------------------------------ 2006 - Famous Scientists, you may not know
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- When you ask a student to name some famous scientists the first name to come to mind is:-
---------------------------------- 1. ALBERT EINSTEIN
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- Maybe some will say:
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---------------------------------- 2. ISAAC NEWTON (pictured above)
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- They probably not think of :
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---------------------------------- 3. GALILIO GALILEI
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- Other names that would be missed include:
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--------------------------------- 4. PYTHAGORUS
-------------------------------- 5. CHARLES DARWIN
------------------------------- 6. NIKOLA TESLA
------------------------------- 7. MARIE CURIE
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- Then there is a list of names you probably have never heard of:
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-------------------------------- 8. CARL FREDRICH GAUSS
-------------------------------- 9. ALHAZEN
------------------------------- 10. CHIEN-SHIUNG WU
------------------------------- 11. FRANCIS BEAUFORT
------------------------------- 12. RAYMOND DART
------------------------------- 13. ADA LOVELACE
------------------------------- 14. MARY ANNING
------------------------------- 15. CARL LINNAEUS
------------------------------- 16. JAMES HUTTON
------------------------------- 17. ROSELIND FRANKLI
------------------------------- 18. ANDRE-MARIE AMPERE
---------------------------------19. MAX PLANCK
------------------------------- 20. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
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----------------------------------- 1. ALBERT EINSTEIN
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- Albert Einstein born in 1879. As a teenager he wrote a paper on magnetic fields. He became a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. And, in 1905 he published four more papers. His math and formulas described the relationship between mass and energy.
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——————————- E. =. mc^2
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- Another paper described “ Brownian Motion “ for atoms and molecules.
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- Still another paper describing the “ photoelectric effect “, introducing light as made up of particles, later called “ photons”.
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- The forth paper introduced special relativity and the concept of space-time.
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- In 1916 Einstein’s paper on “ General Relativity” introduced a new theory for gravity. Mass distorts space-time and gravity is seeking the path of shortest time in curved space. This concept for gravity meant that mass would bend light. During a 1919 solar eclipse astronomers discovered that the sun’s mass did indeed bend the path of distant starlight.
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- In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1933 he became a professor at Princeton University escaping Nazi Germany. In 1940 he became a U.S. citizen.
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- Einstein’s theories live on to predict the existence of Blackholes and gravitational waves. In 2016 physicists actually measured gravitational waves created by the collision of two Blackholes one billion lightyears away. His formulas explained gravitational lensing. Einstein felt that his knowledge was limited but his imagination was not. “Imagination can encircle the world”
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----------------------------------- 2. ISAAC NEWTON
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- Isaac Newton developed Calculus math when he was 23 years old. He had worked out the planetary orbits but did not disclose to any one until Edmund Halley told him about the problem. He immediately had the answer. In 1687 Halley convinced Newton to publish his work. He proposed the theory for the first time how planets and projectiles moved through space. He showed mathematically how gravity governs how these planets and projectiles move.
He worked on light and color and developed the reflecting telescope. He did the fundamental work in mathematically describing how heat works. The metric unit of force was named after him along with the 3 laws of motion. A Newton is 1 kilogram *meter per second squared, about 2 tenths of a pound.
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- ---------------------------------- 3. GALILIO GALILEI
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- In 1609 this Italian mathematician used the first telescope to create modern astronomy. He discovered the moons of Jupiter, sunspots , and the phases of Venus He confirmed that the planet Venus circled the Sun inside Earth’s orbit. He confirmed Nicklaus Copernicus theories that we are in a sun-centered solar system.
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- Galileo studied falling bodies and determined that gravity does not depend on size. He defined inertia that allowed the Earth to rotate. His theories were not accepted and he died on 1642 under house arrest. His laws are used today, unchanged, to navigate spacecraft on NASA missions.
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--------------------------------- 4. PYTHAGORUS
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- A Greek mathematician , in the 6th century B.C. developed the Pythagorean Theorem for a right triangle , a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Pythagoras’ legacy includes hallmarks of patterns, order, replication, and certainty.
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-------------------------------- 5. CHARLES DARWIN
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- As a young man Darwin collected beetles and studied geology in Edinburgh. In 1831 he journeyed around the world aboard the ship HMS Beagle. His 5- year study documented geological formations, habitats, flora, fauna. He determined that animal origins contradicted Victorian-era theories at the time. It was not divine creationism but life adapting to environments that created the diversity of life.
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- Species evolve through natural selection. His theory of evolution was not accepted so he began publishing his works on geology, coral reefs, and barnacles. He amassed overwhelming evidence for evolution in the 20 years after his voyage. In 1859 he published the book “On the Origin of Species” . He was 50 years old when he first sold his 500 page book. He published 6 editions on how the Earth’s species came to be.
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- Species adapt to their environments to survive and those that fall short die out.
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------------------------------- 6. NIKOLA TESLA
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- A Serbian-American Engineer born in 1856 in Croatia He deigned advanced alternating current systems allowing utilities to send current over long distances to power American homes across the country. He developed the Tesla coil, a high voltage transformer used to transmit power wirelessly. Today the most famous electric car bears his name.
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------------------------------- 7. MARIE CURIE
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- Maria Curie born 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Women were not allowed in the universities. She fled to Paris and worked for Henri Becquerel who discovered uranium in 1896. X-rays were discovered one year earlier. Curie worked in this lab for her PhD. thesis. She discovered that the atom was not the smallest form of matter. Later her discovery was called “radioactivity“. She and her husband started examining minerals containing uranium. She discovered another radioactive element named “polonium” after her native Poland. In 1989 she discovered “radium”. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1903. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She died in 1934 likely due to her work with radioactivity.
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-------------------------------- 8. CARL FREDRICH GAUSS
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- As a school boy the class was asked to add up all the numbers 1 to 100. Carl got the answer immediately, 5,100. When asked how he got the answer so fast he said he simply folded the string of numbers back over themselves. Then he added from both ends of the list of numbers: 1 + 99, 2 + 98, 3+ 97, …… 49 +51, each pair added to 100, fifty times, or 5,000 then don’t forget the 100 at the end. Adding all the numbers up from 1 to 100 comes to 5,100.
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-------------------------------- 9. ALHAZEN
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- Born in Iraq Alhazen was the inventor of the scientific method: Observe, hypothesize, experiment, revise, repeat. He wrote over 100 books. Some on astronomy, for example, how the brain creates the illusion that the moon is bigger near the horizon. He developed his theories on experimentation and data collection. He stressed the need for test results.
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------------------------------- 10. CHIEN-SHIUNG WU
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- In 1936 she arrived from China to pursue her doctorate at University of California studying X-ray emissions. She was the first to verify the theory of beta decay radioactivity. Her team won the Nobel Prize in 1957 confirming “the law of parity” in atomic structures. She was not given credit as part of the team, but later became known as the” first lady of physics“.
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------------------------------ 11. FRANCIS BEAUFORT
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- He devised the system to describe weather conditions that became the standard in the Navy . He developed the Beaufort Scale for wind conditions at sea. He produced 1,500 detailed charts for uncharted waters over his 26 years, starting in 1929.
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----------------------------- 12. RAYMOND DART
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- In 1924 Raymond received for the museum a package containing a baboon scull. The specimen came from South Africa. He recognized it to be a young human skull, not a baboon. The specimen was large-brained that showed humans evolved from Africa, not Western Europe as currently thought. He explored many cave systems in Africa to prove Africa was the root of our family tree.
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------------------------------ 13. ADA LOVELACE
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- She was the first computer programmer. She worked with Charles Babbage on his “Difference Engine”. using this analytical machine, she wrote instructions for solving complex math problems. She died in 1852 at the age of 36 after writing the first computer program, before the computer was invented.
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----------------------------- 14. MARY ANNING
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- Is the godmother of paleontology. She was finding fossils along the southern coast of England at 13 years old. Her fossil shop was recognized by the geological Society of London, an organization that would not admit women for another 72 years. The song “ she sold seashells by the sea shore” was another form of recognition.
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------------------------------ 15. CARL LINNAEUS
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- Carl devised the binomial nomenclature system. Born in Sweden in 1707. He became a botanist and in 1753 published the book “ Species Plantarium”. He invented the Latin
2-word construction identifying each plant, genus and species. His naming convention became the center of botany.
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----------------------------- 16. JAMES HUTTON
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- James’ work became the basis of modern geology. He developed the concept of the continents always recycling themselves in plate tectonics. He published his book, “Theory of Earth” in 1788.
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----------------------------- 17. ROSELIND FRANKLIN
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- Roselind was a brilliant chemist and a master of X-ray crystallography. Her work with DNA allowed her three male coworkers to receive the Nobel Prize in 1962.
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--------------------------- 18. ANDRE-MARIE AMPERE
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- French physicist was one of the main founders of electromagnetism.
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----------------------------19. MAX PLANCK
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- Max invented Quantum Theory in physics. And , the Planck length of 1.616x10^-35 meters, a tiny fraction of a proton’s diameter, was named after him.
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--------------------------- 20. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
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- Scottish inventor of the telephone. He was a teacher of the deaf and the decibel was named after him.
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Thursday, January 11, 2018 -----
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