~ Famous Scientists ~

[MysteRy]

William Harvey



The man who first correctly explained the process of blood circulation in our bodies and the role of heart in the process is none other than William Harvey, an English physician. He is also known as the father of modern physiology.

Early Life, Education and Career:

William Harvey was born on 1 April 1578 in Folkestone, Kent, England, the eldest of seven sons. His father, Thomas Harvey was a jurat of Folkestone. After completing his schooling from the King’s School, Canterbury he joined the Caius College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. There he studied arts and medicine and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1597. His fascination for medicine led him to Italy to study at the University of Padua, the center for western European medical instruction. Here he studied under the famous anatomist, Fabricius, Julius Casserius, and other renowned men and graduated with honors in 1602. In the same year he returned to England where he earned yet another medical degree from Cambridge University. Following this, Harvey established himself in London, joining the College of Physicians on October 5, 1604. The same year he also got married to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of Lancelot Browne, physician to King James I. They had no children.

In 1609, he was chosen a physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and in 1615 Lumleian Lecturer at the College of Physicians – a position that he held for his entire life. His thoughts about circulation of the blood were first publicly expressed in these lectures during 1616. Harvey continued to contribute to the Lumleain lectures at the same time also taking care of his patients at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; he thus soon attained an important and fairly lucrative practice, which made possible his appointment as court physician to King James I in 1618 and then to Charles I in 1625, a post he held until Charles was beheaded in 1649. Charles helped Harvey by providing him with deer from the royal parks for his medical research. Harvey stood firm with Charles, looking after him even during the Cromwellian Civil War, which led to the sacking of Harvey’s rooms in 1642 and the demolition of many of his medical notes and papers. He stopped working at the end of the Civil War, a widower, and lived with his various brothers.

Contribution:

Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood is considered as his greatest contribution to the field of medicine. His many experimental dissections and vivisections made him reject Galen’s views about blood movement, particularly the concepts that blood was formed in the liver and absorbed by the body, and that it flowed through the septum (dividing wall) of the heart. Harvey first examined the heartbeat, finding the existence of the pulmonary circulation and noting the one-way flow of blood. In his attempt to discover the amount of blood pumped by the heart, he figured out that there must be a constant amount of blood flowing through the arteries and returning through the veins of the heart, following a cycle. He presented this explanation in 1628 in his publication -An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals.

He published another ground-breaking book in 1651 titled as “Essays on the Generation of Animals.” This book is considered the basis for modern embryology.

Death:

This great physician died of a stroke at the age of 79, on 3 June, 1657 at Roehampton. He is buried in Hempstead church.

[MysteRy]

William Herschel



Sir William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer and composer, who is widely credited as the founder of sidereal astronomy for observing the heavenly bodies. He found the planet Uranus and its two moons, and formulated a theory of stellar evolution. Knighted in 1816, Herschel was also the first astronomer to suggest that nebulae are composed of stars.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Hanover, Brunswick-Lüneburg on November15, 1738, William Herschel’s father was a musician who worked for German Army. Following the French invasion of Hanover in 1757, his father sent him to seek refuge in England, where Herschel became a music teacher and composer.

Contributions and Achievements:

After studying Robert Smith’s “Harmonics” and “A Compleat System of Opticks”, William Herschel soon developed an interest in the techniques of telescope construction, as well as the distant celestial bodies. He built his own telescope and eyepieces that were advanced enough to have a magnifying power of 6,450 times. Herschel conducted two preliminary telescopic surveys of the heavens, and in 1781, during his third survey of the night sky, he discovered an extraordinary object, which was actually the planet Uranus, and its two moons, Titania and Oberon.

The discovery earned him the Copley Medal and a fellowship at the Royal Society of London.

Herschel later studied the nature of nebulae and discovered that all nebulae were formed of stars, hence rejecting the long-held belief that nebulae were composed of a luminous fluid. He also discovered two moons of Saturn, namely Mimas and Enceladus, and coined the term “asteroid”. Herschel maintained that the solar system is moving through space and found out the direction of that movement. He also suggested that the Milky Way was in the shape of a disk.

Later Life and Death:

William Herschel was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1813, and was knighted three years later in 1816. He died on August 25, 1822 in Slough, Berkshire. Herschel was 83 years old.

[MysteRy]

William Hopkins



The field of geology is studded with some notable names and one name in particular that deserves a lot of honor and praise is that of William Hopkins. He is mathematician and a geologist from England who is quite well-known for his contributions to the field of geology and for his private tutor role to Cambridge undergraduates who aspired to be mathematicians. It was this private tutor role that earned him the nickname the “Senior-wrangler maker”.

William Hopkins also made a lot of studies that were centered in letting it be known that Earth’s interior is solid and not a liquid. It was because of this model that he was able to explain quite a number of geological phenomena. Despite the fact that his conclusion about the solid interior was correct, his physical and mathematical reasoning were deemed unsound.

His early life

Hopkins was born in February 2, 1793 at Kingston-on-soar which is found in Nottinghamshire. He was the only son born to William Hopkins who was a farmer. He wasn’t a farmer really because he was more of a gentleman farmer and this meant he didn’t so much work the land with his own hands but rather he owned the farms and made money from them. During his early years, he was in Norfolk where he learned the more practical agricultural basics then his father rented a modest-sized farm for him in Suffolk at Bury St Edmunds. He wasn’t very successful at farming and as a farmer so when his first wife died around the year 1821, he grabbed the chance to mitigate whatever losses he had incurred and enroll in St. Peter’s college at the University of Cambridge to study for a B.A. degree in 1827 and was a second wrangler. He obtained his Master’s Degree in 1930.

Wrangler-maker

Before graduating from St. Peter’s college, Hopkins got married to Caroline Frances Boys and this made him ineligible for fellowship from the school. In order for him to make money he became a private tutor to budding mathematicians who were after the Senior Wrangler title which just so happened to be a very prestigious distinction back then. He may have been a failure at farming but he was quite successful as a tutor and earned around £700-£800 per year. By the time 1849 rolled in, he had already tutored around 200 wranglers of which 17 became senior wranglers. Some famous students of his were G.G. Stokes and Arthur Cayley. He also had the honor of being a tutor to Lord Kelvin, Isaac Todhunter, and James Clerk Maxwell. Francis Galton had nothing but praise for William Hopkins’ style of teaching which was informative and entertaining which explained why it was so effective.

William Hopkins was also the coach to Edward Routh who nabbed the prestigious a Senior Wrangler title and also turned into “wrangler-maker”. In the year 1833, Hopkins came out with this Elements of Trigonometry and was then recognized for his prowess as a mathematician.

Geology

Somewhere in the year 1833, William Hopkins met a man named Adam Sedgwick while he was at Barmouth and thus was able to join in several expeditions and this was when he developed a keen interest in geology and the structure of the earth. From that time on, he began to publish papers in the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the Geological Society of London where he talked about the physical geology as a discipline and helped define it. He even made mathematical studies on the effects of an elevator force that was moving below the crust of the earth, would have on the surface of the Earth in the form of faults and fissures. It was through this that he managed to talk about the denudation and elevation of the Waldean area, the Lake District, and Bas Boulonnais.

He had this idea that the Earth was solid but was never fully at rest and was in fact, dynamic and had cavities that contained extremely hot fluids and vapors that could create a local elevator pressure. William Hopkins’ model of the Earth wasn’t quite in sync with scientific theories of Charles Lyell who believed that the Earth was in a “steady state”. Charles Lyell believed that the Earth and a solid crust but was liquid on the inside.

For his part, William Hopkins submitted papers to the Royal Society between the years 1838 and 1842 and these papers talked about the rotation of the Earth and its nutation and precession as well. He used his observations to prove that his theory about what the interior of the Earth was made of and that it was not fluid like Charles Lyell believed. He didn’t stop there though because he also studied volcanoes and Earthquakes by way of the same theory or so it was stated in a report submitted to the British Association in 1847.

Hopkins worked hard figure out what enormous amounts of pressure did to the melting points and the thermal conductivity on a number of substances and with support of the Royal Society in form of a grant, he was able to recruit William Fairbairn and James Prescott Joule to help in the collecting of measurements which he used to support his theory. Hopkins also asserted that even though the Earth was cooling, this really had no effect on the climate.

It was mentioned that while his theory of the Earth’s structure was spot on, Thomson tactfully pointed out that Hopkins’ physical reasoning and his mathematical equations were all wrong.

Glaciology

He made some studies on the movement of glaciers but in doing so, he crossed J.D. Forbes. J.D. believed the subject of glaciers was his specialty and he was not at all impressed and was even contemptuous of Hopkins and believed he was inexperienced in the field.

Personal life

He married his second wife and they had a son and three daughters- one of who was Ellice Hopkins that became the morality campaigner. Hopkins was a smart man who enjoyed landscape painting, music, and poetry so it was too bad that his final years were spent inside a lunatic asylum where he died of exhaustion and chronic mania. Indeed, it was rather a sad end to such an illustrious life.

[MysteRy]

William John Swainson



Another man of science with many other specialties is William John Swainson. He was a British entomologist, conchologist, malacologist, and an artist. Recently, his 224th birthday was celebrated on a Google Doodle on the 8th of October. He is most known for his colorful drawings of nature which he himself experienced during his life which he spent on research.

Early Life and Background

He was the oldest son of John Timothy Swainson. He was born in St. Mary Newington, London, specifically at the Dover Place. His father had been a fellow of the Linnean Society, and this may have influenced William’s personal interest in natural history. Originally, his father’s family came from Lancashire and his father and grandfather had their positions in Her Majesty’s Customs. Later on, his father became one of the Collectors at Liverpool. Although his mother’s name isn’t known, another relative worth mentioning is his cousin Isaac Swainson who was an amateur botanist.

William’s formal education was actually impeded because he had a speech difficulty, but despite this he got his education at Lancaster Grammar School. Because of this, he first chose to join the Liverpool Customs when he was 15 where he was a junior clerk. After that, he became a member of the Army Commissariat, and during that time he was even able to tour Sicily and Malta.

Research, Works, and Explorations

Having family members with the same interest for natural history, William Swainson found his passion in becoming an explorer and documenter of nature. In 1806, Swainson went to accompany Henry Koster, a British explorer who was then going to Brazil. Koster stayed in Brazil and became famous for his published book called Travels in Brazil. During Swainson’s time there, he also had the chance to meet Dr. GrigoriIvanovitch Langsdorff who was one of the consul generals of Russia who had also been exploring Brazil when Swainson was there.

Although he did not spend much time there because of the revolution, he went back to the UK with more than 20,000 insect samples, 1,200 plant species, 760 different bird skins, and more than a hundred drawings of many different fish species for which he became known for. His other explorations happened in Italy and Greece which allowed him to further his knowledge and specimen collection on fish and flowers of the Mediterranean.

Swainson is best known for his illustrations although he also came up with the scientific, as well as common names, of many different species of both plants and animals. William Elford Leach, one of Swainson’s friends, was the head of the British Museum’s zoology department and he encouraged Swainson to make use of lithography especially for his book called Zoological Illustrations. Because of this, Swainson is actually the very first naturalist and illustrator to have a book which used lithography for the illustration purposes.

The illustrations in the book came in monochrome prints, and they were later on hand-colored based on the pattern plates which Swainson himself made. This publication of his received book orders and it was what led him to become a noted name as a man of science.

He was a traveler and wherever he went he took the opportunity to observe the flora and fauna by taking specimen or drawing them. In the year 1839, he became a member of the New Zealand Company as well as the Church of England committee. There, he bought property in form of land in Wellington. It was at this time that he gave up his career in scientific literature and documentation. But this wasn’t the end of his life involved in the exposure to the scientific world. He was the very first Fellow of the Royal Society who moved to New Zealand. A few years later, he became an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Tasmania.

Come year 1851, he went to Sydney, Australia where he became the Botanical Surveyor of the Victoria Government a year later. He had been invited by Charles La Trobe who was Lieutenant-Governor there to help with their study of local trees. In 1852, not shortly after the study had begun, he was able to finish his report where he was able to come up with a total of more than 1,500 species and different varieties of eucalyptus. During that time he was also able to identify so many species of the Casuarina genus of trees that he no longer had names for them.

While it is noted that Swainson had an expertise for zoology, his untrained eye for botany was not exactly well-praised. Botanist William Jackson Hooker wrote to Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller who was also a noted botanist saying that Swainson’s botanical work—despite his being a good zoologist–is a “series of trash and nonsense.” Despite his not so well-received efforts for botany, his contributions for early zoological research were still given credit.

Personal Life and Latter Years

Like Victorian scientists of his age, Swainson himself was a member of many different learned societies. These included the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society as previously mentioned.

He had two wives, the first one being Mary Parkes whom he married in 1823. They had four sons and one daughter. Mary died in 1835. Five years later, Swainson remarried. The second marriage was in 1840 and this was to Ann Grasby. The couple moved to New Zealand afterwards.

Despite not being positively recognized for his botanical efforts, his love for botany could not be suppressed, and he even studied the plants in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales before his return to New Zealand in 1854 where he lived with his family in the Hutt at Fern Grove. His activities in New Zealand were mostly forestry-related endeavors although he had also been engaged in activities such as property management as well as having more publications related to natural history. On December 6, 1855 at the age of 66, William John Swainson died in their home at Fern Grove.

[MysteRy]

William Ramsay



Sir William Ramsay was an eminent British physical chemist who is credited with the discovery of argon, krypton, neon and xenon. He also demonstrated that these gases, along with helium and radon, makes the noble gases; a family of new elements. Ramsay won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his extraordinary efforts.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Glasgow, Scotland on October 2, 1852, William Ramsay’s father was a civil engineer, while his uncle, Sir Andrew Ramsay, was the famous geologist.

After receiving early education at the Glasgow Academy, Ramsay attended the University of Glasgow under Thomas Anderson, the prominent chemist. He earned his doctorate at the University of Tübingen. Ramsay then became Anderson’s assistant at the Anderson College. He was appointed the Professor of Chemistry at the University College of Bristol in 1879.

Contributions and Achievements:

After taking over the chair of Chemistry at University College London, William Ramsay made several important discoveries and wrote many scientific papers regarding the oxides of nitrogen. Drawing inspiration from Lord Rayleigh’s 1892 discovery that the atomic weight of nitrogen found in the atmosphere was higher than that of nitrogen found in the atmosphere, Ramsay discovered a heavy gas in atmospheric nitrogen, and named it argon. One year later, he liberated helium from a mineral called cleveite.

While working with chemist Morris W. Travers in 1898, Ramsay isolated three more elements from liquid air at low temperature and high pressure, and termed them as neon, krypton, and xenon. In collaboration with another chemist, Frederick Soddy, in 1903, Ramsay showed that helium, together with a gaseous emanation called radon, is consistenly generated during the radioactive decay of radium. This discovery had a profound influence on the field of radiochemistry.

Later Life and Death:

William Ramsay was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, and was knighted three years later, in 1902. He also worked as a president of the Chemical Society, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ramsay died of nasal cancer on July 23, 1916 in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 63 years old.

[MysteRy]

William Smith



William Smith, known to others as “Strata Smith”, is known as the Father of English Geology. He was responsible for initiating the production of a geological map of England and Wales.

Life and Education

Born in March 23, 1769 in Churchill, Oxfordshire, England, William Smith was the son of a mechanic. His father was out of the picture before he turned eight and was left to be raised by his father’s eldest brother, who was a farmer. Because of this, he did not have the privilege of having a steady formal education. This did not hinder his curiosity though, as he continued to explore and collect fossils. His uncle was not pleased with how he went around town carving sundials but later on learned to appreciate him when he also started taking interest in draining land.

He found ways to learn more about geometry, mapping and surveying. His raw knowledge allowed him to train under Edward Webb, a master surveyor. He traveled all over the country as he studied the formation of fossils and rocks and was able to purchase a small estate in the town of Tucking Mill in Midford.

He met several people along the way who helped him in his journey towards becoming one of the greatest figures in geology. He became acquaintances with Rev. Benjamin Richardson who taught him the different names of fossils and shared his knowledge in natural history.

Notable Contributions

As Edward Webb’s assistant, William Smith traveled all over the country and gained more knowledge on his chosen field. His continuous growth as a surveyor led him to supervise and oversee the digging of the Somerset Canal in 1794. This job was where he first observed the way rocks were formed. He noticed how fossils always seem to be in a specific order from top to bottom not only on sedimentary rocks, but on other sections of rocks as well. This was how the “Principle of Faunal Succession” or “Law of Faunal Succession” came to be. The principle states that there is a constant definite sequence in layers of sedimentary rocks and in other rock formations that contain fossils causing a correlation between these locations.

By 1796, Smith’s knowledge led him to be elected as part of Bath’s agricultural society where he discussed his findings and theories with those who shared his interest in fossils and rocks. He was the first person to draw local geologic maps using fossils as a mapping tool based on their stratigraphic order unlike those who created geologic maps before who merely used the composition of rocks. When his contract ended in 1799, he continued on his attempt to create a complete geologic map of Wales and England along with some parts of Scotland as well. Although progress was very slow due to lack of moral and financial support, the completed map finally went into production in 1812 and was eventually published in 1815. The map comprised fifteen sheets all in all on a five miles to one inch scale. A smaller version was later published in 1819. This paved the way for the creation of the Geological Atlas of England and Wales which was made up of 21 different county geological maps. There was also published information from Rev. Joseph Townsend, rector of Pewsey, who acknowledged Smith as the person responsible for dictating the first ever table of the British Strata to him.

In 1817, he produced an exceptional geological map of the area around Snowdon to London. Sadly, a lot of his works were plagiarized which caused him to go bankrupt and fall into serious debt. He was imprisoned in London’s King’s Bench Prison which was a debtor’s prison. The home and other properties he made investments in were seized as well. He was in and out of jobs until he regained his luck when Sir John Johnstone, an employer of his, helped him take back the credit for a lot of his work and paved the way for him to take back the respect the he truly deserved.

Although production of the map was a remarkable feat, the period’s scientific community did not give their full support right away mostly because they believed that he did not have a good background. They noticed his economic standing and his limited education more than his achievement.

Other Achievements

It was not until 1831 that William Smith was finally formally acknowledged as a vital part in the advancement of geology. He was given the first ever Wollaston Medal, an honor presented by the Geological Society of London to those who have shown great contributions to geology. He was also granted an annual life pension of ₤100. He received an LLD degree during a British Association meeting in Dublin in 1835. He was also among the group of commissioners who were given the privilege of choosing the building stones for the Houses of Parliament in 1838.

William Smith also lived in Scarborough from 1824 to 1826 where he built a geological museum called the Rotunda. The museum focused mainly on the Yorkshire Coast. Lord Oxburgh had it renamed The William Smith Museum of Geology in May of 2008.

William Smith died on August 28, 1839 in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England due to poor health. His remains were buried in St. Peter’s Church where a bust created by Chantrey was placed. The earl of Ducie commissioned for a monument to be constructed in his hometown of Churchill in 1891. John Phillips, his nephew who also trained under him, edited his memoirs which were made public in 1844. Phillips later on became one of the most notable figures in geology and paleonthology during the 19th century because of the stringent training and the wide knowledge that his uncle shared with him.

Today, his achievements continue to be highlighted in many different ways. The Geological Society of London presents an annual lecture in his honor. His work has also been acknowledged as an important factor in the discoveries and works of Charles Darwin.

[MysteRy]

William Thomson



Early Life:

William Thomson was born in Belfast, Ireland June 26, 1824 at Baron Kelvin of Largs. William attended Glasgow University from the age of 10. This early age is not quite as unusual as one would think, for at that time the universities in Scotland to some extent competed with the schools for the most able junior pupils. William Thomson graduated from Glasgow and Cambridge showing precocious ability in Mathematics and Physics. He became professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow at a very young age.

Contributions and Achievements:

Having studied some of Thomson’s research contributions, let us comment on the innovations he introduced into teaching at the University of Glasgow. He introduced laboratory work into the degree courses, keeping this part of the work distinct from the mathematical side. Another of Thomson’s famous pieces of work was his joint project with Tait to produce their famous text Treatise on Natural Philosophy which they began working on in the early 1860s. They worked by posting a notebook back and forward to each other on this huge project which Thomson envisioned as covering all physical theories.

Thomson achieved his greatest fame through an event that we have still to discuss. He was always greatly interested in the improvement of physical instrumentation, and Thomson designed and implemented many new devices, including the mirror-galvanometer that was used in the first successful sustained telegraph transmissions in transatlantic submarine cable. He was created Lord Kelvin for his work on the first transatlantic cable Thomson had joined a group of industrialists in the mid 1850s on a project to lay a submarine cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. He played several roles in this project, being on the board of directors and also being an advisor on theoretical electrical matters.

He helped develop the second law of thermodynamics but Kelvin argued that the key issue in the interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was the explanation of irreversible processes. He noted that if entropy always increased, the universe would ultimately reach a state of uniform temperature and maximum entropy from which it would not be possible to extract any work. He called this the Heat Death of the Universe. Therefore he proposed a thermodynamical theory based on the dominance of the energy concept, on which he believed all physics should be based. He said the two laws of thermodynamics expressed the indestructibility and dissipation of energy. By 1847, Thomson had already gained a good reputation as a scientist when he attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Oxford where he stated”There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

At that meeting, he heard James Prescott Joule argue for the mutual convertibility of heat and mechanical work and for their mechanical equivalence. In 1848, he provided only an operational definition of temperature. He proposed an absolute temperature scale in which a unit of heat descending from a body A to a body B at the would give out the same mechanical effect, whatever be the number. Such a scale would be quite independent of the physical properties of any specific substance. In his publication, Thomson wrote:

“The conversion of heat (or caloric) into mechanical effect is probably impossible, certainly undiscovered.”

One of the clearest instances of this interaction is in his estimate of the age of the Earth. Given his youthful work on the figure of the Earth and his interest in heat conduction, it is no surprise that he chose to investigate the Earth’s cooling and to make historical inferences of the Earth’s age from his calculations. Thomson was a creationist in a broad sense, but he was not a ‘flood geologist’. He contended that the laws of thermodynamics operated from the birth of the universe and envisaged a dynamic process that saw the organization and evolution of the solar system and other structures, followed by a gradual heat death.

Thomson was also a yachtsman, as he was a lot interested in the sea related stuff. He introduced a method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel piano wire replaces the ordinary land line. The wire glides so easily to the bottom that “flying soundings” can be taken while the ship is going at full speed. A pressure gauge to register the depth of the sinker was added by Thomson.

Therefore, Thomson’s marvellous pieces of work have no match as they were unique and have helped man in carrying out their daily chores. Like many other scientists some of Thomson’s predictions were proved false but this great man won a number of honorary degrees for his classic work and is ranked among the famous most scientists of history as his remarkable work has become the standard texts for many generations of scientists.

[MysteRy]

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli



There are a lot of notable names in the field of quantum physics and you better believe that all of the people who are involved in that list are some of the best brains the world has ever encountered. After all, to excel in quantum physics, you have to have a deep love for science and a very analytic brain. One such person who is well-known in the field of quantum physics is Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. He is a theoretical physicist from Austria and was one of the people who pioneered the study of quantum physics. But his achievements do not stop there because in the year 1945, he was nominated by none other than Albert Einstein himself and he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Indeed, he was a man of many achievements and is one person that deserves to be lauded.

His life

This Nobel Prize winner was born in Vienna on April 25, 1900 and his father was a chemist names Wolfgang Joseph Pauli and his mother was Bertha Camilla Schutz. His middle name came from his godfather who was the physicist Ernst Mach. One can almost say that with this kind of company, he was destined for a great career involving science. Pauli’s grandparents were from Prague and were prominent Jewish families; his great grandfather was Wolf Pascheles who just happened to be a great Jewish publisher.

His father, the chemist Wolfgang Pauli grew in in the Jewish religion but converted to the Roman Catholic Church in the year 1899 a few months before he got married to Schutz. Ernst Pauli himself was raised in the religion of his mother’s religion though he and his family eventually left the church. In the end, he was considered more of a deist and mystic.

Pauli went to the Doplinger-Gymnasium located in Vienna where he graduated with honors. Two months after he graduated, he came out with his first paper and it was on Einstein’s theory of general relativity which really isn’t the easiest thing to understand but he did a great enough job that his work was published. Later on, he enrolled in Ludwig-Maximilians University located in Munich and he received his Ph.D. while working for Arnold Sommerfeld. His thesis was on the quantum theory of molecular hydrogen that had been ionized.

Sommerfeld then asked Pauli to take up theory of relativity and have it reviewed so it could be put in the Encyklopadie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Only two months after he received his doctorate, he was able to complete the article which was a whopping 237 pages. Not only was it published as a monograph but it also received praise from the great Albert Einstein. Up until today, his work is looked upon as a standard reference of the subject.

But he wasn’t done because Pauli also spend a year at the Gottingen University and worked as assistant to Ma Born and in the following year, he moved to Copenhagen to do work at the institute of Theoretical Physics (this later became the Neils Bohr Institute). From the year 1923 to the year 1928, he took on the role of lecturer at the University of Hamburg and it was during this time that Pauli became instrumental to the development of what is to be known as modern theory of quantum physics. His greatest contribution was to formulate the exclusion principle and come up with the nonrelativistic spin theory.

In the year 1928, he was given the job of professor of Theoretical Physics in Zurich and wouldn’t you know it, he came up with a lot of scientific advances. He was so well known that he even went to Princeton and University of Michigan as a visiting professor. In the year 1931 he was awarded the Lorentz medal.

During the end of the 30s, shortly after he got divorced and after his postulation of the neutrino, he suffered a serious breakdown and this was how he met psychiatrist Carl Jung who was also living in Zurich at the time. After Jung started interpreting Pauli’s archetypal dreams, Pauli then became one of his very best students but it wasn’t long before Pauli started to put forward criticisms of Jung’s epistemology. You can check Jung’s interpretations and analyses of Pauli’s dreams by checking out Psychology and Alchemy.

Scientific Research

Ernst Pauli made a lot of contributions to the field of quantum physics and though he seldom came up with papers for publishing, a lot of his thoughts and ideas have been preserved in paper due to the fact that he liked sending length letters to his peers. He was very close to Werner Heisenberg and Neils Bohr.

In the year 1924, he proposed the quantum number which was also known as the quantum degree of freedom that had two possible values. He did this so he could finally solve whatever inconsistencies there was with molecular spectra and the theory of quantum physics which was developing at the time. He came up with the Pauli Exclusion Principle and a lot of people agree that it was his most important work.

His personality and personal life

When it came to Physics, he was a known perfectionist when it came to his work and to the works of his colleagues. It was because of this that the physics community gave him the title “conscience of physics”. If ever he found a theory lacking, he was quite brutal in his dismissal of the work and he wasn’t shy to let people know that their work was completely and utterly wrong.

He was also quite frank with his colleagues and while some found him somewhat arrogant, he was still able to form friendships with some of the most notable names of his time and this included Paul Ehrenfest. However, there were those that he rubbed the wrong way and Heisenberg was one of them. The rift between the two was so great that Heisenberg did not even go to Pauli’s funeral when he died on December 15, 1958.

Though he managed to get married twice, he never had any kids with either of his wives.

[MysteRy]

Zora Neale Hurston



Women have done a lot of great and wonderful things in the field of science. One woman scientist in particular that should be very interesting for you to get to know is Zora Neal Hurston. She is an American author, folklorist, and anthropologist. She is quite prolific and she managed to publish more than 50 plays, essays, and short stories and 4 novels. One of her best known works is entitled Their Eyes Were Watching God which was published in the year 1937 and is also the novel that she is best remembered for.

The Early Life of Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born on Notasulga, Alabama on 7 January 1891. Her parents were Lucy Ann and John Hurston; she was the 5th of 8 kids. John Hurston was a Baptist preacher, carpenter, and tenant farmer while Lucy Ann was a teacher at the local school. They didn’t stay long in Alabama though because her family made the move to Eatonville in Florida which happened to be one of the very first all-African American towns that got incorporated in the US. Zora Neale Hurston was just three when they made the move. Zora Neale Hurston has confessed that she often felt like Eatonville was her “home” and she sometimes claimed that it was her birthplace.

Later on, her father became the mayor of Eatonville; she glorified the town in her stories and often said it was a haven that allowed African Americans to live in any way they wanted to and they didn’t have to be controlled or adhere to white society mores.

The year 1901 was quite the eye-opener for young Hurston since it was the very year some schoolteachers from the north visited the town and gave her books. These books introduced her to the world and beauty of literature and this is perhaps why she describes her “birth” as something that happened in that place and that year. She spent the rest of her childhood years in Eatonville and describes what it was like in an essay she publishes in 1928 entitled How It Feels to Be Colored Me.

Hurston’s mother died in 1904 and her father got remarried to a woman named Matte Moge. This was considered a minor scandal in their town. Rumors flew that he had relations with Moge even while Lucy Ann was still alive. Hurston was sent a way by her parents to attend boarding school however she got expelled as they stopped paying her school fees. Later on, she worked as a maid to the lead singer of the Gilbert & Sullivan theatre company lead singer.

By the time 1917 rolled in, she attended Morgan College which was the high school division of the Morgan State University which is a Historic All-Black school in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated in 1918 and in that same year she began to attend Howard University and became the earliest recruit of the Zeta Phi Beta. She helped found The Hilltop which was the student newspaper. Also, she took courses in Greek, Spanish, English, and public speaking. She earned her associates degree in 1920. A year after, she wrote John Redding Goes to Sea which is a short story that gained her entry into the Alaine Locke literary club called The Stylus.

She then went on to Barnard College at Columbia University where she was the only black student. There, she received her BA in Anthropology; she was 37 years old. While she was studying at Barnard she worked with Franz Boas to conduct an ethnographic research. She also worked with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict for various anthropological works.

As an Adult

She married Herbert Sheen, her former classmate at Howard and a jazz musician, in 1927. He later went on to become a doctor but they divorced in 1931. Eight years later, she married Albert Price while she was holding down a job at WPA. He was 25 years younger than her and the marriage ended after just seven months.

During her later years, she not only wrote but she also served as a faculty member at the North Carolina College for Negroes. She put up a school for dramatic arts in 1934 at Bethune-Cookman College in Florida.

When the year 1956 rolled in she was given an award by the college to recognize her achievements. The college remains dedicated to preserving and letting people know about her legacy to black culture.

Her Works

She travelled quite extensively especially to the American South and Caribbean where she got immersed in the local culture and traditions as part of her anthropological work. Charlott Osgood Mason sponsored her work in the South and her work Mules and Men was based on that work and is often looked upon as a classic folklorist work.

In 1936 to 37, she made her way to Jamaica and Haiti; an expedition paid for the by Guggenheim Foundation and it was in 1938 that Tell My Horse was published.

Her Later Years

The year 1948 wasn’t a good year for Zora Neale Hurston as it was this time that she was falsely accused of molesting a child; a 10year old boy. The case was dismissed and she was in Honduras at the time of trial but her personal life was rocked by the scandalous accusation. She spent her last years as a writer for newspapers and magazines. In 1957, she moved to Fort Pierce where she took jobs like substitute teaching and even becoming a maid once more.

Her Death

She died of hypertension heart disease on 28 January 1960 and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery in Florida. Her grave was unmarked for some time but literary scholar Charlotte Hunt and novelist Alice Walker found it and decided to mark it for Zora Neale Hurston. She is remembered for her vast literary works and her contributions to the field of anthropology. In Fort Pierce, they honor her name in a festival they call Zora Fest; a 7-day festival usually held at the end of April.