Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (25 December 1642 20 March 1727) was an English physicistand mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for most of classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics and shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the invention of theinfinitesimal calculus. Newton's Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. It also demonstrated that the motion of objects on the Earth and that of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentricmodel of the cosmos.

Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi (Italian: [ulmo makoni]; 25 April 1874 20 July 1937) was [1] anItalian inventor, known for his pioneering work on long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of [2][3][4] their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". As an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of the The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in Britain in 1897, Marconi succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous [5][6] experimenters and physicists. In 1924, he was ennobled as a Marchese.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (French: [zf lwi lysak]; also Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac; 6 December 1778 9 May 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for two laws related to gases, and for his work on alcohol-water mixtures, which led to thedegrees GayLussac used to measure alcoholic beverages in many countries. Gay-Lussac was born at Saint-Lonard-de-Noblat in the present-day department of Haute-Vienne. The father of Joseph Louis Gay, Anthony Gay, son of a doctor, was a lawyer and prosecutor, and worked as a judge in Noblat Bridge.[1] Father of two sons and three daughters, he owned much of the Lussac village and usually added the name of this hamlet of the Haute-Vienne to his name, following a custom of the Ancien Rgime. Towards the year 1803, father and son finally adopted the name GayLussac.[2] During the Revolution, on behalf of the Law of Suspects, his father, former king's attorney, was imprisoned in Saint Lonard from 1793 to 1794.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 August 2, 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practicaltelephone.[N 3] Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. [4]His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876.[N 4] In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[6][N 5]

Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.[8] He has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.

Hans von Ohain

Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (14 December 1911 13 March 1998) was a Germanengineer, and designer of the first operational jet engine.[1] His first design ran in March 1937, and it was one of his engines that powered the first all-jet aircraft, the prototype of the Heinkel He 178 in late August 1939. In spite of these early successes, other German designs quickly eclipsed von Ohain's, and none of his engine designs entered widespread production or operational use. Von Ohain independently developed the first jet engine during the same period that Frank Whittle was doing the same in the UK, and the two projects were often within weeks of meeting the same milestones. von Ohain's Heinkel HeS 1 ran only weeks before Whittle's WU, but did not run on its own power until six months later. von Ohain's design flew first in 1939, followed by Whittle's in 1941. Operational jet aircraft from both countries entered use only weeks apart. After the war the two men met, and became friends.

John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird FRSE (14 August 1888 14 June 1946)[2] was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube. He is often known as "the father of television". Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic systems (such as those of Vladimir Zworykin, Marconi-EMI, and Philo Farnsworth), Baird's early successes demonstrating working television broadcasts and his color and cinema television work earn him a prominent place in television's invention. In 2002, Logie Baird was ranked number 44 in the BBC's list of the "100 Greatest Britons" following a UK-wide vote.[3] In 2006, Logie Baird was also named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'.[4][5] The "Baird" brand name was first owned by Thorn-EMIand is now owned and used by the Brighthouse retail chain in the UK as a brand name for its televisions.

George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver (by January 1864[1][3] January 5, 1943), was an Americanscientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he is believed to have been born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864.[1] Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts.[4] He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.

During the Reconstruction-era South, monoculture of cotton depleted the soil in many areas. In the early 20th century, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop, and planters and farm workers suffered. Carver's work on peanuts was intended to provide an alternative crop. He was recognized for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".

Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (18 February 1745 5 March 1827) was [1][2] an Italian physicist known for the invention of the battery in the 1800s. Volta was born in Como, a town in present-day northern Italy (near the Swiss border) on February 18, 1745. In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that producedstatic electricity. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by the Swedish experimenter Johan Wilcke.[3][4] In the years between 177678, Volta studied the chemistry of gases. He discoveredmethane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin of America on "flammable air", and Volta searched for it carefully in Italy. In November, 1776, he found methane at Lake Maggiore,[5] and by 1778 he managed to isolate methane.[6] He devised experiments such as the ignition of methane by an electricspark in a closed vessel. Volta also studied what we now call electrical capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential (V ) and charge (Q ), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional. This may be called Volta's Law of capacitance, and it is likely that for this work the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.

Archimedes
Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: ; c.287 BC c.212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer.[1] Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors. [2] Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time.[3][4] He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the areaunder the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi.[5] He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.

Amedeo Avogadro
Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di [1] Cerreto, Count ofQuaregna and Cerreto (9 August 1776, Turin, Piedmont 9 July 1856) was an Italianscientist. He is most noted for his contributions to molecular theory, including what is known as Avogadro's law. In tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms,molecules, ions or other particles) in 1 mole of a substance, 6.02214179(30)1023, is known as the Avogadro constant. Amedeo Carlo Avogadro was born in Turin, Italy in 1776 to a noble family of Piedmont, Italy.

He graduated in ecclesiastical law at the early age of 21 and began to practice. Soon after, he dedicated himself to physics and mathematics (then called positive philosophy), and in 1809 started teaching them at a liceo (high school) in Vercelli, where his family had property. In 1811, he published an article with the title Essai d'une manire de dterminer les masses relatives des molcules lmentaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles elles entrent dans ces combinaisons ("Essay on Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies and the Proportions by Which They Enter These Combinations"), which contains Avogadro's hypothesis. Avogadro submitted this essay to a French journal, Jean-Claude Delamtherie's Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d'Histoire naturelle (Journal of Physics, Chemistry and Natural History) so it was written in French, not Italian. (Note: France effectively controlled northern Italy from 1796 to 1814.)

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (/lbrt anstan/; German: [albt antan] ( listen); 14 March 1879 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed thegeneral theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).[2][3] While best known for his mass energy equivalence formula E = mc2(which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"),[4] he received the 1921Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".[5] The latter was pivotal in establishingquantum theory. Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of theelectromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on thegeneral theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanicsand quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the largescale structure of the universe.[6]

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (German: [tfit vlhlm fn labnts][4] or[lapnts][5]) (July 1, 1646 November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician andphilosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy. Leibniz developed the infinitesimal calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz's mathematical notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis). He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe apinwheel calculator in 1685[6] and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is at the foundation of virtually all digital computers.

Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
[1]

(Russian:

; IPA: [dmitrj

vanvt mndlejf] ( listen); 8 February 1834 2 February 1907 O.S. 27 January 1834 20 January 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He formulated the Periodic Law, created his

own version of the periodic table of elements, and used it to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of elements yet to be discovered. Mendeleev was born in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, near Tobolsk in Siberia, to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (ne Kornilieva). His grandfather was Pavel Maximovich [2] Sokolov, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church from the Tverregion. Ivan, along with his brothers [3] and sisters, obtained new family names while attending the theological seminary. Despite being raised as an Orthodox Christian, he later rejected the religion and embraced a form of deism.

Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 19 April 1882) was an Englishnaturalist.[I] He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors,[1] and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolutionresulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existencehas a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.[2] Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.[3][4] By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.[5][6] In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur (/lui pstr/, French: [lwi past]; December 27, 1822 September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist who was one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His experiments supported the germ theory of disease. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to treat milk and wine in order to prevent it from causing sickness, a process that came to be called pasteurization. He is regarded as one of the three main founders ofmicrobiology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch. He worked chiefly in Paris. Pasteur also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the molecular basis for the asymmetry of certain crystals.[2] His body lies beneath the Pasteur Institute in a spectacular vault covered in depictions of his accomplishments in Byzantine mosaics.[3] In 1887 he founded the Pasteur Institute.

Marie Curie
Marie Curie (French: [mai kyi]) (7 November 1867 4 July 1934), ne Maria Salomea Skodowska (Polish: [marja salma skwdfska]), was a Polish physicist and chemist, working mainly in France,[2] who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at theUniversity of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris' Panthon. She was born in Warsaw, in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisawa to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curieand with physicist Henri Becquerel. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (Danish: [nels bo ]; 7 October 1885 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physicsin 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research. Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom with the atomic nucleus at the centre andelectrons in orbit around it, which he compared to the planets orbiting the Sun. He helped develop quantum

mechanics, in which electrons move from one energy level to another in discrete steps, instead of continuously. He founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, which opened in 1920. Bohr mentored and collaborated with physicists including Hans Kramers, Oskar Klein, George de Hevesy and Werner Heisenberg. He predicted the existence of a new zirconium-like element, which was named hafnium, after Copenhagen, when it was discovered. Later, the element bohrium was named after him. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed as having contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated his thinking on both science and philosophy.

Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking ( i/stivn hok/; STEE-ven HOH-king), CH,CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is an English theoretical physicist,cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.[1][2] Among his significant scientific works have been a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularities theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vocal supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was theLucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.

Alhazen
Ab Al al-asan ibn al-asan ibn al-Haytham (Persian : , Arabic: , Latinized: Alhacen or (deprecated)[4] Alhazen) (965 in Basra c.1040 in Cairo) was a Muslim[5] scientist, polymath, mathematician, astronomer andphilosopher, described in various sources as either an Arab or Persian.[1][6] He made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as to astronomy, mathematics,visual perception, and to the scientific method. He also wrote insightful commentaries on works by Aristotle, Ptolemy, and the Greek mathematician Euclid.[7] He is frequently referred to as Ibn al-Haytham, and sometimes as alBasri (Arabic: ), after his birthplace in the city of Basra.[8] He was also nicknamed Ptolemaeus Secundus ("Ptolemy the Second")[9] or simply "The Physicist"[10] in medieval Europe.

Martinus Beijerinck
Martinus Willem Beijerinck (March 16, 1851 January 1, 1931) was a Dutchmicrobiologist and botanist. Born in Amsterdam, Beijerinck studied at the Technical School of Delft, where he was awarded the degree of Chemical Engineer in 1872. He obtained his Doctor of Science degree from the University of Leiden in 1877.[1] At the time, Delft, then a Polytechnic, did not have the right to confer doctorates, so Leiden did this for them. He became a teacher in microbiology at the Agricultural School in Wageningen (nowWageningen University) and later at the Polytechnische Hogeschool Delft (DelftPolytechnic, currently Delft University of Technology) (from 1895). He established the Delft School of Microbiology. His studies of agricultural and industrial microbiology yielded fundamental discoveries in the field of biology. His achievements have been perhaps unfairly overshadowed by those of his contemporaries, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, because unlike them, Beijerinck never studied human disease.