~ Famous Scientists ~

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Claude Bernard



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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.

[MysteRy]

Edward Teller



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



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.

[MysteRy]

Edwin Hubble



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.

[MysteRy]

Elizabeth Blackwell



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



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



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



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.