~ Famous Scientists ~

[MysteRy]

Benjamin Franklin



The American author, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin was indeed a man of multiple talents. He was also one of the significant Founding Fathers of the United States who for later generations served as both a spokesman and a model for the national character. As a scientist, he was one of the prominent figures in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his findings and theories regarding electricity. His inventions include: the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass ‘armonica’. He devoted most of his life towards the development of his people and left an ineffaceable mark on the emerging nation.

Early Years of Life:

Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 17, 1706. He was the fifteenth child of Josiah Franklin, candlemaker and a skillful mechanic and Abiah Folger (Josiah’s second wife). He received his primary education from Boston Latin School. At the age of ten he left school because of the poor financial conditions of his family and continued his education through voracious reading. When he was twelve was apprenticed to his older brother James, a printer who taught him the printing trade. Franklin always wanted to be independent and hated being ordered about so he ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was seventeen. There he established his own printing office in partnership with Hugh Meredith in 1728.

Life as a Scientist:

Benjamin Franklin was an extraordinary scientist and inventor. His creations that received a lot of recognition include: lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. His inventions also comprised of social innovations, such as paying forward. All his efforts towards science were directed towards enhancing competence and bringing human improvement. One such improvement was his effort to expedite news services through his printing presses.

Electricity
Franklin began his investigations on electricity and was the first person to discover he principle of conservation of charge. He also conducted his famous kite experiment, in which he flew a kite with the wire attached to a key during a thunderstorm. From this experiment he further established that laboratory-produced static electricity was similar to a previously unexplained and frightening natural phenomenon.

Wave Theory of Light
Franklin was among the very few scientists who greatly supported the Christiaan Huygens’ wave theory of light. This theory was later proved to be true after experiments performed by other scientists in the 18th century.

Meteorology
Franklin also noted the behavior of winds and he found out storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This concept gained a great significance in meteorology.

Heat Conductivity
Franklin also conducted his experiments on the non-conduction of ice which received a great acceptance by other popular scientists such as Michael Faraday.

DEATH:

At the age of eighty-four this famous personality died on April 17, 1790 and was buried at Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.

Franklin was a true philosopher who was interested in all facets of the natural world. He learned through his own experimentation and his conversation with those who shared his interests.

[MysteRy]

Benjamin Thompson



Sir Benjamin Thompson, count von Rumford was an American-born British physicist and inventor who was a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. One of the leading figures in the history of thermodynamics, his work rejected the popular belief that heat is a liquid form of matter and laid down the modern theory that heat is a form of motion. Benjamin Thompson also performed services for military and drew designs for warships.

Personal Life:

Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, Benjamin Thompson never received formal education. Instead, he joined a store as an apprentice. At nineteen, he married a rich widow named Sarah Walker and lived in Rumford. When the Revolutionary War started, he sided with the British. He also spied for the British Army.

After the war, he went to England, and later to Germany in 1783. In recognition of his civilian and military services, he was given the title of a Count.

He returned to England in 1799. He was made a member of the Royal Society due to his extraordinary scientific accomplishments. Thompson died near Paris in 1814. He was 61 years old.

Contributions and Achievements:

While serving for the military in 1798, Thompson noted that during the process of boring cannons, the metal turned red hot and even boiled the water used to keep it cool. The old explanation was that, if the metal is broken to pieces, the caloric is liberated from the metal. This gives rise to heat.

Thompson rejected this because, even when filing is not made, heat is emitted by simple friction. Actually, he demonstrated that the amount of heat involved in boring was so much that if it were poured back, it could melt the metal. Otherwise stated, more caloric could be achieved from the metal than it could possibly bear.

Thompson’s view was that the heat was due to the mechanical motion of the borer. He showed that the quantity of heat was equal to the motional energy of the borer. He made it clear that heat is a form of energy. Thompson even assessed how much heat was produced by a given amount of motion. He was the first scientist to measure the mechanical equivalent of heat (MEH).

Thompson’s figure of 5.57 Joules was considered too high; only 50 years the first logical value of 4.16 Joules was measured. He also examined the insulating properties of several objects such as wool, fur and feathers.

[MysteRy]

Blaise Pascal



Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French philosopher and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential mathematical writers of all time. He was also an expert in many fields, including various languages, and a well-versed religious philosopher.

Early Life and Contributions:

Born at Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, Pascal’s father was Étienne Pascal, a counselor of the king who later became the president of the Court of Aids at Clermont. His mother died in 1626. The Pascal family settled in Paris in 1631.

At a tender age of 12, Pascal began participating in the meetings of a mathematical academy. He learned different languages from his father, Latin and Greek in particular, but Pascal Sr. didn’t teach him mathematics. This increased the curiosity of young Pascal, who went on to experiment with geometrical figures, even formulating his own names for standard geometrical terms.

Pascal started working on a book, Essay on Conics. The book was published in 1640, and its highlight was the “mystic hexagram”, a theorem related to the collinearity of intersections of lines. It also had hundreds of propositions on conic sections, and influences from Apollonius and his successors. The book gained publicity not only because of the writer’s young age, 16, but also due to its unique accounts about tangency, and several other qualities.

Mathematical and Scientific Achievements:

Pascal’s contributions to hydrostatics, particularly his experimentations with the barometer and his theoretical work on the equilibrium of fluids, were made public one year after his death. The development of probability theory is often considered to be the most significant contributions in the history of mathematics. The Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids by Pascal is an extension to Simon Stevin’s research on the hydrostatic paradox and explains what may be termed as the final law of hydrostatics; the famous Pascal’s principle. Pascal is known for his theories of liquids and gases and their interrelation, and also his work regarding the relationship between the dynamics of hydrodynamics and rigid bodies.

Post-Port Royal, perhaps Pascal’s most important to mathematics dealt with the issuess related to the cycloid; a curve, with the area of which the best mathematicians of the day were occupied. Pascal introduced most of his theorems without proof, thus issuing a challenge to his contemporaries, for instance Christopher Wren, John Wallis and Christian Huygens, who happily accepted and figured them out. He also put forward his own solutions, “Amos Dettonville”, an assumed alias. Later, many mathematicians often referred to him by this alias.

The mathematical theory of probability became popular when a communication between Pascal and Pierre de Fermat disclosed that both had concluded to almost similar results. Pascal designed a treatise on the subject, which was also published after his death, though only a few parts of it have survived. Pascal was always concise and sharp when it came to mathematics.

Death:

Blaise Pascal died of tuberculosis on 19 August, 1662 at a young age of 39.

[MysteRy]

C. V. Raman



One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It is immensely surprising that Raman used an equipment worth merely Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.

Early Life:

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College, Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the subject was published in 1906.

Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907, after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much occupied due to the job, he still managed to spare his evenings for scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent the entire nights. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.

Contributions and Achievements:

On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to discover the reason of the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.

There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan (who later became the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi), gave him the news that Professor Compton has won the Nobel Prize on scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his opinion.

Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds was studied. Thanks to the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists.

Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision, the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.

Later Life and Death:

Sir C.V. Raman became the Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1924. A year later, he set up Raman Research Institute near Bangalore, where he continued the scientific research until his death which was caused by a strong heart attack on November 21, 1970. His sincere advice to aspiring scientists was that “scientific research needed independent thinking and hard work, not equipment.”

[MysteRy]

Carl Bosch



Carl Bosch was a prominent German industrial chemist and entrepreneur. Notable for the development of the Haber-Bosch process for high-pressure synthesis of ammonia, he was one of the founders of IG Farben, which became one of the world’s largest chemical companies. Bosch won the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for formulating chemical high-pressure methods.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Cologne, Germany to a rich gas supplier, Carl Bosch’s uncle was the legendary industrialist Robert Bosch who helped develop the first spark plug. He attended the Technical College of Charlottenburg and the University of Leipzig for six years, from 1892 to 1898. Bosch later accepted an entry level job at BASF, a leading German chemical company.

Contributions and Achievements:

Carl Bosch started working to adapt the laboratory process for synthesizing ammonia for commercial production in 1909.
He formulated the process that bore his name, in which hydrogen is manufactured on an industrial scale by passing steam and water over a catalyst at high temperatures. The Haber-Bosch process turned out to be the most commonly used big-scale process for nitrogen fixation. Bosch was appointed the president of I.G. Farbenindustrie AG.

Bosch shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Friedrich Bergius for his work on the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods. He became a successor to Max Planck in 1935 as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Later Life and Death:

Carl Bosch died after a prolonged illness on April 26, 1940 in Heidelberg, Germany. He was 65 years old.

[MysteRy]

Carl Friedrich Gauss



Johann Friedrich Carl Gauss, more commonly known as Carl Friedrich Gauss, was a German mathematician, widely known as one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He made crucial contributions to geometry, statistics, number theory, planetary astronomy, the theory of functions, potential theory, optics and geophysics.

Early Life and Education:

Born on April 30, 1777 in Brunswick, Germany to a very poor family, the father of Carl Friedrich Gauss was a gardener and brick layer. His mother was, however, very keen to educate her son. Gauss was a child prodigy in mathematics. The Duke of Brunswick was very impressed with his computing skills when he was only 14, so his stay at the Brunswick Collegium Carolinum, Hanover was generously financed.

Gauss attended the University of Göttingen from 1795 to 1798. He earned his doctorate in 1799 at the University of Helmstedt.

Contributions and Achievements:

Gauss was made the director of the Göttingen Observatory in 1807, as well a professor of mathematics at the same place. During his tenure, he spent much of his time establishing a new observatory. He also worked with Wilhelm Weber for almost six years making a primitive telegraph device which could send messages over a distance of 1500 meters. A a statue of Gauss and Weber was later built in Göttingen.

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a prolific author who wrote more than 300 papers, mostly in Latin. He also knew Russian and other foreign languages. He was appointed a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1801, mainly due to his his calculations of the orbits of the asteroids Ceres and Pallas. He also won the Copley Medal in 1838.

Later Life and Death:

Carl Friedrich Gauss was appointed a Geheimrat; a privy councilor, and he was also featured on the 10 Deutsche Mark note. He died on February 23, 1855 in Göttingen, Germany. He was 77 years old.

[MysteRy]

Carl Sagan



Carl Sagan, also known as the “the astronomer of the people”, was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, author and researcher. He made crucial contributions in popularizing astronomy to the public. He authored over 600 scientific papers and several books about astronomy and natural sciences. He also gained worldwide fame for narrating and writing the popular 1980 television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”.

Early Life and Education:

Carl Sagan was born in New York in 1934 to a garment worker. When he was four, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This became a turning point in his life and little Sagan developed an early interest in skyscrapers, science, space and the stars. His parents encouraged his growing interest in science by gifiting him chemistry sets and books. After graduating from Rahway High School in 1951, he went on to acquire three different science degrees.

Sagan was a lecturer and researcher at Harvard University until 1968. He then joined Cornell University in Ithaca, where he became a full Professor in 1971, and later, the director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He remained at Cornell until 1981.

Contributions and Achievements:

Saga authored more than 20 books about space and the universe. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work. His TV series Cosmos still remains one of the most-watched shows in television history. Sagan helped NASA with U.S. space missions to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Particularly, his discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus is highly regarded. He also worked on understanding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter and seasonal changes on Mars.

The 1997 film Contact has been inspired by Sagan’s book of the same name. Contrary to the popular belief that aliens would be destructive to mankind, Sagan advocated that aliens would be friendly and good-natured.

Sagan is known to be one of the earliest scientists to propose that there might be life on other planets. He encouraged NASA to explore the solar system for signs of life. He received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1994.

Later Life and Death:

In his last written works, Sagan contended that the possibilities of extraterrestrial space vehicles visiting Earth are vanishingly small.

Carl Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996 at the age of 62.

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Carolus Linnaeus



Carl Linnaeus (Latinized: Carolus Linnaeus; originally Carl Nilsson Linnæus) was a Swedish botanist, naturalist, physician and zoologist. He was the first person to lay down the principles to determine the natural genera and species of organisms, and to form a uniform system for naming them (also known as binomial nomenclature). Linnaeus is considered to be the founding father of modern taxonomy as well as ecology.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Roeshult, Sweden to a Lutheran minister, Carolus Linnaeus frustrated his father by showing no interest in the priesthood. When he entered the University of Lund in 1727 to study medicine, his parents were quite excited, but within a year, he was transferred to the University of Uppsala, where he took botany. Linnaeus acquired his medical degree from the University of Harderwijk, Netherlands. He received further education at the University of Leiden.

Contributions and Achievements:

Carolus Linnaeus put out his work “Systema Naturae” in 1735, the first edition of his classification of living things. He came back to Sweden in 1738 and practised medicine. In 1740, he took a teaching position at the University of Uppsala.

Linnaeus, primarily known as a naturalist and botanist, was a leading figure in the history of entomology. He laid down the binomial system of nomenclature, which became the basis for the moderm classification of living organisms. Widely known as the “father of biological systematics and nomenclature”, Linnaeus also devised the wing vein-based system for separation of orders, and set up the chronological starting point for the naming of insects.

Later Life and Death:

Carolus Linnaeus used to travel extensively in Europe. He collected and named several specimens from different countries of the world. His 1758 work “Systema Naturae 10th edition” is known to be the starting point for naming of insects. All names prior to it are considered outdated. Linnaeus was ennobled in 1761, and was later known as “Carl von Linne”.

He died of stroke in Uppsala, Sweden, on June 10, 1778.

[MysteRy]

Charles Babbage



Do you ever wonder who you have to thank for the powerful desktop or laptop you are now using for practically everything you do? You might say all thanks should be given to the computer companies of today but in fact, you have Charles Babbage to thank. The name might not be familiar to you just yet but read on because pretty soon, “Charles Babbage” will be on your mind every time you use your computer.

Who is Charles Babbage?

Charles Babbage was born on Dec. 26, 1791 in England. He was a polymath and became a mathematician, mechanical engineer, inventor, and philosopher. He had a lot of contributions to different scientific fields but his most famous work is probably coming up with the idea of a programmable computing device.

In fact, Charles Babbage is considered the “father of the computer” and is given credit for coming up with the first ever mechanical computer. It was very simple but it served as the blue print for other, more complex machines. Of course he had other works to his name in other fields and this is the reason he was often referred to as pre-eminent among other polymaths of his generation.

Try to pay a visit to the London Science Museum and you will find parts of his uncompleted works. Back in 1991, experts constructed a functioning difference engine basis on Babbage’s original designs. The engine was built to conditions that were around during the 19th century and the success of the completed difference engine indicated that the machine of Babbage would have functioned just fine.

His early life

There is some dispute about the birthplace of Charles Babbage but as stated in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Babbage was born at 44 Crosby Row at Walworth Road in London, England. A blue plaque has been placed along the junction of Walworth Road and Larcom Street to commemorate the birth of this brilliant man.

An obituary printed in The Times said he was born on Dec. 26, 1792 but a relative of Babbage wrote in to state that Babbage was actually born a year before in 1791. A baptismal certificate found in St. Mary’s Newington, London indicates that he was baptized on Jan.6, 1792 which supports the relative’s claim about the year of birth.

Charles Babbage was just one of four children born to Betsy and Benjamin Babbage. His father was a banker and he was the partner of William Praed. Together they founded Praed’s & Co. of Fleet Street London in 1801.

When he was 8 years of age, Charles Babbage was sent to Alphington near Exeter for schooling and to recover from a fever that nearly ended his life. For some years, he attended the King Edward VI Grammar School located in Totnes South Devin but he was in such poor health that he had to make the switch to private tutors.

Sometime later, he made his way to the 30-student Holmwood academy located in Bake Street in EinField Middlesex and he was placed under the tutelage of the reverend Stephen Freeman. The academy had a library where Babbage’s love of mathematics blossomed. As he was attending classes in the academy he was also learning from two other private tutors. At the age of about 16 or 17 Babbage went back to Totnes to study and had a tutor from Oxford. It was under this tutor that he learned enough about classic math to be admitted to Cambridge.

At Cambridge

Babbage went to Trinity College in Cambridge on Oct. 1810 and by that time he already taught himself some aspects of contemporary math. It was for this reason that he felt somewhat let down by the standard math instruction they had at Cambridge.

While in Cambridge, he teamed up with such notable names like John Herschel, George Peacock, and other friends to form the Analytical society. He was also a member of other clubs such as the Ghost club where they investigated supernatural happenings. The Extractors Club that he was a member of made it their mission to liberate members from the madhouse in the event that anyone was ever committed to one.

He transferred to Peterhouse in 1812 where he became the top mathematician although he did not graduate with honors. He did receive a degree without having to go through any examinations and that was in 1814. He was able to defend a thesis that was considered blasphemous with respect to the preliminary public disputation.

After Cambridge

It was easy for Charles Babbage after he left Cambridge for he was a most brilliant student. He became a lecturer at the Royal Institution where he talked about astronomy in the year 1815. A year after that, he was elected to become a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. In the same year, he became a candidate for a teaching job at the HaileyBury College and he went with recommendations from people like John Playfair and James Ivory. He lost the spot to Henry Walter.

Babbage and his machines

His machines were considered as one of the very first mechanical computers ever to be invented. The fact that they were not actually used for computing was not due to a design flaw. Rather, it was to be blamed on lack of funding and some personality problems.

Babbage was the director in charge of building steam-powered machines and they did achieve some success; they also suggested that calculations could be done mechanically. For ten years after that, the government funded his projects which amounted to about £ 17,000 but it happened that the treasury lost faith in him and the funding stopped.

While the machines he came up with were mechanical and bulky they had a basic design that is similar to the modern computer. It is for this reason why he is often looked at as one of the pioneers of computers.

Death

Charles Babbage died on Oct. 18, 1871. He is buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Cause of death was “renal inadequacy”. One half of his brain is preserved in Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons while the other half can be viewed in the London Science Museum.

[MysteRy]

Charles Darwin



Charles Darwin, widely considered as one of the greatest and most revolutionizing scientists in history, was the British naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution. Pre-Darwin, it was thought that each species of life on earth came individually and that none had ever changed its form. He confuted this notion and demonstrated from his research that evolution is the law of nature and all living things on earth have descended from common ancestors who lived millions of years ago. He proved that animals and plants have evolved in an orderly manner and keep on evolving even today.

Early Life:

Born at Shrewsbury in 1809, Darwin was raised by his eldest sister from the tender age of eight. Young Darwin had a passion for gathering up even insects and minerals and he used to experiment with them. When Darwin was 16, he joined Edinburg University to study medicine. However, he was too gentle and tender to become a proper physician. Anatomy, in particular, sickened him. He hated the surgical operations, because they had to be performed without any anesthetics at that time. This made Darwin a great failure as a medical student.

Darwin said goodbye to Edinburg in 1828 and sought admission in Cambridge to study Theology. There, he also disregarded his studies and was more interested in beetles than theology. He was lucky to attain his degree anyhow. At Cambridge, he managed to make valuable friends, even befriending the professors of botany and geology.

Contributions and Achievements:

Darwin got his big break in 1831. A naturalist was needed to travel along on a scientific expedition – a voyage around the world in the brigantine HMBS Beagle under the supervision of Captain Fits Roy. Luckily, some of his Cambridge fellows also recommended him for the place. The voyage took around five years.

Throughout this voyage, Darwin collected bones of extinct animals. He was curious about the relationship between the extinct animals and the existing ones. The unusual marine iguana, the tortoises and the finches on the Galapagos Islands in the pacific made him perplexed, since similar, yet rather distinct, forms of the same animals were found on separate islands. These observations led to his legendary ideas on evolution.

After the return, Darwin moved to London for a while and compiled an account of his travels. Darwin got married to his cousin Emma Wedgowood in 1839. The coupled moved to Downe House in Kent in 1844. There, Darwin got a letter from the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had made similar observations about evolution separately. A collaborative report by Darwin and Wallace was published in 1858. Darwin publicized the theory of evolution in his famous book, “The Origin of Species by Natural Selection”, in 1859. The book, which asserted that all the varied forms of life on earth could, in the course of time, have evolved from a common ancestry, was a huge success. Darwin also commented that in the struggle for life, only the ‘fittest’ creatures would survive while others fail.

The book became controversial due to its conflict with the religious belief about the creation of the world. However, in later years, it was embraced by all biologists. Darwin’s another book, “The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication”, came out in 1868. It is considered to be his second most significant work. The book maintains that man, by selective breeding, could make rather different breeds of pigeons, dogs, and some species of plants also. His work also included “The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects”, “Insectivorous Plants”, “The Power of Movement in Plants”, “Descent of Man”, and “The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms”.

Later Life and Death:

Charles Darwin died at 74 and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, fairly near to the tomb of Sir Issac Newton. Out of his 10 children, of whom seven survived him, four became prominent scientists. Three of his sons went on to become fellows of the Royal Society, just like their legendary father.

[MysteRy]

Charles Lyell



Sir Charles Lyell was the most famous lawyer and geologist of his time. One of the most important British scientists in history, Lyell wrote “Principles of Geology”, a landmark work in geology that explores James Hutton’s doctrine of uniformitarianism.

Early Life and Education:

Born at Kinnordy, Scotland to a botanist father who possessed considerable literary tastes, Charles Lyell graduated from Oxford in 1821, and joined the bar in 1825. He soon realized that his ambitions were more towards science, so, in 1827, he finally chose geology over the law.

Contributions and Achievements:

The first volume of his legendary book “Principles of Geology” was published in 1830. The third and last volume was published three years later. It is considered to be a work of synthesis, supported by his own personal observations on his travels.

Lyell’s primary belief was that all the the past changes of the earth can be detailed by the forces now acting. The notion became the fundamental basis of modern geology. It is very difficult to explain how odd it appeared at that time.

His another work, “Antiquity of Man”, was published in 1863, and discussed the proofs of the long existence of human beings on the earth. Lyell’s geological approach tends to be an assessment of evolutionism in the wider sense. He was one the earliest men to embrace Darwin’s theory of natural selection in biology.

Lyell’s geological contributions ranged from volcanoes and geological dynamics through stratigraphy, paleontology, and glaciology to subjects that would now be considered as parts of prehistoric archaeology and paleoanthropology.

Later Life and Death:

In 1866, Charles Lyell was made a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Lyell died on February 22, 1875. He was 77 years old. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb



Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was an eminent French physicist. He formulated the Coulomb’s law, which deals with the electrostatic interaction between electrically charged particles. The coulomb, SI unit of electric charge, was named after him.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Angoulême, France to a wealthy family, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was the son of Henri Coulomb, an inspector of the Royal Fields in Montpellier. The family soon moved to Paris, where Coulomb studied mathematics at the famous Collège des Quatre-Nations. A few years later in 1759, he was enrolled at the military school of Mézières. He graduated from Ecole du Génie at Mézières in 1761.

Coulomb worked in the West Indies as a military engineer for almost nine years. When he came back to France, he was quite ill. During the French Revolution, Coulomb lived in his estate at Blois, where he mostly carried out scientific research. He was made an inspector of public instruction in 1802.

Contributions and Achievements:

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb formulated his law as a consequence of his efforts to study the law of electrical repulsions put forward by English scientist Joseph Priestley. In the process, he devised sensitive apparatus to evaluate the electrical forces related to the Priestley’s law. Coulomb issued out his theories in 1785–89.

He also developed the inverse square law of attraction and repulsion of unlike and like magnetic poles. This laid out the foundation for the mathematical theory of magnetic forces formulated by French mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson. Coulomb extensively worked on friction of machinery, the elasticity of metal and silk fibres and windmills. The coulomb, SI unit of electric charge, was named after him.

Later Life and Death:

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb died on August 23, 1806 in Paris. He was 70 years old.

[MysteRy]

Christiaan Huygens



Christiaan Huygens was a mathematician, physicist and astronomer who formulated the wave theory of light. He also discovered the pendulum clock, centrifugal force and the true shape of the rings of Saturn (as well as its moon, Titan). Huygens is credited as the first theoretical physicist to use formulae in physics.

Early Life and Education:

Born in 1629 to a poet father, Constantijn Huygens, who also worked for the Princes of Orange, Christiaan Huygens studied law in Leiden and Brenda. He soon found out that he was more interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy. As a kid, Huygens loved to experiment with windmills and other machines and to watch the ripples produced by throwing a stone into water.

Huygens was already in contact with leading scholars of the time, even at an early age. Mersenne, the famous French polymath, wrote to his father that his child had the potential to “even surpass Archimedes”.

Contributions and Achievements:

Christiaan Huygens made many extraordinary contributions in diverse fields. His efforts in mathematics included his work regarding squaring the circle. When it came to physics, in addition to his landmark Huygens–Fresnel principle, he extensively researched free fall, pendulum motion and the pendulum clock. Huygens also improved sea clocks, which proved to be very helpful in finding out the position of ships at sea.

As a fan of Descartes, Huygens preferred to carry out new experiments himself for observing and formulating laws. Christiaan started to grind lenses for microscopes and astronomical telescopes. During one of these experiments, he found out the ring of Saturn, and also the Titan, the first moon of a planet ever to be detected.

Huygens was honored with a doctorate in 1655. In 1666, he was made the first director of the Royal Academy of Science.

Later Life and Death:

Christiaan Huygens was seriously ill in the last five years of his life. He died on March 8, 1695. He was 65 years old. Huygens was buried in Grote Kerk.

[MysteRy]

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard



The German biologist, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard is renowned for her embryonic development of fruit flies. Her contribution earned her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with American geneticists Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis. In the Nobel Banquet Speech held on 10 Dec 1995, she said:

“The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative in our hands – and has revealed to us some of its innermost secrets and tricks for developing from a single celled egg to a complex living being of great beauty and harmony. … None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.”

In 1986, she was honored with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the top credit awarded in German research. She also won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991. Since 2001 she has been member of the Nationaler Ethikrat (National Ethics Council of Germany) for the ethical assessment of new developments in the life sciences and their influence on the individual and society.

Oxford University awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Science degree during June 2005.

Early Life, Career and Contribution:

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was born on October 20, 1942, in Magdeburg,Germany. She is the daughter of Rolf Volhard, an architect, and Brigitte Volhard, a musician and painter. She completed her degrees in biology, physics, and chemistry from Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in 1964, a diploma in biochemistry (1968) and a doctorate in biology and genetics (1973) from Eberhard-Karl University of Tubingen. Nüsslein-Volhard was married briefly as a young woman and never had any children.

After finishing her postdoctoral fellowships in Basel, Switzerland, and Freiburg, Germany, she accepted her first independent research position at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany began her collaboration with Wieschaus in the late 1970′s at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 1981, she returned to Tübingen, where since 1985 she has served as director of the genetics division of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.

Wieschaus and Nüsslein-Volhard chose the fruit fly because of its amazingly rapid embryonic development. Together they designed a new genetic tool, saturation mutagenesis, which involved mutating adult fly genes and observing the effects on their offspring. Using a dual microscope, which permitted them to examine one specimen at the same time, the collaborators eventually identified, among about 20,000 genes in the fly’s chromosomes, approximately 5,000 genes important to early development and 139 genes essential to it. They also acknowledged three types of fruit fly genes that generate the blueprint for the insect’s body plan. In awarding the prize to the collaborator, the Nobel Assembly predicted that their discoveries would “explain congenital malformations in man.”

By the late 1990′s her studies of zebra fish mutants had founded a system for studying the process of blood creation and provided imperative insights into human disease.

[MysteRy]

Clarence Birdseye



For people who thank the heavens every day for the convenience that is frozen foods, you may also want to thank the man behind the invention. His name is Clarence Frank Birdseye II and he just happens to be the founder of the modern frozen food industry. So every time you take that bag of frozen veggies or other frozen food from the icebox, you should give a little thanks to Birdseye as well. Without him, you would not be enjoying the convenience of frozen foods.

Who is Clarence Birdseye?

Clarence Birdseye was an American inventor, naturalist, and entrepreneur. He made one of the biggest innovations and contributions to the food industry when he found a way to flash-freeze food. He did this all on his own and he is the man responsible for the flash-freezing method that is still used up to this day. His is one invention that will stick around for ages which is proof of how useful it is.

His Early Years

Clarence Birdseye was born on December 9, 1886 in Brooklyn, NY. His parents were Ada Jane Underwood and Clarence Frank Birdseye I. he was the 6th of 9 other kids. He was a student at Amherst College but only for a brief amount of time as he dropped out around the year 1908 although the exact date is unclear. It wasn’t because he was mentally slow by any means but he and his family really did not have the funds for college. He moved out west to work for the USDA.

He also began a career working as a taxidermist. He got a job in Arizona and New Mexico and his title was “assistant naturalist”. This job required him to kill coyotes. He also worked with entomologist Willard Von Orsdel King in 1910 and 1911. On the job, Birdseye would catch about several hundred small mammals and King would remove ticks from them for research purposes. This was how he found out that ticks were the cause of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

He moved on to another field assignment in 1912 and kept the spot until 1915. This job took him to Labrador in Canada (then known as Dominion of Newfoundland). This was where he really developed an interest in preserving and freezing food (most especially fast freezing). He had some dealings with the Inuit and they taught him how to ice fish underneath very thick ice layers. Given the -40C weather, he found that the fish was iced almost in an instant and tasted fresh when thawed. He thought of the frozen food served in New York and knew that they were of poor quality compared to the frozen fish enjoyed by folks in Labrador and got the idea of applying his new found knowledge in starting a lucrative business. His records from that time period are held in the Special Collections section in Amherst College.

His Flash-freezing Method

Back in the day, the freezing method they used was commonly performed at higher temperatures which and this was how freezing was brought about. However, freezing was done at a slower rate which meant that ice crystals were given time to grow. It is now common knowledge that using the fast freezing method results in smaller ice crystals which means that less damage is brought to the tissues of the food. When using the slow freezing methods on food, fluids leak from the cells and this causes tissues to be damaged by the crystals. This is why food that is frozen using the slow freezing method often has a mushy or dry feel to it. Birdseye changed all that and saved the people from mushy and dry textured food for the years to come.

In the year 1922, he began a series of fish-freezing studies at the Clothel Refrigerating Company. He established his own company soon after and called it Birdseye Seafoods Inc. what they did was they froze fish fillets using chilled air that was as cold as -43C. Two years later, in 1924, his company filed bankruptcy as there was a lack of consumer interest in their product but that did not stop him. In that same year, he came up with a brand new process that made for commercially viable quick-freezing which involved packing fish inside cartons then putting them between two refrigerated surfaces under pressure to free the food. With this new invention he also started a new company which he called General Seafood Corporation.

Development of His Invention

In the year 1925, his new company moved to Gloucester in Massachusetts where he made use of his new invention. He called it the double belt freezer where brine was used to chill a couple of stainless steel belts that carried packaged fish so they froze so much more quickly. He applied for a patent for his invention and it was given the US Patent #1,773,079 and this marked the very beginning of a flourishing frozen foods industry.

He was a man of vision so he created other machines and took out patents on them as well. These new machines he patented cooled foods even more quickly so that only the smallest ice crystals formed in the food and cell membranes did not endure any damage. In 1927, he decided to extend the process past fish and started flash-freezing other food items as well. That year, they also froze vegetables, chicken, meat, and fruits.

Birdseye didn’t keep the company but sold it to Goldman Sachs and Postum Company instead. Together with the patents, he got paid around $22 million which was a massive amount at that time. His company was eventually given the name General Foods Corp. and that founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company. Clarence Birdseye wasn’t completely out of the picture since he still worked for the company and never really stopped coming up with newer and better frozen food technology.

His Death

He died on 7 October 1956 at the Gramercy Park Hotel at 69. His cause of death was a heart attack. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea just off the area in Gloucester in MA.