~ Famous Scientists ~

[MysteRy]

Jonas Salk



“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.”

[MysteRy]

Joseph Banks



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.

[MysteRy]

Joseph Lister



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.

[MysteRy]

Joseph Priestley



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.

[MysteRy]

Justus von Liebig



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.

[MysteRy]

Karl Landsteiner



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.

[MysteRy]

Katharine Burr Blodgett



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

[MysteRy]

Konrad Lorenz



“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.

[MysteRy]

Kristian Birkeland



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.

[MysteRy]

Lee De Forest



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.

[MysteRy]

Leland Clark



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



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



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



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



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.