our polar regions, causing the production of visible aurora. This same theory is still the same working concept that is accepted to this day.
Of course, discoveries this big will never be instantly accepted especially during those times. The concept surrounding what is now called Birkeland currents remained controversial for more than half a century mostly because a phenomenon this wide in scale cannot be proven by mere ground-based projections and measurements. Mainstream scientists ridiculed his findings and theories, and a famous British mathematician and geophysicist by the name of Sydney Chapman went out of his way to vocally rebuff the concepts that Birkeland was proposing. According to Chapman, it was impossible for currents to cross space and that such currents can only come from the Earth. A Swedish scientist, Hannes Alfven, supported Birkeland’s findings as well but his explanation was also dismissed by Chapman.
It was not until 1967, long after Birkeland’s death in 1917, that his theories were finally proven to be correct. A US Navy satellite, the 1963-38c, observed magnetic disturbances every time it passed the high-latitude areas of the earth as recorded by the magnetometer that it had onboard. Initially, they were dismissed as mere hydromagnetic waves. It wasn’t until these disturbances were further analyzed that they realized that these were in fact the currents that Birkeland claimed to exist half a century ago.
Birkeland’s Inventions and Other Contributions
It was very difficult to receive funding to do further research and study for the theories that Birkeland formulated especially with the amount of ridicule that he received. Because of this, he had to create his own source of funds. Upon realizing that inventions can actually be a good source of wealth, he started developing electromagnetic cannon. He found interested investors who helped him form a firearms company. His cannon did not produce the results that he initially promised though, as it only reached velocities of 100 m/s, a far cry from the 600 m/s he promised. He called the cannon an aerial torpedo instead and hoped to use it to sell the company they built. However, the demonstration did not go well and all that he produced was an inductive arc complete with flame, smoke and a lot of noise.
A week after the failed attempt to sell the company, Sam Eyde, an engineer that Birkeland met at a dinner party, expressed the need for a big flash of lightning that they will be using to make artificial fertilizer. Remembering the effect that his failed experiment had, Birkeland immediately trashed his intent to sell the company and started working with Eyde, eventually building a device that created a plasma arc designed to complete the process of nitrogen fixation. Their prototype proved to be ready to be manufactured on a larger scale without costing too much which essentially brought about their huge success. Their company was called Norsk Hydro and Birkeland finally enjoyed the funding that he needed to complete his research.
The process that Birkeland and Eyde worked on was eventually replaced around 1910 to 1920 because it proved to be inefficient considering its energy consumption.
In 1913, Birkeland was the first to predict that plasma was in fact present everywhere in space, applying the same generally accepted concept that there are different kinds of electrons and ions flowing through space as well. It is also believed that he was the first one to state that the Solar Wind is in fact made up of a combination of positive ions and negative electrons.
Birkeland showed his diverse interests when he eventually joined the Norwegian Society for Psychic Research in 1922.
All in all, he was nominated for a Nobel Prize seven times.
Birkeland’s Death
Birkeland had been using a drug called Veronal to help him sleep, but this has also caused him to be extremely paranoid. When he travelled to Japan to visit some colleagues from the University of Tokyo, he was found dead inside his hotel room in Hotel Seiyoken on June 15, 1917. It was discovered that he had taken 10g of Veronal instead of the 0.5g that was prescribed. A lot of mystery still clouds the circumstances of his death although a lot of people believe that this was a case of suicide.
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Lee De Forest
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The American inventor and electrical engineer, Lee De Forest is credited for inventing the Audion, a vacuum tube that takes moderately weak electrical signals and amplifies them. The device helped AT&T establish coast-to-coast phone service, and it was also used in everything from radios to televisions to the first computers.
Early Life, Education and Career:
Lee De Forest was born on August 26, 1873 in Council Bluffs, IA, the son of Henry Swift DeForest and Anna Robbins. His father was a Congregational Church minister and the President of Talladega College, an all-black school in Alabama. He had always hoped that his son would choose the same career path but De Forest had other plans. De Forest completed his schooling from the Mount Hermon School, and then enrolled at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University in Connecticut in 1893. Here he completed his graduation and earned his Ph.D. degree in 1899 with a dissertation on radio waves.
After completing his graduation he got employed at Western Electric, where he devised dynamos, telephone equipment, and early radio gear. In 1902 he started his own business, the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, selling radio equipment and demonstrating the new technology by broadcasting Morse code signals. Within a span of four years De Forest had been squeezed out of the management of his own company.
De Forest was highly creative and active, but many a times did not see the potential of his inventions or grasp their theoretical implications. While working on improving wireless telegraph equipment, he modified the vacuum tube invented by John Ambrose Fleming and designed the Audion (a vacuum tube containing some gas) in 1906. It was a triode, including a filament and a plate, like regular vacuum tubes, but also a grid between the filament and plate. This reinforced the current through the tube, amplifying weak telegraph and even radio signals. De Forest thought the gas was an essential part of the system; however in 1912 others showed that a triode in a complete vacuum would function much better.
In 1913 the United States Attorney General sued De Forest for deceit on behalf of his shareholders, stating that his declaration of rebirth was an “absurd” promise (he was later acquitted).In 1916 the American inventor made two triumphs: the first radio advertisement (for his own products) and the first presidential election reported by radio.
In 1919, De Forest filed the first patent on his sound-on-film process, which enhanced the work of Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt and the German partnership Tri-Ergon, and named it the De Forest Phonofilm process. This process involved recording sound directly onto film as parallel lines of variable shades of gray, and later became known as a “variable density” system as opposed to “variable area” systems such as RCA Photophone.
Death:
Lee De Forest died in Hollywood on July 1, 1961, and was interred in San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. He died as a poor man with just $1,250 in his bank account at the time of his death.
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Leland Clark
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Early Life:
Leland C. Clark was born in 1918 in Rochester, New York. Known as the “Father of Biosensors,” Dr. Clark invented the first device to rapidly determine the amount of glucose in blood. His sensor concept permits millions of diabetics to monitor their own blood-sugar levels. He is most well-known as the inventor of the Clark electrode, a device used for measuring oxygen in blood, water and other liquids.
Leland Clark started high school and discovered that science was an educational discipline, complete with course work, lab sessions and grades. He attended Antioch College and the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine, where he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and physiology. Very soon he became an assistant professor of biochemistry at Antioch and a research associate and chairman of the biochemistry department at a renowned Institute. He also served as a professor of research pediatrics and head of the division of neurophysiology at the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation for a long time.
Contributions and Achievements:
Now talking about his great inventions, he conducted pioneering research on heart-lung machines in the 1940s and 50s and was holder of more than 25 patents. He is also the inventor of Oxycyte, a third-generation per fluorocarbon (PFC) therapeutic oxygen carrier designed to enhance oxygen delivery to damaged tissues. Clark had studied the electrochemistry of oxygen gas reduction at platinum metal electrodes, in fact, Pt electrodes used to detect oxygen electrochemically are often referred to generically as “Clark electrodes”.
More than almost any single invention, the Clark Oxygen Electrode has revolutionized the field of medicine for the past 50 years. The Clark oxygen electrode remains the standard for measuring dissolved oxygen in environmental and industrial applications.
Clark, one of the century’s most prolific biomedical inventors and researchers, is also recognized for pioneering several medical milestones credited with saving thousands of lives and advancing the technology of modern medicine. His research accomplishments include the development of the first successful heart-lung machine, the advancement of technology leading to the development of one of the first intensive care units in the world, and pioneering research in biomedical applications of per fluorocarbons and biosensors.
Later Life:
Leland published more than 400 scientific papers in biomedicine and generated numerous US and foreign patents, mainly in the field of medical instrumentation and fluorocarbons. He is the beneficiary of numerous honors and awards including induction into the National Academy of Engineering and the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.
Leland Clark received the American Physiological Society’s Heyrovsky Award, in recognition of the invention of the membrane polarographic oxygen electrode. He was a person who gave his all and was very dedicated to helping and using his talents to make a difference, to improve the quality of life for others. This great man died on September 25, 2005 at the age of 86.
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Leo Szilard
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A Hungarian-American physicist, Leo Szilard was the proponent of the nuclear chain reaction back in 1933. He also established the relationship between the transfer of information and entropy which was what lead to being able to develop the means to separate radioactive elements as well as isotopes. He was also one of the first scientists who recognized the significance of nuclear fission which was the key element behind the development of atomic weapons used by the United States.
Early Life and Educational Background
Born in 1989, on the eleventh day of February, he was the son of an engineer and a member of one of the more affluent Jewish families back then. His name had originally been Leo Spitz, but it was changed to Szilard in the year 1900.
As a child, his interest in Physics came at an early age of just 13 years old—considering how advanced his interests were for his age. He was attending the public school of Budapest before he was drafted to become one of the members of the 1917 Austro-Hungarian army.
While he was in the army, he had been sent to the officer’s training school but was spared of having to engage in active duty because he had influenza. When the war ended, he stayed in Budapest but this set up didn’t last long because of political unrest in the area as well as lack of better educational opportunities. Because of these reasons, he went to Berlin in 1919.
During his time in Berlin, he took engineering courses in the Technische Hochschule or the Institute of Technology. His main interest had still been physics and he had been drawn to the works of the great minds of physics such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schroedinger, Max Von Laue, Fritz Haber, Walter Nernst, and Max Planck. Most of these physicists had also been teaching in Berlin during those days.
Szilard later on gave up his courses in engineering in the year 1921, and studied physics in the University of Berlin where he was one of the students of renowned physicist Max von Laue. A year later, Szilard earned his cum laude doctorate after his submission of his dissertation called “Uber die thermodynamischen Schwankungserscheinungen” where he discussed the Second Law of Thermodynamics and how it affected not just mean values but the fluctuating values as well. The ideas from his dissertation are now the bases of modern theories.
Career
After he completed his doctorate, he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin along with Hermann Mark, a chemist who is well known for his contributions for the progress of polymer science. During this time, the studies conducted by Szilard focused on how X-rays scattered in crystals as well as the polarization of the same rays when reflected by crystals.
During the years 1925-1933, he had been working with none other than Albert Einstein and together they applied for numerous patents for their collaborative work. One of their more famous patents had been the refrigeration system which they based on pumping metals through a moving magnetic field. Their interest during that time was to catch the attention of A.E.G.—a company which is also known as the German General Electric company, and they hoped that the company would produce a refrigerator to be based on the patent they had. While this refrigerator was never really produced the same refrigeration system they created was used in 1942 to come up with an atomic reactor.
Szilard transferred to England in 1933—the same time when Adolf Hitler also rose to power. There, he had his collaborations with T.A. Chalmers where they came up with the Szilard-Chalmers process. This is the technique where stable isotopes and radioactive elements were separated. Most of his activities during his stay in London had been to have patents for his inventions, as these patents help improve his income through the help of the firm named Claremont, Haynes, and Company. During that time, he was able to influence Sir William Beveridge to establish the Academic Assistance Council, which aimed to help the prosecuted scientists to leave then Nazi Germany. From 1935 to 1937, Szilard had been one of the research physicists of the Clarendon Laboratory in the Oxford University.
The Nuclear Chain Reaction
During his time in London, he first attempted to create the nuclear chain reaction by using indium and beryllium which did not achieve the desired effects. The patent for his nuclear chain reaction was assigned to the British Admiralty with the idea of keeping it secret in mind. Along with Enrico Fermi, Szilard also co-held the patent for the nuclear reactor.
After that time, he moved to Manhattan for research to be done at the Columbia University and shortly after, Fermi went to join him in 1938. In 1939, Szilard along with other scientists namely Fermi, Otto Frisch, Lise Meitner, Fritz Strassman, and Otto Hahn, they were able to conclude how uranium can sustain the chemical reaction they were looking for. With Fermi, Szilard was able to deduce how uranium can be used to sustain chain reactions and that it can be used for nuclear weapons. When they realized this, Szilard also understood what their discovery implied—that it could cause much grief for the world when used in the wrong ways.
Szilard’s Ideas and Views Concerning Nuclear Weapons
He read H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free—a novel which had made a great impact on his thoughts. As a man of science, it was also Szilard who first conceived the possibility of having a device which uses the nuclear chain reaction to come up with a bomb. However, since he was a survivor of economic and political strife in Hungary, he had developed an unending passion for preserving the human life as well as maintaining freedom—even for communicating ideas.
He had advocated not using atomic bombs, knowing how it would also affect not just those considered as “enemies” but civilians and innocents. He had hoped that the mere thought of such a weapon could make Japan and Germany surrender. However, the atomic bombs used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were still used despite the protests from Szilard as well as other scientists who grasped the complete idea of how it would affect the people in the area where the bombs eventually fell.
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Leonardo da Vinci
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More commonly known as the greatest artist in the history of mankind, Leonardo da Vinci was also a magnificent philosopher and scientist. The most influential figure in the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo is widely considered to be an inventive multi-genius. Countless sketches describe that Leonardo had found out the basis for many inventions that were understood hundreds of years after his death.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1452 in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo was the illegitimate child of Ser Piero da Vinci, a notary, and Caterina, a country girl. He stayed with his father’s family and they moved to Florence when he was just 12. At the tender age of 14, Leonardo started out his artist’s apprenticeship at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter. The young Leonardo earned a place into the painter’s guild in 1472 when he was just 20 years old. At 26, he became an expert painter and owned a separate studio.
Contributions and Accomplishments:
The art of painting made Leonardo knowledgable about anatomy and perspective. In addition to painting, Verrocchio’s studio also offered technical and mechanical arts and sculpture. Leonardo had developed an interest in architecture so he went on to study engineering. His versatile and originative nature was born of a desire to promote creativity.
After a decade of highly original work as an artist, Leonardo wrote to several wealthy men in 1482 to help finance his projects. The Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza (1452-1508), accepted his offer as Leonardo told him that he could design useful war weapons like guns and mines, and also structures like collapsible bridges. He lived in Milan with the Duke from 1482 to 1409, reportedly creating very innovational war machines. He also did painting and sculpture, as well as urban planning for large-scale water projects. His advice was sought for various projects related to architecture, military affairs and fortifications. There, he also wrote about making a telescope to view the moon.
Most of Leonardo’s sketches and paintings depict a scientific phenomenon with an artistic and creative approach. On the other hand, his anatomical findings, including information about the structure of muscles and blood vessels, were surprisingly precise. His legendary masterpiece, Mona Lisa (1503-1506), is said to have an unusual smile which depicts how the muscles of the face function to make a smile. Leonardo also planned to create a mechanical flying machine. Leonardo discovered that flying, contrary to the popular notion, by attaching a pair of wings to a person’s arms and then flapping them like a bird, is simply not possible. He concluded that by using levers, the wings of a flying structure could be controlled.
Leonardo also created a sketch of an early helicopter that even featured a preventive parachute. He, however, believed that his flying machines were not executable, partly because of his lack of knowledge about bird flight. As a result, he started studying animal anatomy, particularly of birds and bats.
When France attacked Italy in 1944, Leonardo came back to Florence after the subsequent downfall of the Duke of Milan.
After his return, he became fully engaged in mathematical studies. Leonardo also accepted an invitation by the Duke of Valencia, Cesare Borgia (1475-1507), to work as a senior military architect and general engineer. During his tenure, he analyzed geology and proposed to divert the Arno River and develop a canal that would allow Florence access to the sea.
Later Life and Death:
Leonardo was approached by King Francis I of France (1494-1547) who gifted him a beautiful and peaceful castle near Amboise in the Loire Valley. This is the place where he completed some of his unfinished paintings. Some of his undeveloped ideas also include designs for a canal to link up two rivers that would have made a water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Leonardo foresaw that the world would be swallowed up by massive floods in the years to come. His brilliant series of drawings display water in violent motion.
Leonardo da Vinci died at Amboise, Central France, on May 2, 1519. He was 67 years old.
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Leonhard Euler
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Leonhard Euler was an eminent Swiss mathematician and physicist, who is widely credited to be one of the founders of pure mathematics. He made significant contributions to modern analytic geometry and trigonometry. Euler’s critical and formative work revolutionized the fields of calculus, geometry and number theory.
Early Life and Education:
Leonhard Euler’s father wished to see his son as a clergyman. He attended the University of Basel, where he soon developed an interest in geometry. Therefore, Euler, with support from his future teacher, Johann Bernoulli, persuaded his father to persue mathematics.
Contributions and Achievements:
Leonhard Euler became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science in 1727. He also worked for Russian Navy from 1727 to 1730 as a medical lieutenant. At the academy, Euler served as professor of physics in 1730, and three years later, became a professor of mathematics in 1733.
Euler published several articles during this time, and his book “Mechanica” (1736-37), which was the first work to portray Newtonian dynamics in the form of mathematical analysis, earned him worldwide fame as a prominent mathematician. He joined the Berlin Academy of Science in 1741 on the invitation of Frederick the Great. However, the two never got on well with each other. Nevertheless, Euler wrote more than 200 articles, three books regarding mathematical analysis, and a famous scientific publication “Letters to a Princess of Germany” during his stay at Berlin.
Euler made groundbreaking contributions to analytic geometry, trigonometry, calculus and number theory. He was the first person to integrate Leibniz’s differential calculus and Newton’s method of fluxions into mathematical analysis, and to state the prime number theorem and the law of biquadratic reciprocity when it came to number theory. He published about 886 books and papers and still remains the most prolific writer of mathematics in history.
Later Life and Death:
Leonhard Euler died of a brain hemorrhage in 1783. He was 76 years old. Euler was buried next to his first wife, Katharina, at the Smolensk Lutheran Cemetery.
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Lester R. Brown
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In a world where there is an increasing awareness over the condition of the Earth and the environment, there is one man that stands out as one of the most prominent and leading thinkers of the time. This man is Lester Russell Brown and he has made quite a number of contributions to understanding and analyzing environmental issues. He is indeed one of the leading experts on the subject of environmental science and this is where you will learn more about the man and his work.
Who is Lester R. Brown?
Lester R. Brown is an environmental analyst born on March 28, 1934 in the USA. He is the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute and he is also the founder of the Worldwatch Institute. Earth Policy Institute is a non-profit organization focused on research and is based in Washington D.C. Radio commentator for BBC Peter Day calls Lester Brown one of the great pioneer environmentalists.
He has authored and co-authored more than 5 books focused on global environmental issues and problems. His works are so profound that they have been translated to more than 40 languages. His most recent book is entitled Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. This was published 2 years ago in September 2012.
Lester Brown places an emphasis on the geopolitical effects brought about by the astronomical speeds in which the prices of grain are shooting up. He has said that one of the biggest threats to global stability would have to be the shortage of food in poor countries. He has even warned that this very issue of lack of food in poor countries could very well bring down civilization. When interviewed by Foreign Policy magazine, he explained how the “new geopolitics of food” has already begun to bring about revolutions and upheavals in 2011 in various countries where there is a decided lack of food.
He has been honored with other 26 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship. On top of that, he has also been described as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post. Back in 1978, he already began to give warnings of the dangers of abusing nature. He stated this in his book The 29th Day. He says that by overfishing oceans, turning agricultural lands into deserts, and stripping forests, people are hastening their own demise. Back in 1986, his personal papers were requested by the Library of Congress; they noted that his writings have affected their thinking of views on world population and resources. Former US president Bill Clinton also suggested that it would do everyone good to listen to what Brown has to say and follow his advice. In 2003, the Humanist Manifesto was put out and he was one of the signatories.
During the mid-70s, he helped start the concept of sustainable development and this happened during a career in farming. Since that time, he has received many awards and prices that include the United Nations Environment Prize in 1978, the World Wide Fund for Nature gold medal in 1989 and many more awards and prizes. You might surmise that his is one of the most important works to date and it does seem like a given that he be a recipient of all those rewards.
His Early Life
Lester Brown was raised in a farm where they had no electricity and running water. This far was located in New Jersey in Bridgeton near the Delaware River. He was a voracious reader and started to read at a very young age; he was fascinated by World War II and would resort to borrowing day old newspapers from the neighboring farm just to catch up on some news. Aside from reading old newspapers, he also had a penchant for reading biographies. He loved to read about the lives of the founding fathers like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington Carver etc. Since he was a kid, he worked at the farm by pulling weeds, cleaning stables and milking cows. He was also a rather enterprising child and he and his younger brother, Carl, got involved in various businesses like growing chickens and pheasants to sell.
In 1951 they got involved in the tomato business and this tiny venture eventually grew to be one of the largest in New Jersey. They had sales of over 690,000kg per year. Later on, Brown would say that farming is really all he wanted to do and that one had to know soil, weather, entomology, plant pathology, management, and a bit of politics to be good at it.
His Education and Career
He earned his degree in agricultural science back in 1955 in Rutgers University. He was part of the International Farm Youth Exchange Program where he spent 6 months living in Rural India. This was where he learned all about population issues and its effects on food. David De Leon, a biographer, noted that it was Brown’s experience in India that changed his life. He went back to the US and continued to grow tomatoes but it no longer appealed to him as much.
Lester Brown decided instead to work on global food issues so he went to try and find a job at the USDA and the FAS. These two agencies told him that he would need a degree in agricultural economics before they could hire him so he took a 9-month MA course at the University of Maryland and joined FAS in 1959. He was hired as an international agriculturalist in their Asia branch. A year after he took the job, he went on leave to take an MA in Public Administration.
In 1963, he published his book Man, Land, and Food which was the first complete projection of world food, land resources, and population until the end of the century. He has a lot of works and a lot of talks but there is a prevailing theme in everything he does. He warns that unless mankind changes how it treats the environment then it could very well be working towards its own end.
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Linus Pauling
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Linus Pauling was an American theoretical physical chemist and activist. He remains one of the greatest chemists ever, and the only person in history to be awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes; in 1954 for studying the nature of the chemical bond, and in 1962 for his efforts regarding the prohibition of nuclear testing. His contributions to quantum chemistry and molecular biology are considered revolutionary and created a universal impact.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Portland, Oregon in 1901 to a pharmacist father, Linus Pauling acquired his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis (now Oregon State University), where he also worked as a lecturer for about one year. Pauling received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California; he took chemistry with minors in mathematics and physics.
Contributions and Achievements:
Linus Pauling traveled across Europe studying the physics of atomic structure at several universities. He also met many pioneers of atomic theory. Pauling soon developed an interest in examining the atomic structure of complex biological molecules by using X-ray crystallography.
Pauling accepted a teaching position at the California Institute of Technology, where he remained for the rest of his career. He analyzed chemical bond structure at the place. Pauling worked on the development of explosives, gas detectors and missiles for US Navy during World War II.
He later worked on examining the chemical bonds that compose proteins. The results he produced are still considered as the fundamental rules of biochemistry and have influenced several useful biotechnology applications. He was awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the determination of chemical bonds and its application related to the structure of biological molecules.
Pauling also received the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts. He frequently brought out controversial scientific theories. He maintained moral positions regarding a few scientific issues.
Later Life and Death:
Linus Pauling actively campaigned for social progress and humanitarian concerns such as public health and health promotion. In the last few years of his life, he furthered the health benefits of vitamin C in combating disease. Pauling died in 1994 of prostate cancer in Big Sur, California.
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Lise Meitner
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Lise Meitner was an Austrian-born, later Swedish, physicist who shared the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966, with fellow chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, for their collaborative work on the discovery of uranium fission. She remains one of the most important figures in the fields of radioactivity and nuclear physics. The name of the chemical element, meitnerium (Mt), was suggested in Meitner’s honor, who is also widely credited as the discoverer of protactinium.
Early Life and Education:
Born into a prosperous Jewish family in Vienna, Lise Meitner’s father was a prominent Jewish lawyer in Austria. She chose to convert to Christianity, being baptized in 1908.
Heavily motivated and influenced by her mentor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Meitner studied physics, becoming the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905.
Contributions and Achievements:
After coming to Berlin for further education and research work, Lise Meitner started working on the new field of radioactivity with Otto Hahn. Her partnership and friendship with Hahn lasted a lifetime. Meitner and Hahn discovered a new radioactive element, protactinium, in 1918. Meitner is probably best known for explaining, with another fellow physicist Otto Robert Frisch, some strange experimental results. They had concluded that the nucleus had actually split in two halves, that later became known as the process of fission.
She did not share the Nobel Prize for this discovery which was simply absurd, because it was her discovery of fission that led to creation of the atomic bomb and to more peaceful uses of atomic energy.
Later Life and Death:
Lise Meitner died on October 27, 1968 in Cambridge, England. She was 89 years old.
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Louis de Broglie
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Louis de Broglie (In full:Louis-Victor-Pierre-Raymond, 7e duc de Broglie) was an eminent French physicist. He gained worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking work on quantum theory. In his 1924 thesis, he discovered the wave nature of electrons and suggested that all matter have wave properties. He won the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Dieppe, France in 1892, Louis de Broglie grew up in a rich, aristocratic family. He chose to study history after passing out of school in 1909. Broglie soon gained an interest in science and acquired a degree in physics in 1913. During the World War I, he was enlisted in the French Army. He was posted in Eiffel Tower, where he had plenty of time to carry out experiments in radio communications and engineering. After the war, Broglie started working with his brother, Maurice, in his lab.
Contributions and Achievements:
Most of the work in Maurice’s lab involved X-rays, which made him think about the dual nature of light; more particularly the wave–particle duality. Broglie soon suggested in his thesis for a doctorate degree that matter, also, might behave in a similar manner. When the French Academy became aware of his theory of electron waves, it caught Albert Einstein’s attention, who had high praise for Broglie’s bold ideas. That inspired the birth of wave mechanics.
Broglie’s theory resolved and offered an explanation to a question that was brought up by calculations of the motion of electrons within the atom. It was later independently proved in 1927 by G.P. Thomson and Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer that matter actually could show wave-like characteristics. Louis de Broglie won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics for his amazing work.
Broglie stayed at the Sorbonne after earning his doctorate, being appointed a professor of theoretical physics at the newly-established Henri Poincaré Institute in 1928, where he remained until his retirement in 1962.
Later Life and Death:
Louis de Broglie acted as an adviser to the French Atomic Energy Commissariat after 1945. He won the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO in 1952, and became a foreign member of the British Royal Society, as well as the French Academy of Sciences.
Broglie died on March 19, 1987 in Louveciennes, France. He was 94 years old.
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Louis Pasteur
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Early Life:
If one were to choose among the greatest supporter of humanity, Louis Pasteur would certainly rank at the top. Louis Pasteur was a world renowned French chemist and biologist born on December 27, 1822 in the town of Dole in Eastern France into the family of a poor tanner. Pasteur’s work gave birth to many branches of science, and he was single handedly responsible for some of the most important theoretical concepts and practical applications of modern science. Pasteur’s achievements seem varied at first glance, but a more in-depth look at the evolution of his career specifies that there is a logical order to his discoveries.
He is respected for possessing the most important qualities of a scientist, the ability to survey all the known data and link the data for all possible hypotheses, the patience and drive to conduct experiments under strictly controlled conditions, and the brilliance to uncover the road to the solution from the results.
The young Pasteur worked hard during his student days he was not considered to be exceptional in any way at chemistry. He spent several years teaching and carrying out research at Dijon and Strasbourg and in 1854 moved to the University of Lille where he became professor of chemistry.
Contributions and Achievements:
When Pasteur started working as a chemist, he resolved a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid (1849). Pasteur observed that the organic compound tartrate, when synthesized in a laboratory, was optically inactive (unable to rotate the plane of polarized light), unlike the tartrate from grapes, because the synthetic tartrate is composed of two optically asymmetric crystals. With cautious experimentation, he succeeded in separating the asymmetric crystals from each other and showed that each recovered optical activity. He then hypothesized that this molecular asymmetry is one of the mechanisms of life.
The mystery was that tartaric acid derived by chemical synthesis had no such effect, even though its chemical reactions were identical and its elemental composition was the same. In other words, living organisms only produce molecules that are of one specific orientation, and these molecules are always optically active. This was the first time anyone had demonstrated such a thing.
Pasteur founded the science of microbiology and proved that most infectious diseases are caused by micro-organisms. This became known as the “germ theory” of disease. The germ theory was the foundation of numerous applications, such as the large scale brewing of beer, wine-making and other antiseptic operations. Another significant discovery facilitated by the germ theory was the nature of contagious diseases. Pasteur’s intuited that if germs were the cause of fermentation, they could just as well be the cause of contagious diseases. This proved to be true for many diseases such as potato blight, silkworm diseases, and anthrax.
After studying the characteristics of germs and viruses that caused diseases, he and others found that laboratory manipulations of the infectious agents can be used to immunize people and animals. This treatment proved to work and saved countless lives and because of his study in germs, Pasteur encouraged many doctors to sanitize their hands and equipment before surgery.
Pasteur had a good theoretical understanding of microbes. He sought to apply his findings to the practical problem of stopping wine from spoiling. As many families depended on the wine industry for their livelihoods, and the French economy was heavily dependent on wine exports, this was a big problem. Pasteur achieved success by slightly modifying the process used with the broth. Boiling the wine would alter its flavour. Therefore, Pasteur heated the wine enough to kill most of the microbes present without changing the flavour. Chilling prevented any microbes left from multiplying.
To his great delight, Pasteur found that this process could also prevent milks from turning sour and preserve many other foodstuffs as well. Thus he became the inventor of a new process known as pasteurization which brought him more fame and recognition. Besides this Pasteur also developed vaccines for several diseases including rabies. The discovery of the vaccine for rabies led to the founding of the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1888.
On the discipline of rigid and strict experimental tests he commented, “Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need important experimental proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to understand the gathered observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the experiment. All of these achievements point to singular brilliance and perseverance in Pasteur’s nature. Pasteur’s name lives on in the microbiological research institute in Paris that bears his name, the Institute Pasteur and continues to be today as a center of microbiology and immunology.
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Lucretius
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Lucretius was a Roman poet and philosopher who wrote “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things), an epic poem widely regarded as one of the most influential works in history of literature, philosophy and science. In addition to his doctrinal and scientific impact, Lucretius exterted a profounded influence on countless later philosophers and scientists.
Life:
Very little is known about the life of Lucretius. He was born in 99 BC, according to most accounts. Jerome, a prominent Roman clergyman, wrote that a love potion had driven him insane. After writing some highly influential books in lucid intervals, Lucretius eventually committed suicide.
Contributions and Achievements:
Probably one of the most influential works by Lucretius was his didactic poem, “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things), that consisted of six volumes. He wrote about diverse things such as atoms and the void, our modes of perception, and our will. He discussed the origin of the world and life, the causes of earthquakes, while reflecting on art, language, science and religion. The poem also talked about a variety of diverse scientific topics such as cosmology, mental illness, nutrition, clouds, the seasons, eclipses, magnet and poisoning.
Lucretius was one of the first persons to discover that everything in this universe, ranging from planets and stars to mountains, decay. Centuries before the second law of thermodynamics, he predicted that one day “the walls of the sky will be stormed on every side, and will collapse into a crumbling ruin … Nothing exists but acorns and the void.” He rejected the idea of after-life, and stated that the body was made up of atoms and governed by the laws of nature.
Death:
Lucretius died in 55 BC. He was around 44 years old.
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Ludwig Boltzmann
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Ludwig Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist whose efforts radically changed several branches of physics. He is mostly noted for his role in the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Vienna on February 20, 1844, Ludwig Boltzmann’s fater was a tax official. He earned his PhD degree in 1866 at the University of Vienna.
Contributions and Achievements:
Ludwig Boltzmann taught mathematics, experimental physics and theoretical physics at several universities, but theoretical physics was his main passion. He wrote his famous travelogue “Reise eines deutschen Professors ins Eldorado” during this time.
Boltzmann’s scientific approach was to attack the problem. He explained the second law of thermodynamics in the early 1870s on the basis of the atomic theory of matter. He demonstrated that the second law could be interpreted by blending the laws of mechanics, applied to the motions of the atoms, with the theory of probability. He clarified that the second law is an essentially statistical law. He formulated most of the structure of statistical mechanics, which was later researched by the mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.
In addition to his contributions to statistical mechanics, Boltzmann made detailed calculations in the kinetic theory of gases. He was probably the first person to understand the significance of James Clerk Maxwell‘s theory of electromagnetism, on which he wrote a two-volume treatise. Boltzmann also worked on a derivation for black-body radiation based on the Stefan’s law, which was later termed by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz as “a true pearl of theoretical physics”. His work in statistical mechanics was vocally criticized by Wilhelm Ostwald and the energeticists who disregarded atoms and based physical science exclusively on energy conditions. They were unable to understand the statistical nature of Boltzmann’s logic.
His ideas were supported by the later discoveries in atomic physics in the early 1900, for instance Brownian motion, which can only be explained by statistical mechanics.
Later Life and Death:
Ludwig Boltzmann was greatly demoralized due to the harsh criticism of his work. He committed suicide on September 5, 1906 at Duino, Italy by hanging himself. He was 62 years old.
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Luigi Galvani
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Luigi Galvani was an Italian physician and physicist. One of the early pioneers of bioelectricity, he is known for his extraordinary work on the nature and effects of electricity in an animal tissue, which later led to the invention of the voltaic pile.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Bologna, Italy, on September 9, 1737, Luigi Galvani, like his father, acquired a degree in medicine from Bologna’s medical school.
Contributions and Achievements:
Galvani took a job of comparative anatomist and gained fame for his research on the genitourinary tract of birds. In 1762, he became a lecturer of anatomy at the University of Bologna. During a random experiment on November 6, 1787, Galvani discovered that a frog muscle could be made to contract by placing an iron wire to the muscle and a copper wire to the nerve. He built an instrument in which a frog’s nerve was attached to an electrode of one metal, and an electrode of a different metal was attached with the frog muscle. He was well aware of the fact that an animal body grew convulsive movements when electricity was applied to it.
The discovery played a historical role in bioelectricity as it proved that electricity was not direct in its action. He established that it did not flow directly from the conductor into the frog muscle but was discharged from the conductor to another element in what he termed as a “metallic arc”. A few years later, Alessandro Volta’s findings disputed his discovery and maintained that animal electricity did not exist.
While Galvani remained silent on the controversy, scholarly opinion was divided on the subject. Finally, in 1843, Emil du Bois-Reymond successfully measured the injury potential from frog muscle; therefore, putting an end to it.
Later Life and Death:
Galvani died on December 4, 1798 in his childhood house in Bologna. He was 61 years old.
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Luther Burbank
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The field of botany has many great names and one of them is that of Luther Burbank. He is an America Botanist and horticulturist and just so happens to be one of the pioneers of agricultural science. Burbank was so brilliant that he managed to come up with an excess of 800 plant varieties and strains in all of his 55 years in the field. He came up with different fruit, grains, flowers, vegetables, and grass variations and also came up with a variety of cactus that didn’t have spines that is mostly used to feed cattle. He also came up with the “plumcot” which is what he got when he naturally crossed apricots and plums.
Some of his most well-known creations include the fire poppy, the Shasta daisy, and the “July Elberta Peach. He also came up with the “Flaming Gold” variety of nectarine and the freestone peach. When it came to potatoes, he was quite he king and he created a potato with russet colored skin that was actually a variation of the Burbank and was a natural genetic variation. This russet colored Burbank potato was later called the “Russet Burbank potato” and is the most common potato that is used in food preparation in a more commercial scale.
His life
Luther Burbank was born on a farm in Lancaster, MA, on Mach 7, 1849. He didn’t really progress in school and in fact only managed to gain an elementary education. His parents had 15 children of which he was the 13th. While he didn’t get much education, he did enjoy the plants his mother had in their garden and this may just be where he formed an interest in plants.
His lost his father when he was just 21 but he did gain access to his inheritance. He used this to gain ownership of a 17-acre farm located near the Lunenburg center. This was where he came up with the vaunted Burbank potato of which he held the rights to. Later on, the rights to his potato creation were sold for $150 which was considered a considerable sum during those times. He made use of this cash to take a trip to Santa Rosa in California in the year 1875. It was a few years after he moved to Santa Rosa that he came up with the Russet Burbank potato and it became so famous that it is the potato most commonly used in fast food and commercial use. In fact, this is the kind of potato used by McDonalds for their fries.
When he arrived in Santa Rosa, he again bought a 4-acre farm and this was where he built his nursery and greenhouse. He also established fields where he conducted most of his crossbreeding projects. He was inspired to do so by Darwin’s work which was entitled The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.” Luther Burbank didn’t stop there though because he decided to upgrade and moved on to buy another vastly larger plot of land that was about 18-acres large. This was in Sebastopol which was quite near Santa Rosa. He named it Gold Ridge Farm.
From the years 1904 to 1909, he was the recipient of several grants given by the Carnegie Institution and it was so he could go on with his hybridization projects with the support of Andrew Carnegie himself. Some of Andrew Carnegie’s advisors were against Burbank since they believed his methods weren’t very scientific but Andre Carnegie believed in Burbank and supported him all the way.
It was by way of his plant catalogues that Burbank became most well-known. The most famous of these catalogues was the New Creations in Fruits and Flowers which was published in 1893. Satisfied customers were also responsible for his fame because they couldn’t stop from talking about him and the many wonderful things he could do with plants. In fact, he was so famous that people simply could not stop talking about him during the first decade of the new century
Despite the fact that he didn’t have much of an education, he was quite prolific and came up with an impressive number of plant varieties and hybrids. However, it wasn’t all smooth-sailing for Luther Burbank because more than a few members of the scientific community were quick to criticize him for not being more careful with his record-keeping. The scientific community is known for their meticulous record-keeping ways but as it happened, Burbank was more interested in the results rather than the methods and this explained why he was so lax with his records. In fact, according to one Purdue professor, this lack of record-keeping is what keeps them from considering Luther Burbank a scientist, academically-speaking of course.
His methods
For all his lack of record-keeping, he was a very accomplished individual and made use of a variety of techniques in his work. In his experiments he made use of a lot of different techniques like hybridization and grafting. He also dabbled in cross-breeding different kinds of plants and came up with the most fascinating products like the plumcot. When it came to flowers, he used the cross-pollination technique and selected the very best products to breed further.
His personal life
By all accounts, Luther Burbank was a kind-natured man that was interested in helping people. He was also all for education (perhaps because he didn’t have much education himself) and gave money to many different schools. Though he was married twice, he didn’t have any offspring with either of his wives. He died on 11 April 1926 but before that, he suffered a heart attack and went through gastronomic complications.
Indeed, he was one man who contributed a lot to the world and deserves all the accolades he was given. Every time you order French fries in some fast-food joint, you really need to give a little thanks to this man for coming up with the potato used for your food. He was a man well ahead of his time and all his works are considered important up until today.
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Lynn Margulis
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Lynn Margulis was an eminent American biologist. Her serial endosymbiotic theory of eukaryotic cell development overturned the modern concept of how life originated on earth. She also made vital contributions to Gaia theory, which deals with the relation of living organisms to their inorganic surroundings.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1938, Lynn Margulis earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1957. After a few months, she married the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. They divorced in 1964. Margulis acquired a master’s degree in zoology and genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1960. She later earned a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965.
Contributions and Achievements:
Lynn Margolis is widely regarded as one of the most creative scientific theorists of the modern era. She formulated the symbiotic theory of evolution, which deals with the interconnection of prokaryotic and cukaryotic cells, explaining the emergence of new species by a mechanism known as “symbiogenesis”. In 1983, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She was awarded the the Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 2008.
Her contemporaries either describe her as revolutionary or as an eccentric person. Famous sociobiologist E. 0. Wilson has honored her as the “most successful synthetic thinker of modern biology”. Science, the prestigious academic journal, has identified her as “Science’s unruly Earth mother.”
Later Life and Death:
Lynn Margulis died of a hemorrhagic stroke on November 22, 2011. She was 73 years old.
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Mae Carol Jemison
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The first ever black woman to ever travel to space, Mae Carol Jemison is one of NASA’s astronauts and also happens to be an American physician. She orbited while onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on the 12th of September, 1992. After completing her medical course and having a some general practice, she then served the Peace Corps for two years from 1985-1987. Around that same time, she was picked by NASA to be one of their astronauts.
Early Life, Education, and Personal Background
On October 17, 1956, Mae Carol Jemison became the youngest child of Dorothy Green and Charlie Jemison. She was born in Decatur, Alabama and her mother had spent most of her professional career as math and English teacher while her father worked as a maintenance supervisor for one charity organization.
When she was young, she had a learning experience which sparked a fascination she had for pus. She had her thumb splintered and Dorothy Green, her mother, made her see a learning experience from it. Because of it, she even had a project which revolved all around pus. While she was in kindergarten, she was asked what she wanted to be and she said she wanted to be a scientist. When the teacher asked if she meant she wanted to be a nurse, she knew nothing was wrong with that profession, but that was just not what she wanted to be.
In 1973, she graduated from Morgan Park High School in Chicago and went to Stanford University when she was 16. Four years later, she received her bachelor of science’s degree in chemical engineering while at the same time fulfilling the requirements needed for a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and Afro-American Studies. Being a black woman, it was hard for her especially during her years in the university. She said that her youthful arrogance may have helped because when she set her mind to it, she would finish what she started without caring about what others thought of her.
In 1981, she completed her degree to be a Doctor of Medicine in Cornell Medical College which is now known as Weill Medical College of Cornell University. While she was in the Cornell Medical College, she even took classes for modern dance in Alvin Ailey School. During her years in medical school, she had travelled to Kenya, Thailand, and Cuba to help provide the people in those countries medical care. As an intern, she worked at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center where she also later on worked as one of the general practitioners. Apart from her career in medicine, she also even put up a dance studio at home where she choreographed as well as produced shows about modern jazz as well as African dance.
Career
When she had completed her medical training, she joined the Peace Corps as a Medical Officer for three years from 1983. She took care of the health of other Peace Corps volunteers who were assigned to serve in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Once in her years in the Peace Corps, a patient was diagnosed with malaria but Mae Carol Jemison was certain it was meningitis and that it could not successfully treated while they were in Sierra Leone. She then called for a Germany-based Air Force plane to have medical evacuation which cost $80,000. The embassy even questioned her if she had the needed authority to call for such an action but in reply she told them that she didn’t need anyone else’s permission for this medical decision. When they reached Germany, the 56-hour wait for the patient was worth it because the patient made it alive.
Jemison applied for the astronaut program after the initial flight of Sally Ride back in 1983. Interestingly, her inspiration to become an astronaut had been Nichelle Nichols, an African-American actress who played Uhura in the famous series Star Trek. Although she was rejected on her first try, she got a call in 1987 asking if she was still interested, and she took it.
She went on her only space mission in September 1992, from the 12th to the 20th and her total orbit in space lasted for 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds. Before her launch into space in 1992, she worked for NASA and helped with activities which were being facilitated in Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. She also helped with the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory or SAIL with their computer software verification.
After her resignation from NASA in 1993, she established her very own company called the Jemison group which researches, develops, and markets science and technological improvements which can be used for daily life. Part of the reason why Jemison resigned from NASA was her interest in the interaction between social sciences and technology, and she carried out this interested by the foundation of her company.
In 1993 as well, she was contacted by LeVar Burton, and asked if she would like to be part of Star Trek. He heard she was a fan and it was a dream come true when Jemison appeared in one of the episodes of Star Trek. To make her appearance extra special, she was the first ever real astronaut to have made an appearance on the show.
Other Achievements
Because she believed that her parents were the best scientists she ever knew, she founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, and one of their most notable projects was TEWS or The Earth We Share which is an international space camp for the youth to work on solving global problems. In 1999, she founded the BioSentient Corp which aims to develop mobile monitoring for the INS or involuntary nervous system.
Other endeavors included participating in African American Lives for PBS, appearing in charity events and being a guest speaker and guest personality for TV shows. From 1995-2002, she was Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and also was Dartmouth College’s professor for Environmental Studies. Her more recent appearances include appearing with the First Lady Michelle Obama in a forum in Washington, D.C., and an appearance at NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me as the “Not My Job” guest in February 2013 while she answered questions related to airport shuttles.
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Marcello Malpighi
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Marcello Malpighi was an eminent Italian physician and biologist. Widely regarded as one of the founders of microscopic anatomy, he made crucial contributions in the fields of physiology, practical medicine and embryology.
Early Life and Education:
Born on March 10, 1628 in a rich family of Crevalcore, Italy, Marcello Malpighi started attending University of Bologna when he was only 17. He received doctorates in both medicine and philosophy in 1653.
Contributions and Achievements:
Marcello Malpighi was one of the first scientists to use the newly invented microscope for studying tiny biological entities. He analyzed several parts of the organs of bats, frogs and other animals under the microscope. Malpighi, while studying the structure of lungs, noticed its membranous alveoli and the hair-like connections between veins and arteries, which he named them as capillaries. The discovery established how the oxygen we breathe enters the blood stream and serves the body. He was also the first person to study red blood corpuscles and the mucous layer under the epidermis.
Malpighi gained worldwide acclaim when Royal Society published his findings. Malpighi’s study of the life cycle of plants and animals were quite influential to the subject of reproduction. He extensively studied the transformation of caterpillars into insects, chick embryo development and seed development in plants.
Malpighi is also considered to be the founder of modern anatomy. His contributions were very important and groundbreaking.
Later Life and Death:
Marcello Malpighi was appointed a Papal physician in Rome, Italy by Pope Innocent XII in 1691. Only three years later, he died of apoplexy on November 30, 1694. Malpighi was 66 years old.
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Maria Gaetana Agnesi
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There was a time when women weren’t really known for their prowess in the sciences but during the Renaissance, this lady Maria Gaetana Agnesi from Italy really showed her homeland what she was made of. She made wonderful contributions in the field of math and philosophy and deserves to be lauded for her achievements. For folks who have ever enjoyed integral and differential calculus, this is the woman who wrote the first book ever about the subject. She was not only a math genius but she also proved to be a very kind and religious woman who did her part in helping people and keeping her faith. Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, the composer and clavicembalist, is her sister. Although what she contributed to the field of math was very important, she wasn’t like all other famous scientists and mathematicians; she did lead a loud and wild life but just the opposite.
Early Life of Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in May 16, 1918 in Milan, Italy. Hers was a very wealthy family and like all wealthy families of that time they were literate. It also helped that her father, Pietro Agnesi, worked as a math professor at the University of Bologna. Now Pietro Agnesi was ambitious and wanted to raise his family to the ranks of the Milanese nobility. To achieve this, he married a noble woman named Anna Fortunata Brivio. Brivio’s mother died and this gave her reason to retire from public life and stay home to manage the house.
Maria showed signs of extraordinary intelligence early on in life and she had been recognized as a child prodigy. One sign that she was a smart kid beyond her years was that she knew how to speak Italian and French before she even turned 6 years old. By the time young Maria Gaetana Agnesi turned 11, she was fluent not just in Italian and French but she could also speak Latin, German, Greek, Hebrew, and Spanish. She was so good that she was even called the “Seven Tongued Orator.” She was a brilliant child who did her part to help educate her younger brothers.
When she was 9, she wowed some of the most distinguished minds of their day by composing a speech in Latin which lasted an hour long. She talked about the right of women to get an education.
By the time she reached 12, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was struck by an illness no one could identify. However, doctors pointed to her excessive studying and reading as the cause and so she was told to go on horseback rides and to dance. Dancing and horseback riding didn’t work and she still suffered from convulsions so she was told to practice everything in moderation.
After Maria Gaetana Agnesi’s mother died, her father remarried twice and she ended up as the eldest of 23 children, including half brothers and sisters. Aside from taking her own lessons and her performances, she was obliged in essence with the task of educating her siblings. This very task kept her from doing what she so longed to do which was to enter a convent. At that time, she was already very devout. In fact, she asked her father to send her to the convent and he refused but he did allow her to live in semi-retirement in an almost conventual setting.
Her Early Work in Math
Most kids 14 years of age would be too busy doing other things except studying and homework. But remember, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was a prodigy so it comes as no surprise that by the age of 14 she was already studying geometry and ballistics. Her mind and findings were so great that by the time she was 15 years of age, Pietro Agnesi began to gather a group of the most learned men in Bologna so they could hear what she had to say. These meetings were recorded and they can be found in Lettres sur l’Italie by Charles de Brosse. They were also recorded in the Propositiones Philosophicae written by no other than her father. This work by Pietro Agnesi was published in 1738—it was an account of the final performance given by Maria Gaetana Agnesi. In this final performance, she defended 190 theses. It is worth noting that while she was brilliant, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was very shy and did not really like being put in display or asked to talk in front of a group.
Though Maria Gaetana Agnesi was considered rather beautiful by philosophers during that time and her family being seen as the wealthiest, she did not really seem interested in marriage. At a time when most women would be getting married, she worked at the University of Bologna as a professor.
Her Works
It was said by Dirk Jan Struik that Agnesi was the first important lady mathematician since Hypatia who lived way back in the 5th century A.D. According to experts, the most valuable work of Agnesi was her work Instituzioni ad uso della gioventu italiana which she published in Milan back in 1748. This work was one of the best intros to the works of Euler. Maria Gaetana Agnesi also wrote a commentary which was focused on Traite analytique des sections coniques du marquis de l’Hopital. It was one of her most highly praised works but all they ever really got was the manuscript since she never bothered to publish her work or she just did not want to.
Her Later Life
1750 was quite the year for Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Her father fell ill and Pope Benedict XIV appointed her to the chair of natural philosophy and mathematics and physics at the University of Bologna. But she never served. When Pietro Agnesi died in 1752, she carried out her long-cherished goal of devoting herself to the study of philosophy. At the same time she also devoted her time to helping the sick. She would welcome them to her home where she had a make-shift hospital ready.
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Maria Goeppert-Mayer
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The German physicist and mathematician, Maria Goeppert-Mayer is prominent for her numerous contributions to the field of physics which earned her a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for theoretical physics and second woman in history to win a Nobel Prize— the first being Marie Curie. She is most famous for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.
Early Life and Career:
Maria Goeppert Mayer was born on June 28, 1906, Kattowitz, Germany (now Katowice, Poland). She was the only child of Friedrich Goeppert, a progressive professor of pediatrics at the University at Göttingen and Maria nee Wolff, a former music teacher. When she was very young her family moved to Göttingen in 1910, where Maria was educated at a girls’ grammar school operated by suffragettes. The school went bankrupt after her junior year, but she passed a collegiate examination without a high school diploma and earned her PhD under Max Born at the University of Göttingen in 1930. The same year she married Dr. Joseph Edward Mayer, an assistant of James Franck. After marriage they both moved to United States.
Women during that time were generally regarded unsuitable in the upper realms of academia, and despite her doctorate for years she was largely limited to unpaid and unofficial work in university laboratories, her presence only accepted because her husband. In the following few years, Goeppert-Mayer worked at unofficial or volunteer positions, initially at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1931–39, then Columbia University in 1940-46, and after that the University of Chicago. Later she also took different positions that came her way: a teaching position at the Sarah Lawrence College, a research position with Columbia University’s Substitute Alloy Materials Project and with the Opacity Project. She also spent some time at the Los Alamos Laboratory.
During her husband’s time at the University of Chicago, Goeppert-Mayer volunteered to become an Associate Professor of Physics at the school. Within a few months of her arrival, when the nearby Argonne National Laboratory was founded on July 1, 1946, Goeppert-Mayer was offered a part-time job there as a Senior Physicist in the Theoretical Physics Division. This was the first time in her career that she was working and paid at a level commensurate with her training and expertise. Two years later she made the breakthrough that earned her tremendous fame and respect in her field.
During 1960, Goeppert-Mayer was appointed to a position as a (full) Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego.
Development of the Structure of Nuclear Shells:
It was during her time at Chicago and Argonne that she developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells. With Edward Teller (one of her colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory) she conducted inquiries about the source of the elements, and noticed the repetition of seven “magic numbers”, as she named them — 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. Elements with a “magic number” of protons or neutrons were consistently more stable than elements with other numbers of protons or neutrons. On the basis of this, she proposed in that inside the nucleus, protons and neutrons are arranged in a series of nucleon layers, like the layers of an onion, with neutrons and protons rotating around each other at each level. During the same time but working independently, German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen reached the same conclusion.
Goeppert-Mayer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Paul Wigner for their proposal of the shell nuclear model.
Death:
Goeppert-Mayer died due to a heart failure in San Diego, California, on February 20, 1972.
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Maria Mitchell
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An American lady astronomer, Maria Mitchell is most prominently known for discovering a comet which was then called “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.” In the history of astronomy, Maria Mitchell was the first ever American woman who worked as a professional astronomer. For her discovery of the comet which was named after her, she received a gold medal as a recognition from the king of Denmark, King Frederick VII. On the medal, the phrase “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars” was inscribed, referring to how Maria Mitchell made her discovery with the use of her telescope.
Early Years and Life of Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts and was born on the first of August 1818 and died at the age of 70 on June 28, 1889. She is a distant relative of Benjamin Franklin. Because both her parents who were William Mitchell as well as Lydia Coleman Mitchell were under the Quaker faith, she had received education and equal rights as what was given to men during that time. This was considered as an unusual setup during those days, but because of one of the tenets in the religion of the Quakers, she received equal intellectual treatment which was one of the reasons for her fostered love of science.
Her earliest years in school were spent at Elizabeth Gardener’s small school. Then she attended North Grammar school and this was where her father was the school principal. Her awareness for astronomy came to life when her father began to teach her about the stars with the use of his own telescope. At a tender age of twelve, she had already been assisting her father calculate when the exact time of the annular eclipse would be.
When the school founded by her father closed, she then attended Cyrus Peirce’s school for young ladies. Before opening her very own school in 1853, she worked as a teaching assistant for Cyrus Peirce himself. A year after her own school was opened, she was then offered the job of being Nantucket Atheneum’s first librarian, and she worked there for 18 years.
Career in Astronomy and the Discover of the Comet
It was on the first of October, 1847 when she discovered the comet named after her. During those years, then king of Denmark, King Frederick VII gave gold medals for anyone who had telescopic comet discoveries. The medal was awarded to the first discoverer of the comet only, and not to anyone else who subsequently discovers the same celestial phenomenon. In astronomy’s history, Maria Mitchell is the second woman to discover a comet next only to Caroline Herschel. After her discovery of “Miss Mitchell’s Comet,” she gained popularity worldwide and was recognized for her contribution to astronomy. Today, the designation of this comet is C/1847 T1.
It was in 1848 that she became the first lady member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Two years later, she also became one of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. After being part of those important associations and institutions for astronomy, she worked for the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office where she calculated tables for the positions of the planet Venus and even went on a travel to Europe together with the family of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was an American short story writer and novelist.
In the year 1842, she left the family’s Quaker faith and began to follow Unitarian principles. She protested against slavery and to show her efforts, she stopped wearing clothing made of cotton. She had been friends with other fellow suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and along with other notable women of their time, founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women.
Apart from using the observatory dome of Vassar College for astronomy and scientific purposes, she also used it as a meeting place for discussing politics along with women’s rights and issues. From 1874-1876 she helped found what was known as the American Association for the Advancement of Women and served as their president for those years. A year prior to her founding of that association for women, she had been elected as a part of the American Philosophical Society. It was in 1873 when she attended the first meeting held by the Women’s Congress.
Maria Mitchell then became the very first professor hired for the Vassar College in 1865, and was also named as the Vassar College Observatory’s director. An interesting part of her career was that despite the experience she had along with her reputation and expertise, her salary was still less compared to other younger male professors. Because of this, she asked for a raise and as she deserved, she got it.
Two of Maria Mitchell’s favorite planets were Jupiter and Saturn and during her years in Vassar College, she went on with her research about the surface of these planets and also photographed the stars. The apparatus she used to photograph both the sun and the stars was her own, and she preserved plates of these photographs in one of the observatory’s closets. Her works, along with those of her students were published in the Silliman’s Journal which was one of the top scientific journals those times established by Benjamin Silliman in 1818 at Yale, and also had their works published at Poughkeepsie or Nantucket papers.
Maria Mitchell’s Latter Years and Legacy
Being born at a time when women’s rights weren’t equal with those of men, it can be said that Maria Mitchell’s contributions to science as well as the welfare of women are to be considered as valuable contributions to both science and history.
It was June 28, 1889 when she died at 70 years old in Lynn, Massachusetts. In Nantucket, the Maria Mitchell Observatory is named after the honor of one of the most noted female astronomers who truly made a mark in history. After her death, she was made a part of the U.S. National Women’s Hall of Fame. Even on the moon, a crater was named “Mitchell” after her to commemorate her importance in the field of astronomy.
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Marie Curie
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The famous chemist and physicist, Marie Curie was the first person in the history to be awarded with the two Nobel Prizes in diverse fields of science (chemistry and physics). She is notable for her theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Her work has received great appreciation from many scientists all over the world.
Early Life
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. She was the fifth and the youngest daughter of a secondary-school teacher. Her early years were very difficult with her mother and her sister passing away. She received her early education from some local school and her father taught her mathematics and physics, subjects that Marie was to pursue. She lived in Warsaw until she was twenty-four years old and later moved to Paris to receive higher education at the Sorbonne. There she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.
In 1894, she met Pierre Curie, instructor in the School of Physics and Chemistry. Marie had begun her scientific career in Paris with an examination of the magnetic properties of various steels; it was their common interest in magnetism that brought Marie and Pierre together. The following year they got married.
Achievements
In 1896 when Henry Becquerel made his discovery of radio activity, the Curie’s became inspired to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. In 1898 their brilliant researches led to the discovey of polonium, named after the country of Marie’s birth, and radium. In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honoured both Pierre Curie and Marie Curie with the Nobel Prize in Physics, for their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Becquerel.
Following the unfortunate death of her husband in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences. She was the first woman who had held this position. She was also employed as Director at the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.
After her husband’s death she continued with her efforts of developing methods for obtaining pure radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities. By 1910, she successfully isolated the pure radium metal.
In 1911, Curie was awarded with yet another Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry in recognition of her work in radioactivity.
All her life Marie promoted the use of radium and also set a great example of its use during World War I for healing the injuries of those who suffered. Her passion for science is reflected in all her efforts towards its advancement. She was also a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death. Moreover since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. In 1932 she also laid the foundation of Radium Institute (now the Maria Sk?odowska–Curie Institute of Oncology) in Warsaw. Her work is recorded in various papers in scientific journals.
Death
The great scientist Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934 at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie from aplastic anemia.
Her name will always be written in golden letters for her tremendous contribution to the field of science.
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Mario Molina
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When it comes to discovering the Antarctic ozone hole, Mario Molina was one of the most notable proponents along with F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul J. Crutzen who received the Novel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. He noted how chlorofluorocarbon gases or the ones called CFCs cause threats to the ozone layer and he is also the first ever Mexican-born individual to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Early Life and Education
On the 19th of March in 1943, Mario Molina was born to parents Leonor Henríquez de Molina and Roberto Molina Pasquel who was a lawyer as well as a diplomat who served in countries such as Ethiopia, Australia, and also the Philippines. Mario had shown interest in science at a very early age and he made his own chemistry lab in their home by turning the bathroom into his laboratory and experiment area. He had been fascinated by his toy microscope and this was where he first viewed amoeba and paramecia. For hours on a daily basis, he would play with his chemistry set in the seldom‑used bathroom in their house. Esther Molina, one of his aunts, helped foster his interest by helping him out with more challenging chemical experiments.
It had been a tradition in their family to study abroad for a time, and for Mario Molina and his awareness for his love for chemistry, he went to study at the Institut auf dem Rosenberg which is in Switzerland when he was only eleven years old after having completed his basic education in Mexico.
During his years in Europe however, he was disappointed that his classmates had little interest in chemistry. Because he had already made up his mind to be a chemist, he took his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México or the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the year 1965.
When he finished his undergraduate studies at UNAM, Mario Molina went on to pursue his Ph.D. in physical chemistry. He had a challenging time because although his degree had given him training, subjects like quantum mechanics was something completely Greek to him those days. He attended the University of Freiburg in Germany and had a postgraduate degree there in 1967, and he got his doctoral degree from the University of California in 1972 when he decided that he needed to study more and not just the kinetics of polymerizations to broaden his knowledge.
He was part of the research group led by Professor George C. Pimentel who was a pioneer in developing matrix isolation techniques. Their goal had been to study the molecular dynamics with the use of chemical lasers. For his graduate work, he had investigated on internal energy distribution in photochemical and chemical reaction products where he had the chance to work using infrared optics, vacuum lines, and other advanced equipment he had not been able to use before.
Career
After he completed his Ph.D., he had stayed for another year in Berkeley where he continued his research concerning chemical dynamics. He then joined Professor F. Sherwood’s group as one of the postdoctoral fellows and moved to Irvine, California. It was Professor Sherwood who had inspired Molina to find out about the fate of the environment considering the presence of CFCs which have been accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere. With that project, Molina learned about a new field in chemistry which was atmospheric chemistry.
Since Molina and Sherwood had already studied similar compounds before, they were able to come up with the CFC ozone depletion theory together. Initially, the research was not as interesting as it should have been since Molina knew that as the CFCs drift up to higher altitudes, they will be destroyed. What held his interest was what the consequences of these accumulated compounds would be. They realized how the chlorine atoms which are produced as CFCs decompose and damage the ozone layer. Because of their findings, they were alarmed at how CFCs in the atmosphere would continue to deplete the ozone layer.
Their findings concerning their ozone depletion theory were published on June 1974 in Nature, and they had made efforts to inform the scientific community of work as well as policy makers so that laws to protect the earth’s ozone layer through regulation of CFC use.
A year later, Molina was appointed as one of the faculty members of the University of California, Irvine. While he still had collaborations with Sherwood, he also began working on his own research. He setup his own program for the investigation of spectroscopic and chemical properties of different compounds which have an important role in the atmosphere. Some of the compounds he had focused on included hypochlorous acid, chlorine nitrate, and chlorine nitrite among others.
While Molina had enjoyed his years in Irvine, it limited his time for doing experiments and after 7 years with an academic position, he decided to join the Molecular Physics and Chemistry Section which was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory back in 1982. He was part of a small group but had the time and resources to conduct experiments of his own especially those concerning new atmospheric problems.
Awards and Recognitions
Other than the esteemed Nobel Prize award, he also won the Esselen Award of the Northeast section of the American Chemical Society in 1987, the Newcomb-Cleveland awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the United Nations Environmental Programme Global 500 Award in 1989. The Pew Charitable Trusts Scholars Program in Conservation and the Environment gave Molina a $150,000 grant in 1990. In 1998, Molina received the Willard Gibbs Medal given by the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society as well as the American Chemical Society Prize for Creative Advances in Environment Technology and Science in the same year.
He has several honorary degrees from esteemed bodies of education such as Yale, Duke, and Harvard Universities among others. Molina is also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the 8th of August in 2013 from President Barack Obama.
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Mary Anning
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Mary Anning has been called by some as the greatest fossillist of the world. She had made her mark in the field of collecting fossils by making several contributions to unearthing Jurassic fossil beds which were marine in nature in Dorset, specifically in Lyme Regis. She is credited as the discoverer of the first ever specimen of Ichthyosaurus that was acknowledged by no less than the Geological Society in London. A famous fossil hunter, Mary Anning’s discoveries were some of the most important geological pieces of all time.
Early Life and Personal Background
Her birthplace was in Dorset, England, specifically Lyme Regis. Her father named Richard had been a cabinetmaker. He made ends meet by mining the nearby coastal cliff fossil beds and sold what he found to tourists. He got married to Mary Moore also known as “Molly” and they lived in house which was built on the town’s bridge. Richard and Mary together had ten children but only Joseph and Mary were able to reach adulthood. The family had to face a sad event when Richard died in the year 1810, and had left the family in debt and with no provider. Despite this, he had been able to pass on his skills on finding fossils to his family and had been especially useful for Mary Anning.
Mary was named after a sister who had previously died in a fire and there had even been local lores about her earliest years. When she was only 15 months young, there was an event which included a neighbor named Elizabeth Haskings and two other ladies underneath an elm tree. The women had been watching an equestrian demonstration and Elizabeth Haskings held the young Mary Anning. Lighting then struck the tree and had killed everyone underneath it except Mary Anning. Her survival had been miraculous and apart from being part of the local lore, it had even been attributed as the cause of lively personality and intelligence when she grew up.
Her father, when he was still alive, had taken both Mary and Joseph to his fossil-hunting trips from which he found pieces to sell to tourists. Their family had always lived in poverty and there had even been accounts that they lived so close to the sea at one point that their own home got flooded and they had to climb up to the room upstairs just so they would not drown. There are mixed accounts of the life of Mary Anning, but what hold true are those which are attested by the fossil findings which show more than just the history of their previous lives but the hardships of Mary Anning as well.
When her father died, she had continued the fossil-finding trips near the sea. She would walk the area when the tide was low. Even for enthusiasts, collecting fossils was a risky business, but the teen Mary Anning had braved the challenges and risks that had come along with it.
How Fossil Collecting Helped the Family of Mary Anning
Some may see this as a dire job which would help no one prosper. But things changed when the family had established a good reputation as fossil hunters and were even able to make it as a business which supported them. In the year 1817, the family had the chance to meet Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Birch. He was a well-off fossil collector who later on became the supporter of the Anning family. He had sympathized with the situation of the family and in order to help them, he even arranged to put up his own fossil collections for sale and gave the proceeds to the family.
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Birch had attributed the major fossil discoveries to Mary Anning’s family, and he sold even his finest collections of fossils to those who would buy them to help the family. He believed that Mary’s family should not have to experience such poverty because they had been the ones who found the finer discoveries in the area.
It is true that Mary Anning had been credited with the discovery of the Ichthyosaurus fossils, but it was not she alone who did this. Her brother had found the skull of the beast and she had contributed by finding the rest of it. Because of her and her family’s skills in hunting fossils, European nobles, and collectors of what were then known as “curiosities” sought the fossil finds of the family. Because museums usually credited the individuals who donated the fossils to them, a lot of the discoveries made by Mary Anning were very hard to trace. The most famous ones had been the 1821 discovery of the Ichthyosaurus, and the first ever Plesiosaurus which was unearthed in 1823.
Mary Anning in the Scientific Community
She was born in a time when women weren’t allowed to attend the university, and despite being able to discover several great finds, she had not been properly credited by some of the wealthy fossillists who had used the information they had gotten from her finds and made publications from. Anna Pinney was a young woman who at times accompanied Anning. She had written about this experience of Mary Anning that, the word had used her ill and these men from the scientific community had not given her the credit which was rightfully hers.
Despite that experience however, there had been those who credited her work such as the paleontologist Louis Agassiz who visited her hometown in 1834. He had thanked Mary Anning and a friend of hers named Elizabeth Philpot in his book called “Studies of Fossil Fish.” Roderik Murchinson had been one of those she had fond recollections of, and she had even stayed with his family when she had a chance to visit London in the year 1829.
On the 9th of March in 1847, Mary Anning died from having breast cancer. She was only 47 at the time. Even the famous Charles Dickens wrote about the sufferings and triumphs of Mary. The article he had published in his magazine called “All the Year Round” ended with the lines “The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it.”
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Max Born
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Max Born was a German physicist who played a vital role in the evolution of quantum mechanics. His theoratical work in solid-state physics and optics is also considered very influential. Born shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics with Walther Bothe for his statistical interpretation of quantum theory.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1882 in Breslau, German Empire, Max Born’s father was an anatomist and embryologist. He recieved his early education from the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium. He attended the University of Breslau, and later Heidelberg University and the University of Zurich, Born earned his doctorate at the University of Göttingen in 1907, under the supervision of famous mathematician Felix Klein.
Contributions and Achievements:
Max Born was a highly successful theoretical physicist who made brilliant contributions in the areas of physics and optics. He was appointed the Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen in 1921, where he established an authoritative school for atomic and quantum physics.
Born also worked with Werner Heisenberg for a while he discovered the “arrays of numbers” that could be employed to prepare the first in-depth quantum theory. Born was more proficient in mathematics than Heisenberg and he found out that these “arrays” were widely known in mathematics as matrices. Around 1926, Born and his assistant formulated a full explanation of the new theory.
Perhaps Born’s most influential contribution to quantum theory was his concept that the wave-function could only be employed to predict the probabilities of different results being concluded in measurements; more precisely, that the square of the wave-function symbolizes a probability density. The concept was termed as the statistical interpretation of quantum theory.
Later Life and Death:
Max Born was very disappointed not to share the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physics with Heisenberg. Making things worse, he was forced to leave Göttingen as a Jew after the rise of Adolf Hitler. He spent three years in Cambridge, and alter became Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, where he stayed until 1953. After his retirement, Born returned to Germany. Finally in 1954, he was awarded Nobel Prize for Physics for the statistical interpretation of quantum theory, sharing with fellow nuclear physicist Walther Bothe.
Born died on January 5, 1970 in Göttingen, Germany. He was 87 years old.
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Max Delbruck
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If there is one field of science that really fascinates people, it has to be the field of biology. There are just so many things to learn and understand about it that it has tons of secrets that are yet to be discovered still. There are many great names in the field of biology and biophysics but one name you should never forget is Max Delbruck. He has made tons of contributions to the field of molecular biology and he really is worth getting to know. In the late 1930s, it was Max Delbruck that helped set up the molecular biology and research program. What he did was he stimulated the physical scientists’ interest directly into biology with an extra focus on basic research just so they can better explain and understand genes. At that time, genes were considered mysterious so anything that gave them greater understanding was welcome.
Max Delbruck, together with Alfred Hershey and Salvador Luna, formed the Phage Group in 1945. The Phage Group was quite successful and managed to make massive discoveries towards explaining some vital aspects of cell physiology. In 1969, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the three for their work concerning the replication mechanism and genetic makeup of viruses.
Max Delbruck was also the person who predicted the Delbruck Scattering.
Early Life
Max Delbruck hailed from Berlin, German Empire where he was born in 4th September 1906. His father was Hans Delbruck who taught History at the University of Berlin and his mother was none other than the granddaughter of eminent chemist Justus von Leibig. He grew up in Grunewald which was a suburb in Berlin populated by moderately affluent families. He grew up surrounded by members of the professional, academic, and merchant communities many of whom were large families. He grew up during a period of affluence and warm hospitality before the year 1914 but the latter years were marred with death, hunger, and cold. It was then followed by a period of inflation, impoverishment and revolution. His interest in science was evident even during his boyhood when he had in interest in astronomy.
Max Delbruck left Nazi Germany in 1937 and moved on to California then Tennessee. He married May Bruce and had 4 children in 1941 then went on to become a US citizen in 1945. Considering he grew up when Nazism was strong in Germany it seems odd that he would go to the US and even become a citizen there; however, he wasn’t the only one in his family that had strong feelings about what the regime was up to.
Max Delbruck had a brother named Justus, a lawyer, and a sister named Emmi Bonhoeffer and they happened to be very active in resisting the Nazi regime. Emmie Bonhoeffer not only aided refugees but she also made it a point to teach anti-Nazi education.
In fact, his brothers-in-law Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Klaus Bonhoeffer were in on the resistance too. They were tried by the People’s Court for having roles in a 20th July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. They were found guilty then executed by the RSHA in 1945.
Education and Early Career
Max Delbruck went to the University of Gottingen where he studied astrophysics first then moved on to theoretical physics. He earned his Ph.D. in 1039 then made the move to England then Denmark, and Switzerland after. It was during this time that he met with two other great names in Biology: Neils Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli. It was meeting these two men that got Delbruck interested in biology.
The year 1932 saw Delbruck returning to Berlin to work as an assistant to Lise Meitner who was at that time collaborating with Otto Hahn. Their work concerned using neutrons to irradiate uranium. During his stint with Meitner, Delbruck wrote several papers including one on gamma rays written in 1933. It concerned the scattering of gamma rays by vacuum caused by Coulomb field’s polarization. Theoretically speaking, it was tenable though the conclusion was misplaced. It was Hans Bethe who confirmed the phenomenon some 20 years later and gave it the name “Delbruck Scattering.”
He attained a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1937. At that time, it was launching the molecular biology research program to find out more about fruit fly genetics and the studies were conducted in the California Institute of Technology. It was during this time that Delbruck had the chance to blend genetics and biochemistry. While he was at Caltech, he also had the chance to research bacteria and the viruses they carried. During the year 1939, he co-authored The Growth of Bacteriophage with E.L. Ellis. It was a paper concerned with reporting how viruses reproduce in one step and not like cellular organisms that did it exponentially.
His role with the Rockefeller Foundation ended in 1939 but the Foundation still matched him with the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and from 1940 to 47 he had the opportunity to teach physics. His lab was still located in the Department of Biology.
Delbruck met Salvador Luria from Indiana University in 1941 when the later paid a visit to Vanderbilt University and together, they published material on bacterial resistance to virus infection by way of random mutation. Alfred Hershey, who was from Washington University, started visiting in 1943.
His Later Life and Legacy
During his later years Delbruck focused on helping to spur the interest of physical scientists in biology. In fact, Erwin Schrodinger relied on his inferences on the susceptibility of genes to mutation when he wrote his book What is Life? In the year 1977, he retired from his teaching spot in Caltech though he the Professor of Biology Emeritus status.
Max Delbruck left the world at the ripe old age of 74 on 9th March 1981. He died in Pasadena California at Huntington Memorial Hospital. The year Delbruck would have turned 100, on the 26th to 27th of August 2006, his friends and family came together at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory to remember his life and work.
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Max Planck
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Early Life:
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858, This German Physicist made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily on his role as originator of the quantum theory. This theory revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity revolutionized our understanding of space and time. Together they constitute the fundamental theories of 20th-century. Planck was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Planck was born into a large family and was brought up in a tradition which greatly respected scholarship, honesty, fairness, and generosity. The values he was given as a young child quickly became the values that he would cherish throughout his life, showing the utmost respect for the institutions of state and church. Max began his elementary schooling in Kiel. He did well at school but not brilliantly, usually coming somewhere between third and eighth in his class. Music was perhaps his best subject and he was awarded the school prize in catechism and good conduct almost every year. However, towards the end of his school career, his teachers raised his level of interest in physics and mathematics, and he became deeply impressed by the absolute nature of the law of conservation of energy. Planck describes why he chose physics:
“The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.”
Contributions and Achievements:
Planck was appointed the professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. While in Berlin Planck did his most luminous work and delivered outstanding lectures. He studied thermodynamics in particular examining the distribution of energy according to wavelength. By combining the formulae of Wien and Rayleigh, Planck announced a new formula now known as Planck’s radiation formula. Within two months Planck made a complete theoretical deduction of his formula giving up classical physics and introducing the quanta of energy. On 14 December 1900 he presented his theoretical explanation involving quanta of energy at a meeting of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin. He announced his derivation of the relationship which was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant, now called Planck’s constant.
The discovery of Planck’s constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants. Planck’s work on the quantum theory, as it came to be known, was published in the Annalen der Physik. His work is summarized in two books Thermodynamik (Thermodynamics) and Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (Theory of heat radiation).
This was not only Planck’s most important work but also marked a turning point in the history of physics. The importance of the discovery, with its far-reaching effect on classical physics, was not appreciated at first. However the evidence for its validity gradually became irresistible as its application accounted for many differences between observed phenomena and classical theory.
Planck was also a philosopher of science. In his Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, he stated Planck’s Principle, which holds that “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.
Death:
This great man died on October 4, 1947 at the age of 89 in Gottingen, West Germany.
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Max von Laue
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Max von Laue was a German physicist who won the 1914 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of X-ray crystallography, which helps in determining the arrangement of atoms in some substances.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Pfaffendorf, Sachsen, Germany in 1879, Max von Laue studied physics at the University of Strasbourg, and later, the Universities of Göttingen and Munich. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin in 1903.
Contributions and Achievements:
Max von Laue worked as an assistant to his mentor, Max Planck, at the Institute for Physics in Berlin. He was appointed the deputy director to Albert Einstein at the Institute for Physics in 1917.
Laue’s initial interests were in optics and the wave theory of light. When Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, scientists were not sure if they were particles or short electromagnetic waves. Laue predicted in 1912 that X-rays could be diffracted by a crystal acting as a natural diffraction grating. Later experiments with several crystals produced patterns, which were termed as Laue patterns, from which crystal structure could be interpreted.
Einstein praised Laue’s work as one of the most beautiful discoveries in physics. His contributions gave birth to X-ray spectroscopy, the exploration of atomic structures of chemical elements and the determination of X-ray wavelength. X-ray structural analysis played a vital role in modern physics and chemistry, with practical applications in various industries.
Later Life and Death:
In his later years, Max von Laue worked on the forces between atoms and also studied the thermodynamics of superconductivity. He wrote several famous books on the history of physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity. During World War II, Laue was arrested by the Allies forces and, like other German scientists, was sent to England. He came back to Germany in 1946 and took charge of the Max Planck Institute, Göttingen.
He was appointed the director of the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin in 1951, when he was 71 years old. Laue retired seven years later in 1958.
Max von Laue died on April 24, 1960. He was 80 years old.
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Michael E. Brown
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One of today’s American astronomers, Michael E. Brown who is also referred to as Mike Brown is the California Institute of Technology’s Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy since 2003, and has been a member of their faculty since 1996. His specialty is discovering and studying bodies which are located on the edge of the solar system. Along with his team, he discovered TNOs or trans-Neptunian objects—most notably Eris, the dwarf planet. This dwarf planet is the only identified TNO which is bigger than Pluto, and is the largest object identified in the solar system in the past 150 years.
Mike is known to have referred to himself as the one who “killed Pluto” since he was one of those who supported to Pluto being downgraded as just a dwarf planet after discovering Eris along with other TNOs. Of note, this astronomer is also a published author of the book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, which was published in 2010. This book is a memoir of his discoveries which led to the demotion of Pluto’s planetary status mixed in with some family life as well.
Early Life and Educational Background
A native of Huntsville, Alabama, Mike was a 1983 graduate of the Virgil I. Grissom High School. His father had been an engineer who worked on computers which were inside the rocket ships — these computers were the ones in charge of the rocket navigation, and Mike’s father had been one of the brains behind the computers that were in Saturn V and the Lunar Module. It was his exposure to his father’s work that helped foster his interest for space discovery.
In 1987, he earned his A.B. in Physics after completing his education in Princeton University where he was also one of the members of the Princeton Tower Club. He took his graduate courses at the University of California in Berkeley. There he earned his M.A. in Astronomy in 1990. Four years later, he earned his Ph.D.
During his academic years, he had been the recipient of a number of awards. He won the Urey Prize which was given to the best young planetary scientist and this was given by the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences. He also received the Presidential Early Career Award and a Sloan Fellowship. In 2012, he won the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics and in 2014, he had recently been inducted into the National Academy of Science. The one which started his career though was when he received a certain honorable mention in the science fair he participated back in fifth grade.
Discoveries and Contributions to Astronomy
He is mostly known for his discovery of Eris—the dwarf planet which led to the demotion of Pluto as one of the 9 planets of the solar system. Other than Eris, Mike is also known for discovering other TNOs at the edge of the solar system. Interestingly, the informal names of Eris and its one moon Dysomnia had been Xena and Gabriel—these were the two main characters of the T.V. program Xena: Warrior Princess. Also, he was the one who discovered Makemake, one of the three largest objects in the Kuiper belt alongside Eris and Pluto.
Haumea, a dwarf planet being observed by Mike and his team, caused some controversy in his career. The discovery of this dwarf planet, however, was announced by José Luis Ortiz Moreno. Ortiz’s team from the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain had initially been supported by Mike, and he gave them the credit for this discovery.
After further investigation however, it was shown how a website which had archives of information from Brown and his team’s telescopes used for Haumea were accessed three days before Ortiz made the announcement of his discovery. The IP addresses were traced to the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia—and this was where Ortiz worked.
Even more interesting was that the access to the website archive were on dates after Brown published his abstract concerning an upcoming conference where he was about to announce his discovery of Haumea. This, in turn, resulted in an exchange of emails between Mike Brown and José Luis Ortiz Moreno. In the emails, one of the replies from Ortiz even hinted at how Mike was “hiding objects” and that they were only emailing since Mike did not report the object upon discovery.
As a response, Mike said how this statement from Ortiz contradicts the established scientific practice of thoroughly analyzing one’s research until the researcher is satisfied that his findings are accurate before submitting it for peer review and ultimately, making the public announcement about the discovery.
After this incident, José Carlos del Toro, the IAA director had chosen to distance himself from Ortiz and Mike made petitions to the International Astronomical Union to give credit to his team instead of to Ortiz’s where the discovery of Haumea is concerned. According to the IAU, they had not acknowledged a specific discoverer of Haumea yet—however, its discovery date as well as location is known to as March 7, 2003 and that it had been at the Sierra Nevada Observatory where Ortiz worked. Interestingly enough, the IAU accepted the name Haumea which Mike had suggested, instead of Ataecina which was suggested by Ortiz.
Achievements and Personal Life
In 2006, he was included in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. A year later, he received California Institute of Technology’s most prestigious teaching honor which is the Feynman Prize. An asteroid discovered on April 28, 1998 was named after him as well – Asteroid 11714 Mikebrown.
Articles about Mike and his works had been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, as well as Discovery, and his discoveries made the front page of several international publications. He is also included in the list of Most Powerful Angelinos of Los Angeles Magazine.
On March 1, 2003, he married Dianne Binney who he has a daughter with—Lilah Binney Brown. In 2006, he was one of Wired Online’s Top Ten Sexiest Geeks, something that whenever mentioned, never fails to make Dianne laugh.
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Michael Faraday
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English scientist and physicist, Michael Faraday is known for his brilliant discoveries of electro-magnetic induction, electro-magnetic rotations, the magneto-optical effect, diamagnetism, field theory and much more. Many famous historians regard him as the most influential and exemplary experimentalist in the history of science. The incredible scope and profundity of Faraday’s work spanned a time of 60 years. He is considered as one of the top figures of the 19th century for his remarkable contribution in the field of electricity.
This British scientist was born in Newington Butts, London on 22 September 1791. Faraday was born as the third-child in a poor family, where his father James was a blacksmith. Due to the poor family background young Faraday could not enjoy the niceties of a big school and had to largely educate himself. He developed a great love for reading after he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau. After studying the work of great scientists and authors he developed an interest in science, particularly in electricity. It was his early reading and experiments with the idea of force, that enabled him to make imperative discoveries in electricity later in life.
Faraday was always extremely curious and inquisitive. After the end of his apprenticeship (at the age of twenty), he began to attend lectures of different famous chemists in the quest to learn more. During this time he also applied for a job to Humphry Davy, his chemistry lecturer who later appointed him as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution in 1813. Few years later in 1821, Faraday married Sarah Barnard whom he met at the Sandemanian church.
After Davy retired in 1827, Faraday replaced him as lecturer of chemistry at the Royal Institution and published all his research work related to condensation of gases, optical deceptions and the isolation of benzene from gas oils.
Scientific Contributions:
During the time when he was hired as an assistant to Professor Davy, Faraday discovered two new chlorides of carbon, conducted experiments on the diffusion of gases, investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes.
Faraday is best recognized for his contributions to electricity and magnetism. In 1821 after being inspired by the work of Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian, he began experimenting with electromagnetism and by signifying the conversion of electrical energy into motive force, devised the electric motor. For the next few years he continued conducting experiments from his initial electromagnetic discovery. In 1831 Faraday discovered the induction of electric currents and constructed the first electric dynamo. In 1839 he conducted several experiments to determine the fundamental nature of electricity and established that electrostatic force consists of a field of curved lines of force and conceived a specific inductive capacity. This led to the development his theories on light and gravitational systems. His other prominent discoveries include: the process of diamagnetism, the Faraday Effect, Faraday cage and many more.
Two of his famous books are the ‘Experimental Researches in Electricity’ and the ‘Chemical History of the Candle.’
Later years:
During the later years of his life he made several other achievements: received a Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1832 by the University of Oxford granted Faraday, elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1838 and the French Academy of Sciences in 1844.
For his great contribution to science, the British government granted him a pension and a house in Hampton Court, where he spent the rest of his life after his retirement in 1858.
The great British scientist departed from this world on 25 August 1867.
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Michio Kaku
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Most well known in the world of theoretical physicists, Michio Kaku is the City College of New York’s Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics. He is considered as a futurist, a great communicator, and a modern popularizer of science. He is the author of several physics-related books such as Physics of the Impossible published in 2008, and Physics of the Future published in 2011. Michio Kaku has appeared in several television programs, radio programs, films, and makes his work available through his online blogs.
Education and Early Years
Michio Kaku was born in January 24, 1947 to Japanese parents who have Tibetan ancestry. His grandfather immigrated to the United States to help with the 1906 cleanup operation for the San Francisco Earthquake. He was born in San Jose, California. Around the time of the Vietnam War, he was able to complete the basic training given by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning and he even had his Infantry training in Washington. Before he was even deployed as an infantryman however, the war had already ended.
He has shown a great interest in science ever since he was young. When he studied in Palo Alto’s Cubberley High School, he assembled his own particle accelerator inside the garage of his parents. According to him, his goal was to generate gamma ray beams that would be strong enough to be able to produce antimatter. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attended the National Science Fair and it was there where he had the attention of Edward Teller, a physicist who took him as his protégé. He then earned the Hertz Engineering Scholarship.
Michio Kaku was first in his physics class and in 1968, he graduated summa cum laude at Harvard University. In Berkeley, at the University of California, he received his Ph.D. in 1972 after attending the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. In that same year, he had a lectureship at none other than Princeton University.
Academic Career and Publications
This modern day man of science is knowledgeable in several fields such as hadronic physics, supersymmetry, supergravity, superstring theory, and quantum physics among others. His knowledge on these topics has been subject of more than 70 publications in different journals covering physics-related subjects such as Physics Review.
Michio Kaku is known as a popularizer of science, and he has authored several popular science textbooks. High first book was released in 1994 – Hyperspace, followed by “Beyond Einstein” which he wrote with Jennifer Thompson a year later. In 1998, he published “Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.” It took a while before he published “Einstein’s Cosmos” and “Parallel Worlds” in 2004. His most recent works are “Physics of the Impossible” published in 2008 and “Physics of the Future” published in 2011.
All of these publications spark a great interest in the minds of individuals, both scholars and curious minds alike who are interested in the realm of theoretical physics and other related disciplines given the futurist vision that Michio Kaku believes in.
Michio Kaku’s publications reflect his involvement in the ongoing search of understanding and unifying the forces of nature into just one theory. He continues his works based on Einstein’s earlier findings, and Michio Kaku is known as one of the founders of string field theory. His book Hyperspace was a great best seller and was voted as one of the top science books by both The Washington Post and The New York Times in the same year.
The Popularizer of Science
This is a commonly heard phrase whenever Michio Kaku’s name is mentioned, and not without good reason. Apart from comprehensive publications of both books and journal articles, he has a known presence in many different forms of media.
He has made appearances on several television channels—notable ones such as BBC, Discovery, ABC, CNN, and the Science Channel just to name a few. Apart from his publications in Physics Review, his works and articles are also available to the public through science publications such as Wired, New Scientist, and Discover.
Some of his more recent media exposure includes BBC’s series on Time where he went through an extraordinary exploration in search of time, Vision of the Future of BBC Four series where he explored today’s science as well as that of the future and beyond, and The Universe of the History Channel.
On a weekly basis, Michio Kaku can be heard on radio programs which are broadcasted all over the country. He hosts Science Fantastic and Explorations in Science. Apart from these weekly radio programs, his talks about physics and his studies can be seen in several websites dedicated to his work, and even on YouTube channels. He has also been part of documentaries such as Obsessed and Scientific which discusses the possibility of time travel, UFOs: Seeing is Believing of ABC, and he was one of the scientists who were featured in “Me and Isaac Newton.” For BBC, he has hosted the three-hour documentary called Visions of the Future. There was even a period in his career back in 2009 when he hosted a weekly TV series for 12 episodes at the Science Channel called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible. One of his more interesting thoughts has been featured on Discovery Channel’s Alien Planet where he discussed the possible future of interstellar exploration.
It is because of his presence through different media and his skill when it comes to communicating the otherwise complex theories into information which is easier to understand that has earned him the name popularizer of science. In his videos, he is able to convey the messages and central thoughts of theories without making it hard for his audience to understand, but enough to get them hooked on the science behind different matters.
Despite his amazing academic endeavors and several appearances, he is a father to two daughters and is married to Shizue Kaku. His favorite songs include the Star Wars Theme as well as Star Trek’s The Next Generation Theme, both in line with his interest in physics and interstellar matters of science.
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Mihailo Petrovic Alas
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Mihailo Petrovic Alas was an inventor and influential Serbian mathematician. His main contributions had been for providing differential equations as well as several works on phenomenology. He had also been a well-respected professor at the Belgrade University and apart from his endeavors in Mathematics, he was also a musician, publicist, businessman, writer, fisherman, and an academic. Aside from his most significant contributions for phenomenology and differential equations, he also helped in the development of the very first prototypes for the analog computer.
Early Life and Academic Background
He was the firstborn of his father Nikodim who was a theology professor and his mother Milica. Mihailo was born on the 6th of May in 1868 in Belgrade. After finishing his studies in the First Belgrade Gymnasium in the year 1885, he enrolled for courses in the Faculty of Philosophy specifically for the natural science-mathematical section. When he finished his mathematical studies in Serbia come 1889, other mathematicians such as Dr. Dimitrije Danić, Dr. Dimitrije Nešić, Bogdan Gavrilović were already making their own names. Because of this he strived to improve his knowledge and in 1889, Mihailo himself decided to pursue further studies abroad where he also prepared for an exam to get accepted to the École Normale Supérieure.
In 1891, he got his degree from the Sorborne University where he finished his courses in mathematical sciences. He was continuously improving his education by preparing his dissertation for his doctoral degree which he got in 1894. His doctorate was about differential equations, and he received the title “Docteur des sciences mathematiques” or doctor of mathematical sciences.
Having acquired the background, as well as some training for more intensive work, he became one of the professors of mathematics at what is now known as the University of Belgrade. Back in those days, he was the greatest mind when it came to differential equations, having lectures on mathematics and equations up to his retirement in 1938. He was only 31 when he became one of the members of the Serbian Royal Academy, and on top of that, he was also an associate member of the Zagreb’s Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Mihailo was able to publish many of his journals, scientific works, and books, as well as writings on his inventions during his lifetime. He even made notes of his sea expeditions. Because of his academic work and outstanding publications, he was recognized by many different academies and societies by being handed acknowledgements and awards. When Jovan Cvijić, president of the Royal Serbian Academy, died in 1927, a lot of the members were suggesting that Mihailo should be president. The higher authorities however did not accept the proposal, the reason being that he was a very close friend of prince Đorđe P. Karađorđević who was the king’s brother who happened to be house arrested in 1925.
A few years later in 1931, members of the academy again proposed for Mihailo to be elected as their president, but this was still dismissed and not accepted by the higher authorities. Bogdan Gavrilović, who was a fellow professor and mathematician, was the one who got nominated as the president instead.
Because of his contributions and help in different academic endeavors, he became one of the honorary doctors of the University of Belgrade in 1939 and that same year he received the first class order of Saint Sava. Given his expertise and know-how in the field of mathematics, he founded the Belgrade School of Mathematics. As the years passed, this very school was responsible for producing a number of good mathematicians who continued his works where he left them. During the Second World War, all of the doctoral dissertations which were held in the University of Belgrade were held under his supervision.
He was a man of many trades, and he didn’t stop at making academic contributions. He was also involved in services for his country. He was one of the participants in the Balkan Wars and during the First World War, he was one of the officers. After that time, he was serving as a reserve officer despite having another profession. Being a brilliant mathematician, he practiced cryptography as well and the cipher systems he developed where those used by the Yugoslav army up until the Second World War.
During the Second World War, he was again called to service, and this time, he was captured by the Germans. Fortunately, he was later on released because of an illness. It was in 1943 when he died at the age of 75 in his own home in Belgrade.
Personal Information
His nickname “Alas” was drawn from his love of fishery which actually means “river fisherman.” He wasn’t just an aficionado but he became an expert in this craft as well. He was a fisherman’s apprentice in 1882, and in 1895 he even took the exam to be a master fisherman. So much was his love for fishery that he even participated in some legislative talks about the fishery convention they were to have with Romania at one time, and he also had a hand in the discussion for fishery protection with Austra-Hungaria representatives about fishery protection for places such as the Drina, Danube, and the Sava rivers.
Apart from his interests in academics and fishery, he was also a musician who played the violin and he even founded the musical society which was called Suz. He also came up with the hidrointegrator and even won in the World Exposition in Paris in 1900 where he got a gold medal. He was also a passionate traveler and his wanderlust took him to both the South and North poles.
He had gained international recognition by being a member of societies in Paris, Prague, France, and Berlin, and as a member of different academies in Bucharest, Warsaw, and Krakow. He was a member of SANU, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and the Yugoslav academy where he was able to help hone the young minds of aspiring mathematicians and scholars of his age.
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Mohammad Abdus Salam
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Early Life and Contributions:
Mohammad Abdus Salam, was born in January 29, 1926 in Punjab. He was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, astrophysicist. He was also the first Pakistani and Muslim (he belonged to Ahmadiyya Muslim Community) to win the Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in Electro-Weak Theory.
Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg shared the prize for this discovery. He received the Smith’s Prize from Cambridge University, for the pre-doctoral contribution to Physics and the Hopkins Prize. Later on, he wrote a doctoral thesis on the fundamental work in Quantum electrodynamics. This was published in 1951 and enabled him to earn the Adams Prize. In 1956 he was invited to take a chair at Imperial College, London, where he and Paul Matthews created a lively theoretical physics group. During the early 1960s, however, Salam played a very significant role in establishing the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) – the atomic research agency of Pakistan – and Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) – the space research agency of Pakistan, of which he was the founding director.
He was also the founder of the Third world academy of sciences (TWAS)and the International centre for theoretical physics (ICTP) .
Salam was also responsible for initiating research on water logging and salinity problems in Pakistan. He also played a critical role in agricultural research, PAEC and SUPARCO, the international space agency in Pakistan. Abdus Salam was the pioneered of all the important developments in the theoretical elementary particle physics. He also served on a number of United Nations committees, concerning science and technology in developing countries. Abdus Salam prepared and taught future Pakistani engineers and scientists in the field of mathematics and physics.
His contributions was research on the physics of elementary particles. His most famous contributions included: Two-component neutrino theory and the prediction of the inevitable parity violation in weak interaction, gauge unification of weak and electromagnetic interaction. This unified force is known as the “Electroweak” force, a name given to it by Salam, and which lays the foundation of the Standard Model in particle physics and predicted existence of weak neutral currents and W particles and Z particles before their experimental discovery, symmetry properties of elementary particles; unitary symmetry, renormalization of meson theories, gravity theory and its role in particle physics; two tensor theory of gravity and strong interaction physics, unification of electroweak with strong nuclear forces, grand unification theory; related prediction of proton-decay.
Some other contributions of Salam include Pati-Salam model, a grand unification theory, Super symmetry theory, in particular, formulation of Super space and formalism of super fields in 1974, the theory of super manifolds, as a geometrical framework for understanding super symmetry, in 1974, Super geometry, the geometric basis for super symmetry, in 1974, the application of the Higgs mechanism to the electroweak symmetry breaking and prediction of the magnetic photon in 1966.
Death:
Abdus Salam died on 21st November 1996 at the age of 70 in Oxford, England after a prolonged illness. His body was brought to Pakistan and buried in Bahishti Maqbara in Rabwah. His memory will live on forever in the hearts of Pakistanis’ as he showed the world the true potential of a Pakistani.
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Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
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Early Life:
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer geographer and a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He was born in Persia of that time around 780. Al-Khwarizmi was one of the learned men who worked in the House of Wisdom. Al-Khwarizmi flourished while working as a member of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the leadership of Kalif al-Mamun, the son of the Khalif Harun al-Rashid, who was made famous in the Arabian Nights. The House of Wisdom was a scientific research and teaching center.
Contributions and Achievements:
Al-Khwarizmi developed the concept of the algorithm in mathematics (which is a reason for his being called the grandfather of computer science by some people).
Al-Khwarizmi’s algebra is regarded as the foundation and cornerstone of the sciences. To al-Khwarizmi we owe the world “algebra,” from the title of his greatest mathematical work, Hisab al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabala. The book, which was twice translated into Latin, by both Gerard of Cremona and Robert of Chester in the 12th century, works out several hundred simple quadratic equations by analysis as well as by geometrical example. It also has substantial sections on methods of dividing up inheritances and surveying plots of land. It is largely concerned with methods for solving practical computational problems rather than algebra as the term is now understood.
Al-Khwarizmi confined his discussion to equations of the first and second degrees. He also wrote an important work on astronomy, covering calendars, calculating true positions of the sun, moon and planets, tables of sines and tangents, spherical astronomy, astrological tables, parallax and eclipse calculations, and visibility of the moon. His astronomical work, Zij al-sindhind, is also based on the work of other scientists. As with the Algebra, its chief interest is as the earliest Arab work still in existence in Arabic.
His most recognized work as mentioned above and one that is so named after him is the mathematical concept Algorithm. The modern meaning of the word relates to a specific practice for solving a particular problem. Today, people use algorithms to do addition and long division, principles that are found in Al-Khwarizmi’s text written over 2000 years ago. Al-Khwarizmi was also responsible for introducing the Arabic numbers to the West, setting in motion a process that led to the use of the nine Arabic numerals, together with the zero sign.
Of great importance also was al-Khwarizmi’s contribution to medieval geography. He systematized and corrected Ptolemy’s research in geography, using his own original findings that are entitled as Surat al-Ard (The Shape of the Earth). The text exists in a manuscript; the maps have unfortunately not been preserved, although modern scholars have been able to reconstruct them from al-Khwarizmi’s descriptions. He supervised the work of 70 geographers to create a map of the then “known world”. When his work became known in Europe through Latin translations, his influence made a permanent mark on the development of science in the West.
Al-Khwarizmi made several important improvements to the theory and construction of sundials, which he inherited from his Indian and Hellenistic predecessors. He made tables for these instruments which considerably shortened the time needed to make specific calculations. His sundial was universal and could be observed from anywhere on the Earth. From then on, sundials were frequently placed on mosques to determine the time of prayer. The shadow square, an instrument used to determine the linear height of an object, in conjunction with the alidade for angular observations, was also invented by al-Khwarizmi in ninth-century Baghdad.
While his major contributions were the result of original research, he also did much to synthesize the existing knowledge in these fields from Greek, Indian, and other sources. A number of minor works were written by al-Khwarizmi on topics such as the astrolabe, on which he wrote on the Jewish calendar. He also wrote a political history containing horoscopes of prominent persons.
Death:
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi died in c. 850 being remembered as one of the most seminal scientific minds of early Islamic culture.
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Murray Gell-Mann
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Murray Gell-Mann is an American physicist who is credited with the introduction of the concept of quarks. He won the 1969 Nobel Prize for physics for his groundbreaking work on the description and classification of subatomic particles. Gell-Mann is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of the 20th century.
Early Life and Education:
Borin in 1929 in Manhattan, New York City, Murray Gell-Mann was a very gifted student who entered Yale University when he was only 15. He acquired a B.S. degree in physics in 1948, and earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. His doctoral thesis on subatomic particles greatly inspired the works of Hungarian American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner.
Contributions and Achievements:
Murray Gell-Mann started working at the Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago in 1952, where he introduced the concept of “strangeness”, a quantum property and the force that holds the components of the atomic nucleus, in 1953. He became a member of the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena in 1955, and the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1967.
While working with fellow physicist Yuval Ne’eman, in 1961, Gell-Mann suggested a scheme for the classification of previously discovered strongly interacting particles into a basic and proper arrangement of families. He hypothesized that it should be achievable to elaborate on the specific properties of known particles in terms of even more fundamental particles. He later termed these basic particles of matter as “quarks”, which later led to the 1964 discovery of the omega-minus particle.
Later Life
Murray Gell-Mann served as a director of the MacArthur Foundation for 23 years, from 1979 to 2002. He was also a member of the the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology from 1994 to 2001.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
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One of today’s popularizers of science, Neil deGrasse Tyson is a science communicator and known American astrophysicist. Currently, he is the Hayden Planetarium’s Frederick P. Rose director at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. He is also one of the research associates of the American Museum of Natural History’s department of astrophysics. Since he is a popularizer of science, he has appeared in television shows such as NOVA ScienceNow which was aired on PBS from 2006-2011. He is involved in fields such as physical cosmology, astrophysics, and science communication.
Early Years and Academic Background
Born in Manhattan as a middle child with two siblings, Neil deGrasse Tyson grew up around the Bronx. His mother was a gerontologist named Sunchita Feliciano Tyson. His father was a sociologist named Cyril deGrasse Tyson.
Growing up, Neil deGrasse Tyson went to the Bronx High School of Science from 1972-1976 where there was an emphasis on astrophysics then. Apart from being the captain of their wrestling team, he was also the editor-in-chief of “Physical Science” which was the school’s paper. His love for astronomy began at a young age of nine after his first visit to the Hayden Planetarium. In his teen years, he had an obsession for astronomy, and made his mark on the community of astronomy lovers when he gave lectures when he was just fifteen.
So much was his passion for astronomy that even Dr. Carl Sagan of the Cornell University personally sought him out to invite him for undergraduate programs. Neil, however, chose to attend Harvard University where he then had his major in physics while residing at the Currier House. It was in 1980 when he received his Bachelor of Arts in Physics, but during the years in between, he was involved in other activities such as rowing, wrestling, and dancing.
He proceeded with his post graduate endeavors at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1983, he earned his Master of Arts in Astronomy. Two years later, he even bagged the gold medal for the dance team of the University of Texas when he entered a national event for International Latin Ballroom. He furthered his education by earning a Master of Philosophy in astrophysics at Columbia University back in 1989. He had his doctorate in Philosophy of astrophysics two years later.
Career in Science
Because of his fascination for astronomy, his research was largely focused on stellar evolution, cosmology, galactic astronomy, as well as stellar formation. His career in science has included being able to hold position in the University of Maryland, the American Museum of Natural History, the Hayden Planetarium, and Princeton University.
He has also been able to publish several books on subjects related to astronomy. He wrote “Universe,” a column for the Natural History magazine, in 1995. He was even able to coin a word in one of the columns he wrote back in 2002. The word was “Manhattanhenge” and it is used for describing the 2 days in a year when the setting sun would align with the street grids of Manhattan which makes the sunset easily viewed on the clear side streets.
A year before he coined that term, former US President George W. Bush had appointed Neil deGrasse Tyson to be a member of the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. Two years later, he served as a part of the President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. This Commission is better known by its more popular nickname which is the “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” commission. After a short while, he was then awarded by NASA their Distinguished Public Service Medal which happens to be the highest honor NASA awards to civilians.
Being a popularizer of science, Neil deGrasse Tyson has also made several appearances on television apart from being a columnist and book author. PBS’s miniseries entitled “Nova” had four parts, all of which Neil hosted back in 2004. Along with Donald Goldsmith, Tyson co-authored another volume for Nova which was called “Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution.” Later on, another collaboration was done and the fruit was called “400 Years of the Telescope.” This was aired on PBS back in April of 2009. He also hosted NOVA ScienceNow, the PBS program until 2011.
Part of his rich career related to anything and everything about astronomy included his being the Planetary Society’s chairman, president, and vice-president. Because of his love of the universe, his usual cheerful self along with his knowledge and vibrant character, Neil deGrasse Tyson became a regular part of “The Universe” which is a popular series from The History Channel.
Tyson has his own views about spirituality, religion, and science which he included in his essays called “The Perimeter of Ignorance” as well as “Holy Wars.” Both of these works appeared in the Natural History Magazine. Apart from having contributions in the field of astronomy, he also has civic awareness and was even an eyewitness to the attacks on the World Trade Center back in September 11, 2001. He had written a letter about what he had seen that day, and the footage he was able to take was even made part of the documentary released in 2008 which was called “102 Minutes That Changed America.”
Not only is he a man of science, Neil deGrasse Tyson even has collaborations with PETA or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and he stated that one need not be a rocket scientist to know that showing kindness is a virtue. He even had an interview with PETA where he discussed concepts about the intelligence of both humans and animals. He remains to be an advocate of NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and hopes for the expansion of their operations.
He has had appearances with Bill Nye in Stargate Atlantis’s “Brain Storm” episode, and even in more popular modern shows such as The Big Bang Theory’s episode called “The Apology Insufficiency.” He has also assisted DC Comics in selecting a star which would best match Superman’s home planet, Krypton. Today, he enjoys being a wine enthusiast along with his scientific endeavors while he lives with his wife and two kids in Lower Manhattan.
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Niccolo Leoniceno
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Niccolo Leoniceno was an Italian humanist and physician, and was also known as Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza, Nicolò da Lonigo da Vincenza, Nicolaus Leoninus, Nicolo Lonigo, Nicolaus Leonicenus Vicentinus, and Nicolo Leoniceno. He was born in the year 1428 in Lonigo, Venento. His father had been a doctor, and this may have opened his young mind to medicine and prompted his interest to be a man of science as well.
Educational Background
Niccolo Leoniceno studied the Greek language under Ognibene da Lonigo back in Vicenza. In 1453, he was able to graduate from the University of Padua. It was at this university where he took his studies in philosophy and medicine under the wing of Pietro Roccabonella Veneziano. After he completed his doctorate, Leoniceno was able to go to the University of Ferrara. There, he was able to teach mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. One of his notable students was Antonio Musa Brassavola, a famous Italian physician.
Because of his knowledge in Greek as well as Arabic and Latin, he was able to help translate ancient Arabic and Greek medical texts into more accessible and readable Latin copies. He translated the works of Hippocrates and Galen and helped bring about the importance of such translations to more people. Leoniceno was also the first known person to have written criticisms for Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.
Debates in Ferrara
Pliny the Elder’s works are considered to be strong reference material in medicine back then, and the fact that Leoniceno had a different view on things was enough to spark curiosity and get him attention. More particularly, he was able to catch the attention of the court humanist Angelo Poliziano. Poliziano was not at all in favor of how Leoniceno classified Pliny the Elder alongside medieval and Arab scholars. Because of this, Poliziano employed the help of Pandolfo Collenuccio who was a lawyer as well as a historian to help defend Pliny the Elder from what Leoniceno wrote about him.
It was in 1492 when Leoniceno published the De Plinii et plurium alorium medicorum in medicina erroribus, an article where he was able to point out the errors of medical proportions made by Pliny along with the medieval Arab practitioners of medicine. After this publication by Leoniceno, it was quickly followed by Collenuccio’s Pliniana defensio adversus Nicolai Leoniceni accusationem which was published just a year later.
From 1492 to 1509, Leoniceno as well as Collenuccio published several pamphlets where they were pointing out and arguing about ancient sources they stood for. One particular concern they had was how accurate Pliny’s translations were from original Greek texts into Latin. After a while, Collenuccio himself agreed that there were such issues that existed.
Leoniceno’s attacks on Pliny the Elder were not solely about translation issues though, and he even mentioned a section of one of Pliny’s works where it was stated how the moon was bigger than the earth. Because of this, Leoniceno thought that if Pliny was erroneous on a fact as fundamental as this, this was reason enough to examine Pliny’s work further to see if there were other factual errors.
Natural History Experience
When it comes to natural history back in those days, knowledge was acquired when people study ancient texts for reference and use the formulas given by earlier scholars. What made a huge difference was he thought of not just using existing ancient texts as they were, but the method with which he confirmed the written text was from his own firsthand accounts. What he did was to have a copy of the text and compared it with his own set of observations. His approach was indeed new back then but it faced several challenges. The very first issue was about the translation of texts.
The main issue was about the translation errors and contradictions which ensued after translating the text. According to Leoniceno’s beliefs, if Pliny had errors, other ancient works done by Dioscorides and Theophrastus may have errors which should be examined as well. He had shown a preference for some Greek compared to Arab authors too, and this drive of his was one of the main distinguishing characteristics which helped reform the medical pedagogy back then.
It was really much harder then, working on such texts because it would have been hard to confirm from long dead authors if the plant being observed in the present day was the same one being described before. Despite this challenge though, Leoniceno still proceeded with his work and focused with being able to identify the existing information written on respected ancient texts instead of just adding to it, which was what most other scholars would have done. He insisted on this idea because he believed in “factual accuracy,” and that it was highly important because the health, as well as the life of men depended on the accuracy of facts written in ancient manuscripts.
Personal Library
Having been a scholar and a man who was really interested in ancient works and translation for the betterment of the modernizing civilizations, Leoniceno had his own collection of works. These were what he used for working on his comparisons and observations. He existed during the time which some call “the age of the manuscript.” Back in those days, the main way to gain knowledge was to read existing texts and add to them rather than verify them, which was why Leoniceno’s approach had been really crucial and major to the contributions made to medical texts back then.
After he died, there was an inventory of about 345 volumes which comprised of 482 individual finished works. A great number of smaller volumes were combined in just one volume which was separately bound. Out of the noted 345 volumes, about 117 had been in Greek. Upon inspection, there were numerous translations and versions of just a single text, and also a lot of commentaries on different volumes. Because of his in-depth work on the texts and different volumes, it was clearly reflected how he had a highly textual approach. This approach to learning and knowledge made him have an extensive library, which was what served as a strong basis for his being a scientific scholar.
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Nicholas Culpeper
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Leave it to the rebels of the world to make an impact on history. When one thought of the “bad boy” of the herbalist world, one would automatically think of Nicholas Culpeper. This herbalist who lived in 17th century England would lead a tragically short life. Yet his brief life was nothing short of being fraught with meaning. Though his career was cut short, he would be later known as “The People’s Herbalist.” To this day, many owe Culpeper and his radical beliefs a debt of gratitude. At the time, he would use what would then be viewed as unconventional methods, and was, at a time, accused of witchcraft. But who was Culpeper? What was it in him that made him a man of the masses?
A Peek into Childhood
The rebel herbalist’s life was nothing short of personal tragedy. Born on October 18, 1616, he was to be the only son of the young Reverend Nicholas Culpeper, and his wife Mary. The family that he was born into was of aristocratic origins and owned land. At the time, this was a privilege denied to many. His father passed away suddenly just two weeks before he was even born. This was most unfortunate as the young clergyman had only been appointed Lord of Ockley Manor just a few months before.
After burying her husband, Mary would name her son Nicholas after the father her son never got to meet. She would later leave Ockley Manor, and take the young Nicholas to live with her in her family home in Isfield, Sussex.
The fledgling Nicholas was born in a time where medical knowledge was only limited to a privileged few, the licensed physicians. Like most children, Nicholas grew up with a fascination of the wonders of the world. He would be influenced by his grandfather, Reverend William Attersole.
Being the Minister of St. Margaret’s Church, the old Reverend was a strict and stern man. He was an intellectual, and thus held his grandson’s education of upbringing to be of high regard. Reverend Attersole had high ambitions for the young Nicholas, including sending him to Cambridge, where he had once been educated. Attersole was known for being a devout Purist, and even authored a number of many biblical commentaries and theological works.
Nicholas would learn to read and write Latin and Greek from his grandfather. At an early age, Culpeper had a fascination with the stars, and had read books on astrology in his grandfather’s library at the age of 10. He would later discover William Turner’s Herbal. This would spark Culpeper’s interest in medicine, as well as medicinal plants and herbs. He would pore over the books in his grandfather’s library for hours on end, until the old Reverend would later restrict his grandson’s reading material to the Bible.
The Reluctant Theologian
When Culpeper reached the aged of 16 in 1632, his grandfather sent him to Cambridge University. He was to study Theology, in order to fulfil his grandfather’s dreams of him being a Church Minister, much to his dismay. The young rebel would show no interest in Theology, and would read the medical works of Hippocrates and Galen. He would take out his frustration on his grandfather by drinking and smoking with his peers.
Culpeper fell madly in love with heiress Judith Rivers. Knowing their relationship would prove too much of a scandal, with her being born into a rich and powerful family, the two had hoped to elope. They had devised a plan where they would sail to the Netherlands and settle there until all would prove to be well.
However, this was not meant to be. During their rendezvous at Lewes, his sweetheart’s coach had been struck by lightning in a mad twist of fate. She did not survive, and the young man was devastated. He would later abandon his studies and become a recluse.
His personal tragedies would not end there. A year later, his mother passed away due to breast cancer, though the gossips would say that she died of shock upon discovering her only son’s affair with the young heiress. This would only cause Culpeper to refuse to continue his studies at Cambridge.
Naturally, his grandfather was disappointed in his grandson and disowned him from the family fortune. The reverend would use his contacts to set his grandson up with apprenticeship with the Master Apothecary, Daniel White. From then, he would sever all ties with the renegade Culpeper.
Starting Over
For seven years, Culpeper would serve as apprentice to White. Much of this time was dedicated to cataloguing various medicinal herbs. However, he never lost his fascination with astrology and would later admire the works of astrologer William Lilly. A chance meeting with Lilly would develop his fascination with the astrologer’s work, and would later provide inspiration for the struggling apprentice.
Culpeper would later marry 15-year old Alice Field, who had just very recently come into a considerable inheritance from her wealthy merchant father. Because of this, Culpeper was able to abandon his duties as an indentured apprentice and purchase a home for himself and his wife. He would later set up shop in the poorer areas of London.
Nicholas would set himself up as astrologer, botanist, and physician. This did not set well with the Society of Apothecaries, as they believed that only those who were fully qualified would be worthy to practice the craft. In their eyes, this was complete and utter defiance.
A Man of the Masses
Soon, Culpeper had a reputation for being a healer for the poor. He would sympathize with them in their plight, because he too had experienced their struggles. He was very active, seeing around 40 patients a day. He would charge very little or nothing at all for his services.
His grandfather passed away in May 1640. As a final slap to his face, he was left 40 shillings in the old Reverend’s will. This came to no surprise to him, as Culpeper only viewed his grandfather as a looming authoritarian figure who treated him more like a burden than family.
Servitude during the War
In 1642, Civil war was upon them. Culpeper responded to call-to-arms, and wanted to fight in the front lines for the Puritans. However, he was appointed field surgeon because of his medical knowledge. He would take only medicinal herbs with him. Soon, he was commissioned to captain his own infantry.
One day, during battle he was struck down by a musket shot. Though the Puritans were victorious that day, Culpeper’s days in the battlefield were over.
Affordable Treatment for All
Working amongst the poor in London sparked Culpeper’s belief that medical treatment should not be limited to just the privileged class. This would spark controversy amongst his fellow physicians who regarded him as a traitor who used unorthodox methods in treating his patients.
Culpeper was able to translate Pharmacopia Londonesis from Latin into English. This was most frowned upon by the Royal College of Physicians. Culpeper had the tome published under the name A Physical Directory in 1649. It was his desire to make herbal medicine available to those who needed it the most.
The rebel physician would later write and publish many books, which to this day continue to be of use to the medical field. His health deteriorated due to the wound he received on the battlefield. After a long battle with tuberculosis, he expired on January 10, 1654 aged just 38 years. He would leave behind his widow, Alice. Though he fathered 7 children with her, only one child named Mary would outlive her father.
It is personal tragedy that sparked inspiration into this otherwise tortured soul, and made his works immortal even unto this day.
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Nicolaus Copernicus
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Also known as the founder of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus was the first person to devise a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. Copernicus’ heliocentric theory acted as the catalyst for the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, which is sometimes known as the Copernican revolution. His work forever changed the place of man in the cosmos; no longer could man legitimately think his importance greater than his fellow creatures. Besides an astronomer he was also a great mathematician, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classical scholar, translator and artist.
Early Life:
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toru? (Thorn) in Royal Prussia, where his father, a native of Krakow, had established as a wholesale merchant. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toru? merchant. Nicolaus was the youngest child in the family. After his father’s death, he was raised by his mother’s brother, Lucas Watzelrode, a bishop in the Catholic Church. In 1941-1942 Nicolaus completed his matriculation from Kraków Academy after which he devoted himself, during three years, to mathematical science under Albert Brudzewski and incidentally attained some painting skills.
Contributions and Achievements:
During his time at the Kraków Academy he acquired a thorough mathematical-astronomical knowledge. He also studied the idealistic and natural-science writings of Aristotle and Averroes that stirred his interest in learning, and made him familiar with humanistic culture. In 1497 he resumed his studies, this time in Italy, where he went to many universities including Bologna, Padua and Ferrara. There he completed his bi-doctorate in medicine and law. By attending astronomical lectures of many Italian astronomers such as Domenico Maria Novara, Copernicus extended his astronomical knowledge.
After studying for six years, Copernicus returned to Poland in the year 1503 where he was appointed as a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg and spent a protected life for the rest of his days. In addition to his clerical duties, he continued his astronomical research and medical practice.
From 1513, the foundation of his great work was laid down at Frauenburg, where he began work on his heliocentric theory. His theory was a concise description of the world’s heliocentric mechanism, without mathematical apparatus, and varyied in some important aspects of geometric construction from De revolutionibus; but it was already based on the same assumptions regarding Earth’s triple motions.
He wrote a manuscript explaining his new theory which was read by many astronomers, and rumors of Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolves about the sun spread all through Europe. His theory attracted many mathematicians and various astronomers who came to Copernicus to learn more about his new theory. One of them, Rheticus, even published a book unfolding this theory in 1540. Even though Copernicus finished writing his book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, about a decade earlier, in 1530, he postponed its publication fearing the reactions his ground-breaking theory might stir up.
However, he finally published his book in 1543, the same year he died. His book is considered to serve the beginning of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the scientific revolution.
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Niels Bohr
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Niels Henrik David Bohr is considered as one of most dominant and influential physicists of the 20th century. His remarkable work in understanding the atomic structure and quantum Mechanics earned him the Nobel Price in Physics in 1922. He also acted as a prominent part of the team of physicists working on the Manhattan Project. His contribution to the field of physics has received remarkable praise from many scientists all over the world.
Bohr’s Early Life and Educational Background:
The Danish physicist was born on 7 October 1885 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He belonged to a highly influential and well educated family. His father, Professor Christian Bohr taught physiology at the University of Copenhagen, while his mother Ellen Adler, came from a prominent Jew family. It was his father who was greatly responsible for awakening his interest in physics. In his adolescence, he played for Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub as a footballer.
Bohr received his early education at the Gammelholm Grammar School. In 1903, he joined the Copenhagen University, where he initially studied philosophy and mathematics. After he won a prize for an essay on physics he decided to adopt physics and drop philosophy. He received his Master’s degree in Physics in 1909. Bohr completed his Doctorate from Christian Christiansen in 1911. Later he conducted experiments under the guidance Professor J. J. Thomson at the Trinity College, Cambridge as a post doctorate student.
Professor Bohr got married, in 1912, to Margrethe Nørlund. They had six sons, out of which one died in an accident and the other died in childhood. One of his sons, Aage Bohr, carried Niels’ work forward and became a physicist. Aage was also awarded the Nobal Prize in physics in 1975.
Bohr’s Contributions:
In 1913, Bohr’s model of atomic structure was published which became the basis of the famous quantum theory. In 1916, Niels Bohr became a Professor at the University of Copenhagen and later founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics in 1921. Bohr’s institute became headquarter for theoretical physicists and most of the best known physicists contributed there.
Due to security reasons Niels Bohr assumed the name of Nicholas baker for the top-secret Manhattan Project in New Mexico, America. Soon after the World War II, Bohr started advocating the peaceful use of nuclear energy in Copenhagen.
‘The Bohr model of the atom’, ‘The shell model of the atom’, ‘The correspondence principle’, ‘The liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus’, the identification of uranium isotope and ‘The principle of complementarity’ are some of his major contributions to the field of physics and chemistry.
Final Days:
Bohr died on 18th November 1962, at the age of 77 because of a heart failure. He is buried in the Assistens Kierkegaard in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1965, in honor of Bohr the Institute of Physics at the University of Copenhagen changed its name to the Niels Bohr Institute. Chemical Element ‘Bohrium’ and ‘Asteroid 3948 Bohr’ being named after him are few of his legacies.
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Nikola Tesla
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Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer and inventor who is highly regarded in energy history for his development of alternating current (AC) electrical systems. He also made extraordinary contributions in the fields of electromagnetism and wireless radio communications.
Early Life and Education:
Nikola Tesla was born in the Croatian town of Smiljan (Austrian Empire) in 1856 to a priest father. He studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz and later attended the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. Unfortunately his father died early, and he had to leave the university after completing only one term.
Tesla accepted a job under Tivadar Puskás in a Budapest telegraph company in 1880. He was later promoted to chief electrician and later engineer for the company. He later moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company as an engineer.
Contributions and Achievements:
After moving to New York, United States, Tesla worked for Thomas Alva Edison, but the two did not get along well. He started working with George Westinghouse in 1885. There, he devised an electrical distribution system that employed alternating current (AC).
Tesla made public the first successful wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891.
Probably Tesla’s most important contribution to energy history is the use of alternating current (AC). The Westinghouse Electric Company was the first implement this technology by lighting the World Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It proved to be a more efficient and effective method as compared to the direct current (DC) system of Edison to transport electricity in a grid. The technology quickly became the basis for most modern electricity distribution systems. Besides the AC system, Tesla helped in the development of generators and turbine design. The earliest demonstration fluorescent lighting was also his accomplishment.
Later Life and Death:
Nikola Tesla continued his research work on electricity generation and turbine design in his later life. Even at 81, he claimed to have completed a “dynamic theory of gravity” – something which was never published. He died in New York City of a heart thrombus in January 1943. He was 86 years old.
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Noam Chomsky
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Noam Chomsky is an eminent American theoretical linguist, cognitive scientist and philosopher, who radically changed the arena of linguistics by assuming language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. He suggested that innate traits in the human brain give birth to both language and grammar. The most important figure in “cognitive revolution” and “analytic philosophy”, Chomsky’s wide-ranging influence also extends to computer science and mathematics.
Early Life and Education:
Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928. Both his parents were prominent Hebrew scholars. He entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, where he achieved a bachelor’s degree in linguistics in 1949, a master’s degree in 1951, and later earned his doctorate in 1955.
Contributions and Achievements:
Noam Chomsky became a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and perfomed his services at MIT as a visiting professor. Influenced by the ideas of his mentor, Zellig Harris, Chomsky published his famous work, “Syntactic Structures”, in 1957. During that era, concepts regarding the origin of language were inspired by behaviorist ideas, for instance those of renowned Swedish psychologist B. F. Skinner, who advocated that newborn babies had a blank mind (tabula rasa) and that children acquired language by means of learning and mimickry.
Chomsky rejected that belief and argued that human beings were in fact born with the innate ability to realize the generative grammars that constitute every human language. Children make use of this innate ability to learn the languages that they are exposed to.
Chomsky established his linguistic theory in 1965 with “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax”, and in 1975, with “The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory”. Later works in cognitive science supported his claims. The influence of Chomsky on linguistics is similar to that of Charles Darwin on evolution and biology. His ideas have significant logical implications for various subjects of psychology, and also extends to cognitive science, anthropology, sociology and neurology.
Later Life:
Noam Chomsky won an honorary fellowship at the Literary and Historical Society in 2005. Two years later, he received The Uppsala University Honorary Doctor’s degree in 2007, named after Carolus Linnaeus. He was honored with the President’s Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2008. Chomsky has been serving as an honorary member of The International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI) since 2009.
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Omar Khayyam
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Omar Khayyam was one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He was acknowledged as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times. This is reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, has not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings.
Early life and Career:
Omar Khayyam was born on the 18th of May, 1048 AD in Iran. Omar Khayyam’s full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu’l-Fath Umar Ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami. He was born into a family of tent makers. He spent part of his childhood in the town of Balkh, northern Afghanistan, studying under Sheik Muhammad Mansuri. Later on, he studied under Imam Mowaffaq Nishapuri, who was considered one of the greatest teachers of the Khorassan region. Khayyam had notable works in geometry, particularly on the theory of proportions.
He was a Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. He wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, and music. The treatise of Khayyam can be considered as the first treatment of parallels axiom which is not based on petition principle but on more intuitive postulate. Khayyam refutes the previous attempts by other Greek and Persian mathematicians to prove the proposition. And he refused the use of motion in geometry.
Khayyam was the mathematician who noticed the importance of a general binomial theorem. The argument supporting the claim that Khayyam had a general binomial theorem is based on his ability to extract roots. Khayyam was part of a panel that introduced several reforms to the Persian calendar. On March 15, 1079, Sultan Malik Shah, accepted this corrected calendar as the official Persian calendar.
Khayyam’s poetic work has eclipsed his fame as a mathematician. He has written about a thousand four-line verses or quatrains. In the English-speaking world, he was introduced through the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam which are rather free-wheeling English translations by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883). Khayyam’s personal beliefs are discernible from his poetic oeuvre. In his own writings, Khayyam rejects strict religious structure and a literalist conception of the afterlife.
Khayyam taught for decades the philosophy of Avicenna, especially in his home town Nishapur, till his death. Khayyam, the philosopher can be understood from two rather distinct sources. One is through his Rubaiyat and the other through his own works in light of the intellectual and social conditions of his time. The latter could be informed by the evaluations of Khayyam’s works by scholars and philosophers such as Bayhaqi, Nezami Aruzi, and Zamakhshari and Sufi poets and writers Attar Nishapuri and Najmeddin Razi. As a mathematician, Khayyam has made fundamental contributions to the Philosophy of mathematics especially in the context of Persian Mathematics and Persian philosophy with which, most of the other Persian scientists and philosophers such as Avicenna, Biruni, and Tusi are associated.
Death:
Omer Khayyam passed away on December the 4th 1131 in Nishapur, Persia now known as Iran.
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Otto Hahn
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Otto Hahn was a German chemist and researcher, who is widely considered to be one of the most influential nuclear chemists in history. He pioneered the fields of radiochemistry and radioactivity. Also known as “the father of nuclear chemistry”, Hahn crusaded against the use of nuclear weapons after World War II. As an influential citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, he had also strongly opposed Jewish persecution by the Nazis.
Early Life and Education:
Hahn was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1879 to a rich entrepreneur named Heinrich Hahn. He developed an interest in chemistry at 15, though his father wanted him to study architecture. He studied chemistry and mineralogy and later received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Marburg in 1901, where also worked for two years as an assistant to his doctoral supervisor Theodor Zincke.
Contributions and Achievements:
Hahn accepted a job at the University College of London in 1904, where the famous discovery of radiothorium, a new radioactive substance, took place. He continued his pioneering research in nuclear chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, where he discovered radioactinium, a radioactive isotope of thorium.
He went back to Germany in 1907 and joined the University of Berlin as a lecturer. Hahn made his most significant contribution to energy history in 1938. While working with Fritz Strassmann, a fellow chemist, he discovered that the element barium was produced when uranium atoms were bombarded with neutrons.
Actually Hahn and Strassmann had come upon nuclear fission, the primary chemical process involved in a nuclear reaction. This legendary discovery indirectly helped develop the atomic bomb and nuclear energy. For his discovery of nuclear fission, Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944. He went forward with his research and the development and separation of new elements using the process of nuclear fission.
Later Life and Death:
Otto Hahn joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) in 1946. He was the last president of the institution. Hahn was also founding president of the Max Planck Society (MPG), where performed his duties from 1948 to 1960.
Hahn died on July 28, 1968. He was 89 years old.
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Otto Haxel
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There were a lot of scientists who made their names during the Second World War, and a lot of them were involved in the field of physics and nuclear development. Because of the need for solutions for the problems then, there were a lot of chances for those who aspired to be known to make their marks and contributions. One of those scientists happened to be Otto Haxel, a nuclear physicist from Germany who had a hand in the German nuclear energy projects. Being a noted name in nuclear physics, he had been a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group of the German Atomic Energy Commission, and like several other bright minds of those times, he also held academic positions which allowed him to share his knowledge in the field of nuclear physics.
Early Life and Educational Background
Otto Haxel was born on the 2nd of April in 1909 in Neu-Ulm in Bavaria, Germany. He had his education from the Technische Hochschule München, which is now known as the Technische Universität München, from 1927-1933. During those years, he also took courses from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, and he was able to receive his doctorate in 1933. He was under Hans Geiger’s supervision for his doctorate, and Geiger had been known for the invention of the Geiger counter. Being under Geiger’s tutelage, he had taken the opportunity to be Geiger’s teaching assistant at the University of Tübingen from 1933 up to 1936. Because of his experience in the academic field, Haxel was able to complete his Habilitation in the year 1936.
Academic Career and Other Pursuits
Haxel’s academic affiliation with Geiger paved his way to become a notable figure in the academic scene back then as well. He was able to go to the Technische Hochschule Berlin and became one of the teaching assistants there after his Habilitation had been completed. In 1939, he became a lecturer at the same university. About a year later, Haxel met Fritz Houtermans, who was going to be one of his future collaborators. This meeting was made possible through Max von Laue because Houtermans had just been released from the Gestapo incarceration.
Otto Haxel had been one of the members of the Uranverein or the Uranium Club. This club was also known as the German nuclear energy project, and several of the greatest scientific minds of Germany had been recruited for their cause. From the years 1940 up to 1942, Haxel was a member of the Uranium club, and he had his specialty on studying neutron absorption properties that uranium had. After his time with the Uranium Club, he was called for military service in 1942. There, he was in charge of a group which was doing nuclear research. They were under Admiral Rhein of the German Navy—he had previously been a submarine commander.
From the years 1946 up to 1950, Haxel was the staff of Werner Heisenberg who was then at the Max-Planck Institu fur Physik. In 1949, he had been appointed as the supernumerary professor at the Georg-August-Universität in Gottingen. These years were spent in Gottingen and it was during his time there when he had his collaborative work with Houtermans. Houtermans was working at the II. Physikalischen Institut which was at the University of Gottingen when they did their collaborative work.
Another notable name Haxel had been affiliated with is J. Hans D. Jensen, who had been a scientist working in Heidelberg’s Institut für theoretische Physik, and Hans Suess from Hamburg’s Institut für physikalische Chemie. Together, their collaborative work had been on “magic numbers” and their development.
Haxel himself had been one of the ordinarius professors in Germany, and he was the ordinarius professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg for their physics department. He had also been the director of the Unversity of Heidelberg’s II. Physikalischen Institut. Apart from his scientific endeavors and contributions, he was able to contribute to the movement of environmental physics. This was made possible through his application of nuclear physics. Because of his development of environmental physics and other significant contributions, it led to the formation of the Institute of Environmental Physics, which is also known as the Institut für Umweltphysik. This was founded in 1975, and Karl-Otto Münnich had been the founding director.
Apart from being a member of the Uranium Club, Haxel had also played a part in other notable groups which were about science. From 1956 to 1957, he became a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group also known as the Arbeitskreis Kernphysik which was under the Commission II “Research and Growth” or Fachkommission II, Forschung und Nachwuchs of the German Atomic Energy Commission. While he was a member of the Nuclear Physics working group, he was able to work alongside the chairman Werner Heisenberg and vice-chairman Hans Kopfermann.
From 1970 to 1975, he had been the Scientific and Technical Managing Director or wissenschaftlich-technischen Geschäftsführer of the Karlsruhe Research Center or Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. He had also been a signatory of the Gottingen Eighteen manifesto.
His Latter Years
Because of his contributions for the nuclear energy industry, the Friends of the Karlsruhe Research Center was established and they award the Otto Haxel Prize to bright minds who have their own achievements in nuclear energy studies. Haxel himself had been awarded the Otto Hahn Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main because of his work and dedication for channeling nuclear energy and understanding its production.
On a more personal note, Haxel’s friendship with Houtermans led to his very own marriage. Houtermans had four marriages. Houtermans had been married to Ilse Bartz, who was a chemical engineer and they worked together when they had to publish a paper. Ilse and Houtermans got divorced, however, and Haxel married her after she was divorced from Houtermans. Houtermans then remarried Charlotte Reifenstahl, who was a physicist, whom he married as his first wife. It can be said that because of his affiliation and friendship with Houtermans, it had been the way for him to have met his own wife.
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Paul Dirac
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Paul Dirac (full name: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac) was an English theoretical physicist and mathematician who is widely regarded to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Noted for his 1928 relativistic quantum theory of the electron, and for predicting of the existence of antiparticles, Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrödinger.
Early Life and Education:
Born on August 8, 1902 in Bristol, England, Paul Dirac’s father was an immigrant from Saint-Maurice, Switzerland who taught French. He attended the Bishop Road Primary School, and later the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, where his father was a French teacher. Dirac acquired a degree in electrical engineering at the University of Bristol in 1921.
When theory of relativity became famous in 1919, he gained an interest in the technical aspect of relativity. Dirac joined the University of Cambridge as a research student in 1923, where he further developed Heisenberg’s unpublished hypothesis regarding quantum mechanics.
Contributions and Achievements:
Paul Dirac is known as one of the greatest physicists in history. His contributions laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He formulated quantum field theory after reworking his own Dirac equation as a many-body equation. The work predicted the existence of antimatter and matter–antimatter annihilation. Dirac was the first physicist to devise quantum electrodynamics. He also discovered the magnetic monopole solutions.
Dirac was made Lucasian professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1932, where he taught for almost 37 years. He began indepedent research in the area of quantum theory in 1925. A few years later, he published his famous work “The principles of quantum mechanics” (1932), for which he shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrödinger. He was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society in 1930.
Later Life and Death:
Paul Dirac died on October 20, 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida. He was 82 years old.
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Paul Ehrlich
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Paul Ehrlich was a German scientist whose influence extended across diverse fields, including immunology, hematology and chemotherapy. Ehrlich discovered the first practical treatment for syphilis, for which he shared the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Russian biologist Élie Metchnikoff.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1854 into an affluent Jewish family, Paul Ehrlich developed an interest in the process of staining cells with chemical dyes as a youth. He studied medicine at the Universities of Strasbourg, Breslau, Freiburg and Leipzig. Ehrlich earned his medical degree from the University of Leipzig in 1878.
Contributions and Achievements:
During his experimentation with cellular staining, Ehrlich noticed that chemical reactions took place in cells and that these reactions were the cause of cellular processes. He concluded that chemical agents could cure diseased cells and fight infectious agents, an idea that radically changed therapeutics and medical diagnostics. Ehrlich coined the term “chemotherapy”. He also detected a particular chemical reaction in the urine of typhoid patients and made important contributions for the treatment of various eye diseases.
Ehrlich was appointed a head physician at Charité Hospital, Berlin, where he came up with an exclusive staining method to recognize the tuberculosis bacillus. Ehrlich also differentiated the various kinds of blood cells of the body, and by doing so, became one of the founders of hematology. Ehrlich discovered the application of methylene blue for curing nervous disorders.
He published about 37 scientific papers between 1879 and 1885. Perhaps his most influential work, “Das Sauerstoff-Bedürfniss des Organismus” (The Requirement of the Organism for Oxygen), published in 1885, maintained that oxygen consumption changes with various types of tissue and that these changes form a measure of the intensity of vital cell processes.
Later Life and Death:
Paul Ehrlich shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Russian biologist Élie Metchnikoff in 1908. He died of a stroke in Hesse, Germany, on August 20, 1915. Ehrlich was 61 years old.
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Pearl Kendrick
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Whooping coughs can bring a lot of discomfort to individuals affected by it. Pearl Kendrick, an American bacteriologist, helped in co-developing the vaccine which counters whooping cough. Apart from this breakthrough, she also had contributions for improving the international vaccine standards to better promote health protection. Her name is one of the more prominent names for women who have contributed to science and although she wasn’t the sole inventor of the vaccine, her other contributions have made their own mark for various healthcare concerns.
Early Life and Educational Background
The reason behind inventing a vaccine which can counter whooping cough was that when Pearl Kendrick, born Pearl Louella Kendrick in August 24, 1890 turned three years old, she had been hit with whooping cough. Back then it was known as “pertussis” and it was named after the bacteria called Bordetella pertussis. Around 45 years later she had her revenge by developing the very first anti whooping cough vaccine.
Pearl’s father was a preacher, and in 1908, she graduated from high school. She first attended Greenville College where she stayed for a year before moving to Syracuse University where she received her diploma in the year 1914. In 1934, she graduated from Johns Hopkins University.
Pearl Kendrick’s Quest to Fight Whooping Cough
As a backgrounder, whooping cough during those times was a dreadful disease and during the year where it was most prevailent, it had claimed more than 6000 lives in just the United States alone. In the 1940s, whooping cough had been responsible for infant deaths—even more so than measles, polio, tuberculosis, and it had caused so much more childhood deaths compared to all those infant diseases combined. The effects caused by whooping cough were so alarming that infected children had been quarantined for two weeks while wearing a yellow armband which had the words “whooping cough” in big black letters.
Having been affected by this condition, it was one of Kendrick’s motivation to find a solution to counter whooping cough. She was a native of the Grand Rapids of Michigan, and while she was there, she had an office at the Western Michigan Branch Laboratory of the Michigan Department of Health. During the same period, she began to immerse herself in concerns about public health at the same time she was working her way to have her Ph.D. in microbiology.
While she was at Western Michigan Branch Laboratory, she met Grace Elderling who was going to be her partner in discovering the vaccine which would eventually counter whooping cough. Kendrick had a heart for promoting better children’s health programs and with Elderling, they were the perfect team. However, it was the time of the Great Depression, and because of this, funding for research as well as making programs realities were scarce—a major challenge which the team faced.
This did not, however, stop Kendrick and Elderling from developing the vaccine to counter whooping cough—something which they actually did during their off hours when work in the laboratory was over. It was in 1932 when she began this research, and it began as a fun engagement which later on turned out to be something which could save millions of lives.
Kendrick used the Grand Rapids as her clinical trial area and she was working with a team of local physicians to develop the vaccine along with Elderling. Samples were collected from the physicians in the area, and these same physicians also were the first ones who had their very first test vaccines.
Times were hard because of the lack of funding, but this didn’t stop Kendrick who wasn’t doing this for personal acclaim but really just to help improve the lives of those who were potentially going to be affected by whooping cough. In 1936, Kendrick had the chance to invite the first lady then, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt to her laboratory. Initially, the first lady thought of using orphans to investigate further how the trial vaccines could work. This idea, however, did not sit well with Kendrick. Kendrick suggested to work based on the ties she has made with the locals of the Grand Rapids area from where she can find willing volunteers who can make finding more conclusive results possible. The first lady spend a total of 13 hours with Kendrick that day, and probably seeing a heart and a spirit for her work, she helped provide funding for the research done by Kendrick and Elderling.
Because of the funding which came after the first lady’s visit, Kendrick and Elderling were able to continue working on a larger scale trial come 1934. This trial later on involved more than 5,800 children from which they were able to gain positive and conclusive results from. The results were astounding. The children who first received the vaccine demonstrated having a stronger immune system—indicative of the positive effects of the vaccine.
During that large-scale trial, Kendrick also addressed the situation concerning quarantine times. According to Kendrick, affected children can be infectious from up to a period of 3 weeks, but after 5 weeks, more than 90 percent of them were no longer infectious. Because of these findings, Michigan adapted a 35-day quarantine period.
In the year 1934, the vaccine which Kendrick and Elderling created was used all over the United States as a routine vaccine. In the early years of 1960, incidences of whooping cough had decreased to less than 5% compared to the rate in 1934. This success in coming up with a vaccine to counter whooping cough did not stop Kendrick and Elderling in coming up with better solutions for child health concerns. In 1942, they were able to combine 3 vaccines into a single shot which fought diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. This is now known as the DPT shot which is now a standard vaccine nationwide. Of note is that although whooping cough incidences have been reduced all over the United States, it still continues to cause deaths in some other developing countries of the world.
Kendrick retired from her work as a member of the Michigan Department of Public Health in 1951. She then became one of the faculty members of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. On October 8, 1980, she died at the age of 90 in the Grand Rapids.
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Percy Lavon Julian
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It has been said that Mother Nature has all sorts of plants that can make a difference in the way people take care of their health and also ward off diseases and remedy ailments. One man that has made use of plants to come up with drugs that remedy illnesses is Percy Lavon Julian. Percy Lavon Julian is a research chemist and one of the first advocates of plant-based drugs from the U.S. In fact, he is one of the first men to study the chemical fusion of medicinal drugs that are derived from plants.
His other distinctions include being the first chemist to fuse physostigmine which is a natural product and pioneering the large-scale, industrial production involving the chemical fusion of steroids, progesterone, testosterone and human hormones derived from sitosterol and stigmasterol—both derived from plants. The work of Percy Lavon Julian would help start the path for the production of corticosteroids, pills for birth control and cortisone production.
Later on, Percy Lavon Julian would put up his own business to integrate steroid intermediates that were derived from wild yams from Mexico. This work of his would help lower the price of steroid intermediates that pharmaceutical manufacturers paid for such things which meant that his works also helped them expand the usage of a number of important drugs.
Percy Lavon Julian was really quite prolific in that he received approximately 130 patents for his chemical discoveries. In fact, Percy Lavon Julian was one of the very first black citizens to get a Ph.D. in chemistry. Another feather in his hat is that he is also known as the first ever black chemist to be given a spot in the National Academy of Scientists. He was also the second black man in any field to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. The first was a man named David Blackwell.
He had a lot to go through in terms of his life, career and studies mainly because he was African-American, and he lived during a time where their rights weren’t at all recognized. He also overcame personal scandals to become the great scientist and chemist that the world knows him to be.
Education and Life
Percy Lavon Julian hailed from Montgomery, Alabama and he was the eldest if 6 kids. His parents were Elizabeth Lena Julian Adams and his father was James Sumner Julian. Both Percy Lavon Julian’s parents were graduates of a school that was to become the Alabama State University of modern times. James, his father, worked as a clerk in the USPS. Percy Lavon Julian’s paternal grandfather worked as a slave. While his mother had a good job working as a teacher, Percy grew up in a rather racist environment since it was the time when the uber-racist Jim Crow laws were deeply entrenched in US culture. This was what made the achievements of the Julian family rather extraordinary since they lived during a time where most African-Americans didn’t always move past the 8th grade. However, Percy Lavon Julian’s parents made it a point that their kids were able to obtain higher education.
In college, Percy Lavon Julian went to DePauw University which was in Greencastle, Indiana. The college had limited slots for African-Americans and Julian was forced to live in ways that were rather humiliating due to the segregation which so firmly encroached the rights of their kind. For one, he was prohibited to stay in the dorm and he had to live in a dorm off-campus that would not even give him meals. It was a very long time before he found a place that would serve him food.
He wanted to get a Ph.D. in chemistry but he found out that it wasn’t too easy for African-Americans. That wouldn’t hold him back. He moved to Harvard for his Austin Fellowship but the school withdrew his teaching assistantship since they were worried that their white students wouldn’t be too happy being taught by a black man. He wasn’t able to get his Ph.D.
The Turning Point
There was a point in his life where a scandal broke out and he had to leave his job. This was when Julian’s mentor, a man named William Blanchard, served as a savior and threw him a life-line that he so desperately needed. Julian was offered a teaching position at DePauw University in 1932 and he was to teach Organic Chemistry—this was in 1932. Josef Pikl, a student from the University of Vienna, was asked by Julian to visit the US and in 1935 the pair was able to complete their work which involved the total synthesis of a chemical called “physostigmine.” The pair also confirmed a structural formula which they assigned to it.
Another of Julian’s major works involved the extraction of stigmasterol which was a chemical that could serve as raw material to make human steroidal hormones since his wife was suffering from infertility at that time. He got the name from the West African Calabar bean Physostigma venenosum. It was around the same time that German scientists Butenandt and Fernholz studied stigmasterol from soybean oil which could also be turned into progesterone.
His Work on Steroids
After he was denied a job at DePauw for racial reasons, he then tried to look for a job in Appleton, Wisconsin but was denied again since the city had a law against African-Americans staying in the city after sundown. Instead, he got soybean oil from a company called Glidden where he would use the oil to be the starting point to synthesize human steroidal sex hormones.
Glidden offered him a job where he supervised a plant in the year 1936. His job at Glidden took a turn in 1940 when he started to work on fusing estrogen, testosterone and progesterone that came from stigmasterol, sitosterol and plant sterols from soybean oil. He used a foam technique which he came up with and patented.
His Death
This brilliant man died on the 19th of April 1975 of cancer. He was buried at the Elm Lawn Cemetery in Illinois.
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Peter Debye
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Physics is a field dominated by some of the most famous names in history. One man that had a lot to contribute to the field of physics is one Peter Debye. He is a Dutch-American physical chemist and physicist who was also a Nobel Laureate for Chemistry. He was a brilliant man with lots of interesting projects and theories to share with the world.
His Early Life
Peter Debye was born on 24 March 1884 in Maastricht, Netherlands. His name was originally Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije but records show that he eventually changed the name. Peter Debye went to school at Aachen University of Technology that was located in Rhenish, Prussia. It was just 30km away from his hometown. In school, he focused on studying mathematics and classical physics. He got an electrical engineering degree in 1905 and just 2 years later, in 1907, he published his very first paper that featured a most elegant solution to be used for solving problems that concerned eddy currents. While he was studying at Aachen, he was taught theoretical physics by Arnold Sommerfeld. Arnold Sommerfeld – who was a theoretical physicist – has stated that it was actually Peter Debye that he considered as one of his most important discoveries.
In 1906, Sommerfeld took Debye with him to Munich, Bavaria where he was given a job. Debye was to be his assistant. It was in 1908 when Debye obtained his doctorate degree and submitted his dissertation paper on the subject of radiation pressure. In the year 1910, he used a method to derive the Planck radiation formula. Mac Planck, who already had a formula for the same problem agreed that Debye’s formula was a lot simpler.
The year 1911 saw Debye moving to Switzerland where he would teach at the University of Zurich. The position opened when Albert Einstein agreed to take on a job as a professor in Prague. After his stint at the University of Zurich, he moved to Utrecht in 1912, and then to Gottingen a year after in 1913. He stayed a bit longer in Gottingen but in 1920 he moved to ETH Zurich. It took another 7 years for him to make the move to Leipzig in 1927 and then to Berlin in 1934. Again, he succeeded Einstein and became the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics director. It was during the era of Debye as director that most of the facilities of the Institute were built. In 1936, Debye was granted the Lorentz Medal and he became the Deutsche Physikalische Gesselschaft president from 1937 to 1939.
Contributions to Science
Indeed, he was a man of many talents and visions and this could be seen in his scientific works. The very first of his many major scientific contributions was in 1912 when he found a way to use the dipole moment to the movement of charges in asymmetric molecules. This was what led him to begin developing equations that related dipole moments to dielectric and temperature constants. It was because of this work that the units for molecular dipole moments are called debyes. In the same year, he went to work to expand on the theory of specific heat to lower temperatures simply by using low-frequency phonons. The theory of specific heat was first put forth by Albert Einstein.
A year after he went to work to extend the specific heat theory put forth by Einstein, he again went to work on the theory of Neils Bohr on atomic structure. It was this time that he introduced elliptical orbits. The concept was not something new, though, since his teacher Arnold Sommerfeld already introduced it before Debye did. From 1914-15, Peter Debye worked with Paul Scherrer on calculating the effect of varying temperatures on crystalline solids and the X-ray diffraction patterns they generated.
In 1923, Debye worked with Erich Huckel, his assistant, to develop and improve the theory of electrical conductivity in electrolyte solutions that were put forth by Svante Arrhenius. They did manage to make some improvements by way of the Debye-Huckel equation and while it is true that Lars Onsager made further improvements to their equation, the original equation is still looked upon as a major step towards gaining a better understanding of solutions that involved electrolytes. That same year, in 1923, Peter Debye went to work on developing a theory to help understand the Compton Effect.
His Later Work
Debye worked as a director of physics from 1934 to 39 at the Kiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin as the director of physics. From 1936 onwards, he also held a job at the Frederick William Institute of Berlin as a Theoretical Physics professor. It is important to note that in the years he held these positions, Hitler was already the ruler of Nazi Germany and also in Austria.
Debye went to the US and went to Cornell University where he delivered the Baker Lectures. He left Germany a year later and became a professor at the same university where he also served as chairman of the Chemistry department. He held the position for a decade and even became a member of the Alpha Chi Sigma fraternity. He was granted US citizenship in 1940 and unlike the Debye of earlier years where he moved around from position to position, he actually stayed at Cornell for the rest of his career. In 1952, he retired from the University but that did not stop him from conducting research until he died.
Personal Life
In some biographies, it was stated that Debye moved to the US because he refused to accept the citizenship that was foisted on him by the Nazis. Although some records state that Debye was actively participating in cleansing the Wilhelm Kaiser Institute of Jewish people and other non-Aryan people, this truth is still being debated.
Peter Debye got married to Mathilde Alberer in 1913 and they had a son named Peter P. Debye. They also had a daughter which they named Mathilde Maria. Peter, their son, became a physicist and worked with his father on some researches. The younger Peter Debye also had a son who became a chemist.
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Pierre Curie
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Pierre Curie was a French physical chemist who discovered radium and polonium, while studying radioactivity with his wife, Marie Curie. Widely considered to be one of the founders of founders of modern physics, he pioneered the fields of crystallography, magnetism and piezoelectricity. Curie shared the 1903 the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife for their work on radiation.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Paris, France on May 15, 1859, Pierre Curie was a childhood prodigy. He showed an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics and geometry. Curie completed the equivalent of a higher degree when he was only 18, but failed to pursue a doctorate due to some financial problems. He instead accepted a job as a laboratory instructor.
Contributions and Achievements:
Pierre Curie is widely credited to be one of the founders of modern physics. As a young researcher, his work had already brought important discoveries related to heat waves, crystals, magnetism and symmetry. He formulated the Curie’s law before he married Marie Sklowdowska in 1895. The Curies, the husband and wife, together discovered polonium and radium while conducting research in radioactivity.
Together with Henri Becquerel, the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for their revolutionary work on radioactivity.
Later Life and Death:
Pierre Curie died in a street accident in Paris on 19 April 1906. He was only 46 years old.
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Pierre-Simon Laplace
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Pierre-Simon Laplace was a prominent French mathematical physicist and astronomer of the 19th century, who made crucial contributions in the arena of planetary motion by applying Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation to the entire solar system. His work regarding the theory of probability and statistics is considered pioneering and has influenced a whole new generation of mathematicians.
Early Life and Education:
Pierre-Simon Laplace entered Caen University when he was only 16 and he soon developed a strong interest in mathematics. When he was only 19, he moved to Paris, without finishing his degree, to work as a professor of mathematics at the École Militaire with the fellow mathematician Jean-le-Rond D’Alembert. Five years later, Laplace had already written 13 scientific papers regarding integral calculus, mechanics and physical astronomy, which gained him fame and acclaim all over France.
Contributions and Achievements:
Pierre-Simon Laplace is highly regarded for his influential five-volume treatise “Traité de mécanique céleste” (Celestial mechanics; 1799-1825), which developed a strong mathematical understanding of the motion of the heavenly bodies, including several anomalies and inequalities that were noticed in their orbits. Laplace suggested that the nature of the universe is completely deterministic.
Laplace heavily contributed in the development of differential equations, difference equations, probability and statistics. His 1812 work “Théorie analytique des probabilités” (Analytic theory of probability) furthered the subjects of probability and statistics significantly.
Laplace was made a member of the Paris Academic des Sciences in 1773, where he assumed a senior position in 1785. He was given the duty of standardizing all European weights and measures.
His work on celestial mechanics is considered revolutionary. He established that the small perturbations observed in the orbital motion of the planets will always remain small, constant and self-correcting. He was the earliest astronomer to suggest the idea that the solar system originated from the contraction and cooling of a large rotating, and consequently flattened, nebula of incandescent gas. Laplace published his famous work on probability in 1812. He supplied his own definition of probability and applied it to justify the fundamental mathematical manipulations.
Later Life and Death:
Laplace died in Paris, France, on March 5, 1827. He was 77 years old. It is impossible to overstate the influence Laplace had on the progress of the mathematical theory of mechanics. Various fundamental concepts, for instance the Laplace operator in potential theory and the Laplace transform in the study of differential equations, are named after him.
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Prafulla Chandra Ray
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Early Life and Education:
Prafulla Chandra Ray, one of the first Indian chemical researchers, studied at the prestigious Edinburgh University. After graduating from university, he took a position as a Chemistry Professor at the Presidency College in 1889. Berthelot who was a very famous chemist, helped and encouraged him with his admirable research in Ayurveda.
Contributions and Achievements:
In 1902, his research work of History of Hindu Chemistry was published. In 1892, he established Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works that incredibly flourished under Ray’s management. Ray represented many Indian universities at international seminars and congresses. He got elected as the Indian Science Congress President in 1920.
Prafulla Chandra Ray wanted to use the marvels of science for lifting up the masses. Many of his articles on science got published in renowned journals of his time. Ray was a very passionate and devoted social worker and he participated eagerly and actively in helping out the famine struck people in Bengal in 1922. He promoted the khadi material and also set up many cottage industries. He was a true rationalist and he was completely again the caste system and other irrational social systems etc. He persistently carried on this work of social reformation till he passed away.
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Prokop Divis
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When it comes to the development of lighting rods, you may initially think of Benjamin Franklin and his electricity-related experiments. You may not know of Prokop Divis who happens to be the first one who invented the grounded lighting rod which is still used in today’s modern infrastructures. He was also a natural scientist, theologian, and one of the Czech canon regulars during his time. A man of science from the earlier centuries, Prokop Divis thought ahead of his time and made this classic invention.
Early Life and Background
Prokop Divis was born as Václav Divíšek on the 26th of March back in 1698. He was born in Helvíkovice, Bohemia which is now known as Ústí nad Orlicí District of the Czech Republic. When he was a child, his initial studies began when he went to the Jesuit gymnasium in their town. In 1716, when Prokop was 18, he then entered a gymnasium which was run in Louka, in one of the Premonasterian abbeys there. It was there where he was able to complete his basic education in 1719.
After he was able to complete his basic education, he chose to enter the novitiate of the abbey and he took the name Prokop or what is also known as “Procopius.” A year after his entry into the novitiate, he was able to complete the probation period. Another year later, he professed the religious vows he had in the Order.
Prokop then continued to improve his knowledge by studying both theology and philosophy while he was preparing for his ordination into priesthood. He was ordained later on in 1726. Three years later, he began to teach philosophy at that abbey’s gymnasium. He taught until 1735 and during this time, Prokop had been instructed by his abbot to go to the Paris Lodron University, now known as the University of Salzburg. While he was there, he pursued his advanced studies in the field of theology. He was able to complete his doctoral dissertation and in 1733, he was able to have his Doctor of Theology degree.
After the completion of his degree, he went back to the abbey and resumed how he was with the monastic life being a canon regular. There, he served as the abbey’s sub-prior. In 1736, he was then appointed as a pastor of one of the parishes in Primetice which is now a part of Znojmo. He was in that area for 5 years until he was called back to his own abbey in 1741. When he was recalled that April he then became the abbey’s prior.
Career as a Scientist
Although definitely a man who believed in God and served the church, Prokop still was able to make his own contribution as an inventor and scientist whose product is still being used today. He earned the needed experience to come up with his invention when he was still in the parish.
During his time in the parish, Prokop had been responsible for managing the farmland which was in their vinicinty. He was also in charge of the water conduit construction there, which gave him the exposure he needed to understand how things worked. Because of the time he spent managing the farm, he developed an interest for something which was then the current buzz in the scientific community—electricity. After his curiosity was piqued, he began to perform his own experiments and with great success.
When Georg Wilhelm Richmann who was one of the professors at St. Petersburg reached Prokop’s knowledge, he then became interested in atmospheric electricity. The cause of death of Richmann had been because of being struck by lightning. Since electricity was a big thing back then, exploring all possible options as well as sources of electricity had sparked the interest of Prokop. Because of the instance of Richmann’s death, it prompted Prokop to build what he called as the “weather-machine” when he went back to Primetice.
While he was doing his research, he was able to come up with the very first grounded lightning rod. He made use of the safe empiric method to conduct his research, and from how he observed thunderstorms, he was able to deduce that lighting only happened to be an electrical spark. He also realized how he can imitate lightning even in just a smaller scale. This was what he did and he found ways to make thunderbolts making contact with objects on the ground harmless.
One other important discover he made was how metallic points and not any other material can quickly attract as well as discharge the electricity faster than other materials. This was when he began to make the first application of what he then later on finally developed as the grounded lighting rod. So much so was his success that he even demonstrated his findings at Vienna’s Imperial Court. It was Emperor Francis Stephen who invited Prokop to repeat the experiments he had conducted before the Vienna Imperial Court. The demonstrations he did were even honored with the presence of no less than the Empress Maria Theresa. Very much pleased, the imperial couple gave Prokop two heavy golden medals to show their appreciation of his work.
This was in 1754, 6 years before Benjamin Franklin made his lighting rod in the United States. The main difference was that Benjamin Franklin’s lighting rod was not grounded and therefore did not work well while Prokop’s was. This difference made the defining factor of the perfectly working lighting rod from the other not so perfect invention. Apart from his invention of the very first lightning rod that was fully functional since it was grounded, he also created the very first electrical musical instrument. This was called the Denis d’or. It was invented in 1753, and this instrument had properties which allowed it to imitate the sound that other instruments made.
Initially, Prokop only studied science for the sake of being able to find the truth. But when he realized that he could utilize his findings, he did and made the most productive use of his scholarly knowledge. In 1765, Prokop died on the 21st of December while he was in Primetice.
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Pythagoras
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Pythagoras, a very famous philosopher from Greek and also a religious teacher, was born in c. 575 B.C on the Samos Island. He was the leader of the school of thought that believed that souls could be transmigrated and also developed it as a universal principle.
His father was Mnesarchus. He ran to the South of Italy to get away from the oppression of the Polycrates who had come into power in 538 B.C. It is said that he has also been to Babylon and Egypt. He and his supporters came into power in the south of Italy in Croton. That’s where Pythagoras established a school for new sect. It is predicted that Pythagoreans participated in the home government so that they could preach people to lead pure and simple lives as per their teachings. But, unfortunately the enemies attacked the Pythagoreans and the whole sect was eradicated. So the Pythagoreans were either evicted from Italy or they left the town willingly after they were attacked. He passed away in c. 495 B.C. in Metapontum.
Religious Teachings
Pythagoras and his supporters contributed a lot to both science and religion. The teachings he gave about religion were based on the principle of metempsychosis according to which the believe was that the soul was eternal and that it was intended to be reborn until it could set itself free from the phase of wholesomeness of its life.
Pythagoreanism was differed from other systems of philosophy. It did not just seek the truth of life but also gave preaching about leading the way of life till final destination. This aspect made it more similar to mysterious religions than that to philosophy. Many beliefs taught were unthinkable or supernatural that came up from various sources like sympathetic magic, folk rituals and Greek traditional beliefs that were held by them while they developed extremely rational and imaginative systems of science.
Another important aspect of this theory was relationship of the entire life. It was believed that the spirit was present in animals as well as vegetables but there is no proof about this that it was believed by Pythagoras that he believed that spirits could be born in form of vegetables or plants. He said that he had heard his friend’s voice in form of a dog’s howl. It was said that the number of lives as each soul would be born was infinite. This all came from their religious teachings. Pythagoras himself said to have remembered four diverse lives. The followers of Pythagoras and the sect joined into this confidentiality but it was later said that the commands were not observed devotedly.
Mathematical Teachings
The parts between the Unlimited and the Limited were set by the Pythagoreans. It is assumed that Pythagoras himself that the universal principle was a number and limited and gave shape to matter. It was his research on the musical intervals that led to discover that the main intervals, that fell amid the initial four integers, could also be expressed in the form of numerical ratio. He also came up with a theory that the summation of the initial four integers is 10 and gripped the complete nature of the number.
Pythagoreans’ work regarding the “Tetractys of the Decad” was so respected that people preferred to oath by this rather than their gods. The famous theorem of the right angled triangles that was discovered by Pythagoras has already been found in the scripts from the time of Hammurabi, a king of Babylon. Still, Pythagoras did some remarkable work in arranging and organizing the knowledge of mathematics.
Pythagoras concluded the two contradictions, unlimited and limited, as vital principles. The evenness or oddness of Numerical is equated with Unlimited and Limited, just as plurality and one, female and male, left and right, movement and motionlessness, crooked and straight, darkness and light, oblong and square, and bad and good. It was not clear whether there were one or more reasons for setting out these categories.
Cosmological Views
The Pythagoreans came up with cosmology and had different views from their attendants. It was only because of their knowledge of Mathematics and beliefs of religion. Their most important aspect was that the planet Earth was the shape of the sphere and it rotated in the centre place in the universe. They believed that there was fire in the centre of the system but it was not visible to the people as they said their side of earth was turned away from it. They also believed that the sun was reflected from this fire and the rest five planets were far away and they had to take longer routes around. It is unknown that how much part of this theory was given out by Pythagoras on his own. Later it was said by many people that this theory was given out by Philolaos although it was whole group of people who circulated this view.
Pythagoras was very well known for his teachings of religion and mathematics in the western world. He made a very good religious teacher and many of ancient believes in Greece are based on teachings of Pythagoras.
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Rachel Carson
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“Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life with living populations and all their pressures and counter pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.” – Rachel Louise Carson
American marine biologist, writer and naturalist, Rachel Louise Carson is famous for advancing the global environmental movement through her writings. She is regarded as one of the most influential people of the 20th century.
Early Life:
Born on May 27, 1907 on a small family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, Rachel Carson was the youngest of the three children. As a child she spent a lot of time exploring the forests and streams around her farm, developing a great passion for nature. She became a devoted writer and published her first story at the age of eleven in the St. Nicholas Magazine.
Carson received her early education at a small school of Springdale and then completed high school in nearby Parnassus, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1925 at the top of her class of forty-four students. The same year, she entered Pennsylvania College for Women (later Chatham College) as English major determined to become a writer; however inspired by an outstanding biology teacher at her college she switched her major to biology.
Contributions and Achievements:
After graduation she held a summer study fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There she fell in love with the ocean, which later became the topic of several of her best-selling books. She then entered Johns Hopkins University (on the basis of scholarship she received upon her graduation from Pennsylvania College) and completed her masters in marine zoology while serving as a teaching subordinate and part-time instructor in biology at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland.
Carson’s distinction in both writing and biology earned her a part-time position with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in 1935, in a temporary job where she wrote radio scripts on marine life. Her articles were published regularly by the Baltimore Sun and other of its syndicated papers. From 1936 to 1952 she became a full-time employee of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), moving into positions that further polished her skills as a writer and editor; she was finally appointed editor-in-chief of the information division.
Carson published her first and favorite book in 1941, ‘Under the Sea-Wind’: A Naturalist’s Picture of Ocean Life”. Her second book, ‘The Sea Around Us’, was published in 1951 and explored the origins and geological aspects of the sea and was published. It won the National Book Award, selling more than 200,000 copies. In 1955, upon completion of The Edge of the Sea, Carson began focusing on her growing concern over the effects of chemicals and pesticides on the environment. Her last and perhaps the most famous book, ‘Silent Spring’ was published in 1956. It awakened society to a responsibility to other forms of life.
Death:
This great woman died from cancer on April 14, 1964. Her interment is situated at Parklawn Memorial Park and Menorah Gardens in Rockville, Maryland.
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Ramon Barba
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Ramon Barba may very well be the most well-known Filipino scientist especially to the agriculturally-involved individuals in the Philippines. This is because of his contributions for the advancements concerning the mango industry in the country. Being one of the leading exporters of mangoes all over the world, Ramon Barba’s scientific breakthroughs in the field of horticulture or the science of growing and cultivating fruits has been a much welcomed improvement to the country’s mango export industry.
Early Life and Personal Background
Ramon Barba was born on August 31, 1939 as the youngest of the four children. His father, Juan Madamba Barba was a lawyer, and his mother Lourdes Cabanos was, like Ramon himself, a University of the Philippines graduate too.
He finished his elementary education in 1951 at the Sta. Rosa Academy where he was the third highest in his batch. His high school years were spent in the University of the Philippines. That was where he met Dr. Helen Layosa Valmayor who was famous for her research about orchids and she was his teacher in their Biology laboratory classes.
Ramon Barba went to the University of the Philippines in Los Banos, Laguna to finish his college degree. In 1958, he graduated and gained his degree in Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, major in Agronomy. His inspirations had been Juan Cabanas, his grandfather, who was then an official of the BPI or the Bureau of Plants and Industry and Dr. L.G. Gonzales who is considered as the father of horticulture in the Philippines.
He received a scholarship which allowed him to attend the University of Georgia where he was able to conduct a number of experiments about how to make plants flower using gibberellic acid along with potassium nitrate. In 1962, he graduated Master of Master of Science in Horticulture from the University of Georgia.
Ramon Barba didn’t stop at gaining his master’s degree with distinctions from the University of Georgia. He furthered his education by finishing his Doctorate in Plant Physiology, specializing in Tropical Fruits and Tissue Culture in the East-West Center in Hawaii. He earned his doctorate in 1967 and this makes him a Ph.D. in Horticulture.
Career and Contributions in the Field of Horticulture
The Philippines is known as a largely agricultural country, and Ramon Barba’s dedication to finding a solution to help the mango export flourish even more has made a great positive impact to the country’s benefit from this fruit-bearing tree. However, his road to success wasn’t easy.
Filipino mango tree growers already had a practice on how to make the mango trees flower and it involved using smoke to help bring about flowering. Barba, however, saw this as a tedious and expensive practice which was what made him think of a more probable and practical solution to make the mango trees flower more while he was still a student.
He had to face several rejections when it came to his proposal of applying the technique he developed to make mango trees flower more often which would lead to more fruit production. The trees are seasonal, and this limits the country’s chance to earn from export because of the wait that the trees naturally need to have before being able to bear more fruits. Thanks to the help of Ramon Barba’s friends in Quimara Farms who were Mr. and Mrs. Jose Quimson, Ramon Barba was able to conduct his experiment on 400 mango trees which were 10-12 years old each and yielded positive results from his studies.
The research he conducted at the University of the Philippines in Los Banos made use of ethylene in combination with potassium nitrate. Since ethylene was a gas and in order to induce flowering, the plant has to be covered in the substance being used, he had thought of using potassium nitrate based on other studies which showed that there was a link between the two.
Lo and behold, the results from the simple experiment were astounding. After combining a kilo of potassium nitrate with a hundred liters of water and spraying it on the plants, the buds began forming a week later. After two weeks, these buds became flowers and from further studies conducted, the spraying of potassium nitrate and water onto mango trees helped in tripling the yield which made mangoes available thrice instead of just once a year. Trees which were sprayed with the potassium nitrate and water combination had fruits which were 15% smaller, but overall, the mangoes were great and the trees which had been sprayed still give fruit even after 30 years later.
Even after having the positive results, Ramon Barba met another challenge regarding the patent of his invention. He had read in a paper that another individual had patented his invention, but he went on to contest it as he along with everyone else in the Philippine scientific community believed that it was his invention. After getting in touch with a lawyer, they brought the case up with the Philippine patent office and after investigation, they learned that no patent has been granted yet and the supporting documents he gave regarding his research proved that he was indeed the inventor for the mango flowering method.
The Positive Effects of Ramon Barba’s Efforts
Since the discovery of Ramon Barba’s method to induce flowering for mango plants, the mango industry in the Philippines has experienced and mangoes have since then been considered the number one fruit crop of the country. Apart from the mango producers themselves, other business sectors such as the producers of the pest control chemicals, harvesters, sellers, and all the other smaller groups of workers related to mango industry had benefitted from his invention.
Because of his invention, Ramon Barba became one of the recipients of the 1974 TOYM Awardees for Agriculture and he has also received the IBM-DOST Award in 1989 as well as the DA-Khush Achievement Award and the Gamma Sigma Delta Achievement Award both in 1995. In 1974 as well as 1981, the Crop Science Society of the Philippines gave him the Best Paper Award. In a country where agricultural export plays a big role in the economy and improvement of lives, Ramon Barba’s contributions are indeed worthy of the recognition.
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Randy Pausch
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Most people do not really think of scientists as humans who live and die just like the rest of society. After all, the most common belief is that scientists hold the cure for everything and if they do not already have the cures, they are working on it for sure. However, there is one guy that has given scientist a human face and that is late Randy Pausch who was known for his intelligence first but will be forever remembered for his teachings in achieving dreams.
Who Is He?
Randy Pausch was one of the best known, Design, and Human Interaction at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1997 though, he was a teacher at the University of Virginia. Not only was he brilliant, but he was also an award winning teacher and a very well-known researcher who worked on various projects with Adobe, Google, EA, and Walt Disney just to name a few notable partnerships. He was also known to have pioneered the Alice Project which is one of the most successful non-profits out there. He and Don Marinelli co-founded The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. He was indeed a wonderful human being but sadly, he lost a long fought battle with pancreatic cancer back in July 2008.
It is always sad to lose such a great mind to cancer but what makes his story even more profound is the way he said good-bye. His is a wonderful story that is worth sharing- not only will it bring you to tears but will teach you so many things about human perseverance and how it is to achieve one’s dreams.
Randy Pausch’s Legacy
Most people have given at least a moment’s thought about what their last words would be. For some, it would be nothing more than a few faltering last-minute instructions while others will think of ways they can still tell people off on their death bed. But this is not the case with Randy Pausch. He had bigger and better plans and he wanted to touch as many people as humanly possible.
Also, while most people would have chosen those paths for their “last words”, the late randy Pausch was not like most people since he had bigger and better plans. In September, he delivered a speech that elevated him from a previously unknown computer science expert to a virtual celebrity by way of his lecture to special students at Carnegie Mellon University. Now, such a speech might have otherwise been unrecorded had it been delivered a few years back but thanks to the powers of modern technology, his lecture was retained and spread so it could later be heard by millions of people whose lives it will and has changed. Not only has it touched individuals, but it has also worked its magic in American politics and is poised to become a publishing phenomenon.
His remarkable tale is known as “The Last Lecture” which is really just something of an academic conceit where teachers were asked to think how it would be like if they were near death and had to sum up all the wisdom they had acquired throughout the years so they can share it with their students. The catch is all the know must be summed up in the amount of time it would take to deliver a lecture.
Now this is where Pausch really stood out because the 47 year old father of 3 wasn’t just imagining when he gave students a final lecture. He had just been to the doctor and was positive for pancreatic cancer which meant his last lecture, really was to be his last. He was given an hour to deliver his last lecture and it was to a jam-packed lecture hall where he gave his moving speech about what it was to achieve childhood dreams. Despite the fact that his days were limited, he had a very optimistic outlook in life and his lecture was full of laughter but had more than its fair share of tears. In fact, people who were at the lecture said that it reminded them of a scene from The Dead Poets Society. Many people who have recently developed a love for public speaking say that is was a great reminder of how they should be living their lives.
People often have very strong and varied reactions when it comes to news of their impending demise but people everywhere have to admit that Randy Pausch handled it with grace and panache that is not always seen in cancer patients. To have come up with such a profound and heartfelt speech is something that not a lot of people would have the nerve to do but is something that he had the heart and presence of mind to accomplish.
The people who were there to witness the speech were lucky since they go to hold onto something of the man. Others who weren’t there missed the lecture of a lifetime but it is not like they can get in on some of his teachings and wise words. As mentioned earlier, his book is about to become a publishing success and should not be missed by people who have a deep love for stories of people losing to cancer but winning anyway.
The family and students of the late Randy Pausch are sure to miss him but they have the ultimate honor of being loved and taught by this remarkable man who took news of his impending death smoothly and used it to teach the world a thing or two about living. So you see science isn’t just about white lab coats and faceless and nameless geniuses trapped in labs. Sometimes, they are real life men who battle real life problems and lose only to come out the winner anyway. It is very rare to see such people but apparently, Randy Pausch is one of them and his legacy will be something to talk about for years and years more to come seeing as its impact is just that wonderful and that profound.
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René Descartes
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René Descartes was a highly influential French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, who is widely considered to be one of the celebrated geniuses of the 17th century. His legendary experiment of presenting a geometrical point using a pair of ordered numbers (now called coordinate geometry) almost kickstarted modern mathematics.
The famous skepticism of Descartes, that distrusted every belief but his own conscious thinking, is usually credited as the terminus a quo for modern philosophy. He is also known as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Indre-et-Loire, France in 1596 to a parliamentarian, Descartes graduated from the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand. He later acquired a degree in law from the University of Poitiers in 1616.
He was recruited in the army of Maurice of Nassau in the Dutch Republic, where he managed to make some time to study mathematics, physics and philosophy nonetheless.
Contributions and Achievements:
Descartes was one of the most influential persons in the Scientific Revolution. He virtually condensed the range and variety in the World by his well-known phrase; “matter in motion”. He wrote various books and papers about optics, and examined the rainbows. He declared there was no vacuum, but supported momentum conservation. Descartes also devised the principle of inertia. A supporter of the wave theory of light and vortex theory for planets, he thought of the universe and the human body as a giant machine. He is also described as the father of analytical geometry.
His most significant philosophical position was connected with the mind-body dichotomy. Descartes explained that mind was external to the physical body into which it entered through the pineal gland. He thought that science is an activity of the observing mind (res cogitans) to perceive an observed objective reality (ref extensa). Using one concise phrase, “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), he changed the whole direction of Western philosophy. Descartes is credited as the first thinker to offer a philosophical framework for the natural sciences. His theological beliefs became controversial at the time and faced direct opposition from the Pope.
The theories and treatises of Descartes immensely influenced countless aspects of the physical and scientific world.
Later Life and Death:
René Descartes died of pneumonia on 11 February 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was invited there to teach Queen Christina.
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Richard Feynman
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Richard Phillips Feynman was a prominent American scientist, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential theoretical physicists in history. Feynman revolutionized the field of quantum mechanics and formulated the theory of quantum electrodynamics. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1918 in Brooklyn, Richard Feynman’s parents were of Jewish descent. Feyman earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1942.
Contributions and Achievements:
Richard Feynman was one of the key figures in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II. After the war, Feynman accepted teaching positions at Cornell and the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for successfully resolving problems related to the theory of quantum electrodynamics.
Feynman also formulated a mathematical theory that dealt with the phenomenon of superfluidity in liquid helium. In collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann, he extensvely studied weak interactions such as beta decay. Feynman played a vital role in the development of quark theory by presenting his parton model of high energy proton collision processes.
Feynman is credited with the introduction of fundamental computational techniques and notations into physics. The Feynman diagrams have radically changed the way in which basic physical processes are conceptualized and calculated. As a legendary educator, Feynman was awarded the Oersted Medal for Teaching in 1972.
On a mission to increase the understanding of physics among the general public, Feynman wrote “The Character of Physical Law” and “Q.E.D: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter”. He also published various advanced works that have become definitive references and textbooks for scholars and students alike.
Later Life and Death:
Richard Feynman died of abdominal cancer on February 15, 1988, in Los Angeles. He was 69 years old.
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Rita Levi-Montalcini
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“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.” – Rita Levi Montalcini
Today women have occupied a greater name in the field of science, proving that they are capable of equating men in their abilities to conduct scientific research. They have taken significant positions in the scientific field as compared to the more traditional roles: mother, wife, and homemaker that existed in the past centuries.
Italian Neurophysiologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini is one exceptional woman, who through her pioneering contribution and hard work has set an amazing example for other women to follow her footsteps. She won the 1986 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine which she shared with the biochemist Stanley Cohen, for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that causes developing cells to grow by stimulating surrounding nerve tissue. At 101 years, she has the stamina that many younger people might envy. On her workdays Rita gives equal time to her namesake brain research laboratory and her foundation to support African women with potential for scientific accomplishment.
Early Life, Education and Career Achievements:
Rita Levi-Montalcini was born on April 22, 1909 in Turin to a Sephardic Jewish family. She was the youngest child of her parents, Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and talented mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a painter. She enrolled in the University of Turin in 1930 to study medicine, despite her father’s belief that women should not pursue careers. After completing her graduation in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi’s assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini’s 1938 Manifesto of Race and following the introduction of laws barring Jews from intellectual and professional careers.
“This led me to the joy of working, no longer, unfortunately, in university institutes, but in a bedroom.”
Dr. Levi-Montalcini simply constructed a laboratory in her own home and conducted research in secrecy. For the next few years conducted experiments on chicken embryos, she would cook and eat the remaining yolks. While acting as a doctor in Italian refugee camps, she took out time to publish her research on the sources of nerve constructs.
Subsequent to the Germans invasion of Italy, she left for Florence and lived underground with her family. When the war ended, she accepted a one-year residency at Washington University in St Louis, but stayed more than three decades. She worked together with zoologist Viktor Hamburger and after sometime with biochemist Stanley Cohen, pioneering nerve-growth factor (NGF) and epidermal growth factor (EGF). Levi-Montalcini and Cohen won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986.
Indeed, the latter part of Levi-Montalcini’s life consists of a long list of scientific prizes and honors. In addition to her continuing research, she is an FAO Goodwill Ambassador (1999) and an Italian Senator For life (2001).
“It is imperative that we support FAO’s campaign, urging young people, who more than adults enjoy the ability to spring into action, to play what could be a decisive role in the elimination of this tragic reality. I ask you to join us by participating in FAO’s campaign against world hunger”.
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Robert Bosch
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Robert August Bosch was a German inventor, engineer and industrialist who founded Robert Bosch GmbH, one of the world’s leading engineering firms, in 1886. Robert Bosch is also noted for inventing the spark plug and the electrical magneto for automobiles.
Early Life and Education:
Born on September 23, 1861, near Ulm in Württemberg, south-western Germany, Robert Bosch attended the Technical University at Stuttgart. He also received training in mechanics in Ulm, Great Britain and the United States.
Contributions and Achievements:
Robert Bosch established the Robert Bosch GmbH Corporation, one of the leading producers of automotive technology who also manufactured numerous other products. Bosch made important contributions to the expansion of the automobile industry and related sectors.
Bosch started his own company, “Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering”, when he was only 25. He invented a magneto for gas engines in 1887, which was used in an automobile engine almost ten years later. He also invented the first spark plug, an invention which revolutionized the operation of automobiles. His company largely benefited from the war, but Bosch open-heartedly donated more than ten million marks back to the German public.
Bosch Industries faced severe crisis after the war due to the depressing economic downfall, but the company massively restructured in 1927, expanding into the manufacture of cameras, power tools, television sets, refrigerators and radios.
Later Life and Death:
Robert Bosch died on March 12, 1942 in Stuttgart, Germany, of complications resulting from an inflammation of the middle ear. He was 80 years old.
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Robert Boyle
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Robert Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, scientist and theological writer. As one of the early pioneers of modern experimental scientific method, Boyle’s contributions ranged over a number of subjects, including chemistry, physics, medicine, hydrostatics, natural history and earth sciences.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Ireland on 25 January, 1627 to a wealthy and influential family, Robert Boyle’s father, Richard Boyle, was Lord Treasurer of the Kingdom of Ireland. Boyle received the best education from various prestigious schools, including Eton, where he studied philosophy, religion, mathematics and the latest trends in physics and chemistry.
Contributions and Achievements:
After studying a few years under the local parson, Boyle gained a strong interest in science. He gathered many prominent scientists from various fields of science who had weekly meetings in Oxford and London. The group later became the Royal Society of London. Boyle was elected its president, but he declined the position as the required oath breached his strict religious beliefs.
Boyle was the earliest-known scientist to really publish his work. He carefully collected his experiments, along with his failures and findings. His 1660 scientific paper, “The Spring and Weight of Air”, mentioned the usage of an improved vacuum pump of a custom design. Boyle siginificantly modified the clumsy and inefficient pump of Von Guericke, which needed two men to operate, and with great effort. In Boyle’s new design, vacuum could be sustained with only one operator in a very efficient manner.
Boyle carried out various experiments which helped him in the discovery of the relationship between pressure and volume of gases. This resulted in the “Boyle-Mariotte Law” which implies that if the temperature is constant, the volume of gas is inversely proportional to the pressure. The phrase “chemical analysis” was also coined by him.
In that era, it was widely believed that elements like salt and water could be broken down no further. Boyle largely opposed the theories of basic elements.
Later Life and Death:
Boyle was a very pious person and died, having never married, from paralysis in London, on 30 December, 1691. He was 64 years old.
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Robert Brown
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When it comes to the field of botany and palaeobotany, Robert Brown is a man who has made numerous important contributions because of how he had used the microscope in his studies. The Brownian motion is named after him, and some of his more famous scientific contributions to botany include providing one of the earliest and most detailed descriptions of the nucleus as well as details about cytoplasmic streaming. Some of the first studies in palynology were done by Brown, and he also was the first to recognise the differences between angiosperms and gymnosperms. Apart from those, he had also contributed to plant taxonomy where his discoveries are still credited in the plant families known today.
Early Life and Educational Background
Born on the 21st of December in 1773, Robert Brown was the son of an Episcopalian reverend named James Brown and Helen nee Taylor. Helen was a Presbyterian minister’s daughter. Robert Brown’s hometown was in Montrose and he had attended their local Grammar School which is now known as the Montrose Academy. He then attended the Marischal College in Aberdeen and was a Ramsay scholar but had to withdraw in his fourth year because his family had to move to Edinburgh.
In the University of Edinburgh, he studied medicine but developed a keener interest for botany. While he did not take a degree, he had shown an interest for natural history. In 1791 a year after they moved, his father died. During his time in the university, he was able to attend lectures held by John Walker who was a respected natural historian and he had also begun having correspondences with William Witheron who was one of the leading botanists back in those days. During this time, Robert Brown was able to discover Alopecurus alpinus, a new species of grass and he was able to finish his first botanical paper called “The Botanical History of Angus.”
Robert Brown and his Passion for Botany
In 1793, he dropped out of his courses in medicine and around a year later, he had been commissioned as a part of the Fifeshire Regiment of Fencibles where he was a surgeon’s mate. The regiment assigned to them in New Ireland was with little action though, and because he had a lot of time to spare, he had spent his time on pursuits related to botany.
His life in the military had not suited him and prevented him from getting access to libraries and from being able to begin his own collection of plant specimen. In 1798 and through Jonas Dryander, the librarian of Sir Joseph Banks who he met in London during recruitment, Robert Brown was able to become one of the associates of the Linnean Society. This then became his chance to be part of naturalist expeditions. Sir Joseph Banks had quite a time convincing the lord lieutenant of Dublin to release Brown, but in the end was able to. Brown was still able to receive his pay and commission which he had been using to support his widowed mother who was in Edinburgh.
His being accepted as a naturalist opened doors for him to explore and pursue his love for botany. He had made preparations for his trip to Australia by studying the plant specimen that Sir Joseph Banks had previously collected from the area. He was instructed to collect different scientific specimens but the main priority was to collect insects, plants as well as birds. He had been on the journey of collecting specimen with Ferdinand Bauer who was a botanical illustrator and a gardener named Peter Good who had helped him come up with his collection.
In December of 1801, Robert Brown and the Investigator arrived in what was then called as King George Sound which is currently Western Australia. During his time in Australia, Brown was able to collect around 3400 species—2000 of which were previously not known. Constant dampness during the expedition had threatened Brown’s collection, and a huge part of this collection had been lost though, when on their way back to England, the ship called Porpoise carrying most of the specimens got wrecked. After collecting the specimen, he went back to Britain in the year 1805 and had spent a good five years working on the specimens he had gathered during the expedition.
Works and Legacy
From the expedition Brown had been in, the major work he was able to publish about the Australian plant specimens was called the Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van-Diemen which appeared in 1810. This work had gained popularity because of its quality as well as its support for Jussieu “natural system” style of classification instead of the more rigid Linnean classification system.
Brown had a publication called “Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo” in the year 1818, and around four years later, he was elected as a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
In 1827, the Brownian motion came to life when Brown observed that small particles ejected from pollen grains executed a kind of continuous and jittery movement. He was able to observe the same thing happening to inorganic matter and although no theory was provided as to why these particles moved this way, this phenomenon has been and is still called as the Brownian motion.
He had read a paper to the Linnean Society in 1831 which was published in 1833 where he had named the nucleus of cells. While this part of the cell had been observed by Leeuwenhoek back in 1682, it was Brown who had named it the “cell nucleus” and gave credit to Franz Bauer’s drawings and observation of this regular feature in plant cells.
From the year 1849 to 1853 he was the president of the Linnean Society. Robert Brown had been the first Keeper of the Botanical Department for the Natural History Department of the British Museum. He was able to hold this position until his death on the 10th of June in 1858. As one of his legacies in botany, his name is credited in the Australian her genus called Brunonia and other Australian species he had discovered during his stay there.
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Robert Bunsen
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Robert Bunsen (In full: Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen) was an eminent German chemist. Bunsen, along with his fellow scientist, Gustav Kirchhoff, is credited with the breakthrough discovery (1859) that each element emits a light of characteristic wavelength. The event caused a revolution in the field of spectrum analysis, and later led to the discovery of two alkali-group metals, namely cesium and rubidium. He is also noted for developing the famous Bunsen burner, with the help of his assistant, Peter Desaga.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Göttingen, Germany in 1811, Robert Bunsen’s father taught modern philology at the University of Göttingen. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the same university in 1830, and himself became a successful professor at the Universities of Marburg, Breslau and Heidelberg.
Contributions and Achievements:
Robert Bunsen’s research on the highly toxic arsenic-containing compound cacodyl in 1837 was one of his first acclaimed works. He extensively studied emission spectra of heated elements, with Gustav Kirchhoff, which helped them discover caesium in 1860, and rubidium in 1861. As one of the early pioneers of photochemistry and organoarsenic chemistry, Bunsen formulated various gas-analytical methods. He built the Bunsen burner with his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, in 1855; an invention which greatly bettered the form of laboratory burners.
Bunsen is also credited with the 1841 invention of the carbon-zinc electric cell, as well as the grease-spot photometer in 1844, which measured the light produced by the cell. He obtained magnesium in the metallic state for the first time and analyzed its physical and chemical properties. A few other inventions by Bunsen include the filter pump in 1868, the ice calorimeter in 1870, and the vapour calorimeter in 1887.
Later Life and Death:
Robert Bunsen died in Heidelberg, south-west Germany on August 16, 1899. He was 88 years old.
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Robert Goddard
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Robert Goddard (In full: Robert Hutchings Goddard) was an eminent American phyisict and inventor. Widely regarded as the founder of modern rocketry, Goddard created the first liquid-fueled rocket. He published “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” in 1919, a classic treatise that remains the most influential work in 20th century rocket science.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1882, Robert Goddard earned a B.S. degree in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1908, and an A.M. degree in physics from Clark University in 1910. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1911, he became a very popular physics professor.
Contributions and Achievements:
Robert Goddard was the first scientist to transcend the traditional focus from the substance to be ignited to oxygen, the element essential for combustion. He established that rockets based on atmospheric oxygen can never fly in space, where the lack of oxygen will eliminate combustion. Goddard also discovered the rate of combustion depends on the amount of oxygen.
Wernher von Braun, a German physicist and a friend of Goddard, instituted the German Rocket Society in 1927, following Goddard’s March 1926 launch of a rocket fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen. The German army started research to create a long-range missile using liquid propellants in 1931. Goddard unknowingly assisted the program by answering telephone queries from German engineers. However, by 1939, Nazi aggression alerted him.
From May to July of 1940, Goddard explained U.S. Army and Navy officials about the German threat and the necessity for the United States to produce its own long-range missiles. Although war planners largely ignored him, thinking that Germany was not capable of launching a missile across the Atlantic, Goddard worked for the navy between 1942 and 1945, as director of research in the Bureau of Aeronautics, creating experimental engines.
Later Life and Death:
Robert Goddard became a consultant for Curtiss-Wright Corporation, a leading aircraft firm, in 1943, and director of the American Rocket Society in 1944. He died of throat cancer in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 10, 1945. Goddard was 62 years old.
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Robert Hooke
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The British natural philosopher, architect and polymath, Robert Hooke is perhaps the most neglected natural philosophers of all time despite the significant role he played in the scientific revolution. His prominent contributions include: the iris diaphragm in cameras, the universal joint used in motor vehicles, the balance wheel in a watch, the origination of the word ‘cell’ in biology, he was Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, architect, experimenter, worked in astronomy – yet is acknowledged mostly for Hooke’s Law.
His name is somewhat obscure today, due in part to the hostility of his well-known and dominant colleague, Sir Isaac Newton.
Early Life:
Robert was born on the 18th of July 1635 at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, England. He was the last of the four children of John Hooke and Mirena Blazer. His father was the minister of the Church of England. Most of his early life, Robert had a poor health due to which he received most of his early education at home from his father, who was also in charge of a local school. As a youth, Robert had a natural curiosity in his surroundings and interest in mechanical works and drawing that he pursued in various ways all through his life.
At the age of thirteen young Hooke was able to enter Westminster School, and from there went to Oxford, where some of the finest scientists in England were working at the time. There he built a good impression with his skills at designing experiments and building equipment. He was appointed as a chemical assistant to Dr Thomas Willis and later met the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and gained a position as his assistant from about 1655 to 1662.
Contributions and Achievements:
During November 1661 he was appointed curator of experiments to the Royal Society after a proposition made by Sir Robert Murray. In 1664 Sir John Cutler settled an annual gratuity of fifty pounds on the Society for mechanical lectureship and in the following year Robert was nominated professor of geometry in Gresham College, where he later resided. After the Great Fire of 1666 he constructed a model for the rebuilding of the city, which was highly approved, although the design of Sir Christopher Wren was preferred.
Hooke’s contribution to biology is mainly his book Micrographia which was published in 1665. He developed the compound microscope and illumination system (one of the best such microscopes of his time) and used it in his demonstrations at the Royal Society’s meetings. Using it he also observed organisms as varied as insects, sponges, bryozoans, foraminifera, and bird feathers. This was a best-seller during his time.
His other contributions include: the law of elasticity, attracting principle of gravity, he resolved the problem of the measurement of the distance to a star, it was him who actually created the air pump on which Boyle’s experiments could be conducted, etc.
Death:
This inspirational founder of modern science passed away on March 3, 1703 in London, England.
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Robert Koch
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Robert Koch was a German physician who is widely credited as one of the founders of bacteriology and microbiology. He investigated the anthrax disease cycle in 1876, and studied the bacteria that causes tuberculosis in 1882, and cholera in 1883. He also formulated Koch’s postulates. Koch won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Early Life and Education:
Born in 1843 in Glausthal, Germany, Robert Koch was a childhood prodigy. He taught himself to read newspapers when he was only 5. He loved to read classical literature and was a chess expert. He gained an interest in science while in high school, and decided to study biology. Koch acquired his medical degree from the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1866.
Contributions and Achievements:
Koch developed a strong interest in pathology and infectious diseases as a medical student. After working as a physician in many small towns throughout Germany, he volunteered as a military surgeon during the Franco-Prussian war (1870-72). He was appointed a district medical officer for Wollstein after the war.
His main duty as a medical officer was investigating the spread of infectious bacterial diseases. Koch was very much interested in the transmission of anthrax from cattle to humans. Not very happy with the prevailing process of confirming the cause of infectious disease, Koch formulated four criteria in 1890 that must be achieved for establishing a cause of an infectious disease. These rules were termed as “Koch’s postulates” or “Henle-Koch postulates”. German pathologist Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle was a collaborator in Koch’s research.
Later Life and Death:
Robert Koch’s brilliant contributions were acknowledged in 1905, and he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The medical applications of biotechnology still heavily depend on the Koch’s principles of affirming the causes of infectious diseases. Koch died in 1910 in Black Forest region of Germany. He was 66 years old.
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Ronald Ross
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Having won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902, Ronald Ross is famous for his work concerning malaria. He was the one who discovered that the malaria parasite resided in the gastrointestinal tracts of mosquitos. Because of this, other scientists and doctors were able to deduce that mosquitoes spread the diseases and discovered ways to counter malaria. Because of his contribution as well as experience concerning malaria and other tropical diseases, he became the Director-in-Chief of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases—an institute established to honor his works.
Early Life and Educational Background
Ronald Ross was the son of C.C.G. Ross who was a general of the English Army. He was brought to this world by his mother Matilda Charlotte Elderton and his birthplace was in Almora which is now Uttarakhand in India. Ronald was the eldest of the couple’s ten children and when he was eight, he had been sent to England where he lived with an aunt and uncle.
For his elementary education he went to Ryde and for his secondary learning he was sent in 1869 to one of the boarding schools in Springhill which is near Southampton. He was still just a boy when he developed a love for music, literature, poems, and mathematics. When he was 14, he was able to win a prize for an engagement in mathematics. A book called Orbs of Heaven was the one which woke up his interest in this field.
At a young age of 16, Ronald was able to secure a position to have an examination in the drawing exams for Oxford as well as for Cambridge. Because of his love for poems and literature, he initially wanted to be a writer but his path changed when he became a part of the St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College which was in London in 1874. He did this to follow his father’s preferences.
Since he was initially not fully committed to the path he has chosen, he spent a lot of his time writing plays, poems, and composing his own music. Despite this fact, he graduated in 1880 and a year before that, Ronald was able to pass the examinations for the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Ronald Ross then worked as a ship surgeon and he first worked on a transatlantic steamship. At the same time, he was advancing his knowledge by studying to have the license for the Society of Apothecaries. On his first attempt, he wasn’t so lucky but during his second attempt in 1881, he was able to qualify and this allowed him to join the Army Medical School which made him a part of the Indian Medical Service. Not stopping at having gained a good educational experience, he even took a study leave in 1888 to 1889. He did this with the aim to obtain his Diploma in Public Health from the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons. To achieve this, he took a course about bacteriology and was taught by professor E.E. Klein.
Career
It was in 1894 when he set his mind on determining how mosquitoes propagated malaria. It wasn’t easy for him because for two and a half years, he failed but after that, he was able to successfully demonstrate how the malaria bacteria resided in the mosquitoes’ gastrointestinal tract—this was what helped him establish Laveran and Manson’s hypothesis as a fact.
His research started while he was at Presidency General Hospital where he studied in his own bungalow at the Mahanad village. From time to time, he went around the village to collect mosquitoes with the help of the Indian scientist Kishori Mohan Bandyopadhyay. In 1883, Ross became the Acting Garrison Surgeon of Bangalore and it was then when he realized how they can control mosquitoes and the propagation of malaria by countering their means of propagation and limiting the mosquitoes’ access to water.
Interestingly, Ross was assigned to work at Sigur Ghat which was near Ooty, a hill station. Three days after he arrived, he had malaria and made the observation that there was a mosquito on the wall which had a strange posture. This mosquito was what he called as the “dappled wings” kind of mosquito. He was transferred to Secunderabad, and it was there he was able to culture some 20 brown mosquitoes which he later on infected from a patient’s blood. After the blood feeding, he then dissected the mosquitoes and this was where he was able to discover the presence of the malaria bacteria which stayed in the gastrointestinal tract of infected mosquitoes.
In 1895, he went to India once more and stayed in Madras, Burma, as well as the Andaman Islands. It was during the years 1882 and 1899 that he was working at Calcutta’s Presidency General Hospital. He stayed in India for a few years until he resigned in 1899 and went back to England where he then went to join the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. There, he became a lecturer and made efforts to still help prevent malaria in other parts of the world like Cyprus, Mauritius, Africa, Greece, the Suez Canal, and other areas which were being negatively affected especially because of the First World War.
His dedication for fighting malaria was at a very high degree that he even established an organization to fight malaria specifically in Sri Lanka. Because of his efforts, both academically, and scientifically, he was promoted as the Professor and Chair of Tropical Medicine of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine come 1902. This was a position which he held up until 1912. In 1912, Ross was appointed as London’s Physician for Tropical Diseases at King’s College Hospital. During this time, he was also the Chair of Tropical Sanitation in Liverpool. Up until 1917, Ross held these positions until he was an honorary consultant in Malariology in the British War Office. From 1918 to 1926, he was working as the consultant for malaria in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.
He was married to Rosa Bessie Bloxam and they had two sons. He died because of a long-term illness coupled with asthma and was buried next to his wife in Putney Vale Cemetery.
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Rosalind Franklin
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There is probably no other woman scientist with as much controversy surrounding her life and work as Rosalind Franklin. As a scientist Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook.
Early Life:
Rosalind Franklin was born in London, England on 25th July 1920. Franklin did extremely well at science and then studied physics and chemistry. When she was 15, she decided to become a scientist.
Rosalind attended St Paul’s Girls’ School, London, where she displayed great talent in physics and chemistry. From there she went up to Newnham College, Cambridge in 1938. After graduation in 1941, she was awarded a research scholarship to work on gas chromatography, but left in 1942 to work at the British Coal Utilization Research Association, where she worked on the microstructure of coke. As a result of her research, she gained her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree from Cambridge in 1945.
Contributions and Achievements:
Rosalind was asked to join a research group by John Randall. She had been asked to set up a laboratory to study DNA fibres using X-ray crystallography, where atoms can be precisely mapped by looking at the image of the crystal under an X-ray beam. She had the entire responsibility for determining the structure of DNA. Franklin was able to apply her knowledge of physical chemistry and as a result, she made thinner fibers in order to produce more exact and easier to interpret X-ray patterns.
She discovered A and B forms of DNA, but concentrated on A as it showed more X-ray spots. This form does not show the helical structure as well as form B, which she originally thought of as a ladder with bonds between the bases of the rungs. She did record in her laboratory notebook on the 24th February 1953 that she had revised her thinking to that of a three dimensional helix.
Twenty five years after the fact, the first clear recitation of Franklin’s contribution appeared. The Double Helix, although it was buried under allegations that Franklin did not know how to interpret her own data but her own publication in the same issue of Nature was the first publication of this more clarified X-ray image of DNA. The Double Helix inspired several people to investigate DNA history and Franklin’s contribution but the path to the Double Helix supplied information about original source materials for those that followed. After finishing her portion of the DNA work, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses.
Rosalind Franklin’s critical contributions to the Crick and Watson model was – Franklin’s lecture at the seminar in 1951, where she presented the two forms of the molecule, type A and type B, and her position whereby the phosphate units are located in the external part of the molecule. and she specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it, data that has considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule. Franklin was the first to discover and formulate these facts, which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule.
The rules of the Nobel Prize forbid posthumous nominations and because Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 she was not eligible for nomination to the Nobel Prize subsequently awarded to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins. The award was for their body of work on nucleic acids and not exclusively for the discovery of the structure of DNA. By the time of the award Wilkins had been working on the structure of DNA for over 10 years, and had done much to confirm the Watson – Crick Model. Crick had been working on the genetic code at Cambridge and Watson had worked on RNA for some years.
A debate about the amount of credit due to Franklin continues. What is clear is that she did have a meaningful role in learning the structure of DNA and that she was a scientist of the first rank. Franklin also did important research into the micro-structure and properties of coals and other carbons, and spent the last five years of her career elucidating the structure of plant viruses, notably tobacco mosaic virus. She died at the age of 37 from complications arising from ovarian cancer.
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Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel
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From the name alone, it would be enough to have an inkling of what this man of science contributed to today’s society. Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel made a great contribution in the field of mechanical engineering, particularly in today’s transportation powering methods. He is most famous for having invented the diesel engine but apart from that, Diesel also happens to be a connoisseur of the arts, a social theorist, and a linguist whose brilliant mind made breakthroughs which are still much appreciated by the modern society.
Early Life and Family Background
Born on March 18, 1858 in Paris, France, Rudolf Diesel was the son of Theodor Diesel who was a leather worker, and Elise Strobel. Both of his parents were Bavarian Germans who hailed from Augsburg. When the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 happened, the Diesel family had to be expelled from France which caused them to transfer to London. Young Rudolf Diesel was, however, sent back to Augsburg by his father to continue the education which he was able to have in France.
Although unable to graduate in his 1879 class because he was ill with typhoid, he mad wise use of his time by gaining practical experience in engineering at the Sulzer Brothers Machine Works or the Gebrüder Sulzer Maschinenfabrik in Winterthur, Switzerland. He became fascinated by engineering because of his visits to National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. The following year, Rudolf Diesel graduated with flying colors and made his way back to Paris where he had the chance to work at the firm which Karl Paul Gottfried von Linde, his former refrigeration professor ran. Diesel had been Linde’s student at Technical University Munich.
Career
Diesel assisted Linde to come up with the design as well as the construction of a modern refrigeration as well as ice plant back in 1880. A year later, it was none other than Diesel himself who became the director of the plant. Come 1883, Diesel was married to Martha Flasche with which he had their sons Rudolf Jr. and Eugen, and their daughter Heddy. He continued to work with and for Linde and together, they were able to gain many patents in both France and Germany.
While he was working as one of the employees of the Linde firm, Diesel was captivated by the theoretical works of Nicholas Carnot, a French physicist who was the brains behind the principles of today’s modern combustion engine. Diesel believed that it was possible to build an engine which which is four times more efficient than what they had back then.
This inspiration set his ideas in motion and in 1885, he began to work on his project to have a more efficient engine. For more than a decade, he had worked on different engine designs and come 1892, he was granted the patent to have an engine burn what was then the cheapest fuel available which was powdered coal. During the time he was working on his engines and designs, his projects earned funding from Maschinenfabrik Augsburg which is now known as MAN Diesel as well as Friedrich Krupp AG now known as ThyssenKrupp.
The Diesel Engine
Rudolf Diesel was able to power the very first diesel engine on the tenth of August, 1893 and what served as its fuel was peanut oil. He was able to find workarounds for some of the problems and he was then able to introduce the first 25-horsepower 4-stroke one-cylinder compression engine come 1879. This more advanced engine which became well-known after it was first displayed in the 1898 Munich Exhibition.
The engine that Rudolf Diesel came up with is a kind of internal combustion engine with a compression ignition mechanism that works by having heated fuels. The fuels used for powering the engine can either be bio-derived or petroleum based. This mechanism that does not require complex spark ignition systems is what really sets the diesel engine aside and makes it more efficient. According to Diesel himself, “It is the diesel’s higher compression ratio that leads to its greater fuel efficiency. Because the air is compressed, the combustion temperature is higher, and the gases will expand more after combustion, applying more pressure to the piston and crankshaft.”
His diesel engine was made to be usable for marine engines, automobiles, electric power generators, factories, trains, oil drilling equipment, and mining machines. The American rights for the diesel engine were sold to the brewer named Adolphus Busch, but in Europe, it is still MAN Diesel that operates the leading facility for diesel engines. Not only did Diesel create a more efficient engine, he had also warned of the possible air pollution dangers that may arise from the use of engines, and he even wrote a book about the human condition which also suggested how businesses should be owned by the employees.
Death and Disappearance
In September 29, 1913, Diesel went aboard the steamer Dresden to cross the English Channel. En route to London to be in the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing meeting, he vanished. He went to his cabin around 10 PM after having dinner and asked to be called the following morning around 6 AM. During the roll call, his cabin was empty and had never been seen alive since then.
His clothing were left untouched on his unused bed and ten days later after his disappearance, crew from the Dutch boat named Coertsen chanced upon the decomposing body of a man which floated in the North Sea which is near Norway. The body was not brought on board because of its state, but personal items such as his pill case, pocket knife, I.D. card, and an eyeglass case was taken to help identify him. Eugen, the younges of Rudolf Diesel’s sons identified these personal effects as his father’s.
There are some theories about the death of Diesel, one of which is suicide which is considered as the most likely one. Some conspiracy theories suggest homicide based on military interest on his works. However, there is limited explanation for the death of the man who was able to create a huge change on engine efficiency.
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Rudolf Virchow
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Rudolf Virchow was an emient German pathologist and politician, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential physicians in history. One of the founding fathers of “social medicine”, Virchow developed the concept of pathological processes, and by drawing influence from the cell theory, analyzed the effects of disease in various organs and tissues of the human body.
Early Life and Education:
Rudolf Virchow was born in 1821 to a modest farming family. Virchow proved to be a very bright student, and received a free scholarship for medical training in Berlin. He started his medical studies in 1839, earning his M.D. degree in 1843.
Contributions and Achievements:
The world owes the understanding of the cellular basis for many diseases, such as cancer, to Rudolf Virchow. Particularly passionate about pathological histology, the science of diseased cells and tissues, he published a scientific paper in 1845, that discussed the oldest known pathological descriptions of leukemia. Virchow was also an fervid social reformer.
When he was selected to look into a terrible outbreak of typhus fever in Germany, his report highlighted social conditions and blamed the government for the state of affairs that caused the outbreak. He concluded that improper system of sewers, deficiency of clean drinking water and unhygienic conditions led to the spread of the disease. As a consequence, Virchow was suspended for two weeks and he also faced degradation. Virchow, however, stood still in his reform efforts, and carried out on with his scientific research.
An entire pathological institute was established for Virchow at the University of Berlin, where he worked for the rest of his career. He discovered that outside stimuli affected cells, and that diseased cells arise from already diseased and cancerous cells. He focused on clinical observation, physiological experiments and pathological anatomy, occasionally using laboratory animals, operating at the microscopic level. Virchow published probably his most influential work, “Cellular Pathology”, reporting that the cell was the most fundamnetal unit of disease pathologies, including that of cancer.
Later Life and Death:
Rudolf Virchow was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1861. He was honored with the Copley Medal in 1892.
Virchow died of heart failure in Berlin on September 5, 1902. He was 80 years old.
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Salim Ali
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Salim Ali, one of the greatest ornithologists and naturalists of all time, is also known as the “birdman of India”. He was one of the very first scientists to carry out systematic bird surveys in India and abroad. His research work is considered highly influential in the development of ornithology.
Early Life:
As a 10-year-old, Salim once noticed a flying bird and shot it down. Tender at heart, he instantly ran and picked it up. It appeared like a house sparrow, but had a strange yellowish shade on the throat. Curious, he showed the sparrow to his uncle Amiruddin and questioned him about the bird’s kind. Unable to answer, his uncle took him to W.S. Millard, the Honorary Secretary of the Bomaby Natural History Society. Amazed at the unusual interest of the young boy, Millard took him to see many stuffed birds. When Salim finally saw a bird similar to the child’s bird, he got very excited. After that, the young Salim started visiting the place frequently.
Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali was born on November 12, 1896. He attended college, but did not receive any university degree. To assist his brother in wolfram mining, he went to Burma, but spent most of his time looking for birds. Soon, he returned back to Bombay.
Contributions and Achievements:
As soon as Salim returned, he studied zoology, and secured a position of a guide at the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society. Only 20 years old, he conducted the visitors and instructed them about the preserved birds. His interest in the living conditions of birds grew even more. Therefore, Salim visited Germany and saw Dr. Irvin Strassman. He came back to India after one year but his post in the museum had been removed for financial reasons.
Salim Ali, as a married man, required money to make a living, so he joined the museum as a clerk. The job allowed him to carry on with his research. His wife’s house at Kihim, a small village near Mumbai, was a tranquil place surrounded by trees, where Salim would spend most of his time researching about the activities of the weaver bird.
He published a research paper discussing the nature and activities of the weaver bird in 1930. The piece made him famous and established his name in the field of ornithology. Salim also traveled from place to place to find out more about different species of the birds.
From what he had collected, he published “The Book of Indian Birds in 1941″ in which he discussed the kinds and habits of Indian birds. The book sold very well for a number of years. He also collaborated with S. Dillon Ripley, a world-famous ornithologist, in 1948. The collaboration resulted in the ‘Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan’ (10 Volume Set); a comprehensive book that describes the birds of the subcontinent, their appearance, habitat, breeding habits, migration etc. Salim also published other books. His work “The Fall of Sparrow” included many incidents from his real life.
Later Life and Death:
Salim not only researched about birds, but also contributed to the arena of protection of nature. For his extraordinary efforts, he was given an international award of INR 5 lacs, but he donated all the money to Bombay Natural History Society. The Government of India honored him with Padma Vibushan in 1983.
This genius man died at the age of 90 on June 20, 1987.
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Sally Ride
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Sally Ride is yet another inspiration to women and kids all over the world. Forging her name into the field of space aeronautics, she was a woman who went through a lot of firsts in NASA history. She is officially the first American woman who travelled to space.
Her Life and Education
Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Encino California, the older of two daughters. Her father, Dale B. Ride, was a professor of Political Science in Santa Monica College while her mother, Carol Joyce Anderson Ride, was a volunteer counselor who worked at the women’s correctional facility. Both of her parents instilled in her the importance of exploring, which she credits as the foundation from which her passion for science was born.
Sally was athletic in her early days, and was on a partial tennis scholarship when she attended the Los Angeles prep school Westlake High School for Girls. Before attending the prep school, she also attended Portola Junior High. She also enjoyed running, and played softball and volleyball. She had a brief professional tennis career.
She attended three semesters in Swarthmore College and signed up for some physics courses in UCLA before finally going to Stanford University as a junior where she earned two degrees in 1973: a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Still keeping her passionate for science, she eventually earned her Master of Science degree and her Doctorate in Physics, also in Stanford. Within this period, she was actively doing research on the interaction of x-rays and an interstellar medium.
She had a brief marriage with Steven Hawley, a fellow astronaut, from 1982 to 1987. The marriage did not bear them any children.
Career in NASA
Sally Ride immediately pursued her dream when she saw an ad in the Stanford student newspaper about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) invitation for qualified students to join their astronaut program in 1977. She applied for a spot after earning her degrees in Stanford. She began spaceflight training in 1978 and was one of the first six female astronauts selected by NASA among 8,000 other hopefuls. She started out as a capsule communicator for the second and third shuttle flights in 1981 and 1982, respectively as part of the team’s ground support.
She finally experienced space travel when she was 32 years old. She was part of NASA’s 7th shuttle mission and was the mission specialist on the Challenger. They launched on June 18, 1983 and was back on earth in June 24. She was the first ever woman who operated the shuttle’s robotic arm as part of the team’s mission to launch communication satellites. A trip of many firsts, this was the first successful deployment and retrieval of satellites while using the shuttle’s robotic arm.
Before the actual flight, she caught the attention of the media because of her gender. There were questions about how the flight would affect her reproductive organs, and there were some who asked if her emotions as a woman could affect the way she did her job. But Sally stood firm in saying that she was an astronaut, period. Standing her ground made her the first American woman to travel into space.
In October 5, 1984, Sally made history once again by being the first American woman to return to space. A nine-day mission on the Challenger, she was once again in charge of operating the robotic arm. She readjusted the radar antenna and removed ice from outside the shuttle.
Her training for her third Challenger mission was cut short because of the January 1986 Challenger disaster. Seven crew members died on that day as the shuttle suddenly broke apart a mere 73 seconds after take-off. The shuttle program became inactive for 32 months after the event. All in all, she spent over 343 hours in space.
Because of her historical experiences in space aeronautics, Sally continued to work for NASA and was part of the Rogers Commission—a team set up by then president Ronald Reagan that investigated the Challenger disaster. She was part of the accident investigation board that worked on the Columbia shuttle tragedy in 2003 as well. Her knowledge also led her to become part of the committee that defined NASA’s spaceflight goals in 2009.
After NASA
Sally left NASA in 1987, but never neglected her passion for space and science. She went back to Stanford as part of the university’s Center for International Security and Arms Control and eventually went to the University of California in San Diego as a professor of Physics in 1989. She also served as the director for the California Space Institute. She was SPACE.com’s president from 1999 to 2000 as well.
In 2001, a science outreach company called Sally Ride Science was born. She founded the organization to support her vision of encouraging girls and young women to explore and pursue their passion for science the same way she did. Part of their many programs was a MoonKam experiment that allowed students to take photos of the moon. She was the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, while a childhood friend and partner for 27 years, Tam O’ Shaughnessy, served as co-founder, Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice President.
Further proofs of her drive to pull kids into the world of science are the five children’s books she wrote about science. She published To Space and Back in 1986, Voyager in 1992, The Mystery of Mars in 1999, Exploring Our Solar System in 2003 and The Third Planet in 2004.
Sally Ride was recognized time and again for her numerous contributions to space aeronautics and her unending passion for space and science. She finally became part of the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003.
Sally Ride fought against pancreatic cancer for 17 months and died at the age of 61 on July 23, 2012. Her remains were cremated and placed at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California next to her father.
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Sheldon Lee Glashow
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The American physicist, Sheldon Lee Glashow received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979, with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam for their complementary efforts in originating the electroweak theory. This theory is an important contribution to the unification of elementary particles and forces. He is also known for his work which led to the prediction of neutral currents, charmed particles, and intermediate vector bosons, all of which were subsequently discovered by experiments. He is the author of around 300 research papers and three books: Interactions, The Charm of Physics, and From Alchemy to Quarks. Currently he is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University.
Early life, education and career:
Sheldon Lee Glashow was born on December 5, 1932, in the northern tip of Manhattan in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Russia. He was the youngest of three children of Lewis Gluchovsky, a plumber, and Bella Rubin. He received his early education from the Bronx High School of Science in New York City. In 1954 he completed his graduation in Arts from Cornell University and five years later in 1959, he received a Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University under Nobel-laureate physicist Julian Schwinger. At Harvard he founded important theories of electromagnetic and nuclear particle interaction, which laid the basis for the next generation of research on quarks and leptons.
After a small period at the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, CERN in Geneva, and the California Institute of Technology, Glashow spent five years (1961 to 1966) teaching at the University of Stanford and the University of California (Berkeley), before returning to Harvard in 1967 as lecturer of physics. He has served the science policy committee of CERN since 1979.
During 1972 Glashow married Joan Alexander, with whom he had two children, Bryan and Rebecca, and two step-children, Jason and Jordan.
Contributions to scientific field:
With the assistance of Julian Schwinger, Glashow in 1961 extended his work on electroweak unification models. Through his workings he discovered the basis of the accepted theory of the electroweak interactions and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, along with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam.
In 1964, while working with James Bjorken, Glashow was the first to predict the existence of a fourth quark, which he originally named the “charmed quark” (now charm quick). Through this he demonstrated that the quark pairs would largely cancel out flavor changing neutral currents, as well as eliminating a technical disaster for any quantum field theory with unequal numbers of quarks and leptons-an irregularity.
Along with Howard Georgi in 1973, Glashow devised the first grand unified theory. This work was the groundwork for all future unifying work.
Apart from scientific articles, Glashow has written a number of popular articles, a collection of tales, charts, cartoons, and poems about physics and physicists. He is also one of the members of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He was the focus of a far-reaching profile in the Atlantic Monthly during August 1984.
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Shintaro Hirase
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There are many kinds of scientists in the world and while some work in fields that regularly get the spotlight, there are those that do important work and yet do not really get as much popularity that they deserve. Shintaro Hirase happens to be one of those people and while he isn’t as well-known as other scientists, his works and research as a malacologist are very exciting and contribute a lot to the study of shells and molluscs. His works are used in dozens of research projects even until today and his collections happen to be a marvel as well though there aren’t really much of them left given to the war and the bombings that did away with a lot of Japan’s buildings and other notable works.
The Early Life of Shintaro Hirase
Shintaro Hirase had an early start in the field of malacology (a branch of zoology that places focus on the study of molluscs) because he grew up under the influence of another very well-known malacologist and that was his father, Yoichiro Hirase. Shintaro was born on February 24, 1884 and as mentioned, he was under the influence of his father so it can be said that his foray into the field of zoology and his study of malacology was something he inherited from his father who was very enthusiastic about his job and his interest in malacology.
Aside from formal schooling, he had his father to help drive his interest and this is why together, the two managed to form an extensive collection of seashells that were found along Japanese islands and other islands that were near Japan. It has been said often enough that the collection formed by the two is some of the best to be found anywhere although today, only about 30% of the extensive collection is left.
Today, only about 5000 specimens are left and the reason for the demise of the majority of the collection was because of the bombing in Tokyo. It was the incendiary bombs dropped by US troops that ruined most of the collection. What happened was they dropped the bombs the house of Shintaro Hirase and some bombs were also dropped in the Research Institute for Natural resources during the bombing of Tokyo. The collection was housed in the institute in the year 1948 and was comprised of Shintaro’s own collection and that of his father’s. a great deal was lost to them and to Japan that day but it has to be said that the remaining 30% still inspires awe in people and really show how dedicated they were to their craft.
His Works
While he spent a lot of his time and most of his life building the collection, that wasn’t all be was known to do since he also published several works that prove to be quite valuable in the study of shells and mollusc that were found in Japan. These works are so profound that even until today, they are still in use and in print. One of his works, the Jap J Zool was based on the review of Japanese oysters and was published in 1932. In this work, he talked about the breeding of Japanese oysters and went in-depth about their anatomic qualities.
His other published work, a review of scaphopods was published in the Journal of Choncology. Another work he published was on the study of Japanese shells and this book happens to be one of the most interesting to read and to look at since it included pictures of Japanese shells in their natural colours. All his works were praised to the highest degree and copies can be obtained up until today.
While a majority of his earlier years were spend doing research on shells, collecting shells and writing, his later years were spend teaching because he took a job at Seikei college in Japan where he taught about the subjects that were near and dear to his heart. He taught zoology for several years in the university but also did some research on the side.
His Death
Shintaro Hirase died in 1939 and had an obituary published in the Macological Society of London and in it, they gave a great review of his life and his accomplishments. In it, they touched not only upon his works and his accomplishments but also gave an insight as to what he was as a person. In it, they talked about his career as a teacher of zoology in Seikei college and also how enthusiastic he was about his work. They also made mention of how he was devoted to his work and had no political interests at all. It is interesting to note that his lack of political interest was a sign that the bombs dropped in his house were non-intentional and were purely by chance.
It goes without saying that Shintaro Hirase, just like his father, was truly dedicated to his work and was really an academic. It takes no small amount of devotion to come up with the collection and the works that he did and still be able to teach if he wasn’t really into his craft. A quick glimpse of his books will show you how much he enjoyed his occupation and his love of the subject. To him, it wasn’t just something to pass the time but it was what he loved to do.
His books and collection are not only interesting to see but they have also been used in other studies especially when it comes to studies done on conservation and breeding. Indeed, he had a huge impact in the study of malacology and zoology and it is very refreshing to know that he passed on his knowledge and enthusiasm to his students. There are no reports whether or not the devastated collection was ever replaced or if a new collection was started but even if they did replace it with newer specimens, the ones left over from the original collection were of great value and were surely retained.
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Sigmund Freud
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Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist, was an influential thinker of the twentieth century. Freud’s innovative treatment of human actions, dreams, and indeed of cultural object s as invariably possessing implicit symbolic significance has proven to be extraordinarily productive, and has had immense implications for a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation in addition to psychology. However, Freud’s most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a new science of the mind, remains the subject of much disapproval and controversy.
Contributions and Achievements:
Freud conceptualized the mind symbolically as an ancient ruin which had to been uncovered much like an archeologist would discover the treasures of an ancient civilization. This gave birth to Psychoanalysis. Freud’s account of the sexual genesis and nature of neuroses led him naturally to develop a clinical treatment for treating such disorders. This has become so influential today that when people speak of ‘psychoanalysis’ they frequently refer exclusively to the clinical treatment. The object of psychoanalytic treatment may be said to be a form of self-understanding, once this is acquired, it is largely up to the patient, in consultation with the analyst to determine how he shall handle this newly-acquired understanding of the unconscious forces which motivate him. Freud became more and more sophisticated in his technique of psychoanalysis, and he became particularly adept at using his patient’s biased impressions of him to help the patient to discover the origins of the unconscious memory which led to the symptoms from which they suffered.
Freud’s theories and research methods have always been controversial. He and psychoanalysis have been criticized in very extreme terms. For an often-quoted example, Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, said in 1975 that psychoanalysis is the “most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century”. However, Freud has had a tremendous impact on psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists follow Freud’s approach to an extent, even if they reject his theories.
The contemporary scientific climate in which Freud lived and worked should be taken into consideration. When the towering scientific figure of nineteenth century science, Charles Darwin, published his revolutionary Origin of Species, Freud was four years old. The evolutionary principle completely altered the existing conception of man, whereas before man had been seen as a being different in nature to the members of the animal kingdom by virtue of his possession of an immortal soul, he was now seen as being part of the natural order, different from non-human animals only in degree of structural difficulty.
This made it possible and reasonable for the first time to treat man as an object of scientific investigation, and to imagine of the vast and varied range of human behavior, and the motivational causes from which it springs, as being amenable in principle to scientific explanation. Much of the creative work done in a whole variety of diverse scientific fields over the next century was to be inspired by and derive nourishment from this new world-view which Freud, with his enormous esteem for science, accepted implicitly.
Freud also followed Plato in his account of the nature of mental health or psychological well-being, which he saw as the establishment of a melodic relationship between the three elements which constitute the mind. A key concept introduced by Freud was that the mind possesses a number of ‘defense mechanisms’ to attempt to prevent conflicts from becoming too acute, such as repression (pushing conflicts back into the unconscious), sublimation (channeling the sexual drives into the achievement socially acceptable goals, in art, science, poetry, etc.), fixation (the failure to progress beyond one of the developmental stages), and regression (a return to the behavior characteristic of one of the stages).
Published works:
Freud’s work is preserved in a 23 volume set called The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Some of Freud’s most interesting works are The Interpretation of Dreams, his own favorite, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, about Freudian slips and other day-to-day oddities, Totem and Taboo, Freud’s views on our beginnings, Civilization and Its Discontents, his pessimistic commentary on modern society, and The Future of an Illusion, on religion. All are a part of The Standard Edition, but all are available as separate paperbacks as well. This renowned man died of the cancer of the mouth and jaw that he had been suffering since 20 years of his life.
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Srinivasa Ramanujan
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Early Life and Education:
Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar was an Indian Mathematician who was born in Erode, India in 1887 on December 22. He was born into a family that was not very well to do. He went to school at the nearby place, Kumbakonam. Ramanujan is very well known for his efforts on continued fractions and series of hypergeometry. When Ramanujan was thirteen, he could work out Loney’s Trigonometry exercises without any help. At the of fourteen, he was able to acquire the theorems of cosine and sine given by L. Euler. Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics by George Shoobridge Carr was reached by him in 1903. The book helped him a lot and opened new dimensions to him were opened which helped him introduce about 6,165 theorems for himself. As he had no proper and good books in his reach, he had to figure out on his own the solutions for all the questions. It was in this quest that he discovered many tremendous methods and new algebraic series.
In 1904, he received a merit scholarship in a local college and became more indulgent into mathematics. He lost his interest in all other subjects due to which he lost his scholarship. Even after two attempts, he did not succeed to get a first degree in the field of arts. In 1909, he got married and continued his clerical work and, side by side, his investigations of mathematics. Finally in 1911, he published some of his results.
It was in January 1913 that he sent his work to a Cambridge Professor named G. H. Hardy but he did not appreciate Ramanujan’s work much as he had not really done reached the standard of the mathematicians of the west. But he was given a scholarship in May by the University of Madras.
Contributions and Achievements:
Ramanujan went to Cambridge in 1914 and it helped him a lot but by that time his mind worked on the patterns on which it had worked before and he seldom adopted new ways. By then, it was more about intuition than argument. Hardy said Ramanujan could have become an outstanding mathematician if his skills had been recognized earlier. It was said about his talents of continued fractions and hypergeometric series that, “he was unquestionably one of the great masters.” It was due to his sharp memory, calculative mind, patience and insight that he was a great formalist of his days. But it was due to his some methods of working in the work analysis and theories of numbers that did not let him excel that much.
He got elected as the fellow in 1918 at the Trinity College at Cambridge and the Royal Society. He departed from this world on April 26, 1920.
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Stephanie Kwolek
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Stephanie Kwolek was an organic chemist, best known for inventing Kevlar in 1965. Kevlar is an immensely strong plastic, which was first used as a replacement for steel reinforcing strips in racing car tires and has gone on to be used in a large number of applications where high strength is required without high weight.
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Her father died when she was only 10 years old, but he passed on his interest in science, particularly natural science to the young girl.
Aged 23, Kwolek graduated with a degree in chemistry from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College of Carnegie Mellon University. She was quickly recruited to work as a chemist at Dupont Chemicals in Buffalo, NY. Four years later, she moved to Wilmington, Delaware where she spent the remainder of her career with DuPont.
After nine years of research work, Kwolek made her major breakthrough, discovering Kevlar. Her pathway to discovery began a year earlier, when she began looking for a new, lightweight plastic to be used in car tires. The idea was that lighter tires would allow vehicles to enjoy better fuel economy.
Not only did Kevlar find use in tires, its combination of lightness and strength has seen it used in a large variety of protective clothing applications, such as bulletproof vests, which have saved the lives of countless police officers and other people.
Speaking about her discovery, Stephanie Kwolek, “I don’t think there’s anything like saving someone’s life to bring you satisfaction and happiness.”
Stephanie Kwolek died on June 18, 2014, at the age of 90.
Awards
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was awarded the National Medal of Technology; the Perkin Medal, which is seen as the highest award in American industrial chemistry; the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists; and the Howard N. Potts Medal for Engineering. In 1994, she was admitted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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Stephen Hawking
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Stephen Hawking is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is widely considered to be one of the greatest scientists alive today. He is currently the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge.
Early Life and Education:
Born on 8 January 1942 to a biologist father, Hawking had two younger sisters. He was an average student at school, deeply interested in science. After winning a scholarship in natural sciences, he acquired a degree in physics from the University College, Oxford. Thereafter, Hawking also studied astronomy and cosmology at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Contributions and Achievements:
In his early days at Cambridge, Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease in which the nerves controlling the muscles become inactive while the sensory nerves function normally. Due to this sustained condition, it normally takes him about 40 hours to devise a 45 minute lecture.
Hawking is known for furthering Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum theory. He has about twelve honorary degrees. Awarded the CBE in 1982, he became a Companion of Honor in 1989. He received numerous awards, medals and praises. Hawking is also a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Stephen Hawking is working as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics since 1979, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Arguably the most famous scientist alive today, he is considered a living legend for his amazing contributions to quantum physics.
A highly successful active lecturer and author, Hawking makes use of an adaptive communication system known as Equalizer to combat ALS. It involves a speech synthesizer. Using the Equalizer, he has authored a book and several scientific papers and lectures, though he is capable of speaking at a mere rate of 15 words per minute.
Hawking’s 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” quickly became an instant best-seller and was translated into 30 languages. It has sold over 10 million copies worldwide to date. His 2001 book “The Universe in a Nutshell” is hailed as a masterpiece in the history of modern physics.
Personal Life:
Stephen Hawking got married to Jane Wilde, a language student, in 1965, and together they have three children and one grandchild.
The couple got separated in 1991. As of 2009 Hawking has been almost completely paralyzed.
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Steven Chu
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A 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Steven Chu is an American physicist who was the 12th Secretary of Energy in the United States. He is known for his work on cooling and also trapping atoms using laser light, and this is what won him the Nobel Prize. He is one of the leading advocates of nuclear power and renewable energy use because he believes that shifting the source of power from fossil fuels can help in battling the adverse effects of climate change.
Childhood Years and Family Background
Steven Chu comes from a family of scholars and it is no shock to have such a brilliant mind considering his family’s background. Before he was born in February 28, 1948 in St. Louis Missouri, Ju Chin Chu, his father, had moved to the United States in order to further his education in chemical engineering and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After two years, Ching Chen Li, Steven Chu’s mother, joined his father to study economics. Before his parents had their academic endeavors in the U.S., his paternal grandfather and one of his uncles had also studied science-related courses before returning to their homeland in China. Later on, his father had teaching positions at Washington University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
There is no denying how important good education was for Steven Chu’s family, and most of his elders had Ph.D.’s in either engineering or science. His brothers had earned several MDs, Ph.D.’s, and a law degree when he had just finished one advanced degree. To Steven, he felt as if schoolwork was a chore rather than intellectual adventures, but it was Geometry which made him appreciate mathematics. Strange as it may sound to some, his life did not revolve around academic endeavors. He also had a fondness for making plastic model warships and planes, and there was a time when he began creating numerous gadgets with several moving parts. He, along with a friend even played with their own homemade rockets and made a business out of a chemistry-based hobby by testing the soil of neighbor’s lawns for missing nutrients and acidity levels.
Educational Background and Career
Despite his seemingly mediocre academic achievements when compared to his brothers and relatives back in high school while he studied at Garden City High School, Steven Chu received his B.S. Degree in Physics as well as his B.A. Degree in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1970. In 1976, he had support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship when he went to work on getting his Ph.D. from University of California.
After he had gotten his doctorate, he remained in the University of California for two more years as a postdoctoral researcher before he joined Bell Labs where he along with his co-workers worked on their laser-cooling project which won them the Nobel Prize for Physics. After his career in Bell Labs, he became one of the Physics professors at Stanford University back in 1987, and served as the university’s Physics Department Chair from 1990-1993 and again in 1999-2001.
During his years in Stanford, he along with three other university professors started what was known as the Bio-X Program. It focused on the interdisciplinary research involved in medicine and biology. They also played a key role for the procurement of funds for the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory became a center for research efforts on solar energy and biofuels under Steven Chu’s leadership. It was August of 2004 when he was appointed as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s director, and later on he joined the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology as well as UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics. His interest in solar energy research made him lead the Helios project whose aim is to find and develop ways on how to harness solar energy as a renewable energy source which can be used for transportation.
It was in 2009 when he became the 12th Secretary of Energy of the United States, and he was sworn under President Barack Obama’s administration. He is the first person to have become a member of the U.S. Cabinet after winning the Nobel Prize. He served from 2009-2013 and had continued his other scientific work alongside his being the Secretary of Energy.
Advocacies
Steven Chu is a vocal advocate and openly expresses his support for more research efforts for the use of nuclear power and renewable energy. He has also become a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council which was created in order to build momentum for the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen back in 2009. He believes that by shifting away from using fossil fuels, the negative effects of climate change as well as global warming can be battled. In 2009 and 2011, Chu was a speaker at the National Science Bowl and he talked about how important the science students of America are, and that they will carry on environmental planning as well as other global initiatives.
Another advocacy he is known for is making the roofs of buildings as well as roads have white or at least other lighter colors in order to reflect more sunlight back to space to help mitigate the effects of global warming. This vision was supported by Samuel Thernstrom who expressed his support for Chu’s idea The American magazine, and said that this idea can indeed have an important role when it comes to the world’s climate concerns.
Awards and Other Recognitions
Apart from being a co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics award for their work on laser cooling for atoms, he has also received other awards including the Humboldt Prize in 1995 given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, an honorary doctorate given by the Boston University, Harvard University, Penn State University, and Washington University in St. Louis, and an honorary degree he got from Yale University and Polytechnic Institute of New York University.
He has two sons from his previous marriage with Lisa Chu-Thielbar, and in 1997, married British American Jean Fetter who is an oxford-trained physicist.
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Svante Arrhenius
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Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish physicist and physical chemist who formulated the theory of electrolytic dissociation. One of the founding fathers of physical chemistry, Arrhenius also present a revolutionary model of the greenhouse effect. He won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his brilliant contributions.
Early Life and Education:
Born on February 19, 1859 near Uppsala, Sweden, Svante Arrhenius’s father worked for Uppsala University as a land surveyor. A childhood prodigy, Arrhenius taught himself to read and even solve simple mathematics problems when he was only 3. He received his early education from the renowned Cathedral School in Uppsala. After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1878, Arrhenius earned a doctorate in 1884 at Uppsala University, where he was also awarded the the honorary title of docent the same year.
Contributions and Achievements:
Svante Arrhenius sent his 150-page thesis regarding the conductivities of electrolytes to several famous scientists across Europe. Wilhelm Ostwald was very much impressed, who even made a trip to Uppsala to recruit Arrhenius for his research team.
Arrhenius extensively broadened his ionic theory in 1884 and gave detailed definitions for acids and bases. He received a travel stipdent from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1886. Arrhenius revolutionized the study of electrolytes by stating that electrolytes are separated into ions when there is no current flowing through the solution.
Controversies regarding the causes of the ice ages led Arrhenius to build the earliest climate model of the influence of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which he presented in “The Philosophical Magazine” in 1896. He therefore became the first scientist to discuss the effect of industrial activity on global warming. Arrhenius also performed extensive research on bacterial toxins and various plant and animal poisons.
Later Life and Death:
Svante Arrhenius suffered a serious attack of acute intestinal catarrh in September 1927. He died a few days later, on October 2, 1927. Buried in Uppsala, Arrhenius was 68 years old.
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Sven Wingqvist
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Sven Wingquist, a Swedish inventor, engineer and industrialist, is responsible for perfecting the system used for one of the most basic things that we still use today – the spherical ball bearing. With different industries and processes relying on this simple invention, he has made his mark in history.
Life and Education
Sven Gustaf Wingquist was born in the municipality of Kumla, which was found south of Orebro in Sweden in 1876. His father, Sven Daniel Wingquist, was Hallsberg’s railway station inspector. His mother was Anna Lundberg.
He attended Orebro Technical Elementary School until he graduated in 1894 and went on to study at the John Lennings Textile College found in Norrkoping. Here, he widened his knowledge on the technical aspects of the textile industry. Because Sven dreamed of creating more efficient processes in industrial production, Sven left for the US in 1896.
He eventually married a girl named Kristina Hult in 1919 while enjoying the continuous growth of SKF. Despite the huge success that Sven Wingquist achieved, he remained humble and lived simply. He preferred staying in the background and gave very few interviews.
Sven Wingquist died in 1953, leaving behind a legacy that still continues to benefit the world until today.
His Greatest Invention
In 1899, Sven became an operating engineer at a weavery in a district called Gamlestadens in Goteberg, Sweden. They continuously experienced problems because the factory was built on clay soil. Because the ground was unstable, the building housing their main operations shifted from time to time. This caused their drive shafts to incur damages, and their machines overheated. Since they wanted to avoid this fire hazard, they found a way to solve the problem. This solution however also meant ordering ball bearings that came all the way from Germany which caused deliveries to take several months. Even worse, the ball bearings proved to be of poor quality which means that their effort to avoid further damages would ultimately be useless. The ball bearings broke down at an alarming rate, causing even more damage to the drive shafts.
This was when Sven felt that he needed to think of a solution to the problem himself. He studied different concepts used on the development of ball bearings from all over Europe. He especially took great interest in a report from Professor Richard Stribeck in 1902. Stribeck was then affiliated with the Institute of Technology in Dresden, Germany where he tried comparing the properties of ball bearings and plain bearings using scientific methods. This gave Wingquist the idea that there was a lot of room for innovations in this industry. He set up a small workshop inside the factory where he worked and conducted several tests and came up with a lot of different designs.
In 1906, he came up with a simple design that was made up of two rows of balls and two rings, the single-row, self-aligning ball bearing. The outer ring’s interior was spherical in shape which allowed freedom of movement for the inner ring. With the entire load equally divided between the two balls, friction was controlled and further damage to the drive shafts was finally avoided.
Building Svenska Kullagerfabriken (S.K.F.)
Wingquist’s invention caught the eyes of a number of investors. Upon closing a few deals, Svenska Kullagerfabriken, more popularly known now as SKF, was founded in 1907. Wingquist personally went around the entire country, demonstrating how his ball bearings worked and finding new customers who can benefit from his invention. In a matter of months, he had talked to over a hundred companies in different areas and never failed to impress his audiences. He received order after order for his invention. In the same year, he got a Swedish patent for his design in eleven countries including his own.
Business boomed to unimaginable heights bringing Wingquist a lot of fame and fortune. In 1908 alone, over SEK 114,000 worth of products were ordered, which was quite a fortune at that time. After eight years, SKF grew to become a global company, with factories built in 27 countries around the world. By 1920, SKF has been receiving orders for SEK 23 million worth of ball bearings.
Sven Wingquist held the position of Chief Operating Officer until 1919. He became Chairman of the Board after this.
Today, SKF has truly become a global giant. With 106 years of experience in the business, they now employ over 46,700 employees in 140 sites and 16 technical centers across 32 countries around the world. Their products include actuation systems, bearings units and housings, condition monitoring systems, coupling systems, lubrication solutions, linear motion, magnetic systems, maintenance products, power transmissions, seals, test and measurement equipment, and vehicle aftermarket. They also offer different services like asset management, business consulting, customer training, engineering consultancy, logistics, mechanical maintenance, remanufacturing and maintenance, remote monitoring and diagnosis, and service contracts. SKF provides solutions across different industries including aerospace, agriculture, construction, material handling, mining and mineral processing, oil and gas, racing, and a lot more.
SKF continues to grow and evolve, adapting to the changes across different industries and applying newly established technologies. New factories are continuously being built and bought as the number of products and services that they offer across the different industries they cater to grows as well.
Other Achievements
Sven Wingquist did not only apply his skills in his own company, but in other companies as well. In fact, he also became the CEO of Bofors, a weapons manufacturer found in Karlskoga.
Two of Wingquist’s young employees, Gustaf Larson and Assar Gabrielsson, eventually expressed their interest in building a Swedish car company. Because Wingquist was also a car enthusiast he supported their endeavor and gave them financial support through SKF. When it was time to think of a name for the car company, the two were trying to decide between calling it “GL” or “Larson”. Sven Wingquist thought that it would be more interesting to name the company something else and suggested a Latin word that literally meant “I roll.” This word was Volvo.
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Thabit ibn Qurra
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Al-Sabi Thabit ibn Qurra al-Harrani (836 –901) was a an astronomer and mathematician born in present day Turkey, best known for translating classic Greek works on astronomy, and discovered an equation for determining the amicable numbers. He was a Mandean physician, who was known as Thebit in Latin.
Early Life:
Thabit was a member of the Sabian religious sect. His heritage was sharp in traditions of Hellenistic culture and pagan veneration of the stars. This background, and in particular his knowledge of Greek and Arabic, made him an attractive prospect for enclosure in one particular community of scholars, the Banu Musa and their circle in Baghdad. Thabit seems to have been asked to join this circle by a family member, the mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir, who recognized his talents and potential.
Thabit subsequently came to fame after traveling to Baghdad when he was invited by Muhammad bin Musa bin Shakir, one of the Banu Musa brothers. He worked in Baghdad and he occupied himself with mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, medicine and philosophy.
Contributions and Achievements:
Thabit is credited with dozens of treatises, covering a wide range of fields and topics. While some were written in his native Syriac, most were composed in Arabic. Thabit was trilingual, a skill that enabled him to play a key role in the translation movement of 9th century Baghdad. He translated works from both Syriac and Greek into Arabic, creating Arabic versions of important Hellenistic and Greek writings. Several of Thabit’s Arabic translations are the only extant versions of important ancient works.
The medieval astronomical theory of the trepidation of the equinoxes is often attributed to Thabit. He developed a theory about the trepidation and oscillation of the equinoctial points, of which many scholars debated in the Middle Ages.
According to Copernicus Thabit determined the length of the sidereal year as 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes and 12 seconds (an error of 2 seconds). Copernicus based his claim on the Latin text attributed to Thabit. Thabit published his observations of the Sun. In the fields of mechanics and physics he may be recognized as the founder of statics. He observed conditions of equilibrium of bodies, beams and levers. Thabit also wrote on philosophical and cosmological topics, questioning some of the fundamentals of the Aristotelian cosmos.
He rejected Aristotle’s concept of the essence as immobile, a position Rosenfeld and Gregorian suggest is in keeping with his anti Aristotelian stance of allowing the use of motion in mathematics. Thabit also wrote important treatises related to Archimedean problems in statics and mechanics. Besides all these contributions he also founded a school of translation and supervised the translation of a further large number of books from Greek to Arabic.
Among Thabit’s writings a large number have survived, while several are not present. Most of the books are on mathematics, followed by astronomy and medicine. The books have been written in Arabic but some are in Syriac. In the Middle Ages, some of his books were translated into Latin by Gherard of Cremona. In recent centuries, a number of his books have been translated into European languages and published. Thabit’s efforts provided a foundation for continuing work in the investigation and reformation of Ptolemaic astronomy. His life is illustrative of the fact that individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and religions contributed to the flourishing of sciences like astronomy in Islamic culture.
Death:
Thabit died in Baghdad. Thabit and his grandson Ibrahim ibn Sinan studied the curves which are needed for making of sundials that is commendable and is a great source of inspiration for the learners.
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Theodor Schwann
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Theodor Schwann was a German physiologist who is widely credited as the founder of modern histology. He played a vital role in the development of cell theory and defined the cell as the fundamental unit of animal structure.
Early Life and Education:
Theodor Schwann was born in Neuss, Germany in 1810. His father was a goldsmith. Schwann loved tinkering with mechanical devices as a child. He studied medicine at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, and Berlin.
Contributions and Achievements:
Schwann completed his graduation in 1834 and accepted a job at a Berlin anatomy museum. He discovered the digestive enzyme pepsin during this time. He also researched fermentation and muscle movement and made important discoveries. He was appointed a professor of anatomy at the University of Leuven, Belgium in 1838. Schwann discovered the organic nature of yeast and also coined the term “metabolism”.
Schwann implemented Matthias Schleiden’s cell theory to animals in 1839, and demonstrated that every mature animal tissue is composed of embryonic cells. He later moved to the University of Liège, Belgium in 1848, where he taught physiology and anatomy.
Later Life and Death:
In his later life, Theodor Schwann had developed a passion in theological issues. Schwann, however, continued to study cells until his death in 1882. He was 72 years old when he died.
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Theodosius Dobzhansky
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Widely regarded as the founder of evolutionary genetics, Theodosius Dobzhansky was an eminent Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionist. He played a vital role in the development of evolutionary theory and genetics.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Nemirov, Russian Empire in 1900, Theodosius Dobzhansky was the son of a high school mathematics teacher. He belonged to a family of Russian Orthodox priests. During his childhood, Dobzhansky had developed a passion of collecting insects, and was an ardent fan of outdoor activities. In his high-school days, he decided to become a biologist. After graduating in biology from the University of Kiev in 1921, Dobzhansky accepted a position at the Polytechnic Institute of Kiev on the faculty of agriculture.
Contributions and Achievements:
During his stay as a professor and researcher, Theodosius Dobzhansky started devoting his efforts to the emerging field of genetics. He studied many newer areas of genetics, starting extensive research on the fruit-fly (Drosophila melanogaster). Many contemporary geneticists followed his work, such as Russian entomologist Yuri Filipchenko, who was Dobzhansky’s fellow professor at Leningrad University until 1927. He also later analyzed the genetics of horses and cattle.
Dobzhansky followed zoologist Thomas Hunt Morgan to the California Institute of Technology in 1928, working as assistant professor in genetics. A few years later, in 1933, he made an important breakthrough when Dobzhansky changed his model organism to Drosophila pseudoobscura. The results corroborated his worked “Genetics and the Origin of Species”. Published in 1937, it turned out to be the most important book on evolutionary biology of the 20th century. A combination of Darwinian selection and modern genetics, it became a catalyst for future researches in evolution.
Dobzhansky joined the Columbia University in 1940, making an energetic group of genetics researchers around him. He moved to Rockefeller University in 1962, where he remained until his retirement in 1970. Dobzhansky revolutionized the application of genetics and evolution to the understanding of human beings. He also wrote about anthropological and philosophical themes, for instance his influential 1962 work, “Mankind Evolving”, that changed the face of modern genetics and evolutionary theory.
Later Life and Death:
Theodosius Dobzhansky retired from Rockefeller University in 1970, and announced to join the University of California at Davis as a supervisor. He died five years later, in 1975, following a long battle with leukemia. He was 75 years old.
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Thomas Alva Edison
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Thomas Alva Edison is one of the greatest American inventors who held countless patents, majority of them related to electricity and power. While two of his most famous inventions are the incandescent lamp and the phonograph, arguably the most significant invention of Edison is considered to be organized research.
Early Life:
Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the historic city of Milan (Ohio). His father was a versatile person and a man-of-all-work, while his mother was a teacher. Edison was mostly homeschooled by his mother. Edison became a salesman of fruit, paper and other goods on the Grand Trunk Railroad at a tender age of 12. With the help of his tiny handpress in a trash car, he wrote and published the Grand Trunk Herald in 1862, which was sent to 400 railroad employees. The same year Edison worked as a telegraph operator, trained by the father of a kid whose life he had saved. Edison was a tramp telegrapher, as he was exempted from military service due to his deafness. He was recruited in 1868 by Western Union Telegraph Company in Boston.
Early Conceptions:
Perhaps the first invention of Edison was a telegraph repeater in 1864 which worked automatically, while his earliest patent was registered for an electric vote recorder. He acquired partnership in a New York electrical company in 1869, where he honed the stock ticker and sold it. With all his money, Edison paid for his own factory in Newark, N.J., where he hired technicians to help him with the inventions. His dream was to create an “invention factory.” Almost 80 “earnest men,” including physicists, mathematicians and chemists, were among his collaborators. “Invention to order” made him good money at this place.
From 1870 to 1875 Edison devised many telegraphic advances including receivers, transmitters, the duplex, tape and automatic printers. He also collaborated in 1871 with Christopher Sholes, also known as “father of the typewriter,” to ameliorate the typing machine. Edison claimed to have made twelve typewriters at Newark in 1870. As a result, the Remington Company purchased his interests.
Edison’s carbon telegraph transmitter for Western Union brought a breakthrough for the creation of the Bell telephone. The money he got from Western Union for the transmitter was spent to establish a factory in Menlo Park, N.J. One more time, he used scientific talent to register over 300 patents in only 6 years. His electric pen (1877) developed stencils to produce copies.
Other Inventions and Contributions:
Probably his most impressive invention, the phonograph, was patented in 1877. By 1890 Edison had about 80 patents under his name, and that was pretty much the reason The Victor Company came into being.
To explore incandescence, Edison and his fellows, among them J. P. Morgan, developed the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. Years later, the company became the General Electric Company. Edison invented the first practical incandescent lamp in 1879. With months of hard work researching metal filaments, Edison and his staff analyzed 6,000 organic fibers around the world and determined that the Japanese bamboo was ideal for mass production. Large scale production of these cheap lamps turned out to be profitable, hence the first fluorescent lamp was patented in 1896.
Edison made an amazing discovery in pure science, termed as the Edison Effect. He discovered in 1883 that electrons flowed from incandescent filaments. The lamp could function as a valve using a metal-plate insert, while taking only negative electricity. A method to transmit telegraphic “aerial” signals over short distances was patented by Edison in 1885. The “wireless” patent was later sold to Guglielmo Marconi.
The huge West Orange, N.J., factory was supervised from 1887 to 1931 by Edison. This was probably the world’s most cutting-edge research laboratory, and a forerunner to modern research and development laboratories, with experts systematically investigating and researching for the solution of problems.
The Edison battery, made perfect in 1910, used an alkaline electrolyte, and proved to be a superb storage device. The copper oxide battery, strikingly similar to modern dry cells, was modified in 1902.
The kinetograph, his motion picture camera, was able to photograph action on 50-foot strips of film, and produced about sixteen images per foot. A young assistant of Edison built a small laboratory in 1893 called the “Black Maria,” which was substantial in making the first Edison movies. The kinetoscope projector of 1893 finally displayed the films. The earliest commercial movie theater, a peepshow, was established in New York in 1884. After developing and modifying the projector of Thomas Armat in 1895, Edison commercialized it as the “Vitascope”.
The Edison Company created over 1,700 movies. Edison set the benchmark for talking pictures in 1904 by synchronizing movies with the phonograph. His cinemaphone adjusted the film speed to phonograph speed. The kinetophone projected talking pictures in 1913. The phonograph, behind the screen, was synchronized by pulleys and ropes with the projector. Edison brought forth many “talkies.”
The universal motor, which utilized alternating or direct current, appeared in 1907. The electric safety lantern, patented in 1914, significantly reduced casualties among miners. The same year Edison devised the telescribe, which unified characteristics of the telephone and dictating phonograph.
Services for the Government:
Edison presided the U.S. Navy Consulting Board throughout World War I and made 45 more inventions. These inventions included substitutes for antecedently imported chemicals (such as carbolic acid), a ship-telephone system, an underwater searchlight, defensive instruments against U-boats, among others. Later on, Edison launched the Naval Research Laboratory, the eminent American institution for research involving organized weapons.
Death:
This multi-genius died on Oct. 18, 1931 in West Orange, N.J. The laboratory buildings and equipment affiliated with Edison were upheld in Greenfield Village, Detroit, Michigan by Henry Ford, a friend and admirer.
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Thomas Burnet
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Thomas Burnet was an English divine theologian and a notable writer on speculative cosmogony or the scientific theory of how the universe was created. Burnet was also the royal chaplain to the king of England that time, William III and a cabinet officer as well. His famous work was the Telluris Theoria Sacra and was translated to Sacred Theory of the Earth. Many would say that his work was considered to be the most popular of all geologic works in the seventeenth century. His books were widely criticized by many but he defended himself with his own views. With his works, he was able to attract solid supporters and as well as strong opponents. In his other book, the Archaeologiae Philosophicae sive Doctrina Antiqua de Rerum Originibus or The Ancient Doctrine Concerning the Origin of Things, his views were strongly opposed that he had to resign his post in the court. Despite the drawbacks in his writings, Thomas Burnet was one of the first few people to view the material world basing on historical development.
Personal Life and Education
Born English, Thomas Burnet was born in 1635 at Croft in Yorkshire, England. He went to Northallerton to study grammar under whom he has amazed and attracted with his views, Thomas Smelt. After getting educated, he transferred to Clare Hall, Cambridge about the year 1651. He became the student of John Tilotson. But in 1654, Burnet decided to follow the Clare Master, Ralph Cudworth moving to Christ’s College in Cambridge. After three years, he became fellow of Christ’s, was M.A. the following year and then in the year 1667, he became a senior university proctor.
Burnet remained fellow of Christ’s until the year 1678, though he was not all the time in his residence. During his stay in Cambridge, he worked intimately with the Cambridge Platonists, making a special mention on Henry More and Cudworth. In the year 1671, Burnet went out of the country as governor and then made a second tour later on in Europe.
Early Career
Thomas Burnet grabbed employment by travelling with Charles Paulet’s son, Lord Wiltshire and through James Butler, who was the 1st Duke of Ormonde. Burnet was then able to secure a position through the Duke of Ormonde’s influence, where one of the governors appointed him the master of the Charterhouse School in 1685 where he then obtained the D.D. degree.
Being the master, Burnet made a strong and righteous stand opposing the illegal attempts to let Andrew Popham become admitted as a pensioner of the Charterhouse. In the same way, he strongly opposed the order of James II on the 26th of December, 1686 to the governors providing with the decrees for that said occasion.
It was during his travels that he was able to formulate his views and theories about the Earth. It was the books he published that made him become notable and at the same time, controversial. He was able to publish the famous works on the Sacred Theory of the Earth or his Telluris Theoria Sacra, Archaeologiae Philosophicae or the Ancient Doctrine Concerning the Origin of Things, and De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium or On the State of the Dead and the Resurrection, which was only published after his death.
Contributions to Science
In 1681 within the boundaries of London, Burnished published his popular work Telluris Theoria Sacra or Sacred Theory of the Earth. The book, which contained a whimsical theory of the structure of the Earth, had attracted so much attention to the readers which in turn had encouraged an issue of the book’s translation in English that was then printed in the form of folio between the years 1684 to 1689.
The book was an exploratory cosmogony, in which he proposed a hollow earth filled with mostly water until the Flood on the time of Noah, at that time oceans and mountains appeared. Burnet calculated the volume of water on the surface of the Earth, which then he stated that the amount of water was not sufficient to conclude that the Flood. To some extent, Burnet was somehow influenced by Rene Descartes who wrote the Principia philosophiae tackling the earth’s creation in the year 1644. Roger North, a lawyer, criticized the grounds of Burnet’s work. The sacrilegious views of Isaac La Peyrere contained the idea of the Flood being not universal; on the other hand, the theory of Burnet was partly intended to respond on that idea regarding that point.
Burnet’s system showed the features of his novels, including the four classical elements, which were very conventional – an originally ovoid Earth, the Paradise that was always present in the spring season before the Flood, and the rivers that flow from the Equator poles. In 1685, a criticism on his work was published by Herbert Croft, which accused Burnet of not following the Book of Genesis; instead, he followed the Second Epistle of Peter. Still, he defended his views against the critics.
Despite the criticisms, Isaac Newton remained attracted on Burnet’s approach on theological views to his connection on geological processes. For this, Newton sent Burnet a letter proposing the possibility on the creation of the Earth. He suggested that when God made the Earth, the days seemed longer. However, the proposal of Newton was not considered by Burnet scientific enough to add up on his views on the creation of the Earth. He considered lengthening the span of days as already part of God’s intervention. Despite the clamor of science and theology, Burnet held tightly on his belief that God made the world along with its processes wholly and suitably from the very beginning.
The works of Thomas Burnet were controversial, yet remarkable to many. His works influenced a lot of people. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet and philosopher, was one of them. Burnet was cited at the start of the 1817 edition of his longest and major poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Burnet’s influence even reached the moon. For that, the moon’s Dorsa Burnet ridge was named after him and his great works and contributions in Science.
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Thomas Hunt Morgan
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Thomas Hunt Morgan was an eminent American zoologist and geneticist. He is known for his legendary experimental analysis of the fruit fly, after which he formulated the chromosome theory of heredity. Morgan also demonstrated that genes are connected in a series on chromosomes, which carry hereditary traits, therefore kickstarting the modern field of genetics.
He won the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his extraordinary achievements.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, on September 25, 1866 to a rich, influential southern family, Thomas Hunt Morgan earned his B.S. degree from the State College of Kentucky (now the University of Kentucky) in 1886, and his Ph.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1890. After his doctorate, Morgan joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr College for a while.
Contributions and Achievements:
Thomas Hunt Morgan was appointed a professor of experimental zoology at Columbia University in 1904. He established a large laboratory at this place that was later termed as the “Fly Room.” In collaboration with fellow biologist Lilian Morgan and several other assistants, Morgan studied and highlighted the two specific characteristics of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). They were able to demonstrate the results of mating individual flies having these specific characteristics. The discovery is regarded as the earliest to extend Mendel’s genetics from the plants into the animals.
Morgan also extensively studied the field of experimental embryology. He knew the hypothetical connections between genetics and development, but was rather unwilling at the time to reveal those links explicitly.
Morgan won the 1924 Darwin Medal, the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine and the 1939 Copley Medal.
Later Life and Death:
Thomas Hunt Morgan continued to work in the laboratory until his death. He died in Pasadena, California, of a heart failure, on December 4, 1945. Morgan was 79 years old.
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Thomas Kuhn
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An American historian, physicist, and one of the most influential people being a philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn became famous for his book published in 1962 called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This book became a highly influential work in academic as well as other circles because of his claims about scientific knowledge and its progress which undergoes what is called the paradigm shift. His work in that particular book has even made an impact to the study of the English language which made him an even more influential man of science.
Personal Life and Academic Background of Thomas Kuhn
On July 18, 1922, Thomas Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to his mother Minette Stroock Kuhn, and his father who was an industrial engineer named Samuel L. Kuhn. His awareness for physics and mathematics began after he graduated from The Taft School in 1940. In 1943, he was already able to attain his B.S. Degree in Physics after attending Harvard University and he graduated summa cum laude. From the same university, he obtained both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees for physics in the years 1946 and 1949.
According to him and as stated on the preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ second edition, the three years of academic freedom that he experienced as one of the Harvard Junior Fellows were key to his being able to switch from physics towards the history and philosophy of science.
He was married twice, and had three children with Kathryn Muhs who was his first wife. He later married Jehane Barton Burns or Jehane R. Kuhn. In 1994, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he died 2 years later in 1996.
Careers
After graduating from Harvard University, he spent his years there in doing research about radar during the war years. He was elected as a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard, a prestigious society of the University. Up until 1956, Thomas Kuhn taught science classes of humanities undergraduates which were part of the curriculum for General Education in Science. This paved way to his being able to study more historical cases in detail. He then had a fascination for Aristotle’s works which made him understand more about philosophy while having his knowledge for science remain undistorted.
Because of that experience, he concentrated on the history of science. After some time, he was then appointed as the assistant professor for the history of science as well as general education. In this time of his career, his work was focused on the early history concerning thermodynamics as well as the 18th century theory on matter. His first book was published in 1957 when he turned his focus to the history of astronomy, and his book was called The Copernican Revolution.
In 1956, Kuhn moved to the University of California at Berkeley to take a teaching post for the history of science under the philosophy department. In 1961, he then became one of the full time professors there. It was his years in the University of California that developed his interest for the philosophy of science. A year later, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published.
The main idea behind this publication was that the development of science has a driving force which is what Kuhn called as paradigms. These paradigms supple the puzzles which scientists are to solve as well as provide the tools which are needed to solve the problem. Scientific crises arise when the paradigm loses its ability to solve puzzles which are particularly worrying, and these are called the anomalies.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also referred to as the SSR and in his work, Kuhn argued that paradigms happen to be incommensurable—which means it is not possible for one to understand a paradigm by understanding another rival paradigm’s conceptual framework. His work had many critics, and especially about a paradigm’s being incommensurable, David Stove thought of this as irrational. According to him, if one cannot make comparisons between rival paradigms, how is one to know which one is better? Because of the interpretation, Kuhn denied that his work had any relativism behind it in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ third edition for clarification on his views and to avoid other misinterpretations.
Apart from being influential and controversial in science-related fields, SSR had an enormous impact on linguistic aspects as well. In Kuhn’s own words in the postscript of SSR’s second edition, he said that “the most novel and least understood aspect of this book.” Other terms coined with the rise of his book involved “normal science” which referred the daily work of scientists. “Scientific revolutions” referred to work which took place in different periods and encompassing several disciplines.
The work of Thomas Kuhn is truly influential in several fields including language, science, social science, and even made a presence in the debate about International Relations.
Honors and Awards
Because of his significant contribution and influence in several fields of study, Kuhn received several numerous honorary doctorates and he is credited as the foundational force who brought to life the post-Mertonian Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.
During his teaching career, notable positions he held included being the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science in Princeton University back in 1964. It was in 1979 when he became the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy. In 1954 Thomas Kuhn was named as a Guggenheim Fellow. The History of Science Society awarded him the George Sarton Medal in 1982.
Because of his legacy which brought to life awareness about the paradigm shift, the American Chemical Society awards the “Thomas Kuhn Paradigm Shift Award” to different speakers who are able to present new and original views which are not considered as part of the mainstream kind of scientific understanding. The winning candidate gets the award depending on how novel the viewpoint he or she present is. The potential impact of the said viewpoint and if it can be widely accepted is also taken into consideration. This is to honor the same legacy that the paradigm shift idea of Thomas Kuhn brought to the people of today.
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Thomas Midgeley Jr.
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Thomas Midgeley Jr. was a chemist and mechanical engineer who was also one of the most notable names in a group of chemists who developed TEL or tetraethyl lead as well as developed some of the very first chloroflourocarbons. TEL is an additive to gasoline which helped prevent the “knocking” of engines while the CFCs are some of the chemicals still used for cooling purposes. Throughout his life as a scientist, he received more than a hundred patents, but because some of his innovations are now deemed not eco-friendly, his name has been quite tarnished.
Early Life and Background
He hailed from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and was born on the 18th of May in 1889. His father was also an inventor and this was one of the reasons why he had been inspired to make his very own innovations. While growing up in Columbus, Ohio, he finished his degree in mechanical engineering from the Cornell University. Despite studying to be an engineer though, his claim to fame had come to him as a chemist instead.
Career
His degree in mechanical engineering wasn’t all lost because the most notable innovations he was known for still related to mechanical engineering to some extent. He worked for Charles F. Kettering at the Dayton Research Laboratories which was under General Motors. They were trying to solve how to avoid knocking in engines, or that continuous pinging or putting sound which was observed in internal-combustion engines.
Midgley was able to deduce that this engine knocking was caused by increased pressure as well as temperature within the cylinders of the engine. Being a mechanical engineer, he could have changed the design of the engine, but it could be said that he “thought out of the box” by solving the problem another way.
He found ways to alter a gasoline’s chemical makeup and this was where he added bromine from seawater and tetraethyl lead. His “no-knock” gasoline was invented in 1921, and naturally, drivers who were constantly experiencing this problem found this as an appealing solution to avoid engine knocking and potential permanent damage to their vehicles. However, there was one major problem from this product—it caused the death of at least 7 workers.
Their deaths had been caused by the lead found in the ethyl gasoline and it had been toxic. The deaths happened in the 1920s and in 1924, Midgely himself took an extended medical leave because of lead poisoning as well. About a year later, he wrote a paper about the hazards of lead poisoning and it was determined how lead additives to gasoline were highly toxic and were also pollutants which caused blood as well as brain disorders in children, some antisocial behavior, and also lowered IQ levels. Come year 1970, the ethyl compounds discovered by Midgely had been removed from gasoline and the negative effects of adding these compounds were widely recognized and ultimately avoided.
Before lead was removed from gasoline to come up with the “no-knock” formulation, the product was called “ethyl” and no mention of lead in its composition was ever mentioned. Automobile manufacturers as well as oil companies even promoted the TEL additive discovered by Midgely as a top additive for ethanol-blend or ethanol fuels. Before Midgely filed for a medical leave caused by lead poisoning, he even received the award for “Use of Anti-Knock Compounds in Motor Fuels” for his Nichols Medal. This award was the his first of many—sadly, this same award was for a product which was later on shunned because of its negative side effects on the environment as well as the health of the people exposed to it.
After his invention of the “no-knock” gasoline, his career continued and in 1928, he was transferred to work for Frigidaire which at that time had also been one of the subsidiaries of General Motors. During his time there, he was then tasked to find safer and more affordable refrigerant substitutes. However, all of those he discovered were either flammable, toxic, or both at the same time. Because of these limitations, he came up with dichlorodifluoromethane which is a mixture of mostly chlorine, carbon, and fluorine—this mixture is now known as the CFCs or chlorofrlourocarbons. The trademark given for this product was “Freon” and it is still being used for some refrigerators, air conditioners, and even insect repellents.
A few decades later, however, a number of studies showed how this same product has been causing the destruction of the ozone layer which in turn reduced the natural protection that humans have against the harmful sun rays. Also of note was that Freon leaks can cause higher death rates in an area caused by asphyxiation since its molecular structure has the ability to displace oxygen. During the year 1980, most products using Freon were banned. What is interesting is that before all of these negative effects were noted, Midgely even wrote one of his papers in 1939 which suggested how the ozone layer could possibly be manipulated with the aim to control climate.
Life After His Inventions
The American Chemical Society even gave Midgely their Priestly Medal which was their highest form of recognition. He also received the Willard Gibbs Award and was later on also elected as the chairman and president of the American Chemical Society.
Later in his life, he had polio which continued to progress and left him in the confines of his home. Even then, he was able to design a system of pulleys to allow him to move from one place to another without the need to be assisted by another person.
Like his several other inventions though, this ambulatory aid he made for himself also had its own dangers. On the second day of November 1944, he slipped and accidentally got himself entangled in the device’s ropes which in turn strangled him to death. He was 55 when this happened. He died thirty years before the negative effects of CFCs were noted along with the other negative effects of lead in gasoline which also caused atmospheric damage.
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Thomas Newcomen
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Thomas Newcomen was a prominent British engineer, best known for inventing the atmospheric steam engine, which was the the world’s oldest known steam engine for pumping water. The Newcomen engine largely influenced later designs such as James Watt’s engine.
Career:
Born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, Thomas Newcomen initially worked as an ironmonger at Dartmouth. Since flooding was a major problem in the area, Newcomen, with the help of a plumber named John Calley, extensively worked on a steam pump, which was found to be much efficient than Thomas Savery’s conventional crude pump.
In this design, the intensity of pressure was not restricted by the pressure of the steam. Newcomen devised the internal-condensing jet for producing a vacuum in the cylinder and an automatic valve gear.
The first operational Newcomen engine was built in 1712 near Dudley Castle, Staffordshire. It proved to be a very efficient and cost-effective tool for drainage of mines and raising water to power waterwheels.
Later Life and Death:
Thomas Newcomen died on August 5, 1729 in London, England. He was 65 years old.
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Thomas Willis
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A neuroanatomist and physician in the 17th century, Thomas Willis is known to be the Father of Neuroscience and is responsible for building the foundation which a lot of studies, research and discoveries relating to the brain and the nervous system stemmed from.
Early Life and Education
Thomas Willis was born in his parents’ farm on the 27th of January, 1621 in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, England. Both of his parents, Thomas and Rachel, were committed royalists. Thomas Willis was the eldest among three sons.
Willis initially attended the School of Edward Sylvester. On March 3, 1967, he got into the University of Oxford’s Christ Church College which he attended for over nine years. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1639, his Master of Arts degree in 1642, and his Bachelor of Medicine in 1646.
Both father and son served during the Civil War because of the family’s undying loyalty to King Charles I. His father did not survive. The King recognized young Thomas’s service, however, which is why he was granted his medical degree seven years earlier.
With his degree, he practiced medicine in a nearby town as he was not allowed to practice in Oxford because of his lack of experience. He went around local markets to offer his service. He also stayed in touch with other scientists and physicians and habitually discussed cases that they handled. His network included the architect and artist Sir Christopher Wren, physician, anatomist and physiologist Richard Lower, physicists Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, and physician and philosopher John Locke.
On April 7, 1657, Thomas Willis married Mary Fell whose identity was surrounded by a lot of controversy. Giving birth to eight children all in all, it was said that only one or two of them survived. Within the same period, both of Thomas’ siblings also died at a young age. Mary Fell Willis died in 1666. All the deaths in his family did not discourage Thomas Willis though, and he continued doing research and practicing medicine.
Notable Contributions
Before Thomas Willis came into the picture, the concept of neuroanatomy was very vague and details surrounding it were extremely limited. They were based mostly from the knowledge that Berengario, Da Vinci and Vesalius shared, three scientists who were greatly influenced by Galen. Galen believed that the brain’s primary purpose was to purify spirits that were, at that time, blamed for a lot of human diseases. The spirits he believed in were known to be phantom-like and were said to be capable of making their own decisions. They were especially seen as responsible for a lot of mental disorders such as insanity and depression. At that time, the brains that these scientists studied were of poor quality, having no effective means of preserving the organ just yet.
Willis respected those who came before him, although he also acknowledged the inaccuracy of their work. He started working on anatomy and formulating his own hypotheses, a lot of which involved experimental and clinical observations. This time around, a preservation method known as “chiriguia infusoria” had already been developed by Sir Christopher Wren and found to be effective. This method allowed Willis to study the brain in its normal form as opposed to the disintegrated form that his predecessors were used to analyzing.
December 14, 1650 proved to be fateful for Thomas Willis. Anne Green was a 22-year old prisoner of the state. She was convicted for infanticide, the victim of which was her own newborn. After being hanged in Oxford’s Cattle Yard, her body was donated for scientific study to Oxford. The corpse was delivered to Willis’ colleague, William Petty. When the coffin was opened however, Green started gagging. Willis and Petty worked together in trying to revive her, and were successful after trying a few techniques that were less than traditional. This marked Willis’ career as a physician.
Thomas Willis had six books published, one of which was only published after his death. What made its mark in medical history was Cerebri Anatome, where Willis first used the term “neurologie”. In this book, he showed gratitude to both Richard Lower and Christopher Wren for assisting him during dissections and for contributing illustrations.
The Cerebri Anatome was the main reason why the arterial circle found at the base of the human brain is now called the Circle of Willis. Though he was not the first one who discovered and described it, he was the only one who was able to discuss it in great detail, describing each part and vascular pattern in depth. He was also responsible for naming a lot of other parts of the brain and the nervous system. Some terms that he coined aside from neurologie were optic thalamus, vagus nerve, corpus striatum, anterior comissure and internal capsule, among others.
Other Achievements
Thomas Willis was chosen as Oxford’s Sedleian Professor for Natural Philosophy in 1660 after an endorsement from Gilbert Sheldon, a strong supporter of his. He then devoted his career to neuroanatomy under the motivation of correcting the flawed studies that his predecessors conducted.
Thomas Willis came across several other brilliant medical and scientific minds during his time. Willis and these notable people were responsible for forming the prestigious Royal Society. He was also seen as responsible for major contributions not only in neurology but to other medical branches like endocrinology, cardiology and gastroenterology as well. He was also acknowledged by John Locke in one of his acclaimed pieces in philosophy because of his contributions to his field. Locke was one of Willis’ loyal followers and would often attend lectures conducted by Willis.
Willis spent the last nine years of his life in London as requested by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Here, he charged his wealthy patients big amounts to pay for his service while he treated the poor for free.
Thomas Willis died of pleurisy in London in December 11, 1675 and was buried at Westminster Abbey where his bones lie to this day. His discoveries formed the foundations of neurology and the medical field as a whole.
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Tim Noakes
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When people speak of great scientists they always tend to focus on the ones who worked with chemicals or broke the laws of physics. It is always on fields that seem to be extremely scientific. But what about people who work in the field of sports science? What about great men and women of science that challenged the way people thought about food and exercise? What about men like Tim Noakes? This sports scientist from Cape Town in South Africa has been redefining beliefs for years and has made numerous advances in the field of sports science and pushes the limits of human performance in different sporting fields. Check out what he has done and you will see why he deserves to be honored.
Get to Know Timothy David Noakes
Timothy Noakes was born in 1949 in Harare, Zimbabwe but moved to South Africa where he became an exercise and sports science professor. This was the position he took at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. What makes him so remarkable is that he doesn’t just preach but he practices as well. To date, he has participated in over 70 ultra-marathons and marathons combined. He has also authored some books, one of which is entitled Lore or Running which became a best seller and a holy grail of sorts to runners.
Early Life
As mentioned, Tim Noakes entered the world in Africa at Harare which is located in Zimbabwe although his family made the move to Cape Town in South Africa when he was just five. Like many South Africans he was crazy about cricket. This was probably what paved the way for a career in sports science. He attended the Monterey Preparatory School that was located right in Constantia Cape Town. He went to attend Diocesan College afterwards. This was where he earned his degrees. The first was his MBChB in 1974, then came his MD in 1981. He got his DSC (Med) in 2002.
Tim Noakes: Educator, Researcher, and Author
A year before he got his MD, Noakes was given a directive to start the course in sports science in the school at the University of Cape Town. With that successful venture he then became the head of the Bioenergetics Exercise Research Unit that was funded by the Medical Research Council. Later on, this was turned into the MRC/UCT Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine.
When the early 90’s rolled in, Tim Noakes and former South African rugby player Morne du Plessis founded the Sports Science Institute of South Africa. Together with his unit, they managed to produce over 370 articles in sports science and fitness since the year 1996. As it happens, he is the leading researcher on a condition that is known as exercise-related hyponatremia (also known as EAH to stand for exercise-associated hyponatremia). For the very first time he saw signs of the condition when watching a female runner compete during the Comrades Marathon back in 1984. This was a condition that people who run marathons often suffer after filling up on too much water to supposedly combat dehydration. He published the results of his findings a year after in the Medicine and Science and sports and Exercise journal. Tim Noakes also hosted the very first international consensus in EAH back in May of 2005 in Cape Town.
He is also quite well known for elaborating and renewing the idea proposed by Archibald Hill (Nobel Prize Winner for Physiology or Medicine in 1922). The idea was of a central governor responsible for regulating exercise so the body is adequately protected from homeostasis. Homeostasis is the ability of the body to maintain a constant internal environment amidst changes in the environment.
Also in 2005, he went on to undertake a number of ground-breaking experiments conducted in the Antarctic and Artic with the participation of Lewis Gordon Pugh (British-born South African swimmer). They conducted the research to better understand the capabilities of the human body when under extreme cold. During the course of their research he found out that Pugh actually had the power to increase his body’s core temperature before he entered the water to better prepare for the cold. He is the man responsible for the term “thermo-genesis” in description of the ability. When Pugh went on to undergo a 1-km swim in the geographic North Pole back in 2007, Noakes was there to serve as the expedition doctor.
Writings
With all the research that he published it was only a matter of time before we started writing books. He went on to write several books, one of which is the Lore of Running – a book that is mainly used by runners to enjoy, understand, and improve their running performance. He also published a book entitled Waterlogged where he takes people on a very informative journey into the world of hydration for athletes. This is the same book where he states that drinking too much water after a marathon can have bad effects on the body and recovery of the athlete. Noakes worked with a nutritionist and other chef-athletes for his next work entitled The Real Meal Revolution where they walked and ran the difficult path through different challenges that had to do with nutritional science and experimenting on themselves. This book has some ground-breaking revelations and stances but it also has amazing and mouth-watering recipes backed by scientific study.
Awards
Tim Noakes is quite well-known for taking a challenging stance when it comes to old and common paradigms of exercise physiology. The American College of Sports Medicine honored him when he went over to present the J.B. Wolfe Memorial lecture in the year 1996. A lot of the work he has completed over the last decade supported his model of the brain being the central governor that dictated how much, how long, how strong, and how fast the body could perform. Truly, he is a gem in the world of sports science, and hopefully he will have more ground-breaking revelations to share about the human body and exercise physiology in years to come.
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Timothy John Berners-Lee
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For folks who thank the heavens every day for the invention of the internet, you should also start thanking the heavens for the man that invented the Internet (or the World Wide Web). The man who is responsible happens to be a British scientist Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, FRSA, OM, FREng, KBE, DFBCS. Online, he goes by the name “TimBL.” This person had a major hand in developing the WWW and you will learn more about him now.
Who is TimBL?
As mentioned earlier, Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist from Britain that helped bring about the WWW. Berners-Lee submitted a proposal back in March 1989 and it was about a system for information management. He was also the first man to ever successfully communicate between an HTTP server and client with the use of the internet around November of that same year.
The W3C is directed by Berners-Lee. This W3C oversees the continued development of the WWW. He is also one of the directors of the WSRI and one of the members of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence advisory board. He also founded the World Wide Web Foundation and is an esteemed senior researcher and holder of Founders Chair which is located at the CSAIL.
In the year 2004, TimBL was granted knighthood by the Queen of England to honor his outstanding work on the development of the Internet. In April of 2009, the US National Academy of Sciences elected him as a foreign associate. He was also given the honor and title of “Inventor of the World Wide Web” back in 2012 when they were holding the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics. He was there to accept it because he was there using a NeXT Computer (a rather old computer model) right inside the stadium. He even tweeted “this is for everyone” and it was spelled out on LCD lights so that all the attendees could see.
The Early Life of Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee entered the world in England in Southwest London back in June 8, 1955. His parents were named Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee; he had three siblings. The Berners-Lee couple worked with the very first ever commercial computer which was the FerrantiMark1 so you could say that computers were his legacy.
He went to the Sheen Mount Primary school then proceeded to Emanuel School in south west London from 1969 to 73. As a kid, he was a very keen train-spotter and learned all about electronics and tinkered with his model railway. He enrolled at the University of Oxford at The Queen’s College from 1973 to 76. He received a degree in physics (first class) when he finished his studies.
The Career of Tim Berners-Lee
After he graduated and got his degree, he was an engineer at a Plessey telecom located in Poole. However, in 1978 Tim Berners-Lee went to work for D.G. Nash in Dorset and this was where he had a hand in creating type-setting software to be used for printing machines.
From June to December in 1980, he worked for CERN as an independent contractor. While he was there, he made a proposal for a project based on what is known as hypertext. It was to be used to make sharing and updating of information shared by researchers easier and more convenient. He came up with a prototype system he called ENQUIRE to demonstrate how it would work.
After he left CERN in the late 1980, he went on to land a job at John Pooles Computer Systems LTD which was also located in England. He was the man in charge of the technical side of the company for a good 3 years. He worked on a project called “real time remote procedure call” and this gave him a taste of computer networking. For years after, he went back to CERN but as a fellow.
Five years after, in 1989, CERN was known as the largest internet node in the European continent and it was then that Tim saw his chance to meld HTTP with the Internet. He came up with his first proposal in March of 1989. A year after he was helped by Robert Caillau to come up with revisions his manager, Mike Sendall, would accept. He made use of similar ideas that were present in his ENQUIRE system to create the WWW. He even designed the very first ever web browser and his software also worked as an editor. The system was named Worldwide Web and it ran on using the NeXTSTEP OS. The very first web server was named CERN HTTPd. It comes as no surprise that the very first website ever was built at CERN and was published on August 6, 1991 and its address was info.cern.ch. It was both a web server and site. A NeXT computer located at CERN was used to run it. The site contained information about Berners-Lee’s project so visitors could glean information about HTTP and get other details about building webpages so they could make their own.
In 1994, Sir Berners-Lee founded the W3C at MIT and it was made up of different companies that were willing to work together to uphold the quality of the Web and also to make improvements as well. What is great about this Knight is that he made sure his ideas were available to anyone who wanted them and that they can be obtained without paying royalty fees.
His Current Work
Back in June 2009, British PM Gordon Brown made the announcement that TimBL would be working with the government so they could make data more accessible and open to people that needed it. In fact he and a professor named Nigel Shadbolt are two of the main figures behind the site data.gov.uk.
He is also one of the voices that are in favor of Net Neutrality and their main cry is that Internet Service Providers should be able to supply connectivity to users with no strings attached and that they should not monitor the activities of online behavior of their subscribers. Last October 2013, the Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched and he is the leader of public and private coalitions that include such companies like Facebook and Google.
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Trofim Lysenko
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Popular for having rejected the Mendelian genetics, Trofim Lysenko was an agronomist and biologist who favored Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin’s theories on hybridization instead. He was also known as someone who pursued “socialist genetics” which was the politicized science which made him Joseph Stalin’s favorite scientist. He supported these theories so much that he even coined the term Lysenkoism which was the pseudoscientific movement he had for hybridization. Lysenko was supported by Stalin himself concerning the experimental research efforts that Lysenko had especially for improving crop yields. Apart from being recognized as a scientist, some also refer to Lysenko as a hoaxer who was able to sway Stalin into believing what he said.
The Beginnings of Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Lysenko was born Trofim Denisovich Lysenko to a peasant family that resided in Karlivka, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine. He was the son of Denis Lysenko and his wife Oksana. Trofim received his education from the Kiev Agricultural Institute. When he was 29, Trofim had the chance to work in Azerbaijan at an agricultural experiment station. It was then when he began his research work which would later on lead to his paper discussing vernalization—published in 1928.
This paper drew much attention for those interested in Soviet agriculture to hopefully put an end to the famine which resulted from the forced collectivization. The lack of enough winter snow destroyed the planted winter-wheat seedlings which affected the produce from which the people relied on. It was Lysenko who found a workaround in this issue when he treated the wheat seeds to deal with cold and moisture better so they would still have crops even when the seedlings are planted during spring.
Lysenko’s method of treating the seeds was something he called “Jarovization” where he used a certain chilling process to change how winter cereals behaved and make them behave more like spring cereals or “jarovoe.” This term was later on changed to vernalization. This breakthrough also made it possible to fertilize the fields without the need for fertilizers and control when the plants would bloom in more favorable weather conditions as well as control when the crops will be ripe in time for the harvest.
For this breakthrough, Lysenko was treated as a hero who was able to bring a solution to the famine and the impoverished Soviet nation accepted the findings that Lysenko had. Where he went wrong, however, was when he incorrectly made a claim that having the vernalized state was something that plants could inherit. According to him, offspring from vernalized plants would also exhibit the same behavior and that the offspring would no longer need the process of vernalization to be done to them to show the same positive behavior and controlled flowering.
Because of the breakthrough that Lysenko was able to discover, he was assigned to be in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. While he was in charge there, he was the one who oversaw the research program which was specifically dedicated for increasing the crop yields. The methods that Lysenko was able to discover were used on all the collectivized farms in the Soviet Union as well as in other places under the USSR’s influence which could also benefit from these agricultural methods.
Since all experiments were funded by the government and Lysenko had a certain hold on Stalin after being able to dazzle him into believing everything he said, Lysenko was safe from scrutiny by other scientists who believed in other solutions to the famine or those who contradicted Lysenko’s claim on his findings. As long as he was under Stalin’s protection, Lysenko was safe from the criticism of other scientists regardless of how factual their findings were. If a scientist so much as countered Lysenko and made it known to Stalin, it was almost as good as suicide and the end to one’s scientific career. Only a handful of scientists ever tried and those who did were sent to be imprisoned in the gulag.
Positive Contributions
Despite the falsified claim of having vernalization as something which can be inherited by untreated plans, Lysenko was able to contribute positive results to agriculture. For areas in the Soviet Union where they had little rainfall during the summer, they used vernalization where the chilled seeds of winter grains were planted during the spring to have the yields they need. It was in 1935 when he proposed planting some potatoes in the hot and dry regions. He also created spring wheat which was suitable depending on where they were going to be planted.
He was able to bring about a great increase in the harvest of millet which was highly important in being able to feed the soldiers who belonged to the Red Army during the time of the Great Patriotic war. Through cluster planting, Lysenko was also able to increase kok-sagyz yields and he had the solution for countering the effects of over wintering of wheat harvested in Siberia. Because of these obvious discoveries and the payoffs of his vernalization, the people of Russia loved him. Lysenko’s findings came at a time when times were hard especially for those who were dependent on the produce and his breakthrough was what helped regain not just produce but the order which had been lost when collectivized farmers had begun acting against the government because of the lack of yields.
His Later Years
When Stalin died in 1953, Lysenko was still supported by the new leader who was Nikita Khrushchev. The problem was that more mainstream scientists emerged and this was when three scientists, namely Pyotr Kapitsa, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich presented a case which debunked the works and claims of Lysenko. They also pointed out how Lysenko made use of his political influence to protect him from criticism and denounced those who were making a valid fight to reveal factual claims.
In 1964, the physicist named Andrei Sakharov countered Lysenko’s claims and spoke to the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences. Because of his speech, the media began to spread anti-Lysenko articles and a certain devastating critique was made public and this had caused Lysenko to be disgraced from his own nation. His work, however, was still used in China even after years after that incident.
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Tycho Brahe
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Tyge Ottesen Brahe, more commonly known as Tycho Brahe (latinized form), was an eminent Danish astronomer and alchemist. He played a vital role in the development of various astronomical instruments. Brahe is also known for his precise and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations, which heavily influenced future discoveries.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Knutstorp Castle, Scania in 1546, Tycho Brahe was raised in an influential and noble Danish family. He received his early education in a Latin school. Brahe entered the University of Copenhagen when he was only 12. After initially studying law, he soon gained an interest in astronomy, having witnessed a great sun eclipse when he was 13 years old. Tycho later attended the Universities of Rostock and Basel.
Contributions and Achievements:
The brilliant astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe were highly influential to the scientific revolution. He made amazingly accurate and precise astronomical observations for his times, even without the help of the telescope. Brahe was an active participant to the debates on the nature of the Universe. Although better known as a famed astronomer, Tycho Brahe also played a crucial role in the development of geodesy and cartography.
Instruments built by Brahe proved to be very helpful in accurate determinations of latitude and longitude. His groundbreaking contribution to lunar theory was his renowned discovery of the variation of the Moon’s longitude. The maps of Hven drawn by Brahe were one of the earliest in the whole of Scandinavia to use systematic triangulation.
Later Life and Death:
Tycho Brahe died on October 24, 1601 in Prague, Czechia, supposedly due to bladder complications. He was 54 years old.
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Ukichiro Nakaya
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For people in countries with snow, appreciating the beauty of each snowflake is one of the many wonders that nature can bring. Each with a unique pattern, nature never fails to come up with beauty even in the smallest of frozen things. Being small, delicate, and unique, it is hard to imagine how to replicate snowflakes. However, Ukichiro Nakaya found a way around this. He is known for having created the very first artificial snowflakes. Nakaya was a Japanese science essayist and a physicist who was also known for his works on glaciology as well as low-temperature sciences. When it came to snow and ice research his name would definitely ring a bell. Basically, he is known internationally for his scientific contributions.
Early Life and Educational Background
Born on the 4th of July in 1900, Dr. Nakaya was a native of Katayamazu, Ishikawa-ken now known as Kagashi which is located off the Sea of Japan. This is the same area depicted in the encyclopedic work called Hokuetsu Seppu which contains about 183 sketches of natural snowflakes. This work was published in 1837. This was known to be what inspired Nakaya’s life’s work.
Nakaya wrote in one of his works how his father had originally wanted him to become a potter and even sent him to live with one during his years in primary school. Although his father died while he was still in primary school, his very first scientific paper which was published in 1924 was about Kutani Porcelain. This work was written for the Physics Department of Tokyo Imperial University’s inaugural issue.
Nakaya’s inspiration for studying physics were Laplace and Kant, mainly their nebular hypotheses and his interest for physics began to take off when he was in high school. Hajime Tanabe, a Japanese philosopher who was from the Kyoto School also had an influence on Nakaya’s works later on.
He studied at Tokyo Imperial University and was under Torahiko Terada, a Japanese author and physicist, while he majored in experimental physics. Nakaya graduated in 1925 and received his Master of Science Degree that year.
After graduating, he became Terada’s research assistant not long after and they worked on their research at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research commonly known as RIKEN. There he studied about electrostatic discharge while also being one of the assistant professors at Tokyo University.
He furthered his education by engaging in more physics-related work at Kings College in London and was under the tutelage of Dr. O.W. Richardson for a year from 1928. During his time there, he studied about long-wavelength x-rays. In 1931, he acquired his Doctor of Science from Kyoto University. A year earlier, he had been appointed as the Professor of Physics at Hokkaido University in Sapporo and he was associated with the university for the rest of his life.
Research on Snowflakes
When Nakaya had the chance to take over the Hokkaido University Department of Physics, they had less than sufficient funding for research and scarce equipment too. What he did have was an unlimited supply of snow which has accumulated and was still falling because of the long winter and a microscope. This was what sparked his research on snowflakes.
He had over 3,000 microphotographs and from these, he was able to establish a kind of general classification of the natural snow crystals. It was in 1935 when he brought the Low Temperature Science Laboratory to life and this was where he realized his next step for his research—finding ways to create artificial snow crystals.
From his studies about snowflakes, he was able to develop the “Nakaya Diagram” and the convective snow-making apparatus which he used to make the very first artificial snow crystal in 1936. He used the Nakaya Diagram for determining the growing conditions for specific snow crystals, and based on the shape of the snowflakes, he also found out how he can determine different meteorological conditions of the atmosphere from where the crystal was formed.
Because of his work on snow crystals and low-temperature-related research, he was awarded the Japan Academy Prize in 1940. In 1954, his work on snowflakes was published in an illustrated book called the Snow Crystals. Today, this work serves as a classic reference when it comes to classifying snow based on their shapes and is used by both scientists and artists as well.
For two years though, Nakaya and his family had to live at a certain hot springs resort on the Izu Peninsula while he was recuperating from clonorchiasis. This happened from 1936 to 1938 and for two years he wasn’t as active in his scientific endeavors as before.
In the year 1952, Nakaya was invited to have his own research done at the U.S. Army Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment and later on even after his research period was over, he frequently visited the United States to further his studies. He was very much engaged in his work and his studies even got him to places such as Mt. Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the Greenland Ice Cap, and the Ice Island. Because of his expertise and profound knowledge in snow crystals and low-temperature science, he was elected as the Vice President of the Commission on Snow and Ice of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.
Legacy
Nakaya had been the author as well as co-author of many publications and scientific articles; this part of him was only a facet of his personality and many talents. He had also made non-fiction books, an inkling for people who knew him that during his earlier years he had been very interested in oil painting and had become very good in “Sumi-e” which is a kind of Japanese art which uses single brush strokes with just black ink.
In Japan, he was also known as a great essayist, a reputable critic on topics about natural science, and also a great photographer. He had also been recognized as one of Japan’s ten most distinguished men and in 1960. He received recognition for his many different talents and scientific contributions. Even today he is still remembered for all these contributions, and in true to his words “snow crystals are the hieroglyphs sent from the sky.”
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Virginia Apgar
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The American physician, Virginia Apgar is best known for developing the Apgar Newborn Scoring System (better known as the “Apgar Score”), a simple, quick method for judging newborn viability. The newborn’s appearance color, reflex irritability, muscle tone, and respiration are assessed one minute and five minutes after birth; low scores indicate possible health issues. The test has saved countless infants, laid the foundations of neonatology and caught potentially grave conditions. She was one of Columbia University’s first female M.D.s and one of the first American women to specialize in anesthesia.
Life and Career:
Apgar was born on 7 June 1909 in Westfield, New Jersey. Belonging to a family of amateur musicians, Apgar enjoyed playing violin and other instruments, and became a skilled musician.
A Mount Holyoke graduate, Apgar was one of a few women to complete her graduation during the 1930s from Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (1933). In 1937 she successfully completed a residency in surgery at Columbia. However, she was dejected from practicing surgery by Dr. Allen Whipple, the chair of surgery at Columbia. She finished her training in anesthesia and returned to Columbia in 1938 as director of the newly formed division of anesthesia. In 1938 she accepted the position of the director of anesthesiology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center-the university’s first female department head. Also, she became Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons first professor of anesthesiology in 1949 (a post which she held until 1959), while she also did clinical and research work at the affiliated Sloane Hospital for Women.
In 1949, Virginia Apgar came up with the Apgar Score System (presented in 1952 and published in 1953), which became popular in the United States and elsewhere. Before her discovery, babies at birth were assumed to be in good health unless they exhibited some obvious suffering or imperfection: needless to say, internal deficiencies (e.g., circulatory or respiratory) could be missed, resulting all too often in death. Because Apgar realized that “Birth is the most hazardous time of life,” she designed a system for quickly and accurately assessing a baby’s health in the crucial minutes after birth. While examining the system’s effectiveness, Apgar found out that cyclopropane as an anesthetic for the mother had a harmful effect on the infant, and due to which, its use in labor was put to an end.
In 1959, Apgar obtained a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins and also the executive position with the March of Dimes. In that capacity, she worked hard to improve the healthcare of infants and children. For the next 14 years, until her death, Apgar served as an activist, fund-raiser and an instructor. In 1995 she was introduced into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Agpar published sixty scientific papers. Her book Is My Baby All Right? (1972), co-written with Joan Beck became a popular parenting hardback.
Death:
Virginia Apgar died as an unmarried lady on August 7, 1974, at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. The Virginia Apgar Award is given every year by the American Academy of Pediatrics for stupendous contributions to the field of perinatal pediatrics.
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Vladimir Vernadsky
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Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky is a renowned Russian crystallographer, mineralogist, geochemist and geologist. He is best known today for his research on the noosphere and the way it affects the biosphere. He was also responsible for laying out the foundation for the study of geochemistry.
Early Life and Education
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was born on March 12, 1863 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Coming from a line of Ukrainian Cossacks, his father was a professor in Kiev at the Moscow University, teaching political economy before deciding to move to Saint Petersburg. He was also the editor of the journal entitled “Economic Index”. His mother, on the other hand, was a noblewoman and the daughter of a general and was born and raised in Russia. His childhood was spent in Ukraine and he studied in Kharkov for a brief period of time. When they moved to Saint Petersburg, he continued his studies at the Saint Petersburg Grammar School. This is where he started developing an interest in science, specifically in natural sciences.
Vernadksy acknowledged being both a Ukrainian and a Russian and even learned a little of the Ukrainian language despite having lived longer in Russia. He did not believe in the independence that Ukraine had however, and remained loyal to the Russian state.
In 1885, Vernadsky earned his degree from Saint Petersburg University’s Department of Natural, Physical and Mathematical Faculty. He chose to specialize in mineralogy because he found great potential for more discoveries in this field. He trained under the famous V.V. Dokuchaev, who was known as the founder of soil science.
He pondered on the topic he was going to pursue for his doctorate study for some time. While he was doing this, he travelled to Naples and studied under Scacchi, a crystallographer. Scacchi’s senility hindered Vernadsky from gaining valuable knowledge, so he decided to go to Germany instead to train under Paul Groth. Groth had developed a piece of equipment that helped analyze the thermal, optical, electrical and magnetic properties of crystals and Vernadsky enjoyed learning using modern machinery. He was also able to use the physics lab of Professor Zonke, another expert who was working on crystallization. He defended his Doctorate study in 1885 and became a fellow in research at the mineralogy laboratory.
Notable Contributions
Vladimir Vernadsky presented his report on the “Paragenesis of Chemical Elements in the Earth’s Crust” in front of the 12th Congress of Medics and Natural Scientists. This study laid the foundation for what was later known as geochemistry. He pushed researchers to try using radioactive phenomenon in studying the history of chemical elements and in seeing the genetic relationships between these elements.
In 1909, Vernadsky established the Radium Commission. This was caused by his theory that radioactive substances are, in fact, important sources of energy. This means that they can also be used in creating a new set of chemical elements. He started collecting rock samples and mapped where deposits of radioactive substances can be found in great detail. After a year, the first geochemical laboratory was opened in Saint Petesrburg.
Vernadsky was the first person to make the concept of the noosphere more familiar. He also contributed to the idea of the biosphere as it is known today although it was Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist whom Verdansky got the chance of meeting in 1911, who coined the term.
Basically, Vernadsky reasons that there is a certain succession by which the earth develops. Geosphere or inanimate matter comes first, followed by the biosphere or biological life. Then comes noosphere which comprises human consciousness and mental activity. Each of these relate to each other, with the emergence of biological life transforming the geosphere and the emergence of human consciousness transforming biological life. Both biological life and human cognition are seen as having a large impact on the evolution of the earth, a concept that is somehow parallel to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. But as with any discovery of the same nature, gaining acceptance for his concept was hard to achieve, especially in the West.
Other Contributions and Achievements
Vernadsky was among the first scientists who realized that the presence of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide is a direct product of biological processes. He also published some of his research in the 1920’s, stating that living organisms also have a big impact on how the planet evolves. This made him one of the pioneers that shaped environmental sciences.
In 1912, he was elected as an ordinary academician in the Saint Petersburg Academy of Science. In 1914, he headed the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology. He was among those who coordinated in developing the metal mining industry. In 1917, he started visualizing a new branch of science called biogeochemistry. He envisioned this branch of science to deal with living matter as an integral part of the biosphere.
Vernadsky founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1918 and became its first president. He also founded the National Library of the Ukrainian State and contributed greatly by sharing his knowledge to the Tavrida University in Crimea. Because of his great contribution, a main avenue in Tavrida National University was named after him. An avenue in Moscow also bears his name.
He moved to Simpheropol upon leaving Kiev and there worked as a mineralogy professor. He also became the head of Simperopol University until his dismissal in 1921 because of the unstable political situation.
Among Vernadsky’s notable published works is Geochemistry which was published in 1924 and released in Russia in 1927 as Essays on Geochemistry. He also worked with Marie Curie and published two of their works together, the Living Matter in Biosphere and Human Autotrophy.
Vladimir Vernadsky was one of the advisers for the Soviet atomic bomb project. He was among those who fought hard to make their voices heard, discussing how atomic energy can be exploited and how further research should be done about nuclear fission at his Radium Institute. However, Vernadsky died on January 6, 1945 even before his proposals for further research projects were pursued.
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Walter Schottky
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Walter Schottky is a famous name in the fields of electronics and physics. Today, a lot of devices used in these fields bear his name, and some scientific phenomena are also named after him. Two of the most famous are the Schottky effect, where there is an irregularity in thermion emissions when inside a vacuum tube, and the Schottky defect which describes a certain crystal lattice vacancy that results from the displacement of an ion to the surface of a crystal. He has made a significant number of contributions for solid-state physics and electronics and is also known as an inventor.
Early Life and Personal Background
Born on the 23rd of July, 1886, in Zurich, Switzerland, Walter Hermann Schottky was the son of a mathematician named Friedrich Hermann Schottky who was known for working on abelian, elliptic, and the theta functions, and also for introducing Schottky’s theorem. Walter was one of two sons, and he had a sister. He was born 4 years after his father’s appointment at the University of Zurich as a professor of Mathematics. Schottky’s family had to return to Germany in the year 1892 when Friedrich Schottky was appointed with a position at the University of Marburg.
In 1904, he graduated in Berlin’s Steglitz Gymnasium. He was able to complete his B.S. degree in physics in 1908 at the Berlin University. Four years later, he was able to complete his doctorate degree also at the University of Berlin where he was under the instructions of Heinrich Rubens and Max Planck, two of the most notable names in physics during those years. Schottky’s thesis was called the Zur relativtheoretischen Energetik und Dynamik.
Career
After completing his education he taught physics as one of the professors in the University of Rostock Germany. He held this post from 1923 to 1927. Prior to his career as an academic instructor, Schottky spent his post-doctoral time at the University of Jena for two years from 1912-1914. He then held lectures at the University of Wurzburg from 1919-1923 before becoming a full professor at the University of Rostock.
After his career as a professor and a scholar, he worked as one of the industrial researchers at Siemens & Halske where he was given the chance to work in Berlin as well as Pretzfeld, the latter a rather obscure town in Bavaria where Siemens happened to have a research center. During his time there, he conducted his research on semiconductor physics which was also known back then as “dirty physics.” Unfortunately, there weren’t any products developed from his research then, but he also studied electronics where he was able to work with the vacuums which paved the way for his discoveries later on.
One of his inventions had been the ribbon microphone which he had co-invented with Erwin Gerlach. Their idea behind this invention was how a fine ribbon suspended by magnetic fields can come up with electric signals. The same concept was what led to the fruition of the ribbon loudspeaker which used the same idea but in reverse order. This invention, however, was not considered practical until high flux and permanent magnets were made more accessible in the latter years of 1930. His research on how noise comes from electron currents was also referred to as the Schrot effect, or literally, the small shot effect.
Probably one of the most noted scientific achievements or contributions by Schottky was his formula which helps compute for interaction energy between a certain point charge and another flat metal surface while the charge is at a certain distance from said surface. The interaction derived from this formula is known as the image PE or image potential energy. This work by Schottky was based on Lord Kelvin’s earlier works on thermodynamics. Today, the image PE which was determined by Schottky is now one of the standard components in models which show the barrier to motion that electrons approaching metal surfaces experience.
Apart from his contributions for scientific calculations and measurements, he also had other inventions aside from the ribbon microphone and loudspeaker. These inventions include the screen grid tube and the tetrode. He was also able to invent the screen grid tube in 1915. This was an evolution of the triode tube, and improvements in 1916 paved way to the development of the double-grid tube where the additional grid was able to reduce space charge. It was in 1919 when he was able to invent the tetrode which is known as the very first multigrid vacuum tube.
Because of his inventions, he was able to study electron transfers and he also had exposure and contributions to the development of semiconductor devices. Although he previously incorrectly suggested that field electron emission happens when a barrier is brought down to zero. The fact is that this effect is caused by wave-mechanical tunneling as explained by Nordheim and Fowler in the year 1928. Despite Schottky’s incorrect suggestion, the SN barrier has become the standard used for the tunneling barrier.
When the behavior of interfaces in semiconductor devices is studied closely, it has been discovered that they can be a special kind of diode which is known as the Schottky diode. The metal-semiconductor joint is called the Schottky contact.
Awards
In 1936, Schottky was awarded with the Hughes Medal from the Royal Society for being able to discover the Schrot effect in the thermionic emission. The award was also given for inventing the screen-grid tetrode and the method for wireless signal reception through a superheterodyne.
He also received the Werner von Siemens Ring in 1964 because of the many different physical manifestations that his work gave basis to, especially for appliances which had to use semiconductors and tube amplifiers.
Because of his contributions, the Walter Schottky Institute in Germany was named after him, and so is the Walter H. Schottky prize. He was able to publish two books namely Thermodynamik in 1929, and Physik der Glühelektroden, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft in 1928. He died in Pretzfeld, Germany on the fourth of March in 1976.
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Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe
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Throughout the years, there had been hundreds of brilliant minds toiling away and making breakthroughs in the field of physics. One such man was Walther Wilhelm Georg Booth, a German nuclear physicist. He was so brilliant and his work was so revolutionary that in 1954, he won and shared physics Nobel Prize with Max Born. He was quite the genius and he managed to accomplish a lot of things in the world of physics despite an illness which prevented him from doing certain things.
His Life and Career
Walther Booth was born on the 8th of January, 1891 to Charlotte Hartung and Fredrich Bothe. He was from Oranienberg, a place close to Berlin. Growing up he was a very bright boy. It was pretty obvious what his interests were because from 1908 to 1912 he was at the University of Berlin to study physics. While he was there, he learned from the brilliant Max Planck. He was a very good and driven student in the sense that he was able to get his doctorate degree before the war broke out in 1914. He got a job at Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt where he worked as a Professor Extraordinary from 1913 to 1930 which allowed him to stay in Berlin. He also became Professor of Physics as well as the Director of The Institute of Physics at the University of Giessen in the year 1930.
In 1934, he inherited the Director of Institute of Physics job at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research after Phillip Lenard left the job. By the time World War II had ended, the institute was used entirely for other purposes. Sensing that he was no longer needed for the new purpose, Bothe decided to return to the Physics Department in the University of Giessen. He held a teaching job until he had to cut back on the scope of his work because of an illness that had hampered him for a long time. It might have limited his scope of work but that didn’t mean he had plenty of downtime because he still made it a point to supervise work conducted at the Max Planck Institute’s Institute of Physics. He was awarded that Nobel Prize in 1954 but he was unable to get it himself since he was sidelined by his illness which turned out to be a circulatory disease. He continued his supervisory work until he died on the 8th of February, 1957 in Heidelberg.
High Points of His Career and Life
The work of Walther Bothe coincided at a time when there was a big boom in the massive field of nuclear physics and it has to be said that all his hard work and discoveries led to ground-breaking methods and new outlooks.
During World War I, he was taken captive by the Russians and was forced to spend time in Siberia during his captivity. Being the consummate scientist, he chose to spend that one year of captivity by learning how to speak and read Russian and studying maths. He didn’t stay there long since he was sent back to Germany in 1920, a year after he was taken captive.
Bothe and Geiger
After his stay in Siberia, he took the job offer at Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin. While he was there, he collaborated with H. Geiger (of Geiger counter fame). It was from the year 1923 to 1926 that he concentrated much of his work on the theory of light (theoretical and experimental). Together, Geiger and Bothe related the Compton Effect to the theory of Slater, Kramers, and Bohr and the results of their experiments and tests gave very strong support for the corpuscular light theory.
H.Geiger had a lot of influence in Bothe’s work. In 1924, Bothe talked about his cutting-edge method (that worked on the premise of coincidences) which allowed him to make many important discoveries. He stated that if a particle passed through a couple or more Geiger counters, the measured pulses that come from the counters would be very coincidental in timing. What followed is even more fascinating—the pulse from each counter would then be sent to a coincidence circuit which could measure pulses that had coincident times.
He perfected the method and it was so revolutionary and accurate that he even made use of it in his studies concerning the Compton Effect as well as other physics problems. Because of this partnership with Geiger, they managed to shed more light into ideas that were about the small angle scattering or rays of light. The summary of their work can be found published in 1926 and 33 in his Handbusch. In that study, Geiger and Bothe managed to establish the very foundations for modern methods that were developed simply to better analyse and understand the scatter process of light.
In 1927, he made other discoveries that were very important to the world of physics. In collaboration with Franz, he conducted studies focused on what happened to light elements when they were bombarded with alpha rays. He stated that the fission products such an action produced were then only seen as fiscillations. However, his work with Franz using a needle counter made it possible to count.
Other collaborations
Bothe had several other partners in his works and some of his partners are listed below:
• W. Kohlhorster in 1929 – Introducing an alternative method to be used for studying UV and cosmic rays.
• H. Becker in 1930 – Obtaining a never-before-seen form of radiation (this study led Sir James Chadwick to discover the neutron in 1932).
Personal Life
Bothe may have been a busy man but he did have a personal life. Despite his captivity in the hands of the Russians, he ended up marrying Barbara Below from Moscow and they had two children. He enjoyed vacationing in the mountains and would often come up with painted art works in a style all his own though he had a deep admiration for French impressionists. He was also a musician and he enjoyed listening to Beethoven and Bach.
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Werner Heisenberg
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Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and philosopher who is noted for his crucial contributions to quantum mechanics. He devised a method to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices, for which he was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physics. Heisenberg is widely considered as one of the most influential figures in nuclear physics, particle physics and quantum field theory.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Würzburg, Germany in 1901, Werner Heisenberg’s father was a prominent secondary school teacher. Heisenberg went to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he studied physics and mathematics from 1920 to 1923. He earned his doctorate in 1923.
Contributions and Achievements:
Werner Heisenberg ranks alongside Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman as far as his influence on contemporary physics is concerned. He was one of the most important figures in the development of quantum mechanics, and its modern interpretation.
Heisenberg formulated the quantum theory of ferromagnetism, the neutron-proton model of the nucleus, the S-matrix theory in particle scattering, and various other significant breakthroughs in quantum field theory and high-energy particle physics are associated with him. As a prolific author, Heisenberg wrote more than 600 original research papers, philosophical essays and explanations for general audiences. His work is still available in the nine volumes of the “Gesammelte Werke” (Collected Works).
Heisenberg is synonymous with the so-called uncertainty, or indeterminacy, principle of 1927, for one of the earliest breakthroughs to quantum mechanics in 1925, and for his suggestion of a unified field theory, the so-called “world formula”. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1932 at the young age of 31.
Heisenberg stayed firmly in Germany during the worst years of the Hitler regime, heading Germany’s research effort on the applications of nuclear fission during World War II. He also played a vital role in the reconstruction of West German science after the war. Heisenberg’s role was crucial in the success of West Germany’s nuclear and high-energy physics research programs.
Later Life and Death:
In his later years, Werner Heisenberg assumed various influential positions in Germany and abroad, giving important lectures on theoretical physics and other subjects. He died of cancer of the kidneys and gall bladder on February 1, 1976. Heisenberg was 74 years old.
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Wernher Von Braun
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When it comes to the field of rocket science and space exploration, the name Wernher von Braun is one of great esteem. It was in the 1930s-1970s when he made significant contributions to rocket science and space exploration and these contributions made him an important man in history. So much was the importance of his contributions that the German scientist is often called as the “Father of Rocket Science.” First, his works were only noted in Germany, but after the World War II, he also began to be a prominent figure in the United States as well.
Early Life and Educational Background
Wernher von Braun was a part of an aristocratic family. His place of birth Wirsitz, and was the middle child in the brood of three. Magnus Freiherr von Braun, his father, was from an affluent family, and because of this, he and his father both had the title “Freiherr” which is equivalent to being a Baron. Magnus Freiherr von Braun was a conservative civil servant, and he was the Minister of Agriculture in the Federal Cabinet. Emmy von Quistorp, Wernher’s mother, can trace her family’s ancestry back to the medieval European royalties. It was his mother who had started his curiosity for knowing more about outer space.
After Wernher von Braun’s Lutheran confirmation, he received a telescope as a gift from his mother and it was then when he began to love astronomy. When his family transferred residence to Berlin, he had caused a great disruption in one of the crowded streets after having attached and set fire to fireworks on his toy wagon. He drew his inspiration from the speed records made by Fritz von Opel and Max Valier. Apart from his curiosity with fireworks, he was a talented musician who played pieces by masters such as Bach and Beethoven from his memory. He learned how to play both the piano and cello while he was young and though he originally wanted to be a composer, he was destined for greatness in another field.
In 1925 he began to attend a boarding school which was in Ettersburg Castle. During the early years, he wasn’t excelling in mathematics or physics but because of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen or the book called By Rocket into Interplanetary Space which he acquired back then, he honed his skills in mathematics and physics because space travel was something which has always fascinated him.
He then joined the “Spaceflight Society” or Verein für Raumschiffahrt when he went attended Technische Hochschule Berlin. There he was able to have a hand in assisting Willy Ley in the tests he was conducting for liquid-fueled rockets. Because of this exposure, he believed that so much more would be needed to make space exploration come true and it prompted him to further his studies by entering Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in 1934 to have his post-graduate courses which earned him a degree in physics. While in the following years his work had been focused on military rockets, his real interest was for space travel.
Career
His career can be divided into two main timelines; one where he worked for the Nazis, and the other when he was working for the United States. While working for the Nazis, Wernher von Braun became known as the leader of the “rocket team” who had developed the V-2 missile used by the Nazis in the World War II. Scholars still have discussions about his involvement in the manufacturing of these ballistic missiles which were supposedly products of forced labor in the factory known as Mittelwerk.
The V-2 first flew in October of 1942. However, in 1945, it became clear to Wernher von Braun how Germany wouldn’t win against the Allied forces and this made him begin his plans for where he would be after the war. Before the Allies captured their V-2 rocket complex, it was von Braun who had planned his surrender along with 500 rocket scientists he had been working with on the project. He had also surrendered test vehicles as well as plans for other rockets to the Americans.
Despite his involvement with the Nazis and the manufacturing of ballistic missiles used in the World War II, Wernher von Braun along with the other rocket specialists he had made to surrender had careers when they worked for the United States. It was in June 1945 when he along with this other specialists was transferred to America, but it was only in October of the same year when they were announced in public. The U.S. Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency had first made sure to bleach their records of involvement with the Nazis before allowing them to work for the United States.
He worked in alliance with the United States army for 15 years for the country’s development of ballistic missiles. He was a major part of a military operation which was known as the Project Paperclip, and along with other members of what used to be his “rocket team,” they worked in Fort Bliss, Texas. The rockets they built for the United States army were launched at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, and in 1950, this same team of rocket scientists moved somewhere near Alabama to the Redstone Arsenal.
Around ten years later, the rocket development team lead by Wernher von Braun was transferred to what was then the just established NASA. There, they had received the mandate to create giant Saturn rockets. He then became the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center of NASA.
Other than being the brains behind the development of rockets which had helped the Americans reach the Moon, he was also the leading spokesman of the United States for space exploration matters in the 1950s. Twenty years later, NASA then asked him to transfer to Washington, DC for planning efforts for their agency. He did so, leaving his home which was in Alabama but his time there in Washington had been short as he retired two years later. He then spent his last years working for the Fairchild Industries of Germantown, Maryland. In June 16, 1977 he died at the age of 65 in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Wilbur and Orville Wright
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Wilbur and Orville Wright established a marvelous legacy in the history of world, alongside the greatest American inventors, with the invention of the first successful, fully powered and heavier-than-air flying machine. The airplane, which was created in Dayton, Ohio and made operational at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, virtually kicked off the aerial age. The invention is considered as one of the most important events in the 20th century.
Early Life:
The Wright brothers belonged to the deep mid-western America. Various generations on both sides of the family had been erstwhile colonists on the Ohio and Indiana frontier. Milton Wright, the dad, was an itinerant minister, who served as a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. His job meant that the family saw many church posts across the place. Susan, the mom, had been a member of the United Brethren, and an intelligent, shy person.
Contributions and Legacy:
The Wrights brothers began experimenting in aeronautics in 1899 as they mastered their skills by 1905. In these six years, with brilliant originality, they determined the necessary elements of the problem, conceptualized creative technical solutions, and created practical mechanical design tools with constituents that resulted in an executable aircraft. The effors meant much more than merely coaxing a machine off the ground.
They laid down the fundamental principles of aircraft design that are still relevant to this day. After introducing the invention to the public in the United States and Europe in 1908, they gained international fame and recognition. The Wright Company started manufacturing airplanes for sale and created wealth that far exceeded anybody’s imaginations. The contemporary experimenters and aviators responsively overtook and surpassed their designs, but it was Wilbur and Orville Wright who made the landmark discovery that made them immortal in history.
Air transportation and military aviation have had an indeterminable economic, geopolitical, and cultural impact in the entire world.
Personal Life and Death:
The Wright brothers never got married. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid. He was only 45 years old. Orville Wright died of a heart attack at 77.
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Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
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Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (a.k.a., Roentgen) (1845-1923), the first Nobel winner in Physics, was the first to produce X-rays, known originally as Röntgen rays. The facts of his early biography offer hope for those who fail in their initial educational efforts. A childhood act of solidarity excluded him from many subsequent schools. However, he went on not only to complete his education but to achieve a full professorship. His discovery of the effect of the invisible but powerful rays that revealed the bones inside bodies has made possible many elements of modern medicine.
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was the child of a Dutch mother and a German father. Although born in Germany, his family, which was Catholic moved to Holland, which is largely Protestant. As a teenager, he made the judgment error of refusing to squeal on a schoolmate who had drawn a rude picture of an instructor. This act of defiance caused his expulsion and his exclusion from other gymnasia, not only in the Netherlands but in his father’s nation of Germany as well.
Education:
Somehow in spite of apparently universal blacklisting, he managed to gain admission to the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, by entry exam. He studied mechanical engineering, and went on to the University of Zurich for his PhD. He went on to teach physics at a number of universities. He even considered an offer from Columbia University, an institution with a history of offering lecterns to brilliant émigrés. However, World War I broke out and he ended up remaining in Munich for the remainder of his professional career.
Research:
For decades, he had been studying the effects of electrical charge on the response and appearance of vacuum tubes. The science of electricity was still relatively new, and there remained much to understand. His set-ups used relatively simple components by today’s standards.
He conducted a series of experiments in 1895 in which he connected a type of vacuum tube (visualize a light bulb on steroids) called a Hittorf-Crookes tube to an early and very powerful electrostatic charge generator known as a Ruhmkorff coil, similar to what sparks a car motor to start. He was trying to reproduce a fluorescent effect observed with another type of vacuum tube called a Lenard tube. The filament inside produced a stream of electrons which was well-known, called a cathode ray. To his surprise, this produced fluorescence on a screen coated with a compound called barium platinocyanide, several feet away. This suggested to him that a hitherto unknown, and entirely invisible, effect was being produced. We know now that the cathode ray had excited the atoms of the aluminum to produce X-rays, which in turn excited the atoms of the barium (an element which fluoresces readily)
He also discovered that when his hand passed between the electrically charged vacuum tube and the barium platinocyanide coated screen, he saw his bones. He reproduced this phenomenon with his wife, causing horror.
After secretly confirming his findings, he published an article titled, “On A New Kind Of Rays” (Über eine neue Art von Strahlen). This revelation and its nearly immediate application to all sorts of medical imaging earned him an honorary medical degree. His Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.
Unlike the bios of some other radiation pioneers, his does not end with him giving his life for his seminal work, since he used lead shielding. He did, however, die of intestinal carcinoma.
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Wilhelm Ostwald
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Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, more commonly known as Wilhelm Ostwald, was an eminent Russian-German chemist and philosopher who was a key figure in the development of physical chemistry as a recognized branch of chemistry. He won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his groundbreaking research on chemical equilibria, chemical reaction velocities and catalysis.
Early Life and Education:
Born of German parents in Riga, Latvia in 1853, Wilhelm Ostwald received his early education at the city’s Realgymnasium, where he studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and natural history, while learning various languages such as French, English, Latin and Russian. His father wanted him to become an engineer but Ostwald had already developed an interest in chemistry.
After entering the Dorpat Landesuniversitiit in 1872, Ostwald studied physics under Arthur von Oettingen and chemistry under Karl Schmidt and Johann Lemberg. He received his Candidat in 1875, after writing an essay on the mass action of water. Oettingen consequently took him in as a helper in the physical laboratory. Ostwald received his master’s degree after analyzing the chemical affinity by physical means. He began to give lectures on physical chemistry at the University, and continued his research on affinity, while refining the scientific methods related to the process.
Ostwald earned a doctorate in 1878 and became Schmidt’s assistant in 1879.
Contributions and Achievements:
Wilhelm Ostwald came back to Riga in 1881 to join the Polytechnicum as the Professor of Chemistry, where he soon became a popular teacher and a creative researcher. He worked on two projects that gained him worldwide acclaim; “Lehrbuch Der Allgemeinen Chemie” and “Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie”. His works massively promoted the growing field of physical chemistry.
Ostwald went to Leipzig in 1887, where he assumed the chair of physical chemistry. There he carried out groundbreaking research on catalysis, while promoting the works of Arrhenius and van’t Hoff. He made Leipzig a world center for the study of physical chemistry. Moreover, he extensively studied and made important findings regarding energetics. Ostwald spent almost two decades at Leipzig.
Later Life and Death:
Wilhelm Ostwald went into semi-retirement in 1894, choosing to continue only as a research professor. He started focusing more towards “Naturphilosophie” and kept himself away from research in chemistry. He finally announced full retirement in 1906 and moved to his estate at Grossbothen, in Saxony, where he spent his last years as an independent scholar and freethinker, exploring the fields of energetics, scientific methodology, monism and pacifism and internationalism. He also developed a new physical theory of colors.
In 1909 he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Ostwald died at “Landhans Energie” in 1932, after a short illness. He was 78 years old.
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Wilhelm Röntgen
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The German physicist, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was the first person to systematically produce and detect electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-rays or Röntgen rays. His discovery of x-rays was a great revolution in the fields of physics and medicine and electrified the general public. It also earned him the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1896 and the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. He is also known for his discoveries in mechanics, heat, and electricity.
Early Life and Career:
Röntgen was born on March 27, 1845, at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany. He was the only child of a merchant and cloth manufacturer. Röntgen was brought up in Netherlands after he and his family moved to Apeldoorn in 1848. Here he first received his early education at the Institute of Martinus Herman van Doorn, a boarding school and in 1861 attended the Utrecht Technical School. Unfortunately in 1863 he was expelled unfairly from his school after being accused of a prank another student had committed. Even though Röntgen did not seem to be especially gifted in his schoolwork, he was good at building mechanical objects, a talent that enabled him to build many of his own experimental devices in his later life.
He then entered the University of Utrecht in 1865 to study physics without having the necessary credentials required for a regular student. In 1869, he earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Zurich. Here he attended lectures by the noted physicist Rudolf Julius Emmanuel Clausius and also worked in the laboratory of Kundt. As soon as he completed his graduation he was appointed assistant to Kundt and went with him to Würzburg in the same year, and three years later to Strasbourg.
In 1874 he was appointed as a lecturer at Strasbourg University and in 1875 served as a professor in the Academy of Agriculture at Hohenheim in Württemberg. In 1876 he returned to Strasbourg as Professor of Physics. Three years later he accepted the invitation to the Chair of Physics in the University of Giessen. In 1888, he obtained the same position at the University of Würzburg, and in 1900 at the University of Munich. Even though he accepted an appointment at Columbia University in New York City but due to the occurrence of World War I, Röntgen changed his plans and remained in Munich for the rest of his career.
Discovery of X-rays:
During 1895 Röntgen carried out his investigations on the phenomenon of cathode rays. Accidently he put a piece of cardboard covered with fluorescent mineral near the experimental set and noticed it glowing in the dark when the source of cathode rays was turned on. Roentgen immediately initiated an experiment aimed at investigation of the phenomenon.
He found that that if vacuum tube, used for experiments with cathode rays, was covered tightly with thin, black cardboard and placed in a darkened room, bright glow was observed during each discharge on a screen covered with fluorescent barium platinum cyanide (placed near the device). He realised that the fluorescence was caused by an agent which could infiltrate from within the vacuum tube through dark cardboard (impermeable to visible or ultraviolet radiation) to the outside of the set. He termed this agent as x-rays.
Death:
Röntgen died at Munich on February 10, 1923, from carcinoma of the intestine.
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Wilhelm Wundt
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Wilhelm Wundt was a German physiologist and psychologist, who is widely credited as the founder of experimental psychology. Wundt is also acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential psychologists of all time.
Early Life and Education:
Born at Neckarau, Baden in 1832, Wilhelm Wundt was the son of a Lutheran minister. Wundt received a medical degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1856. He also attended the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin.
Contributions and Achievements:
After teaching physiology at the University of Heidelberg, Wilhelm Wundt joined Hermann von Helmholtz as an assistant in 1858. During this time, he wrote “Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung” (Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception). As one of the early pioneers of scientific psychology, Wundt introduced the usage of experimental methods in psychology, therefore minimizing the role of rational analysis.
After succeeding Helmholtz, he investigated the immediate experiences of consciousness, such as sensations, ideas and feelings, and wrote “Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie” (Principles of Physiological Psychology), which still remains one of the most influential works in the history of psychology. It also explored the fundamental concepts related to apperception (conscious perception) and introspection (conscious examination of conscious experience).
During his tenure as professor at the University of Leipzig in 1879, Wundt built the first psychological laboratory ever. He also published the first journal of psychology, “Philosophische Studien” (Philosophical Studies) in 1881. Some of his later works also included “Grundriss der Psychologie” (1896) and “Völkerpsychologie” (1900–20).
Later Life and Death:
Wilhelm Wundt died on August 31, 1920 in Grossbothen, Germany. He was 88 years old.
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Willard Frank Libby
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Willard Frank Libby (1908-1980), a Nobel Prize laureate and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient was a pioneer in the use of differential decay of the Carbon 14 Isotope for dating organic materials; what we now call radiocarbon dating. He addressed this scientific puzzle after developing a gaseous diffusion enrichment process for uranium-235. His work also involved the identification, separation, and control of ‘heavy water’ containing deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of Hydrogen. These processeswere important to the building of the Hiroshima bomb. Through his post-war appointment to the Atomic Energy Commission, he embraced the cause of peaceful nuclear use.
War:
His bio begins in Colorado. He studied chemistry at Berkeley, teaching there until 1941. He worked initially to develop Geiger counters for the detection of background radiation from soils and rock formations; what homeowners call radon gas. His Guggenheim post-doctoral fellowship took him to Princeton,but with the outbreak of WW II hostilities, he was recruited into the Manhattan project at Columbia University, a massive mobilization of top scientists to develop an atomic weapon.Libby’s biography must record his innovation in techniques used to separate and concentrate uranium isotopes through gaseous diffusion.
Peace:
Post-war, he taught at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. He made the connection between the amounts of tritium, an unstable isotope of Hydrogen, in water, and the action of cosmic ray bombardment in the highest levels of the atmosphere. Only trace quantities of tritium are found in any body of water, but once the water is isolated from the atmosphere, it no longer acquires new tritium molecules. This observation led to pioneering techniques for dating water bodies, and identifying different currents of water in the ocean.
This line of research also led him to discover that the bodies of all organisms, whether plant or animal, absorbed trace amounts of the Carbon 14 isotope only during life. He reasoned that the steady radioactive decay of this other unstable isotope could provide a way to measure the time elapsed since death. The technique of documenting the degree of decay of the Carbon isotope, C14, in dead tissues, immediately proved useful. This technology has been immensely helpful to many branches of science, especially archeology and paleontology. Its value to science was recognized in the Nobel Prize he received in 1960.
Libby believed fully in the possibilities and promises of atomic science, and carried this message for the Eisenhower administration into the media and on the lecture circuit. Libby’s advocacy for atoms for peace while with the Atomic Energy Commission did, however, put him publicly at odds with some other noted scientists, for example, Linus Pauling, who believed that all testing should cease immediately.
Libby put his belief in the survivability of nuclear attack into practice in the construction of his home fallout shelter, which famously burnt immediately upon completion. His enthusiasm occasionally could lead to nearly laughable missteps; for example, he counseled the residents of a rural town with one solitary through-road to flee to the countryside in case of attack. Since this course of action would have been a virtual guarantee of traffic gridlock, and starvation or dehydration would unavoidably await anyone attempting this strategy, his audience took his advice with the proverbial grain of salt.
No such silliness detracts from the facts of his contribution to every discipline that deals with time – radiocarbon dating assures him a place in the pantheon of the greats.
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William Bayliss
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An English physiologist, William Bayliss was the co-discoverer of the peptide hormone called secretin which he and Ernest Starling jointly researched about. Together with Starling, Bayliss also discovered the peristaltic or the movements and contractions inside the digestive tract which moves food from one place to another. Apart from these discoveries, Bayliss is also a notable name for research in the fields of physical chemistry, biochemistry, and physiology.
Early Life and Educational Background
William Bayliss was born William MaddockBayliss on the second of May in 1860 in Butcroft, Wednesbury. His parents were Jane Maddock and Moses Bayliss who was a manufacturer of screw bolts. He had no siblings and was named after a paternal uncle who happened to be the man who founded the ironworks in Wolverhampton’s Cable Street. Later in his life, William joined this firm along with one other person and the firm was then known as Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss.
Growing up in Wolverhampton, he got his initial education in Mowbray House School. Later on, he became the apprentice of a doctor in the Wolverhampton Hospital—this was done to hopefully rouse his interest in medicine which somehow succeeded in the long run despite a slight change of course. He was not able to complete his apprenticeship and he took a different road when he went to the University College London in 1881. Four years later, he attended Wadham College in Oxford. During his time there, he worked on getting his degree in the School of Natural Science or Physiology. Back then, this was a blooming field which a lot of scientific minds began to take interest in. After finishing his degree, he took a teaching post in the University College London from 1888-1912. It was when he was working there that he made his grand discovery.
Career and Scientific Endeavors
Ernest Henry Starling, another notable name which almost always pops up along with Bayliss’s, was also a physiologist who worked at the University College London. Together, he and Bayliss discovered the occurence when food touches the small intestine. These physiologists were able to determine how secretin, a chemical substance—more specificallya hormone–is secreted. This substance is then carried by the blood to the pancreas. There it would stimulate pancreatic juice secretion. Pancreatic juices are the most important ones when it comes to digestion, and this hormone is what triggers the pancreatic juice secretion.
Secretin, the substance they discovered, was the very first hormone identified. Bayliss and Starling coined the term “hormone” from the Greek phrase “I arouse” or “I excite” because of its effects on another organ. Because of their breakthrough, a whole new field of medical and scientific research was opened. So much was the importance of their discovery that the “Bayliss Clubs” in America are named after William Bayliss. These clubs were formed to help raise more awareness on life in general and how chemistry is also a factor at play in it.
Despite the positive contributions they had, there was also some controversy surrounding their work. Their tandem worked on animal experiments which led to the 1903 Brown Dog Affair. Stephen Coleridge who was then the Secretary of the National Anti-Vivesection Society addressed the Society that a certain brown dog was vivesected at the University College London and the procedure was done by Bayliss. As a counter move, Bayliss sued Coleridge and he won. After this incident, he donated no less than £2,000 to the college for the damages the incident incurred, especially on the physiological research department. After then, Bayliss distanced from the issue and even wrote several articles which were about the humane and proper treatment of animals. Come 1912, Bayliss was appointed as the Professor of General Physiology at University College London.
Bayliss had a very productive scientific career and his tandem discovery with Ernest Starling wasn’t the end of his scientific contributions which are remembered to this day. He also engaged himself in the study about saline injections which helped counter shock which patients tend to experience after surgery. Because of the findings in this work of his, he eventually proposed using gum-saline injections. These injections had been used for shock caused by major wounds and had saved many lives during the First World War.
Three years after he was appointed as the Professor of General Physiology, Bayliss’s classic publication called the “Principles of General Physiology” was made public. During his lifetime, his famous publication had four editions. There came a point when he became too ill to make the revisions himself and since each chapter required professional attention, no other person was quite able to make a revision as detailed as the previous ones were for the lack of thorough knowledge in the fields that Bayliss himself opened.
Two years before he died, Sir William Bayliss was knighted after which he lived in Hampstead and continued working as the director of their family business which his uncle started.
Personal Life and Later Years
His collaborations with Ernest Starling weren’t all about science. In fact, they left a different kind of legacy when it came to their personal lives. Bayliss’s children had been born by Starling’s sister named Gertrude. Together, they had a daughter and three sons. Leonard Ernest Bayliss followed the footsteps of his father and also became a physiologist and studied under the wing of Starling at the University College London.
Bayliss and his wife took part in the social setup of the people around them. This was why they had mutual interests and spent efforts on improving the working conditions of those in Cable Street where the family business was located. The people from the area knew of the couple’s hospitality and Bayliss kept an interesting scientific aura inside their home all the time. According to varied accounts, Bayliss was a gentle and honest man who was very approachable. It was also said that he was a man who always esteemed other people more highly than he did himself.
In 1924, Bayliss died in London. Several years later in 1979, the Bayliss and Starling Society was established and the main purpose of the society was focused on central and autonomic peptide functions.
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William Buckland
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William Buckland is more properly known as the Rev. Dr. William Buckland. He was a theologian hailing from England and later on he became the dean of none other than Westminster. Apart from his career and service as a well-respected theologian, he was not just a man of God but a man of science as well. He had been a palaeontologist and geologist, and these fields of specialization lead to his detailed documentation of the dinosaur fossil now known as the “megalosaurus.” He had been a proponent of what is known as the “Gap Theory” which was, in a way, a theory that reconciled biblical accounts of creation with the scientific discoveries made by modern man.
Early Life and Educational Background
He was born in Axminster, Devon, on the 12th of March in 1784. He was the eldest son of then Rector of Templeton and Trusham Charles Buckland, and Elizabeth Buckland. It is said that William Buckland’s interest in fossils had been tapped by his birthplace’s proximity to quarries in Axminster which was then bountiful with fossil remains. His father had a keen interest in the development of roads and William Buckland was often taken on trips near the quarries which is why he had become so familiar with such scenes.
Initially, he had been home schooled and it was his father who had been teaching him. In 1797, however, he was entered to Blundell’s school which was in Tiverton to receive a more comprehensive education which would prepare him for his days in the university. A year after his time in Blundell’s, he was moved to St. Mary’s College in Winchester where he was able to progress academically while still being able to retain his love for natural science and history.
After some coaching from his uncle, William Buckland won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College in 1801, and this was where he began his Oxford career. Three years later, he had obtained his BA degree through his scholarship and had also taken pupils to teach. He had never neglected his studies, but he was also able to make time for furthering his knowledge on scientific matters by attending lectures on geology given by John Kidd, as well as anatomy lectures given by Christopher Pegge. In 1808, William Buckland obtained his MA, became a fellow in the college he attended, and was even ordained as a priest that same year.
Career
During the years 1808 to 1812, William Buckland went on numerous geological excursions on horseback to different parts of Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland. He had taken his favourite black mare on his journeys and examined sections of strata. He even took home specimen for research purposes during those excursions.
John Kidd resigned from his post as the Reader of Mineralogy, and it was William Buckland who became his successor. He had a colourful personality which he let shine during his lectures, and that gained him even more students. Apart from being a well-loved lecturer of mineralogy, he had also contributed as a curator of sorts of the Old Ashmolean building. He even added his private collection of fossils and rocks which he had kept in his old room back in Corpus Christi College.
In 1818, he was able to persuade the Prince Regent to bestow him a second reading, and it was Geology. During that time, his studies had kept him very busy and he was involved in justifying the inclusion of geology while keeping in line with the biblical accounts of Creation as well as the Noachian flood. During his days, fossils of animals were believed to be from the great deluge and he had spent a lot of time understanding the timeline between the great flood and the existence of the animals whose fossils he had been examining.
On January 18, 1823, William Buckland discovered a skeleton which he had then named as the “Red Lady of Paviland” since the remains were found in the Paviland Cave. The name was because he had first thought that the remains had been that of a prostitute in the area, and his discovery had been the oldest and most anatomically modern found in the U.K. While he had discovered the strata in the same area where bones of mammoths and other extinct animals had been, Buckland had shared his views with Georges Cuvier who also believed that there were no humans who lived the same time as extinct animals did. He then came to the conclusion that the skeleton had probably been buried in a grave made by earlier people. Years later and after carbon-data tests, the “Red Lady of Paviland” was proven to be a male from around 33,000 years ago.
There was a time when Buckland had taken great interest in the theory of Louis Agassiz and in 1938, he had a trip to Switzerland to meet Agassiz himself. In 1840, these two scientists found evidence of former glaciation. In the same year, Buckland became the Geological Society’s president once more and despite the hostile reaction to the theory he had proposed, he had already been convinced that glaciation was the origin of many of the surface deposits which were in Britain then.
Personal Life
In December of 1825 when he had also accepted the Stoke of Charity in Hampshire, he married Mary Morland. While she had been only 28 then, she already had her own collection of fossils and had even contributed to the works of both Buckland and Cuvier. They had a shared passion for geology, and even their honeymoon tour had destinations only geology lovers would plan on going to. They had nine children, but only 5 survived to adulthood.
In 1850, he was afflicted with a disease which had greatly disabled him and lead to his death six years later. From post-mortem findings, there was a tubercular infection which spread to his brain. Interestingly, the plot which had been reserved for his grave had a Jurassic limestone which needed to be blown up before proper excavation could be done and this was seen as a kid of final jest from the geologist.
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William Harvey
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The man who first correctly explained the process of blood circulation in our bodies and the role of heart in the process is none other than William Harvey, an English physician. He is also known as the father of modern physiology.
Early Life, Education and Career:
William Harvey was born on 1 April 1578 in Folkestone, Kent, England, the eldest of seven sons. His father, Thomas Harvey was a jurat of Folkestone. After completing his schooling from the King’s School, Canterbury he joined the Caius College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. There he studied arts and medicine and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1597. His fascination for medicine led him to Italy to study at the University of Padua, the center for western European medical instruction. Here he studied under the famous anatomist, Fabricius, Julius Casserius, and other renowned men and graduated with honors in 1602. In the same year he returned to England where he earned yet another medical degree from Cambridge University. Following this, Harvey established himself in London, joining the College of Physicians on October 5, 1604. The same year he also got married to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of Lancelot Browne, physician to King James I. They had no children.
In 1609, he was chosen a physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and in 1615 Lumleian Lecturer at the College of Physicians – a position that he held for his entire life. His thoughts about circulation of the blood were first publicly expressed in these lectures during 1616. Harvey continued to contribute to the Lumleain lectures at the same time also taking care of his patients at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; he thus soon attained an important and fairly lucrative practice, which made possible his appointment as court physician to King James I in 1618 and then to Charles I in 1625, a post he held until Charles was beheaded in 1649. Charles helped Harvey by providing him with deer from the royal parks for his medical research. Harvey stood firm with Charles, looking after him even during the Cromwellian Civil War, which led to the sacking of Harvey’s rooms in 1642 and the demolition of many of his medical notes and papers. He stopped working at the end of the Civil War, a widower, and lived with his various brothers.
Contribution:
Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood is considered as his greatest contribution to the field of medicine. His many experimental dissections and vivisections made him reject Galen’s views about blood movement, particularly the concepts that blood was formed in the liver and absorbed by the body, and that it flowed through the septum (dividing wall) of the heart. Harvey first examined the heartbeat, finding the existence of the pulmonary circulation and noting the one-way flow of blood. In his attempt to discover the amount of blood pumped by the heart, he figured out that there must be a constant amount of blood flowing through the arteries and returning through the veins of the heart, following a cycle. He presented this explanation in 1628 in his publication -An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals.
He published another ground-breaking book in 1651 titled as “Essays on the Generation of Animals.” This book is considered the basis for modern embryology.
Death:
This great physician died of a stroke at the age of 79, on 3 June, 1657 at Roehampton. He is buried in Hempstead church.
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William Herschel
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Sir William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer and composer, who is widely credited as the founder of sidereal astronomy for observing the heavenly bodies. He found the planet Uranus and its two moons, and formulated a theory of stellar evolution. Knighted in 1816, Herschel was also the first astronomer to suggest that nebulae are composed of stars.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Hanover, Brunswick-Lüneburg on November15, 1738, William Herschel’s father was a musician who worked for German Army. Following the French invasion of Hanover in 1757, his father sent him to seek refuge in England, where Herschel became a music teacher and composer.
Contributions and Achievements:
After studying Robert Smith’s “Harmonics” and “A Compleat System of Opticks”, William Herschel soon developed an interest in the techniques of telescope construction, as well as the distant celestial bodies. He built his own telescope and eyepieces that were advanced enough to have a magnifying power of 6,450 times. Herschel conducted two preliminary telescopic surveys of the heavens, and in 1781, during his third survey of the night sky, he discovered an extraordinary object, which was actually the planet Uranus, and its two moons, Titania and Oberon.
The discovery earned him the Copley Medal and a fellowship at the Royal Society of London.
Herschel later studied the nature of nebulae and discovered that all nebulae were formed of stars, hence rejecting the long-held belief that nebulae were composed of a luminous fluid. He also discovered two moons of Saturn, namely Mimas and Enceladus, and coined the term “asteroid”. Herschel maintained that the solar system is moving through space and found out the direction of that movement. He also suggested that the Milky Way was in the shape of a disk.
Later Life and Death:
William Herschel was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1813, and was knighted three years later in 1816. He died on August 25, 1822 in Slough, Berkshire. Herschel was 83 years old.
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William Hopkins
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The field of geology is studded with some notable names and one name in particular that deserves a lot of honor and praise is that of William Hopkins. He is mathematician and a geologist from England who is quite well-known for his contributions to the field of geology and for his private tutor role to Cambridge undergraduates who aspired to be mathematicians. It was this private tutor role that earned him the nickname the “Senior-wrangler maker”.
William Hopkins also made a lot of studies that were centered in letting it be known that Earth’s interior is solid and not a liquid. It was because of this model that he was able to explain quite a number of geological phenomena. Despite the fact that his conclusion about the solid interior was correct, his physical and mathematical reasoning were deemed unsound.
His early life
Hopkins was born in February 2, 1793 at Kingston-on-soar which is found in Nottinghamshire. He was the only son born to William Hopkins who was a farmer. He wasn’t a farmer really because he was more of a gentleman farmer and this meant he didn’t so much work the land with his own hands but rather he owned the farms and made money from them. During his early years, he was in Norfolk where he learned the more practical agricultural basics then his father rented a modest-sized farm for him in Suffolk at Bury St Edmunds. He wasn’t very successful at farming and as a farmer so when his first wife died around the year 1821, he grabbed the chance to mitigate whatever losses he had incurred and enroll in St. Peter’s college at the University of Cambridge to study for a B.A. degree in 1827 and was a second wrangler. He obtained his Master’s Degree in 1930.
Wrangler-maker
Before graduating from St. Peter’s college, Hopkins got married to Caroline Frances Boys and this made him ineligible for fellowship from the school. In order for him to make money he became a private tutor to budding mathematicians who were after the Senior Wrangler title which just so happened to be a very prestigious distinction back then. He may have been a failure at farming but he was quite successful as a tutor and earned around £700-£800 per year. By the time 1849 rolled in, he had already tutored around 200 wranglers of which 17 became senior wranglers. Some famous students of his were G.G. Stokes and Arthur Cayley. He also had the honor of being a tutor to Lord Kelvin, Isaac Todhunter, and James Clerk Maxwell. Francis Galton had nothing but praise for William Hopkins’ style of teaching which was informative and entertaining which explained why it was so effective.
William Hopkins was also the coach to Edward Routh who nabbed the prestigious a Senior Wrangler title and also turned into “wrangler-maker”. In the year 1833, Hopkins came out with this Elements of Trigonometry and was then recognized for his prowess as a mathematician.
Geology
Somewhere in the year 1833, William Hopkins met a man named Adam Sedgwick while he was at Barmouth and thus was able to join in several expeditions and this was when he developed a keen interest in geology and the structure of the earth. From that time on, he began to publish papers in the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the Geological Society of London where he talked about the physical geology as a discipline and helped define it. He even made mathematical studies on the effects of an elevator force that was moving below the crust of the earth, would have on the surface of the Earth in the form of faults and fissures. It was through this that he managed to talk about the denudation and elevation of the Waldean area, the Lake District, and Bas Boulonnais.
He had this idea that the Earth was solid but was never fully at rest and was in fact, dynamic and had cavities that contained extremely hot fluids and vapors that could create a local elevator pressure. William Hopkins’ model of the Earth wasn’t quite in sync with scientific theories of Charles Lyell who believed that the Earth was in a “steady state”. Charles Lyell believed that the Earth and a solid crust but was liquid on the inside.
For his part, William Hopkins submitted papers to the Royal Society between the years 1838 and 1842 and these papers talked about the rotation of the Earth and its nutation and precession as well. He used his observations to prove that his theory about what the interior of the Earth was made of and that it was not fluid like Charles Lyell believed. He didn’t stop there though because he also studied volcanoes and Earthquakes by way of the same theory or so it was stated in a report submitted to the British Association in 1847.
Hopkins worked hard figure out what enormous amounts of pressure did to the melting points and the thermal conductivity on a number of substances and with support of the Royal Society in form of a grant, he was able to recruit William Fairbairn and James Prescott Joule to help in the collecting of measurements which he used to support his theory. Hopkins also asserted that even though the Earth was cooling, this really had no effect on the climate.
It was mentioned that while his theory of the Earth’s structure was spot on, Thomson tactfully pointed out that Hopkins’ physical reasoning and his mathematical equations were all wrong.
Glaciology
He made some studies on the movement of glaciers but in doing so, he crossed J.D. Forbes. J.D. believed the subject of glaciers was his specialty and he was not at all impressed and was even contemptuous of Hopkins and believed he was inexperienced in the field.
Personal life
He married his second wife and they had a son and three daughters- one of who was Ellice Hopkins that became the morality campaigner. Hopkins was a smart man who enjoyed landscape painting, music, and poetry so it was too bad that his final years were spent inside a lunatic asylum where he died of exhaustion and chronic mania. Indeed, it was rather a sad end to such an illustrious life.
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William John Swainson
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Another man of science with many other specialties is William John Swainson. He was a British entomologist, conchologist, malacologist, and an artist. Recently, his 224th birthday was celebrated on a Google Doodle on the 8th of October. He is most known for his colorful drawings of nature which he himself experienced during his life which he spent on research.
Early Life and Background
He was the oldest son of John Timothy Swainson. He was born in St. Mary Newington, London, specifically at the Dover Place. His father had been a fellow of the Linnean Society, and this may have influenced William’s personal interest in natural history. Originally, his father’s family came from Lancashire and his father and grandfather had their positions in Her Majesty’s Customs. Later on, his father became one of the Collectors at Liverpool. Although his mother’s name isn’t known, another relative worth mentioning is his cousin Isaac Swainson who was an amateur botanist.
William’s formal education was actually impeded because he had a speech difficulty, but despite this he got his education at Lancaster Grammar School. Because of this, he first chose to join the Liverpool Customs when he was 15 where he was a junior clerk. After that, he became a member of the Army Commissariat, and during that time he was even able to tour Sicily and Malta.
Research, Works, and Explorations
Having family members with the same interest for natural history, William Swainson found his passion in becoming an explorer and documenter of nature. In 1806, Swainson went to accompany Henry Koster, a British explorer who was then going to Brazil. Koster stayed in Brazil and became famous for his published book called Travels in Brazil. During Swainson’s time there, he also had the chance to meet Dr. GrigoriIvanovitch Langsdorff who was one of the consul generals of Russia who had also been exploring Brazil when Swainson was there.
Although he did not spend much time there because of the revolution, he went back to the UK with more than 20,000 insect samples, 1,200 plant species, 760 different bird skins, and more than a hundred drawings of many different fish species for which he became known for. His other explorations happened in Italy and Greece which allowed him to further his knowledge and specimen collection on fish and flowers of the Mediterranean.
Swainson is best known for his illustrations although he also came up with the scientific, as well as common names, of many different species of both plants and animals. William Elford Leach, one of Swainson’s friends, was the head of the British Museum’s zoology department and he encouraged Swainson to make use of lithography especially for his book called Zoological Illustrations. Because of this, Swainson is actually the very first naturalist and illustrator to have a book which used lithography for the illustration purposes.
The illustrations in the book came in monochrome prints, and they were later on hand-colored based on the pattern plates which Swainson himself made. This publication of his received book orders and it was what led him to become a noted name as a man of science.
He was a traveler and wherever he went he took the opportunity to observe the flora and fauna by taking specimen or drawing them. In the year 1839, he became a member of the New Zealand Company as well as the Church of England committee. There, he bought property in form of land in Wellington. It was at this time that he gave up his career in scientific literature and documentation. But this wasn’t the end of his life involved in the exposure to the scientific world. He was the very first Fellow of the Royal Society who moved to New Zealand. A few years later, he became an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Tasmania.
Come year 1851, he went to Sydney, Australia where he became the Botanical Surveyor of the Victoria Government a year later. He had been invited by Charles La Trobe who was Lieutenant-Governor there to help with their study of local trees. In 1852, not shortly after the study had begun, he was able to finish his report where he was able to come up with a total of more than 1,500 species and different varieties of eucalyptus. During that time he was also able to identify so many species of the Casuarina genus of trees that he no longer had names for them.
While it is noted that Swainson had an expertise for zoology, his untrained eye for botany was not exactly well-praised. Botanist William Jackson Hooker wrote to Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller who was also a noted botanist saying that Swainson’s botanical work—despite his being a good zoologist–is a “series of trash and nonsense.” Despite his not so well-received efforts for botany, his contributions for early zoological research were still given credit.
Personal Life and Latter Years
Like Victorian scientists of his age, Swainson himself was a member of many different learned societies. These included the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society as previously mentioned.
He had two wives, the first one being Mary Parkes whom he married in 1823. They had four sons and one daughter. Mary died in 1835. Five years later, Swainson remarried. The second marriage was in 1840 and this was to Ann Grasby. The couple moved to New Zealand afterwards.
Despite not being positively recognized for his botanical efforts, his love for botany could not be suppressed, and he even studied the plants in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales before his return to New Zealand in 1854 where he lived with his family in the Hutt at Fern Grove. His activities in New Zealand were mostly forestry-related endeavors although he had also been engaged in activities such as property management as well as having more publications related to natural history. On December 6, 1855 at the age of 66, William John Swainson died in their home at Fern Grove.
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William Ramsay
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Sir William Ramsay was an eminent British physical chemist who is credited with the discovery of argon, krypton, neon and xenon. He also demonstrated that these gases, along with helium and radon, makes the noble gases; a family of new elements. Ramsay won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his extraordinary efforts.
Early Life and Education:
Born in Glasgow, Scotland on October 2, 1852, William Ramsay’s father was a civil engineer, while his uncle, Sir Andrew Ramsay, was the famous geologist.
After receiving early education at the Glasgow Academy, Ramsay attended the University of Glasgow under Thomas Anderson, the prominent chemist. He earned his doctorate at the University of Tübingen. Ramsay then became Anderson’s assistant at the Anderson College. He was appointed the Professor of Chemistry at the University College of Bristol in 1879.
Contributions and Achievements:
After taking over the chair of Chemistry at University College London, William Ramsay made several important discoveries and wrote many scientific papers regarding the oxides of nitrogen. Drawing inspiration from Lord Rayleigh’s 1892 discovery that the atomic weight of nitrogen found in the atmosphere was higher than that of nitrogen found in the atmosphere, Ramsay discovered a heavy gas in atmospheric nitrogen, and named it argon. One year later, he liberated helium from a mineral called cleveite.
While working with chemist Morris W. Travers in 1898, Ramsay isolated three more elements from liquid air at low temperature and high pressure, and termed them as neon, krypton, and xenon. In collaboration with another chemist, Frederick Soddy, in 1903, Ramsay showed that helium, together with a gaseous emanation called radon, is consistenly generated during the radioactive decay of radium. This discovery had a profound influence on the field of radiochemistry.
Later Life and Death:
William Ramsay was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, and was knighted three years later, in 1902. He also worked as a president of the Chemical Society, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ramsay died of nasal cancer on July 23, 1916 in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 63 years old.
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William Smith
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William Smith, known to others as “Strata Smith”, is known as the Father of English Geology. He was responsible for initiating the production of a geological map of England and Wales.
Life and Education
Born in March 23, 1769 in Churchill, Oxfordshire, England, William Smith was the son of a mechanic. His father was out of the picture before he turned eight and was left to be raised by his father’s eldest brother, who was a farmer. Because of this, he did not have the privilege of having a steady formal education. This did not hinder his curiosity though, as he continued to explore and collect fossils. His uncle was not pleased with how he went around town carving sundials but later on learned to appreciate him when he also started taking interest in draining land.
He found ways to learn more about geometry, mapping and surveying. His raw knowledge allowed him to train under Edward Webb, a master surveyor. He traveled all over the country as he studied the formation of fossils and rocks and was able to purchase a small estate in the town of Tucking Mill in Midford.
He met several people along the way who helped him in his journey towards becoming one of the greatest figures in geology. He became acquaintances with Rev. Benjamin Richardson who taught him the different names of fossils and shared his knowledge in natural history.
Notable Contributions
As Edward Webb’s assistant, William Smith traveled all over the country and gained more knowledge on his chosen field. His continuous growth as a surveyor led him to supervise and oversee the digging of the Somerset Canal in 1794. This job was where he first observed the way rocks were formed. He noticed how fossils always seem to be in a specific order from top to bottom not only on sedimentary rocks, but on other sections of rocks as well. This was how the “Principle of Faunal Succession” or “Law of Faunal Succession” came to be. The principle states that there is a constant definite sequence in layers of sedimentary rocks and in other rock formations that contain fossils causing a correlation between these locations.
By 1796, Smith’s knowledge led him to be elected as part of Bath’s agricultural society where he discussed his findings and theories with those who shared his interest in fossils and rocks. He was the first person to draw local geologic maps using fossils as a mapping tool based on their stratigraphic order unlike those who created geologic maps before who merely used the composition of rocks. When his contract ended in 1799, he continued on his attempt to create a complete geologic map of Wales and England along with some parts of Scotland as well. Although progress was very slow due to lack of moral and financial support, the completed map finally went into production in 1812 and was eventually published in 1815. The map comprised fifteen sheets all in all on a five miles to one inch scale. A smaller version was later published in 1819. This paved the way for the creation of the Geological Atlas of England and Wales which was made up of 21 different county geological maps. There was also published information from Rev. Joseph Townsend, rector of Pewsey, who acknowledged Smith as the person responsible for dictating the first ever table of the British Strata to him.
In 1817, he produced an exceptional geological map of the area around Snowdon to London. Sadly, a lot of his works were plagiarized which caused him to go bankrupt and fall into serious debt. He was imprisoned in London’s King’s Bench Prison which was a debtor’s prison. The home and other properties he made investments in were seized as well. He was in and out of jobs until he regained his luck when Sir John Johnstone, an employer of his, helped him take back the credit for a lot of his work and paved the way for him to take back the respect the he truly deserved.
Although production of the map was a remarkable feat, the period’s scientific community did not give their full support right away mostly because they believed that he did not have a good background. They noticed his economic standing and his limited education more than his achievement.
Other Achievements
It was not until 1831 that William Smith was finally formally acknowledged as a vital part in the advancement of geology. He was given the first ever Wollaston Medal, an honor presented by the Geological Society of London to those who have shown great contributions to geology. He was also granted an annual life pension of ₤100. He received an LLD degree during a British Association meeting in Dublin in 1835. He was also among the group of commissioners who were given the privilege of choosing the building stones for the Houses of Parliament in 1838.
William Smith also lived in Scarborough from 1824 to 1826 where he built a geological museum called the Rotunda. The museum focused mainly on the Yorkshire Coast. Lord Oxburgh had it renamed The William Smith Museum of Geology in May of 2008.
William Smith died on August 28, 1839 in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England due to poor health. His remains were buried in St. Peter’s Church where a bust created by Chantrey was placed. The earl of Ducie commissioned for a monument to be constructed in his hometown of Churchill in 1891. John Phillips, his nephew who also trained under him, edited his memoirs which were made public in 1844. Phillips later on became one of the most notable figures in geology and paleonthology during the 19th century because of the stringent training and the wide knowledge that his uncle shared with him.
Today, his achievements continue to be highlighted in many different ways. The Geological Society of London presents an annual lecture in his honor. His work has also been acknowledged as an important factor in the discoveries and works of Charles Darwin.
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William Thomson
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Early Life:
William Thomson was born in Belfast, Ireland June 26, 1824 at Baron Kelvin of Largs. William attended Glasgow University from the age of 10. This early age is not quite as unusual as one would think, for at that time the universities in Scotland to some extent competed with the schools for the most able junior pupils. William Thomson graduated from Glasgow and Cambridge showing precocious ability in Mathematics and Physics. He became professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow at a very young age.
Contributions and Achievements:
Having studied some of Thomson’s research contributions, let us comment on the innovations he introduced into teaching at the University of Glasgow. He introduced laboratory work into the degree courses, keeping this part of the work distinct from the mathematical side. Another of Thomson’s famous pieces of work was his joint project with Tait to produce their famous text Treatise on Natural Philosophy which they began working on in the early 1860s. They worked by posting a notebook back and forward to each other on this huge project which Thomson envisioned as covering all physical theories.
Thomson achieved his greatest fame through an event that we have still to discuss. He was always greatly interested in the improvement of physical instrumentation, and Thomson designed and implemented many new devices, including the mirror-galvanometer that was used in the first successful sustained telegraph transmissions in transatlantic submarine cable. He was created Lord Kelvin for his work on the first transatlantic cable Thomson had joined a group of industrialists in the mid 1850s on a project to lay a submarine cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. He played several roles in this project, being on the board of directors and also being an advisor on theoretical electrical matters.
He helped develop the second law of thermodynamics but Kelvin argued that the key issue in the interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was the explanation of irreversible processes. He noted that if entropy always increased, the universe would ultimately reach a state of uniform temperature and maximum entropy from which it would not be possible to extract any work. He called this the Heat Death of the Universe. Therefore he proposed a thermodynamical theory based on the dominance of the energy concept, on which he believed all physics should be based. He said the two laws of thermodynamics expressed the indestructibility and dissipation of energy. By 1847, Thomson had already gained a good reputation as a scientist when he attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Oxford where he stated”There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
At that meeting, he heard James Prescott Joule argue for the mutual convertibility of heat and mechanical work and for their mechanical equivalence. In 1848, he provided only an operational definition of temperature. He proposed an absolute temperature scale in which a unit of heat descending from a body A to a body B at the would give out the same mechanical effect, whatever be the number. Such a scale would be quite independent of the physical properties of any specific substance. In his publication, Thomson wrote:
“The conversion of heat (or caloric) into mechanical effect is probably impossible, certainly undiscovered.”
One of the clearest instances of this interaction is in his estimate of the age of the Earth. Given his youthful work on the figure of the Earth and his interest in heat conduction, it is no surprise that he chose to investigate the Earth’s cooling and to make historical inferences of the Earth’s age from his calculations. Thomson was a creationist in a broad sense, but he was not a ‘flood geologist’. He contended that the laws of thermodynamics operated from the birth of the universe and envisaged a dynamic process that saw the organization and evolution of the solar system and other structures, followed by a gradual heat death.
Thomson was also a yachtsman, as he was a lot interested in the sea related stuff. He introduced a method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel piano wire replaces the ordinary land line. The wire glides so easily to the bottom that “flying soundings” can be taken while the ship is going at full speed. A pressure gauge to register the depth of the sinker was added by Thomson.
Therefore, Thomson’s marvellous pieces of work have no match as they were unique and have helped man in carrying out their daily chores. Like many other scientists some of Thomson’s predictions were proved false but this great man won a number of honorary degrees for his classic work and is ranked among the famous most scientists of history as his remarkable work has become the standard texts for many generations of scientists.
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Wolfgang Ernst Pauli
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There are a lot of notable names in the field of quantum physics and you better believe that all of the people who are involved in that list are some of the best brains the world has ever encountered. After all, to excel in quantum physics, you have to have a deep love for science and a very analytic brain. One such person who is well-known in the field of quantum physics is Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. He is a theoretical physicist from Austria and was one of the people who pioneered the study of quantum physics. But his achievements do not stop there because in the year 1945, he was nominated by none other than Albert Einstein himself and he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Indeed, he was a man of many achievements and is one person that deserves to be lauded.
His life
This Nobel Prize winner was born in Vienna on April 25, 1900 and his father was a chemist names Wolfgang Joseph Pauli and his mother was Bertha Camilla Schutz. His middle name came from his godfather who was the physicist Ernst Mach. One can almost say that with this kind of company, he was destined for a great career involving science. Pauli’s grandparents were from Prague and were prominent Jewish families; his great grandfather was Wolf Pascheles who just happened to be a great Jewish publisher.
His father, the chemist Wolfgang Pauli grew in in the Jewish religion but converted to the Roman Catholic Church in the year 1899 a few months before he got married to Schutz. Ernst Pauli himself was raised in the religion of his mother’s religion though he and his family eventually left the church. In the end, he was considered more of a deist and mystic.
Pauli went to the Doplinger-Gymnasium located in Vienna where he graduated with honors. Two months after he graduated, he came out with his first paper and it was on Einstein’s theory of general relativity which really isn’t the easiest thing to understand but he did a great enough job that his work was published. Later on, he enrolled in Ludwig-Maximilians University located in Munich and he received his Ph.D. while working for Arnold Sommerfeld. His thesis was on the quantum theory of molecular hydrogen that had been ionized.
Sommerfeld then asked Pauli to take up theory of relativity and have it reviewed so it could be put in the Encyklopadie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Only two months after he received his doctorate, he was able to complete the article which was a whopping 237 pages. Not only was it published as a monograph but it also received praise from the great Albert Einstein. Up until today, his work is looked upon as a standard reference of the subject.
But he wasn’t done because Pauli also spend a year at the Gottingen University and worked as assistant to Ma Born and in the following year, he moved to Copenhagen to do work at the institute of Theoretical Physics (this later became the Neils Bohr Institute). From the year 1923 to the year 1928, he took on the role of lecturer at the University of Hamburg and it was during this time that Pauli became instrumental to the development of what is to be known as modern theory of quantum physics. His greatest contribution was to formulate the exclusion principle and come up with the nonrelativistic spin theory.
In the year 1928, he was given the job of professor of Theoretical Physics in Zurich and wouldn’t you know it, he came up with a lot of scientific advances. He was so well known that he even went to Princeton and University of Michigan as a visiting professor. In the year 1931 he was awarded the Lorentz medal.
During the end of the 30s, shortly after he got divorced and after his postulation of the neutrino, he suffered a serious breakdown and this was how he met psychiatrist Carl Jung who was also living in Zurich at the time. After Jung started interpreting Pauli’s archetypal dreams, Pauli then became one of his very best students but it wasn’t long before Pauli started to put forward criticisms of Jung’s epistemology. You can check Jung’s interpretations and analyses of Pauli’s dreams by checking out Psychology and Alchemy.
Scientific Research
Ernst Pauli made a lot of contributions to the field of quantum physics and though he seldom came up with papers for publishing, a lot of his thoughts and ideas have been preserved in paper due to the fact that he liked sending length letters to his peers. He was very close to Werner Heisenberg and Neils Bohr.
In the year 1924, he proposed the quantum number which was also known as the quantum degree of freedom that had two possible values. He did this so he could finally solve whatever inconsistencies there was with molecular spectra and the theory of quantum physics which was developing at the time. He came up with the Pauli Exclusion Principle and a lot of people agree that it was his most important work.
His personality and personal life
When it came to Physics, he was a known perfectionist when it came to his work and to the works of his colleagues. It was because of this that the physics community gave him the title “conscience of physics”. If ever he found a theory lacking, he was quite brutal in his dismissal of the work and he wasn’t shy to let people know that their work was completely and utterly wrong.
He was also quite frank with his colleagues and while some found him somewhat arrogant, he was still able to form friendships with some of the most notable names of his time and this included Paul Ehrenfest. However, there were those that he rubbed the wrong way and Heisenberg was one of them. The rift between the two was so great that Heisenberg did not even go to Pauli’s funeral when he died on December 15, 1958.
Though he managed to get married twice, he never had any kids with either of his wives.
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Zora Neale Hurston
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Women have done a lot of great and wonderful things in the field of science. One woman scientist in particular that should be very interesting for you to get to know is Zora Neal Hurston. She is an American author, folklorist, and anthropologist. She is quite prolific and she managed to publish more than 50 plays, essays, and short stories and 4 novels. One of her best known works is entitled Their Eyes Were Watching God which was published in the year 1937 and is also the novel that she is best remembered for.
The Early Life of Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was born on Notasulga, Alabama on 7 January 1891. Her parents were Lucy Ann and John Hurston; she was the 5th of 8 kids. John Hurston was a Baptist preacher, carpenter, and tenant farmer while Lucy Ann was a teacher at the local school. They didn’t stay long in Alabama though because her family made the move to Eatonville in Florida which happened to be one of the very first all-African American towns that got incorporated in the US. Zora Neale Hurston was just three when they made the move. Zora Neale Hurston has confessed that she often felt like Eatonville was her “home” and she sometimes claimed that it was her birthplace.
Later on, her father became the mayor of Eatonville; she glorified the town in her stories and often said it was a haven that allowed African Americans to live in any way they wanted to and they didn’t have to be controlled or adhere to white society mores.
The year 1901 was quite the eye-opener for young Hurston since it was the very year some schoolteachers from the north visited the town and gave her books. These books introduced her to the world and beauty of literature and this is perhaps why she describes her “birth” as something that happened in that place and that year. She spent the rest of her childhood years in Eatonville and describes what it was like in an essay she publishes in 1928 entitled How It Feels to Be Colored Me.
Hurston’s mother died in 1904 and her father got remarried to a woman named Matte Moge. This was considered a minor scandal in their town. Rumors flew that he had relations with Moge even while Lucy Ann was still alive. Hurston was sent a way by her parents to attend boarding school however she got expelled as they stopped paying her school fees. Later on, she worked as a maid to the lead singer of the Gilbert & Sullivan theatre company lead singer.
By the time 1917 rolled in, she attended Morgan College which was the high school division of the Morgan State University which is a Historic All-Black school in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated in 1918 and in that same year she began to attend Howard University and became the earliest recruit of the Zeta Phi Beta. She helped found The Hilltop which was the student newspaper. Also, she took courses in Greek, Spanish, English, and public speaking. She earned her associates degree in 1920. A year after, she wrote John Redding Goes to Sea which is a short story that gained her entry into the Alaine Locke literary club called The Stylus.
She then went on to Barnard College at Columbia University where she was the only black student. There, she received her BA in Anthropology; she was 37 years old. While she was studying at Barnard she worked with Franz Boas to conduct an ethnographic research. She also worked with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict for various anthropological works.
As an Adult
She married Herbert Sheen, her former classmate at Howard and a jazz musician, in 1927. He later went on to become a doctor but they divorced in 1931. Eight years later, she married Albert Price while she was holding down a job at WPA. He was 25 years younger than her and the marriage ended after just seven months.
During her later years, she not only wrote but she also served as a faculty member at the North Carolina College for Negroes. She put up a school for dramatic arts in 1934 at Bethune-Cookman College in Florida.
When the year 1956 rolled in she was given an award by the college to recognize her achievements. The college remains dedicated to preserving and letting people know about her legacy to black culture.
Her Works
She travelled quite extensively especially to the American South and Caribbean where she got immersed in the local culture and traditions as part of her anthropological work. Charlott Osgood Mason sponsored her work in the South and her work Mules and Men was based on that work and is often looked upon as a classic folklorist work.
In 1936 to 37, she made her way to Jamaica and Haiti; an expedition paid for the by Guggenheim Foundation and it was in 1938 that Tell My Horse was published.
Her Later Years
The year 1948 wasn’t a good year for Zora Neale Hurston as it was this time that she was falsely accused of molesting a child; a 10year old boy. The case was dismissed and she was in Honduras at the time of trial but her personal life was rocked by the scandalous accusation. She spent her last years as a writer for newspapers and magazines. In 1957, she moved to Fort Pierce where she took jobs like substitute teaching and even becoming a maid once more.
Her Death
She died of hypertension heart disease on 28 January 1960 and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery in Florida. Her grave was unmarked for some time but literary scholar Charlotte Hunt and novelist Alice Walker found it and decided to mark it for Zora Neale Hurston. She is remembered for her vast literary works and her contributions to the field of anthropology. In Fort Pierce, they honor her name in a festival they call Zora Fest; a 7-day festival usually held at the end of April.