List of Famous Scientists in History
by Owen Borville
July 9, 2024
Science, History
Top Scientists in History List from Around the World in History
A
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss born scientist, biology, geology, discovered glaciers, fishes, anti-evolution
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) Italian philosopher, 1st famous female mathematician/writer
Al-Battani (Albategnius) (850-929 A.D.) Persian philosopher; astronomy distance approx. of stars, moon, planets
Abu Nasr al-Farabi (Alpharabius) (870-950) Persian philosopher studied Greek philosophy and introduced it to the Islamic world; created musical instruments
Alhazen (al-Haytham) (965-1040) Persian philosopher, optics, light travels straight lines, astronomy, math, philosophy
Jim al-Khalili (1962) Iraqi-British theoretical physics, quantum mechanics and biology
Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850) Persian polymath, algebra, astronomy, geography
Mihailo Petrovic Alas (1868-1943) Serbian mathematician, differential equations
Angel Alcala (1929-2023) Filipino ecologist, conservationist, biodiversity, reptiles, amphibians
Salim Ali (1896-1987) Indian ornithologist 1st bird studies, surveys in India
Luis Alvarez (1911-1988) American Nobel Prize in 1968 in physics (particle), hydrogen bubble chamber analysis
Andre Ampère (1775-1836) French physicist, electromagnetism, fluorine, proposed electron
Anaximander (610) B.C. Greek philosopher of Miletus, astronomy, philosophy, world map, boundless theory
Carl Anderson (1905-1991) American physicist, discovered positron, muon, 1936 Nobel prize
Mary Anning (1799-1847) English paleontologist, fossils in cliffs, plesiosaur
Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) American physician, Apgar score, newborn child health
Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 B.C.) Greek scientist, engineer, inventor, lever, screw, claw
Agnes Arber (1879-1960) British botanist, Royal Society fellow
Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) Greek astronomer, 1st Heliocentric model of universe
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek philosopher, polymath, geocentric model, 4 elements=earth, air, fire, water
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) Swedish scientist; electric current conducted in chemical solutions
Oswald Avery (1877-1955) American scientist; showed DNA was the transforming principle of genes
Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) Italian scientist Avogadro’s law of gasses, physical chemistry
Avicenna (ibn Sina) (980-1037 A.D.) Persian philosopher and physician who published a five-volume medical encyclopedia, the Cannon of Medicine, that was used in the Islamic world and Europe until the 18th century and the Book of Cure.
B
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) English mathematician & inventor; developed 1st automatic digital computer
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, philosophy of science, the scientific method
Alexander Bain (1810-1877) Scottish inventor, Engineer, electric clock, railway telegraph lines, fax machine
John Logie Baird (1888-1946) Scottish inventor, Engineer, the 1st live working television system
Joseph Banks (1743-1820) English botanist, discovered acacia, mimosa, eucalyptus, banksia, plus birds
Ramon Barba (1939-2021) Filipino horticulturalist inventor, inducing mango tree flower crop
John Bardeen (1908-1991) U.S. physicist awarded two Nobel Prizes, in 1956 for semiconductors and transistor effect; in 1972 for quantum mechanics
Charles Barkla (1877-1944) British physicist Nobel Prize 1917 in X-ray spectroscopy radiation of the elements
Ibn Battuta (1304-1377) Moroccan traveler, author of Rihlah, a famous travel log book, describing people, places, cultures traveled through north Africa, Mali, Kenya, East Europe, Arabia, Persia, India, China and Indonesia
William Bayliss (1860-1924) English physiologist, discovered hormone secretin, biochemistry
George Beadle (1903-1989) U.S. geneticist, awarded Nobel Prize for gene control formation of enzymes
Arnold Orville Beckman (1900-2004) U.S. chemist, inventor of pH meter and spectrophotometer
Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) French physicist, radiation discovery Nobel Prize awarded in 1903 along with Marie Curie
Emil Adolf Behring (1854-1917) German physician awarded Nobel Prize in 1901 for finding diphtheria antitoxin cure
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish Canadian; U.S. inventor of 1st telephone
Emile Berliner (1851-1929) German U.S. inventor, improved telephone phonograph technology
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, discovered glycogenic function of the liver
Timothy John Berners-Lee (1955) English computer science researcher, invented World Wide Web in 1989
Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) Swiss mathematician, physicist, described properties of fluid flow pressure, density, velocity
Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) Swedish chemist, discovered cerium, selenium, isolated silicon, thorium, titanium, zirconium
Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) English inventor, economical steel manufacturing, Bessemer convertor
Hans Bethe (1906-2005) German-U.S. physicist, awarded 1967 Nobel Prize on stellar nucleosynthesis, energy production in stars
Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1909-1966) Indian nuclear physicist and leader of Indian nuclear program
Alfred Binet (1857-1911) French psychologist, 1st IQ tests, Intelligence theory
Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956) U.S. inventor, frozen food industry methods, double belt freezer
Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) Norwegian physicist, atmospheric electric currents, sun source of Northern Lights explanation
James Black (1924-2010) Scottish physician, developed the drug propranolol heart calmer
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) British physician, 1st woman in U.S. medical degree, opened medical college for women
Alfred Blalock (1899-1964) U.S. surgeon, worked on shock blood loss treatment and blue baby syndrome with Vivian Thomas
Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979) U.S. physicist, chemist, work on invisible non-reflective glass
Guy Bluford (1942) 1st African American in space with NASA
Franz Boas (1858-1942) German-U.S. father of modern anthropology; applied scientific method to anthropology, research first
David Bohm (1917-1992) U.S. Brazilian British physicist, quantum theory, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind
Aage Bohr (1922-2009) Danish nuclear physicist awarded Nobel Prize for 1975 particle motion
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist awarded Nobel Prize in 1922 for atomic structure, quantum theory, and the Bohr Model of the atom
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) Austrian physicist, statistical mechanics, statistics of 2nd law of thermodynamics
Max Born (1882-1970) German-British physicist quantum mechanics, the wave function, statistical probability of particle position, awarded 1954 Nobel Prize
Carl Bosch (1874-1940) German chemist awarded Nobel Prize, high pressure methods of synthesis of ammonia
Robert Bosch (1861-1942) German engineer, devices that generate current for ignition of ICE engines
Amar Gopal Bose (1929 - 2013) was an American engineer, academic, and entrepreneur who founded the audio company Bose Corporation in 1964. Bose was a pioneer in modern acoustics and a professor at MIT for over 45 years. His work includes: loudspeakers, noise cancelling headphones, Video Wave TV, flatscreen TV with speaker technology, 901 speaker system.
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) British-Indian scientist, biologist, plant movement stimuli
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) Indian physicist, quantum mechanics, Bose-Einstein Statistics, Condensate and theory
Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (1891-1957) German physicist, coincidence method, particle energy conservation
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) Anglo-Irish chemist and inventor, 1st modern chemist; Law of Gases
Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971) Australian-British physicist, X-ray crystallography diffraction Nobel Prize 1915
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Danish astronomer, geo-heliocentric model, supernovae, comets
Brahmagupta (598-668 AD) Indian mathematician-astronomer, geometry formulas, cyclic quadrilateral
Hennig Brand (1630-1710) German alchemist, discovered element phosphorus, 1st discovered element
Georg Brandt (1694-1768) Swedish chemist & mineralogist, discovered cobalt (a metal unknown in ancient times); He also exposed fraudulent alchemists claiming to turn metals into gold
Werner Von Braun (1912-1977) German-American aerospace engineer, father of rocket science, developed rocket missiles for military
J. Harlen Bretz (1882-1981) American geologist, researched the Missoula floods in Northwest America. “The Channeled Scablands of the Columbia Plateau,” in which he presented his theory that the unique landscape was created by a massive flood originally called the Spokane Flood.
Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) French physicist who researched "the wave nature of electrons," awarded 1929 Nobel Prize, proposed all matter has wave properties
Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) French chemist mineralogist, stratigraphy of the Tertiary period near Paris, cross-reference strata with fossils
Robert Brown (1773-1858) Scottish botanist, nucleus of the cell and Brownian motion random movement of particles
Michael Edw. Brown (1965) American astronomer, objects in Kuiper Belt, including dwarf planets, TNOs Trans-Neptunian objects
Lester R. Brown (1934) American environmentalist, Green Movement, think tank founder, author, sustainable development, conservation
Eduard Buchner (1860-1917) German chemist, fermentation, 1907 Nobel Prize, discovered that yeast extract with no living yeast fungi can form alcohol from a sugar solution.
Linda Buck (1947) American biologist, discovered olfactory receptors (nose) connection to brain, awarded 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology-medicine
William Buckland (1784-1856) English theologian, geologist, discovered "Megalosaurus" (first dinosaur discovery)
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) French naturalist, geologic history in series of stages and extinctions, leading to paleontology, created a comprehensive encyclopedia of natural history connecting all of the natural sciences; collision theory of sun with a comet = solar system
Robert Bunsen (1811-1899) German chemist, Bunsen burner in chemical labs, spectrometry, discovered cesium, rubidium, invented zinc-carbon battery
Luther Burbank (1849-1926) American botanist, horticulturalist, developed plant breeding into modern science, fruits, flowers, vegetables, grasses
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) Irish astrophysicist, discovered radio pulsars while a graduate student, which led to Noble Prize, but was not given credit
Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985) Australian virologist, immunology, discoveries about viral diseases; 1960 Nobel Prize, predicted acquired immune tolerance and theory of clonal selection
Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) English theologian, cosmogonist, Sacred Theory of the Earth, speculated Hollow Earth with water until Noah's Flood.
C
Benjamin Cabrera (1920-2001) Filipino physician, public health, medical parasitology, developed treatments for various diseases of parasites
Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) Spanish neuroscientist, discovered neuron (nerve cell) as basic unit of nervous system; 1906 Nobel Prize in medicine physiology; first Spanish Nobel Prize winner
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) American marine biologist; writings on environmental pollution and natural history of sea; marine conservation
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) American agriculturalist, inventor, teacher, pioneering crop rotation, applications of plant products
Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) English natural philosopher, discovered the element hydrogen in 1766, or elemental nature of hydrogen
Anders Celsius (1701-1744) Swedish astronomer, Celsius temperature scale (centigrade scale) (0-100) based on the freezing and boiling points of water with mercury thermometers
James Chadwick (1891-1974) English physicist, discovered the neutron (neutral subatomic particle in nucleus) in 1932, Nobel Prize in 1935
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) Indian-American physicist; Chandrasekhar limit (the maximum mass of a white dwarf star) or the minimum mass that must be exceeded for a star to collapse into a neutron star or black hole (following a supernova); led to discovery of Black Holes, awarded 1983 Nobel Prize
Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) Austria-Hungarian American biochemist whose work showed that in natural DNA the number of guanine units equals the number of cytosine units and the number of adenine units equals the number of thymine units.
Noam Chomsky (1928) American professor, Father of Modern Linguistics, politics, cognitive science, war critic
Steven Chu (1948) American physicist Nobel Prize 1997 for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light
Leland Clark (1918-2005) American biochemist; invention of Clark membrane oxygen electrode, for measuring oxygen in blood, water, and liquid
John Cockcroft (1897-1967) British physicist; developed nuclear accelerator, split atomic nucleus, development of nuclear power, Nobel Prize 1951
Francis Collins (1950) American physician; discovered important genes associated with human diseases; leader of Human Genome Project; founder of BioLogos
Arthur Compton (1892-1962) American physicist; Compton effect demonstrates the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish astronomer; proposed heliocentric sun at center of solar system and rotating planets including earth
Gerty Theresa Cori (1896-1957) Austrian American biochemist; cycle of carbohydrates (Cori Cycle); body glucose conversion to glycogen; Nobel Prize 1947
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) French physicist; Coulomb's Law: electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion; also worked with friction
Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) French oceanographer, undersea investigations, co-invented 1st fully automatic compressed air-aqua lung
Brian Cox (1968) English physicist and musician, public presenter of science programs, worked at CERN Large Hadron Collider
Francis Crick (1916-2004) English molecular biologist; worked with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, which led to the identification of DNA structure in 1953 and Nobel Prize 1962
James Croll (1821-1890) Scottish scientist; theory of climate variability and multiple ice ages based on changes in the Earth's orbit 60 years before Milankovitch
Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) English botanist, physician, his herbalist systematisation work led to the development of modern pharmaceuticals
Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish-French physicist-chemist, discovery of radium and polonium, finding cancer treatments with radiation, discovery and understanding of radioactivity; Nobel Prize in Physics (radiation) and chemistry (isolating pure radium)
Pierre Curie (1859-1906) French physicist, discovered radium and polonium with his wife, along with the discovery of radioactivity
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) French naturalist, father of paleontology; comparative organismal biology, extinction of past lifeforms
Adalbert Czerny (1863-1941) Austrian pediatrician; modern pediatrics; reducing child mortality
D
Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) German engineer, industrialist, modern (internal combustion) gas engine, 1st 4-wheel automobile in 1885
John Dalton (1766-1844) English chemist, physicist, meteorologist, development of atomic theory in chemistry, color-blindness, human optics
Raymond Damadian (1936-2022) American physician inventor of the first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanning machine for human medicine and performed the first full body scan in 1977, detecting tumors & tissue response signal wavelengths, cancer diagnosis, robbed of Nobel Prize, creationist
James Dwight Dana (1813-1895) American geologist, mineralogist, mountain-building, volcanic activity, origin & structure of continents and oceans, responsible for the term "geosyncline", believed earth contraction from cooling created mountains, also a zoologist, published textbooks on geology, zoology, developed mineral classification system
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist, evolutionary biology by natural selection of inherited variations, The Origin of Species 1859 , all life from common ancestry
Humphry Davy (1778-1829) British chemist, invented Davy safety lamp, Electric Arc Lamp, 1st electric light, electric battery, isolation of sodium, potassium, metals, proved oxygen not part of all acids, invented laughing gas nitrous oxide
Peter Debye (1884-1966) Dutch-American physicist, chemist, 1936 Nobel for dipole moments of molecules, X-ray diffraction, light scattering in gases
Max Delbruck (1906-1981) German-American biophysicist, molecular biology; replication mechanism and genetic structure of viruses; Nobel medicine
Jean Andre Deluc (1727-1817) Swiss geologist; latent heat hypothesis; invented & improved measuring instruments; said creation 6 days epochs of time
Democritus (460-370 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher of atomic theory of the universe; believed everything made of small, invisible atoms
René Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher scientist; I think, therefore I am; deductive reasoning; math variable notation; Cartesian plane points
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (1858-1913) German inventor engineer; invented diesel engine using diesel fuel and internal combustion; fuel efficiency
Diophantus (200-284 A.D. Greek mathematician, number theory, notations, father of polynomials, positive rational numbers, algebraic notation
Paul Dirac (1902-1984) English mathematical theoretical physicist; one of founders of quantum mechanics & quantum electrodynamics); positron; relativistic quantum theory
Prokop Divis (1698-1765) Czech theologian and scientist; developed 1st grounded lightning rod to prevent thunderstorms
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) American geneticist; evolutionary biology; theistic evolution
Frank Drake (1930-2022) American astrophysicist; the Drake Equation for number of possible intelligent life forms to be discovered
K. Eric Drexler (1955) American engineer introduced molecular nanotechnology; high performance solar sail; making metals in space
E
John Eccles (1903-1997) Australian neurophysiologist; worked on synapse, or measuring small variations in electrical charges at contact surfaces between nerve cells, Nobel Prize 1963
Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) English astronomer; helped prove or confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1919 during a solar eclipse, when light travels around curved space caused by mass and gravity of a large object like the sun
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, businessman, electric power devices, mass communication, sound recording, motion pictures, incandescent light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera, improving the telegraph and telephone
Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) German physician scientist, discovered 1st antibiotic treatment for syphilis; chemotherapy; identification of bacteria and blood cells to diagnose blood diseases; Nobel Prize
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German theoretical physicist; theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity and motion; photoelectric effect Nobel
Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) American biochemist; pharmacologist: Nobel Prize 1988 for innovative methods of rational drug design for development of new drugs for treating various diseases like leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes.
Empedocles (492-432 B.C.) Greek philosopher; four elements of all matter: fire, air, water, earth; unsuccessfully threw himself into volcano to prove he was a god; inventor of rhetoric and founder of the science of medicine in Italy
Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) Greek polymath, philosopher; geographer; prime numbers; measuring diameter of earth and earth's axial tilt; distance from earth to sun and moon; global projection with parallels and meridians; scientific chronology for historical dates; librarian at Alexandria
Euclid (300 B.C.) Greek mathematician, geometry, Elements=points, lines, planes; spherical and conic sections, number theory
Eudoxus of Cnidus (390-340 B.C.) Greek astronomer, mathematician, geometry, theory of proportions, magnitudes, geocentric theory of earth
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) Swiss mathematician, scientist, functional notation f(x), trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan); Euler's formula relation with trigonometric and exponential functions
F
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) English scientist; electromagnetism; electrochemistry; electromagnetic induction; diamagnetism, electrolysis; father of the electric motor, electric generator, electric transformer, and electrolysis, self taught
Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665) French mathematician; infinitesimal calculus; finding ordinates in curved lines, led to differential calculus; finding tangents to curves and their maximum and minimum points; number theory
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) Italian-American physicist, creator of 1st nuclear reactor, leading to production of 1st atomic bomb in 1942; Nobel Prize for artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist; quantum mechanics; quantum electrodynamics, physics of superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium; Parton model of particle physics
Fibonacci, Leonardo of Pisa (1170-1240) Italian mathematician; top western mathematician of the Middle Ages; popularized the Indo-Arabic numeral system in the western world by his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation); introduced the sequence of Fibonacci numbers, where each number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two numbers
Emil Fischer (1852-1919) German chemist Nobel prize 1902, discovered caffeine and other purines, and the molecular structures of sugars and proteins. Fischer discovered the Fischer esterification. Fischer also developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms. He also hypothesized lock and key mechanism of enzyme action.
Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) British mathematician, scientist, developed the application of statistical procedures to the design of scientific experiments.
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Scottish physician who discovered the antibiotic penicillin, which greatly saved lives from infections; Nobel Prize
Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) English electrical engineer; father of modern electronics; 1st vacuum tube; radio-transmitter for 1st trans-Atlantic radio transmission; right hand rule in physics for magnetic field forces
Howard Florey (1898-1968) Australian pharmacologist & pathologist, shared Nobel prize with Fleming & Chain for penicillin discovery.
Henry Ford (1863-1947) American industrialist engineer, founder of Ford Motor Company; his Model T assembly line made it affordable
Lee De Forest (1873-1961) American inventor, electrical engineer; electronic amplifier; Audion triode vacuum tube; live radio broadcasting
Dian Fossey (1932-1985) American primatologist (mountain gorillas) and conservationist to preserve population of mountain gorillas
Leon Foucault (1819-1868) French physicist, pendulum demonstration, for proof of Earth's rotation on its axis; early measurement of speed of light; discovered eddy currents; named the gyroscope
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American scientist and inventor, statesman, diplomat. He coined the terms “battery,” “positive charge,” and “negative charge,” and discovered new ways to generate, store, and deploy electricity. His design and promotion of the use of lightning rods helped prevent untold numbers of structural fires throughout the world.
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) British chemist, X-ray crystallographer, work led to identify molecular structure of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, graphite; robbed of Nobel prize that went to Watson and Crick for DNA structure discovery
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian neurologist, father of psychology, founder of psychoanalysis; theories of conscious and unconscious mind, the id, ego, superego, dream interpretation
Elizabeth Smith Friedman (1892-1980) American cryptanalyst, (for deciphering enemy codes) served in both world wars, the military, and international crime cases
G
Galen (129-216 A.D.) Roman-Greek physician, surgeon, philosopher; Galen believed that the body contained four important liquids called humors, which were phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. These humors must remain in balance for a person to remain healthy. If there was too much of one humor, illness occurred. The excess fluid was removed; for example, blood was removed by bleeding and excess bile could be removed with a purgative. The theory of the humors was an accepted medical teaching until the Renaissance period. Hajar R. Medicine from Galen to the Present: A Short History. Heart Views. 2021 Oct-Dec;22(4):307-308. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer; stars, lunar mountains and craters; Jupiter's moons, phases of Venus, sunspots; heliocentric model; rings of Saturn
Francis Galton (1822-1911) British scientist, behavioral genetics, 340 publications, statistical correlation, regression toward the mean, fingerprints, human intelligence, eugenics
Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) Italian physician, physicist, electricity in animal tissue (frogs), studied the effect of electric spark on nerves, muscles, as conductors-receptors of brain stimuli
George Gamow (1904-1968) Soviet-American physicist; promoted Lemaitre's Big Bang Theory expanding universe, atomic nucleus, star activity, creation of elements, genetic code of life; predicted temperature of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Martin Gardner (1914-2010) American mathematician, science writer, popularizer of recreational mathematics (games for students)
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) German mathematician, physicist, number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary science, theory of functions, electromagnetism, potential theory
Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) American theoretical physicist; theorized existence of quarks as elementary subatomic particles, only subatomic particles that experience all 4 forces of nature; Nobel prize
Sophie Germain (1776-1831) French mathematician-physicist, 1st woman to receive math award; elasticity theory, Fermat's last theorem; number theory; mean curvature
Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) American scientist, thermodynamics, physical chemistry; statistical mechanics; Gibbs Free Energy; 1st PhD in engineering (Yale)
William Gilbert (1544-1603) English physician, physicist, created science of magnetism and electricity: discovered Earth is a magnet
Sheldon Lee Glashow (1932) theoretical physicist, unified electromagnetic force and the weak interaction of elementary particles into one force, Nobel Prize
Robert Goddard (1882-1945) American physicist, inventor; created world's first controlled, liquid fuel rocket 1926; father of American rocketry; solid fuel rocket
Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972) German-American theoretical physicist, magic numbers; atomic shells; Nobel prize, nuclear shell model of atomic nucleus, protons and neutrons in a nucleus arrange themself in distinct energy levels just like electron shells.
Thomas Gold (1920-2004) Austrian-American physicist, promoted steady state theory of the universe, the universe is the same everywhere all the time
Jane Goodall (1934) English biologist, primatologist, research on chimpanzees of Tanzania (Gombe Stream Nat.Park) and their interactions with each other
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) American biologist, paleontologist, evolutionary theory; theory of punctuated equilibrium=long stability, swift punctuated specialization
Fredrick Gregory (1941) American astronaut, engineer, Air Force pilot, one of first 3 African Americans in space NASA
Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) German physicist, engineer, 1st air pump 1650, vacuums, role of air in combustion and respiration, fluids and gases
H
Fritz Haber (1868-1934) German chemist, Haber-Bosch process, nitrogen and hydrogen from air to fertilizer, producing ammonia, Nobel prize
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) German zoologist, discovered thousands of new species, coined new terminology, genealogical tree, homology of embryos & evolution
Otto Hahn (1879-1968) German chemist, pioneer in radioactivity, radiochemistry, father of nuclear chemistry & nuclear fission discovery; thorium isotope
Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) Swiss physiologist; father of modern physiology; irritability property of muscle tissue, sensibility exclusive property of nervous tissue
Edmund Halley (1656-1742) English astronomer, physicist, 1st to calculate orbit of a comet & the comet was named after him (Halley's Comet)
Ken Ham (1951) Australian-American founder of Answers in Genesis
Alister Hardy (1896-1985) English marine-biologist, invented CPR, continuous plankton recorder, allowing mapping of world's plankton distribution and changes
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) English astronomer, mathematician, theory of refraction of light, sine law; 1st observed sunspots with telescope; 1st to see moon with a telescope and created the 1st map of the moon; one of 1st astronomers to use a telescope; shape of cannonball flight as parabola because of gravity and air resistance; accurate observations of Halley's comet; symbolic algebra, binary arithmetic, infinite series, foundation of calculus, correcting errors with navigation tools
William Harvey (1578-1657) English physician, 1st to correctly describe blood circulation in the body; heart pumps blood through arteries and veins quickly to make a complete circuit through the body heart to heart
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) English theoretical physicist; black holes, origin of universe, author
Otto Haxel (1909-1988) German nuclear physicist; German nuclear energy project; Max Plank Institute
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist; pioneer of theory of quantum mechanics; Nobel prize; hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, atomic nucleus, subatomic particles, cosmic rays, ferromagnetism
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) German physicist; opthalmoscope to see inside eyes; energy conservation, vortex equations for fluid dynamics, free energy in thermodynamics
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644) Belgian chemist, physiologist; gas classification, stomach acid in digestion
Joseph Henry (1797-1878) American scientist; 1st secretary of Smithsonian Inst.; property of inductance in electric circuits, electromagnetic inductance led to development of the telegraph, telephone, and electric motor
Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) German-British astronomer, identified several comets, and nebulae gas clouds
John Herschel (1792-1871) English polymath, photographer, blueprint, botanist
William Herschel (1738-1822) German-British astronomer, discovered planet Uranus, proposed that nebula contain stars, theory of stellar evolution; discovered infrared light radiation; discovered thousands of nebulae and star clusters
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887-1975) German physicist, Nobel on inelastic electron collisions in gasses, lose energy as electrons collide; electrons hold discrete quantized states of energy
Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) German physicist; demonstrated that electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell actually exist; his name used for unit of frequency
Karl F. Herzfeld (1892-1978) Austrian-American physicist; kinetic theory; ultrasonics; behavior of liquids and gases
George de Hevesy (1885-1966) Hungarian radiochemist; Nobel Prize for radiotracer principle to study chemical processes in animals; father of nuclear medicine
Antony Hewish (1924-2021) British radio-astronomer; Nobel prize for role in discovering pulsars, a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles.
David Hilbert (1862-1943) German mathematician discovered and developed invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory).
Maurice Hilleman (1919-2005) American microbiologist developed over 40 vaccines, top vaccine scientist of the 20th century
Hipparchus (190-120 B.C.) Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician, early trigonometry, precession of the equinoxes, calculated length of a year; created the 1st star catalog
Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) Greek physician, father of Greek medicine, books; prognosis; clinical observation; systematic categorization of diseases; established medicine as a distinct profession, clinical medicine
Shintaro Hirase (1884-1939) Japanese biologist (malacologist); mollusk collection; taxonomy; new species discovered; journal publications
Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) English chemist; X-ray crystallography of biomolecules; molecular structure of penicillin, insulin, Nobel prize
Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English polymath; designed microscope; coined the term cell; cell theory, living things are made of cells; Hooke's law of elasticity force to extend-compress a spring directly proportional to displacement of spring; gravity inverse square law; identified rotations of Mars and Jupiter; believed Earth was not static; extinction of species; uplift and erosion of land surface; helped rebuild London
Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1861–1947) British biochemist; discovered essential vitamins in animals; Nobel; discovered amino acid tryptophan essential to proteins
William Hopkins (1793-1866) English mathematician geologist, private tutor for Cambridge undergraduate mathematics students
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) American computer scientist-mathematician; pioneer in computer programming languages; development of UNIVAC first commercial computer; wrote 1st computer manual; contributed to creation of COBOL language in 1959
Frank Hornby (1863–1936) English inventor; Meccano toy kits for children; model railway trains, Dinky toys, Meccano magazine; Parliament member
Jack Horner (1946) American paleontologist; discovered Maiasaura dinosaur; evidence for nesting and parental care among dinosaur
Bernardo Houssay (1887-1971) Argentine physiologist, Nobel prize for work on pituitary hormones in regulating glucose blood sugar levels in animals
Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) English astronomer; stellar nucleosynthesis of heavy elements; nuclear reactions in cores of stars for elements up to iron; promoted steady state universe model over big bang theory
Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) American astronomer; discovered new galaxies beyond Milky way; measured galactic distances; Hubble's Law: evidence for universe expansion
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) German scientist; plant biogeography and ecosystems, proposed Atlantic continents' coastlines were once together; father of ecology and environmentalism; plant distribution, climate, geography, ecosystem intereconnectedness
Russell Humpheys (1942) American physicist; creationist model for planetary magnetic fields, distant starlight; Starlight and Time author
James Hutton (1726-1797) Scottish geologist, chemist; uniformitarianism and deep time model of earth history
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) Dutch scientist; formulated wave theory of light; derived formula for centrifugal force in classical mechanics; rings of Saturn, discovered Titan; invented pendulum clock
Hypatia (350-415 A.D.) Roman Alexandria, Egypt neo-Platonist taught philosopher, astronomer; wrote commentary about mathematics works; daughter of Theon
I
Ernesto Illy (1925-2008) Italian chemist; chairman of coffee manufacturer; researched coffee and espresso quality, espresso machines, and packaging
Ernst Ising (1900-1998) German physicist; phase transitions; ferromagnetism; linear chain of magnetic moments with only two possible positions: “up” or “down.” The Ising model describes a system of interacting spins (quantum angular momenta) on a lattice, where each spin can be either “up” or “down.” Ising’s work laid the foundation for understanding how magnetic materials transition from a paramagnetic (random spin orientations) to a ferromagnetic (aligned spins) state.
Keisuke Ito (1803-1901) Japanese medical practitioner; botanist; devised a smallpox vaccine in 1852; studied Japanese flora and fauna
J
Mae Carol Jemison (1956) American astronaut, engineer, physician; 1st African-American woman in space; research technology company, nonprofit
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) English physician; created smallpox vaccine, world's 1st vaccine; pioneered concept of vaccines
J. Hans D. Jensen (1907-1973) German nuclear physicist; separation of uranium isotopes; 1963 Nobel for nuclear shell model
Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956) French chemist, physicist; joint-Nobel prize in 1935 with husband Frederic Joliot-Curie for discovery of induced radioactivity (daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie)
James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) English physicist, studied relationship between heat and mechanical work, leading to the law of conservation of energy and the 1st law of thermodynamics; the unit of energy is named after him, the joule
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) Percy Julian chemist, pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants such as soybeans. Julian had a large role in the development of industrial scale chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as physostigmine, progesterone, testosterone, and corticosteroids.
K
Michio Kaku (1947) American physicist, author, science communicator, professor of theoretical physics
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) Dutch physicist, Nobel for studying material behavior when cooled to near absolute zero; liquified helium for the 1st time; discovered superconductivity.
Pyotr Kapitsa (1894-1984) Soviet physicist, Nobel for work on low-temperature physics
Friedrich August Kekulé (1829-1896) German organic chemist; theory of chemical structure; Kekule structure of benzene
Frances Kelsey (1914-2015) Canadian-American pharmacologist physician; FDA reviewer; refused to authorize thalidomide, later shown to cause birth defects
Pearl Kendrick (1890-1980) American bacteriologist co-developed 1st successful whooping cough vaccine along with Grace Eldering and Loney Gordon (1930s)
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer; laws of planetary motion; books; influenced Isaac Newton's law of gravitation
Abdul Qadeer Khan (1936-2021) Pakistani nuclear physicist; Pakistan's atomic weapons program
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Persian polymath, astronomer, philosopher, poet; known for finding geometric solutions to cubic equations; conics; Euclid's parallel axiom; calculated duration of solar year; designed a solar calendar as basis to the current Persian calendar.
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) American scientist on human sexual reproduction
Gustav Kirchoff (1824-1887) German physician and mathematician; electric circuits; spectroscopy, black-body radiation by heated objects; Kirchoff's laws of circuits and thermal radiation, thermochemistry
Martin Klaproth (1743-1817) German chemist; apothecary; systemizer of analytical chemistry; inventor of gravimetric analysis; discovered uranium, zirconium, titanium, strontium, cerium, chromium, confirmed discovery of tellurium, beryllium
Robert Koch (1843-1910) German physician, microbiologist, discovered causes of infectious diseases tuberculosis, cholera, anthrax; founder of modern bacteriology; father of microbiology; proof of germ theory of diseases; created scientific basis of public health; modern medicine; Nobel 1905
Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) German psychiatrist; origin of psychiatric disease is biologic and genetic malfunction
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) American historian and philosopher of science; scientific revolutions; paradigm shifts of scientific advancement
Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014) American chemist; invented Kevlar, a strong, heat resistant synthetic fibers; worked with DuPont
L
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) Italian-French mathematician, physicist, astronomer; He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) French naturalist, proponent of biological evolution according to natural laws
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) Austrian-American actress and inventor; developed concept of "frequency hopping" along with George Antheil which helped enable wireless communication technology, such as Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth. Frequency hopping, also known as frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS), is a radio transmission method that involves rapidly switching between multiple frequency channels. This technique is used to minimize the risk of unauthorized interception or jamming of telecommunications.
Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991) American scientist and inventor; lead the Polaroid corporation to the first instant photography system
Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) Austrian-American biologist, physician; humans have different types of red blood cells and can clump when mixed together; led to blood transfusions of similar blood type or group; Nobel prize 1930
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) French mathematician, astronomer, physicist; stability of solar system; theory of magnetic, electrical, and heat wave propagation; Laplace equation; Laplace transformation, differential operator, to simplify the solution to many differential equations that describe physical processes
Max von Laue (1879-1960) German physicist; discovery of diffraction of X-rays by crystals; 1914 Nobel prize
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) French chemist; father of modern chemistry; named oxygen; discovered oxygen is a key substance in combustion; developed the modern system of naming chemical substances; law of conservation of mass
Ernest Lawrence (1901-1958) American physicist; 1939 Nobel Prize for inventing the cyclotron, which proved instrumental in the production of fissionable isotopes and success of the Manhattan Project.
Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921) American astronomer; developed tools to map out the stars of the universe; correlation between period and luminosity; helped map the sky and universe; measured distances from earth to stars, brightness, magnitude of stars
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) Dutch scientist; father of microbiology; described size and shape of blood cells; discovered blood circulation through capillaries; discovered bacteria in water; discovered sperm cells and fertilization when sperm and egg unite; insects reproduce like larger organisms; discovered many microorganisms; studied plant anatomy; made microscopes
Inge Lehmann (1888-1993) Danish seismologist; discovered the Earth's inner core in 1936 by using seismic wave data
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) German mathematician; differential and integral calculus, independent of Isaac Newton; binary system
Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) Belgian scientist; 1st proposed Big Bang Theory scientifically; universe began from explosion of super atom
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian scientist, engineer; envisioned airplane flying machine, helicopter, tank, concentrated solar power; a calculator; the double-hull; artist, painter; sculptor, draftsman, architect
Niccolo Leoniceno (1428-1524) Italian physician; translated ancient Greek, Arab medical texts into the Latin language; wrote 1st scientific paper on syphilis.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American scientist; environmental ethics and wilderness conservation
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012) Italian neurobiologist; 1986 Nobel with Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor, mechanisms that regulate growth of cells and organs
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) French anthropologist; structuralism paradigm in social sciences
Willard Frank Libby (1908-1980) American physical chemist; development of radiocarbon dating in 1949 for archaeology and paleontology
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) German chemist and agriculturalist; development of nitrogen-based fertilizer; beef extract; helped found organic chemistry; analytical methods
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) Swedish biologist; created modern system of naming organisms (binomial system) ; the father of modern taxonomy
Joseph Lister (1827-1912) British surgeon scientist, pathologist, pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative healthcare; father of modern surgery
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and physician, enlightenment thinker; father of liberalism; limited government; theory of natural rights: life, liberty, and property; opposed divine right of kings; social contract theory: government exists only by the consent of the people in order to protect basic rights and promote the common good of society. Locke opposed the divine right of kings; he believed that kings who don't respect natural rights could be removed
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) Dutch physicist; 1902 Nobel prize for Zeeman effect, the effect of splitting of a spectral line into several components in the presence of a static magnetic field. Lorentz studied connections between electricity, magnetism, and light. Lorentz electron theory= in matter there are charged particles, electrons, that conduct electric current and whose oscillations give rise to light.
Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) Australian zoologist; animal behavior; principle of attachment or imprinting between newborn animal and its caregiver; 1973 Nobel prize
Ada Lovelace (1815-1882) English mathematician; worked on Charles Babbage's personal computer; recognized that the computer had applications beyond calculations; Lovelace was recognized as the 1st computer programmer
Percival Lowell (1885-1916) American businessman and scientist; predicted existence of Pluto (9th planet), predicted canals on Mars
Lucretius (99-51 B.C.) Roman poet and philosopher; author of the philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe)
Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Scottish geologist; natural causes of earth's history; uniformitarianism; author: Principles of Geology; worked with Charles Darwin
M
Ernst Mach (1838-1916) Austrian physicist and philosopher; physics of shock waves; speed of sound; super-sonic motion; the ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor
Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) Italian physician; founder of microscopical anatomy; histology; father of physiology and embryology; link between arteries and veins; red blood cells; oxygen and blood circulation in lungs; skin pigmentation mechanism; sensory mechanism of the tongue; connection between spinal cord and brain; discovery of pulmonary capillaries and alveoli
Jane Marcet (1769-1858) English author of science textbooks
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) Italian inventor scientist; used radio waves to transmit signals over a distance of several kilometers. He developed the technology in later years to achieve greater range of signals, establishing the foundation for both wireless telegraphy and radio. Nobel prize 1909.
Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) American biologist; theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges central tenets of neo-Darwinism. She argued that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Endosymbiotic theory is an evolutionary theory that explains the origin of eukaryotic cells from prokaryotes; Mitochondria from chloroplasts; It states that several key organelles of eukaryotes originated as a symbiosis between separate single-celled organisms.
Barry Marshall (1951) Australian physician; 2005 Nobel with Robin Warren; discovery that stomach ulcers are an infectious disease caused by bacteria
Polly Matzinger (1947) French born immunologist; danger model theory of immune system, which suggests that the immune system is far less concerned with things that are foreign than with those that do damage. The danger model of the immune system proposes that it differentiates between components that are capable of causing damage, rather that distinguishing between self and non-self.
Matthew Maury (1806-1873) American oceanographer; discovered ocean currents and mapped them; father of oceanography; currents, winds, weather conditions across the world's oceans
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Scottish physicist; classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) German-American biologist; biological species concept; linked Darwin to Mendelian genetics
Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) American scientist; Nobel prize for the discovery of genetic transposition proving that genes can move on a chromosome, causing certain physical characteristics to turn on or off. She also was 1st to identify all ten maize chromosomes.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) Jewish Austrian physician; discovered the radioactive element protactinium and 1st to describe nuclear fission; overlooked for Nobel prize
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Austrian biologist; discovered fundamental laws of inheritance; father of genetics; genes come in pairs and are inherited, one from each parent; principles of heredity; mathematical foundation of scientific genetics
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) Russian chemist and inventor; formulated the Periodic Law and the Periodic Table of the Elements in 1869
Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) German physician and astronomer; developed system of therapeutics called mesmerism, the forerunner of hypnotism.
Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) Italian inventor; invented 1st telephone (according to several sources) or voice communication apparatus
John Michell (1724-1793) English natural philosopher; predicted black holes, seismology, manufacture of magnets, mass of earth
Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) Prussian-American; measured speed of light; Nobel prize; Michelson-Morley experiment=speed of light is constant in all directions enabling calculation of distances in space, confirmed E=mc2; invented echelon telescope; measured diameter of a star
Thomas Midgeley Jr. (1889-1944) American engineer; solved problem of engine knock by creating tetraethyl lead gasoline, increasing efficiency; developed freon for refrigerators and air conditioners
Milutin Milanković (1879-1958) Serbian mathematician; developed theory relating Earth motions to long-term climate change cycles
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) American astronomer; 1st female astronomer in U.S., 1st American scientist to discover a comet, in 1847
Mario Molina (1943-2020) Mexican physical chemist; 1995 Nobel co-prize for discovery of Antarctic ozone hole and the threat to Earth's ozone layer from chloroflurocarbon gases.
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) American biologist; Nobel prize for discovery of role of chromosomes in heredity; confirmed the chromosomal theory of inheritance; confirmed genes are stored in chromosomes inside the nucleus of the cell
Henry Morris (1918-2006) American engineer and creationism promoter; father of modern creation science; co-authored the book The Genesis Flood with John C. Whitcomb in 1961.
Samuel Morse (1791-1872) American inventor; electric telegraph, long-distance communication; transmitted electric signals by wire between stations; co-developed Morse Code text for the telegraph communication; painter
Henry Moseley (1887-1915) English physicist; pioneering studies of X-rays emitted from the elements, Moseley's law leading to the concept of atomic number arrangement on the Periodic Table based on X-ray frequency; atomic structure; predicted elements
N
Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-1962) Japanese physicist; glaciology; created 1st artificial snowflakes in laboratory; he explained the mechanism of growth and thermal behavior of Tyndall figures (negative crystals) in ice crystals with his experiments. Also in this period he compiled many data on plastic deformation of ice crystals which made it clear that the ice crystal slips in the basal plane in layers. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Journal of Glaciology, 1.30.2017)
John Napier (1550-1617) Scottish mathematician, physicist, known for his discovery-invention of logarithms to help in mathematical calculations, which helped the invention of analog computers and slide rules. Also invented Napier's bones (rods), which could be assembled in different ways to multiply or divide large numbers by reading across the columns of figures. Napier also made common use of the decimal point in mathematics.
Giulio Natta (1903-1979) Italian chemical engineer; Nobel 1963 with Karl Ziegler for work on high-density polymers. He discovered a catalyst that formed molecular chains with their parts oriented in certain directions, making it possible to produce rubbery and textile-like materials. He discovered plastics contain very large molecules containing long chains of smaller molecules.
John Needham (1713-1781) English biologist and priest; theory of spontaneous generation; living organisms can develop from non-living matter; claimed to grow microbes in laboratory experiment after boiling a broth mixture and letting it cool
John von Neumann (1903-1957) Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, engineer; early development of computers; MANIAC; game theory
Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) English inventor; created atmospheric steam engine, 1st practical, fuel burning engine in 1712 (steam engine)
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) English mathematician, physicist, astronomer who formulated laws of motion of objects and universal gravitation into math formula equations; published the book Principia; invented calculus, reflecting telescope, new theory of light and color, alchemist, theologian, natural philosopher
Charles Nicolle (1866-1936) French bacteriologist; 1928 Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries about typhus disease prevention research (lice)
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) English social reformer, statistician; founder of modern nursing; hospital management; author
Tim Noakes (1949) South African scientist; exercise science; nutrition; author of scientific books
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor; invented dynamite; founded the Nobel prizes; many patents
Emmy Noether (1882-1935) German mathematician; abstract algebra; proved Noether's 1st and 2nd theorems; top mathematician of 20th century and called the most important female mathematician in history by Albert Einstein and others; developed theory of rings, fields, algebras. Group theory, number theory. Noether's theorem explains physics connections between symmetry and conservation laws. She proved two theorems that were basic for both general relativity and elementary particle physics.
Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (1942) German biologist; 1995 joint Nobel prize for research on mechanisms of early embryonic development
Bill Nye (1955) American science communicator, television personality for science educational programming; engineer
O
Hans Christian Orsted (1777-1851) Danish physicist chemist; discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, which was the first connection found between electricity and magnetism. Oersted's law and the oersted unit are named after him. Discovered and produced aluminum.
Georg Ohm (1789-1854) German physicist mathematician; Ohm's law, describing the mathematical relationship between electrical current, resistance and voltage. V=IR (Voltage (V) equals current (I) times resistance (R); He also developed the Ohm's torsion balance, a device used to measure current, and Ohm's acoustic law.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) American theoretical physicist; director of Manhattan Project Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II; had a leading role in developing, researching, and designing the first atomic bombs
Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) German chemist; founder of physical chemistry; rates of chemical reactions; acids and bases; Nobel prize for work on definition of catalyst, which can affect a chemical reaction's speed, but is not included in its end products; applications to industrial chemical reactions and biochemical reactions; chemical equilibria and rates of reactions; discovered law of dilution of electrolytes
William Oughtred (1574-1660) English mathematician, clergyman; invented earliest form of the slide rule in 1622 using logarithms and logarithmic scales, lines, or rules. Used the slide rule to perform multiplication and division; created math symbols x for multiplication, and sin and cos for the sine and cosine functions.
P
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician scientist; foundation of modern theory of probability; Pascal's triangle for binomial expansion; Pascal's principle of pressure; early digital calculator, syringe, a hydraulic press, and roulette wheel; atmospheric pressure; proved existence of vacuum above atmosphere
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French chemist and biologist; discovered principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, which kills microbes and prevents spoilage in food products such as milk; disproved theory of spontaneous generation; proposed that life only comes from life and that diseases are caused by microscopic organisms; discovered principles of vaccination and created vaccines for rabies and anthrax in 1885; discovered fermentation, molecular asymmetry, and that virulence (severity of disease) can be increased or decreased
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900-1958) Austrian theoretical physicist; pioneer of quantum mechanics; explained the Zeeman effect (splitting of spectral line into components in the presence of a static magnetic field); proposed the existence of the neutrino elementary particle; developed Paul Exclusion Principle (no two electrons in the same atom can have identical values for all four of their quantum numbers-no more than two electrons in each orbital and two electrons in the same orbital must have opposite spins)
Linus Pauling (1991-1994) American chemist; nature of the chemical bond; developed concepts of resonance and hybridization with chemical bond shared electrons; cause of sickle-cell anemia; developed accurate oxygen meter for submarines; helped create synthetic plasma; determined the spiral structure of proteins; helped lead Watson and Crick to their discovery of DNA structure; Nobel Prize; developed electronegativity scale for elements; concept of molecular disease; the role of antigens and antibodies in the immune system
Randy Pausch (1960-2008) American computer science professor; developed "Alice" software project which create animations, builds interactive narratives, or programs simple games in 3D.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian neurologist-physiologist; discovered theory of classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs; He was awarded the 1904 Nobel prize in medicine for research on digestion and digestive glands
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) British-American astronomer; discovered that the Sun and the other stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. Heavier elements, such as those making up the bulk of the Earth, make up less than two percent of the mass of the stars.
Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) American-Canadian neurosurgeon; developed the Montreal Procedure, which enabled surgeons to operate on the brains of epileptic patients and destroy the cells where seizures originated. He also discovered that stimulation of the temporal lobes provoked startlingly vivid recollections, which is proof of the physical basis of memory.
Marguerite Perey (1909-1975) French physicist and student of Marie Curie; discovered francium in 1939 by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium.
William Perkin (1838-1907) British chemist; discovered mauvine, the first commercialized synthetic dye; and other synthetic dyes
John Philoponus (490-570) Byzantine Greek philosopher, Christian author; creation of universe ex-nihilo; prime matter as 3D extension; projectile motion by impetus; theory of impetus
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist; theory of child cognitive development; 4 major stages of cognitive development: (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking, with each stage being an age group, the last of which is age 12 and up
Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) French physician; father of modern psychiatry; he advocated humane treatment of mentally ill (moral therapy); he developed diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders; his work influenced modern psychotherapy
Max Planck (1858-1947) German physicist; 1918 Nobel prize for discovery of elementary energy quanta (discrete values) in his quantum theory; Plank's law is also applied to radiation law where energy is only emitted in discrete values or quanta
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (23-79 A.D.) Roman philosopher and author, published 1st encyclopedia Natural History (an encyclopedia of natural science)
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French scientist who researched the three-body problem and discovered that orbits can be non-periodic. Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. Poincare is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology; dynamic systems theory and the solar system; worked on special relativity theory; gravitational waves; electromagnetic theory
Karl Popper (1902-1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science, who promoted the theory of falsification, which is a way to separate science from non-science by saying that a theory is scientific only if it is testable and conceivable to be proven false. If a theory cannot be tested, then it is not scientific. So Popper rejected evolution theory as unscientific because it cannot be tested. Popper is known for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences.
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) English children's author, scientist, conservationist; studied fungi and mushroom reproduction
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) English chemist, minister, inventor, discovered oxygen and a dozen chemical compounds, published a paper about electricity, invented carbonated water, pencil eraser.
Proclus (412-485 A.D.) Greek neo-platonic philosopher, most well-known philosopher of late antiquity, helped transfer platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages
Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 A.D.) Alexandrian scientist; geocentric theory of the universe that lasted for 1,400 years; astronomy, mathematics, geography, music theory, optics
Pythagoras (570-495 B.C.) Greek philosopher and polymath; influenced Plato and Aristotle; Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, theory of proportions, sphericity of Earth; astronomy; the morning and evening stars as planet Venus; he was known as the father of philosophy-systematic thinking, reasoning, rational inquiry; father of mathematics; father of music; music theory: pitch intervals based on string length
Q
Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist; founded and directed Brussels Observatory; introduced statistical methods to the social sciences; he collected population data about births, deaths, crimes, and censuses; his average man theory found truths about population using statistics about social behaviors and studying their distributions and averages.
Harriet Quimby (1875-1912) American aviator, journalist, film screenwriter; 1st woman to receive a pilot's license; 1st woman to fly solo over the English Channel
Thabit ibn Qurra (836-901 A.D.) Abbasid polymath, astronomy, medicine, translated ancient Greek texts into Arabic
R
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata (C.V.) Raman (1888-1970) Indian physicist known for his work in the field of light scattering. Using a spectrograph that he developed, Raman and his student K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected light scatters, changing its wavelength and energy. Named Raman Effect or Raman Scattering. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics, and he was the 1st Asian to win the prize.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) Indian mathematician who reshaped twentieth-century mathematics with his various contributions in several mathematical domains, including mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions, number theory, and game theory is recognized as one of history's greatest mathematicians.
William Ramsay (1852-1916) Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases as a new group on the periodic table and received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1904. He first discovered argon, neon, krypton, xenon. Helium and radon already known.
John Ray (1627-1705) English naturalist; produced a widely-accepted biological definition of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy
Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944) Indian chemist who discovered stable compound mercurous nitrite; Father of Indian chemistry; founded India's 1st pharmaceutical company; 1st to synthesize mercury, pioneered the use of mercury for skin diseases; discovered element thallium; published books and articles
Francesco Redi (1626-1697) Italian physician; founder of experimental biology; father of modern parasitology; 1st to challenge theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies; proved that cells don't come from nonliving matter; proved life comes from life by reproduction (theory of biogenesis) and therefore proved a major pillar of cell theory
Sally Ride (1951-2012) American astronaut and physicist; 1st American woman to travel in space and 3rd woman to travel in space; technology career promoter
Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series; Reimann surfaces, Reimann hypothesis; analytic number theory; differential geometry; mathematics of general relativity; He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
Edouard Roche (1820-1883) French astronomer who calculated the Roche (limit) or Roche radius, which is the distance from a celestial body within which a second celestial body, held together only by its own force of gravity, will disintegrate because the first body's tidal forces exceed the second body's self-gravitation. Also calculated Roche sphere (gravitational sphere of influence, such as with an astronomical body) and Roche lobe (region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star).
Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) German engineer and physicist; discovered X-rays, or electromagnetic radiation (rays) in the wavelength range assigned to X-rays accidentally while experimenting with cathode rays and fluorescence in vacuum tubes. He was awarded the inaugural Nobel prize in physics in 1901. The discovery of X-rays revolutionized the medical field by allowing doctors to see inside the human body and diagnose diseases easier.
Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) Swiss psychiatrist who developed a projective test with an inkblot designed to reflect unconscious parts of the personality that "project" onto the stimuli. The inkblot test used for diagnosing psychopathology.
Ronald Ross (1857-1932) British physician, polymath; awarded Nobel prize in medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria parasites by mosquitos
Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroes in Europe) Andalusian polymath who wrote about many subjects from philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, law, and linguistics
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand physicist; father of nuclear physics; pioneering study of radioactivity and the atom; he discovered two types of radiation: the alpha and beta particles from uranium. Rutherford discovered that the atom is mostly empty space, and the mass is concentrated in the centrally positively charged nucleus of the atom; discovery of atomic nucleus; discovery of the proton; Nobel prize in chemistry for 1908. Rutherford model of the atom; discovery of radon; artificial disintegration of elements; proposed laws of radioactive decay
S
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American astronomer and science communicator; possibility of extraterrestrial life and experimental production of amino acids from chemicals and light exposure
Abdus Salam (1926-1996) Pakistani physicist: awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, along with Glashow and Weinberg, for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current. Salam realized that at high temperatures, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear force were the same. He showed that the two forces were components of one unified force, the electroweak force. Many physics topics can be taught in connection to unified theory. Salam's notable achievements also include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photons, vector mesons, Grand Unified Theory, and work on supersymmetry, quantum field theory, neutrinos, neutron stars, black holes, and quantum mechanics.
Jonas Salk (1914-1995) American virologist who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines
Frederick Sanger (1918-2013) British biochemist awarded Nobel prize in chemistry twice for determining the structure of the insulin molecule (1958) and determining the base sequence of nucleic acids (1980).
Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) Brazilian inventor and aviation pioneer designed and flew balloons and flying machines. He made the first significant flight of a powered airplane in France in 1898, where he and his machine (a dirigible) reached 1300 feet before crash landing.
Walter Schottky (1886-1976) German physicist; theory of electron and ion emission phenomena; invented screen-grid vacuum tube (1915); co-invented the ribbon microphone and ribbon loudspeaker (1924); later described electron holes in semiconductors; published Thermodynamik
Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) Austrian physicist and pioneer in quantum theory and mechanics; He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1933. Schrodinger believed that matter and electrons could be particles and waves and formulated a wave equation that accurately calculated the energy levels of electrons in atoms in 1926. He also applied Albert Einstein's theory of relativity to his work on quantum mechanics and determined that the electron must have a spin of 1/2. He is known as the father of quantum physics. He used differential equations to describe how the quantum state of a physical system changes over time. Schrodinger's famous thought experiment demonstrated quantum mechanics, where a cat is locked inside a box with potentially lethal poison. The status of the cat's safety is impossible to know, until the box is opened. In theory, the cat could be alive or dead at the same time. Schrodinger also published a paper on color perception and luminosity.
Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) German physician and physiologist; his work extended cell theory to animals; discovered all animals are made of cells; worked with German scientist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, who discovered that cells are the basic structure for plants; Cell theory describes how cells can be independent, compacted, fused, or elongated to form various tissues and organs. Schwann isolated the enzyme responsible for digestive processes in the stomach, and named it pepsin; Schwann also studied nerve cells, fermentation of yeast, metabolism, microorganisms, embryology.
Glenn Seaborg (1912-1999) American chemist who discovered and synthesized ten transuranium elements along with his colleagues, including plutonium; he also helped identify over 100 isotopes of elements of the periodic table; Seaborg was awarded a share of the 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry.
Hans Selye (1907-1982) Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist who studied organism response to stressors; Selye's Stress Theory: Selye's Syndrome or General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is the negative biological response to stress identified by Dr. Selye in 1936. GAS has three phases, according to Selye: an initial alarm phase, a resistance or adaptation phase, and finally a stage of exhaustion, illness, and death.
Charles Sherrington (1857-1952) British neurophysiologist whose research established the concept of spinal reflex as a system with connected neurons (the neuron doctrine), and coined the term "synapse" to describe the connection between two neurons; awarded Nobel prize in medicine in 1932 for his work. He also researched spinal reflexes from nerve cells from the spinal chord to muscles.
Gene Shoemaker (1928-1997) American geologist; co-founder of planetary science; co-discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994, the first such collision seen by scientists. Shoemaker discovered about 30 comets, and his wife also discovered about 30 comets.
Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892) German electrical engineer, inventor, industrialist known for his contributions to electrical engineering and telegraphy, the pointer telegraph, telegraph cables, and the dynamo machine. The dynamo electric principle established electricity as a power source and allowed large scale generation of electricity by mechanical means.
George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) American paleontologist, one of the most well known paleontologists of the 20th century; intercontinental migrations of animal species in past geologic times; modern synthesis of evolution theory; used mathematical methods in paleontology
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor; Skinner's theory of learning for conditioning of human behavior: stimulus exposure, response, reinforcement of response.
William Smith (1769-1839) English geologist; created 1st nationwide geologic map; identified rock layers by the fossils that the rock layers contained.
Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) English radiochemist co-work with Ernest Rutherford found that that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements and researched the nature and origin of isotopes. Soddy was awarded the Nobel prize in 1922, along with Francis William Aston.
Mary Somerville (1780-1872) Scottish polymath and astronomer, had a vital role in the discovery of planet Neptune.
Arnold Sommerfeld (1868-1951) German physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, and taught many students.
Hermann Staudinger (1881-1965) German organic chemist who discovered existence of macromolecules, which he called polymers and became known as the father of polymer chemistry; He also discovered ketenes and the Staudinger reaction. Staudinger was awarded the 1953 Nobel prize in chemistry
Nicolas Steno (1638-1686) Danish scientist and pioneer in anatomy and geology; explained that the Earth's crust contains rock layers with fossils that can reveal the chronologic geologic history of Earth.
Nettie Stevens (1861-1912) American geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes.
William John Swainson (1789-1855) English scientist, artwork of shells, flowers, and birds; studied thousands of plant species
Leo Szilard (1898-1964) Hungarian physicist and inventor; helped conduct the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
T
Niccolo Tartaglia (1499-1557) Italian mathematician and engineer known for his discovery of solutions to the cubic equation, however, other before him also found solutions to the cubic equation, such as Omar Khayyam in the 12th century and Scipione del Ferro in the 16th century.
Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American physicist and chemical engineer known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb," helped to successfully test the hydrogen bomb, and worked on the concept of submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Serbian-American inventor and engineer, pioneered the generation, transmission, and use of alternating current electricity system, which can be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current. Tesla's inventions and contributions include work on: remote control, neon and fluorescent lights, wireless transmission, computers, smartphones, laser beams, x-rays, robotics, along with alternating current, which is the basis of our current electric system. The Tesla coil, an electric circuit used to generate low-current, high-voltage electricity. Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power plant in Niagara Falls, New York. Tesla's name is used for the unit of measure of the strength of magnetic fields.
Thales of Miletus (626-548 B.C.) Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher regarded as the first Greek philosopher, who used natural philosophy instead of mythology in his works, which included mathematics, science, and deductive reasoning; he believed nature's existence was based on one universal substance, water. He calculated and researched heights, distances, astronomy, weather, and engineering, including river diversion.
Theon of Alexandria (335-405 A.D.) Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt and published commentaries of Euclid and Ptolemy. Wrote about solar and lunar eclipses. His daughter Hypatia also was a well known mathematician and astronomer of her time.
Vivien Thomas (1910-1985) American laboratory supervisor best known for his role in developing a groundbreaking surgical technique to correct a potentially fatal birth defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot, that resulted in oxygen-poor blood leaving the heart, which is also known as blue baby syndrome. He also developed techniques and tools that would lead to today's modern heart surgery.
Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) American-British scientist and inventor known for his experiments on heat and light and for his inventions of heating and cooking stoves.
J. J. Thomson (1856-1940) British physicist credited with discovering the electron, the 1st subatomic particle, in 1897 with cathode rays in a high-vacuum tube. Thomson worked on an atomic model of the structure of the atom. In 1906, Thomson was awarded the Nobel prize for work on the electrical conductivity of gases. Thomson's work also led to the development of the spectrograph.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907) British scientist who developed the international temperature system for absolute temperature. Also developed the plum pudding model of the atom, which described negatively charged electrons (plum pieces) embedded into a positively charged pudding.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American naturalist-philosopher; believed transcendentalism; innate goodness of humanity; civil liberty advocate, wrote Walden
Kip S. Thorne (1940) American physicist; gravitation and astrophysics; 2017 Nobel prize for his work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the observation of gravitational waves.
Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997) American astronomer who discovered planet Pluto in 1930, which was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. He also discovered hundreds of variable stars, asteroids, and two comets.
Susumu Tonegawa (1939) Japanese scientist of (MIT), was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity." At a time when the question of how a limited number of genes could produce such a vast array of antibodies perplexed immunologists, Tonegawa demonstrated that antibody diversity was a result of the rearrangement of genes in somatic cells. His findings have allowed for advancements in the areas of vaccination, organ transplantation, and the treatment of autoimmune diseases. (American Association of Immunologists)
Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) Italian physicist and mathematician, student of Galileo; invented the barometer, worked with optics and the method of indivisibles. He was the 1st to create a sustained vacuum. The unit of measurement torr is named after him; He also worked with geometry, which led to the development of integral calculus.
Charles Townes (1915-2015) American physicist who worked on the theory and application of the maser (invisible light); obtained patent for maser; worked in quantum electronics associated with maser and laser (visible light) devises; maser led to development of laser; Townes won Nobel prize in 1964.
Youyou Tu (1930) Chinese malariologist and chemist who discovered, artemisinin, a drug from ancient Chinese herbal medicine to treat malaria, and was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine in 2015.
Alan Turing (1912-1954) English mathematician known for his work with the first modern computers, known as the father of modern computer science; developed the Turing Test, which formed the basis for artificial intelligence; worked with encryption
Neil Degrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator; research in cosmology, stellar formation, glaxies, and bulges
U
Harold Urey (1893-1981) American chemist known for work on isotopes; Nobel prize in chemistry in 1934; discovery of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope, also known as heavy hydrogen. Also known for participation in Miller-Urey experiment that claimed to be successful in producing organic molecules under primitive Earth conditions
V
Craig Venter (1946) American biotechnologist who led one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembling the first team to transfect a cell with synthetic chromosome.
Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) Russian geochemist considered one of the founders of geochemistry and biogeochemistry; one of the first to recognize the potential of radioactivity as a source of thermal energy and geochemical processes in the Earth.
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) Belgian physician; father of anatomy; one of the first physicians to accurately record and illustrate human anatomy, published De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, one of the most important books on anatomy; researched through autopsies and dissections
Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) German physician; founder of cellular pathology and modern pathology. He stated that all diseases involve changes in normal cells, that is, all pathology ultimately is cellular pathology.
Artturi Virtanen (1895-1973) Finnish chemist who won the 1945 Nobel prize in chemistry for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder (hay) preservation method"; chemistry of nutrients; dairy products
Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Italian physicist and chemist who pioneered electricity and power; credited with inventing the first electric battery (the first source of continuous current) and discovered methane; invented the electric cell; developed the law of capacitance; the volt unit is named after him; along with voltage, voltmeter
W
Selman Waksman (1888-1973) Jewish-Ukrainian scientist whose research on soil microbes led to the discovery of a new antibiotic, streptomycin, the first effective cure for tuberculosis, cholera, and typhoid fever. Waksman was awarded the Nobel prize in 1952 for his work. He also discovered other antibiotics.
George Wald (1906-1997) American scientist who studied pigments in the retina of the eye. He won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1967 for research on the molecular basis of photo-reception.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) English naturalist; proposed the idea of evolution by natural selection independently from Charles Darwin, however Wallace's work is not as well-known as Darwin's work.
John Wallis (1616-1703) English clergyman and mathematician who made substantial contributions to the development of calculus; was the top English mathematician before Isaac Newton; Wallis introduced the infinity symbol; exponent notation; interpolation; conic sections; gravitation; infinitesimals
Ernest Walton (1903-1995) Irish physicist and 1951 Nobel laurate who first split the atom; helped along with John Cockroft construct one of the first particle accelerators
James Watson (1928) American biologist proposed with Francis Crick the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, and was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Rosalind Franklin had a major role in the discovery, and produced much of the data evidence from her X-ray image, but was not recognized for her work.
James Watt (1736-1819) Scottish inventor, known for inventing different types of steam engines and coined the term horsepower. The basic unit of energy, the watt, is named after him. He also developed a rotary engine that mechanized weaving, spinning, and transport. Invented a copy machine, tachometer (revolution counter), micrometer for measuring distances, civil engineering work with flexible water mains.
Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) German climatologist, meteorologist, polar researcher, originator of continental drift hypothesis (1912) that led to the theory of plate tectonics. Researched polar air circulation in Greenland.
John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) American physicist and a leading theoretical physicist of the twentieth century, contributing particularly to the fields of general relativity, gravitation, unified field theory, and quantum mechanics. Wheeler was a pioneer in the study of black holes, celestial phenomena which he named.
Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) New Zealand-born British biophysicist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA, and was co-Nobel Laurate with Francis Crick and James Watson. Wilkins research focused on phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction.
Thomas Willis (1621-1675) English physician who researched anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and founded comparative neuroanatomy, clinical neurology, and neuropathology; and coining the term neurologia or neurology. Willis established neurology as a distinct discipline and made significant original contributions to many related fields including anatomy, pathology, cardiology, endocrinology, and gastroenterology. He is most remembered for his work in elucidating the function and anatomy of the circle of Willis.
E. O. Wilson (1929-2021) American biologist known for the field of sociobiology, the genetic basis of social behavior in animals and humans; he was also the leading world authority on ants.
Sven Wingqvist (1876-1953) Swedish engineer and founder of a world-leading spherical ball-bearing and roller-bearing maker; he also invented the multi-row, self-aligning ball-bearing in 1907.
Sergei Winogradsky (died 1953) Ukrainian-Russian microbiologist; pioneered the cycle of life concept; father of modern environmental and soil microbiology; showed how microorganisms can use inorganic substances to make their own nutrients and energy; nitrogen and sulfur cycles
Carl Woese (1928-2012) American microbiologist and biophysicist who discovered and defined Archaea (a group of single-cell prokaryotic organisms) by phylogenetic taxonomy
Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) German chemist; organic and inorganic chemistry; 1st to isolate aluminum, beryllium and yttrium in pure metallic form; 1st to prepare several inorganic compounds; he was the 1st to synthesize an organic compound from an inorganic substance
Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) American aviation pioneers who made the 1st successful powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) German psychologist; father of experimental psychology; established psychology as a science; opened the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology in Germany, published the 1st textbook on psychology; his research methods studied the human mind experimentally.
Y
Chen-Ning Yang (1922) Yang-Mills theory; he found that parity not conserved when certain subatomic particles decayed; awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1957; first Chinese scientist to win the Nobel Prize
Z
Ahmed Zewail (1946-2016) Egyptian-U.S. chemist, and father of femto-chemistry. In the late 1980s, Ahmed Zewail developed methods for studying chemical reactions in detail by using laser technology to produce flashes of light just a few femtoseconds long, allowing reactions to be mapped. (NobelPrize.org 1999) Chemical reactions of molecular vibrations and rotations occur at speeds in femtoseconds (10^-14s).
Nobel Prize Winners in the Sciences List: African, American, Asian, Australian, European
African American Scientists and Inventors
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) 1st African-American scientist, astronomer, mathematician, almanac series, accurate clock, agriculture irrigation, surveyor
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) agriculturalist, inventor, teacher, MSc Iowa St, pioneering crop rotation=rotate cotton with peanuts and soybeans, which would restore nitrogen in the soil and increase protein levels in human’s diets. Crop rotation can help to manage your soil and fertility, reduce erosion, improve your soil's health, and increase nutrients available for crops (USDA). Also crop rotation can enhance soil health, reduce pests, optimize nutrient cycling, improve yields, and promote biodiversity (tracextech). Sustainable agriculture. Carver developed 300 uses for peanuts, Tuskegee Institute 40 years agriculture department, advised
Edward Bouchet physics 1st African-American Ph.D in USA, Yale 1876, Educator (father from Charleston, SC)
Tbello Myokong chemistry Ph.D 1987, 450 publications, patent
Neil deGrasse Tyson Ph.D Astrophysics 1991 Columbia, researcher, science promoter
Thomas Mensah chemical Engineer, fiber optics, nanotechnology, patents, Ph.D 1978
Marie Daly 1921-2003, Biochemist, Columbia Ph.D 1st African American chemistry Ph.D, protein synthesis
Mae Jemison engineer, physician, NASA Astronaut
Walter Lincoln Hawkins chemistry, helped pioneer polymer chemistry
Charles Henry Turner biologist known for his research on the behavior of insects, particularly bees and ants, he showed that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience, produced over 70 research papers
Percy Julian chemist, pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants.
Ernest Everett Just, biologist Ph.D 1916 Chicago from Charleston, SC SCSU, marine egg fertilization
Emmett Chapelle bioluminescence in living organisms produce light, biochemistry
Lonnie Johnson engineer, heat pump, Super Soaker water spray toy
Ronald McNair physicist, NASA astronaut, 1986 challenger, 2nd African-American astronaut
Otis Boykin patents on electrical devices, computer, pacemaker enhancement
Norbert Rillieux (AGS) sugar processing enhancement devices
George Robert Carruthers physics ultraviolet camera spectrograph
J. Earnest Wilkins physics gamma radiation from the Sun
Herman Branson biochemistry alpha helix protein structure
Willie Hobbs Moore 1st African-American female PhD Physics, Engineer, U.Michigan
Samuel P. Massey Arkansas chemistry, cancer drugs, medicines, uranium isotopes, Manhattan Project
Bettye Washington Greene chemistry, polymers, 3 patents
Margarett S. Collins entomology, termites, Ph.D Chicago
St. Elmo Brady 1st African American PhD Chemistry, physical organic chemistry research
Arthur B.C. Walker physicist, optics, telescopes for the solar corona
Jewel Plummer Cobb skin cell cancer research, lungs, leukemia
Alma Levant Hayden scientist for NIH and FDA in DC, spectrophotometry, discovered fraudulent medicine
Lloyd Quarterman physics atomic science hydrogen fluoride
James Andrew Harris chemist who discovered elements 104, 105
Lloyd Hall developed method of curing meats using a particular salt combination in 1932 as preservative
Roger Arliner Young 1st bf PhD zoology Chicago studied w/Ernest Everett Just radiation sea urchin eggs
Marguerite Williams PhD geology Howard-Columbia-Catholic U discovered humans accelerate erosion
Lloyd Noel Ferguson PhD chemistry publications on carbon molecule structure, cancer chemotherapy
Henry Cecil McBay chemistry hydrogen peroxide research Phd Chicago, teacher
Mack Gibson Ph.D geology Chicago clay minerals, shales, from SC, USC faculty
John E. Hodge chemist UKansas = studied Maillard chemical reaction in foods that produce flavor & color
Beebe Steven Lynk chemistry professor Lane College, U. West Tennessee
Roland Jefferson Howard U botanist cherry tree preservation, seed exchange, US National Arboretum DC
Michael P. Anderson UWash physics, Air Force, NASA Astronaut, Space Shuttle Columbia 2003
Joan Murrell Owens PhD geology marine biology discovered species of button corals GWU from FL
Valerie Thomas data science programs NASA, inventor patent illusion transmitter, publications
Jospehine Silone Yeates professor & dept. head chemistry, English Lincoln U, Missouri, M.S. Nat. U, IL
Ruth Smith Lloyd PhD anatomy, physiology, fertility, Case Western Reserve U, teaching=Howard U.
Warren M. Washington Ph.D Penn St, atmosphere, climate, computer models 1960’s, publications
George Edward Alcorn physics/engineer inventor professor PhD HowardU XRay spectrometer circuit etching
Erich Jarvis neuroscience vocal learning circuits in humans and animals PhD Rockefeller U NY
Elmer Imes quantum physics, high resolution infrared spectroscopy of molecules NYU, Michigan PhD
Overta Fuller microbiology immunology PhD UNC, UMich Med Sch, virus and cell research, COVID
Virgil Trice Chemical engineer, M.S. Purdue U nuclear energy and radioactive waste IL Inst. Tech. M.S.
Leroy Walker
Louis Roberts physics Ph.D MIT UMich, teaching, research, optics, microwaves, 11 patents, publications
Arlie Petters physics Ph.D MIT, mathematical theory of gravitational lensing, prof. Duke U (from Belize)
Sylvester James Gates physics PhD MIT supersymmetry, supergravity, superstring theory (from FL)
African Science and Scientists
Ancient Egypt, North Africa and Sahara, Nile Valley East Africa, West Africa, South Africa
Scientists and scientific achievements of Asia ancient to present
Mesopotamia-Babylon
Indian Subcontinent
C.V. Raman
Satyendra Nath Bose
Jagadish Chandra Bose
Homi Bhabha
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Prafulla Chandra Ray
Salim Ali
Gandhi and Theodore Roosevelt
Ramanujan
Aryabhata
East Asia
Sau Lan Wu particle physics Higgs Boson (Hong Kong)
Chin Ni Yang, particle physics Yang Mills Theory
Persian Scientist and Philosopher List
Albucasis (Al-Zahrawi) physician, Father of Surgery
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) astronomy, math, physics
Alkindus (Al-Kindi) math
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) philosopher and scientist
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Banu Musa brothers (math, astr., engineering)
Biruni (Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni) (optics)
Farghani (Al-Farghani) (Alfraganus) astronomy and math
Firnas (Ibn Firnas) inventor scientists, first to fly
Hayyan (Jābir ibn Ḥayyān) chemist, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid discovery
Idrisi (al-Idrisi) cartographer, world maps
Jahiz (al-Jahiz) polymath and writer
Jayani (Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī) (math)
Jazari (Ismail al-Jazari) engineering
Kashi (Jamshīd al-Kāshī) (math)
Khandun (Ibn Khaldun) sociology
Khwarizmi (Muhammad Musa al-Khwarizmi) mathematics, algebra, algorithms
Khayam (Omar Khayam) mathematics, astronomy, and poetry
Nafis (Ibn al Nafis) physician, polymath, and philosopher
Rhazes (physician) (Abū Bakr al-Rāzī), physician, chemist
Shatir (Ibn al-Shatir) astronomy, math, engineering
Sufi (Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi) (astronomer)
Taqi (Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf ash-Shami al-Asadi) engineer, steam energy; steam engine
Tusi (Nasir al-Din al-Tusi) (astronomy)
Persian Poet, Artist, Musician List
Farabi (Al-Farabi) music theorist and philosopher, book of music
Ferdowsi
Hafez
Khayam (Omar)
Khusrow, Amir
Kindi (Al-Kindi music)
Nizami
Rumi
Saadi
Ud Din, (Farid) poet and philosopher
1001 Knights folk tales (Aladdin, Alibaba, Sinbad)
Calligraphy written language Arabic and Farsi
Lut (music instrument like guitar)
Safi al-Din al-Urmawi musician
Avicenna Ibn Sina philosophy, music
Averroes Ibn Rushd philosophy
Tufail (Ibn Tufail) philosophy
Ziryab musician
Persian Inventions and Contributions to the World
Agriculture=Qanats (water supply system, aqueduct, irrigation) Gonabad, Iran (oldest known)
Architecture styles from over 4,000 years ago seen spanning from Turkey, Africa, China, India, geometric designs, Roman influence, domes, arches, aqueducts
Bricks (first Bricks)
Astronomy=Biruni, Khayam, Tusi, Maragheh Observatory (13th c.)
Postal Service and Roads=1st Postal service in world and highways (according to Herodotus)
Medicine = Modern Medicine (Ibn Sina-Avicenna), medical encyclopedia
The Teaching Hospital
Chemistry=Sulfuric Acid (Razi)
Alcohol distillation (Razi) for drinks, foods, preservatives
Foods=Daily Tea, Rose, Spinach, Grape vines and wine, dessert
Perfumes
Mathematics=Algebra (Khwarizmi)
Engineering= Refrigerator (yakchal) pyramid-shaped, air conditioning
Engineering=the wheel, the windmill
Engineering = 1st Battery (Parthian) Baghdad Battery
Animation on artwork
World Empire=1st world empire Persian Empire on 3 continents: Asia, Africa, Europe
Banned slavery
Military units and uniforms
Heavy armored Cavalry
Government=Taxation system (Archaemenid period)
Human Rights=1st Human rights charter = Cyrus Cylinder
Religion=Monotheism (Zoroastrianism and religious tolerance)
The Banquet
Banks=1st private banks established, Bank of Egibi
Bazaars=The Bazaar shopping center
Music=Guitar (Lut), the Orchestra
Textile Industry=pants and long coats, Persian Rugs, Gloves
Sports=Games=Polo the sport (chovgan),
Chess (India or Persia)
Sports=Backgammon=1st Board Game (“nard”, found at Sukhteh city)
Arts=Pottery and ceramics
Cutlery= the 1st Cutlery
Literature=1st Persian national epic novel Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
Landscaped Gardens, Gardening, Tree Planting, Flower Planting
Pierre Omidyar founder of Ebay
Gas Masks=Banu Musa Brothers=to protect well workers from pollution
The word “paradise”
Birthday celebrations
Female Scientists of the West
Marie Curie chemistry and physics radioactivity 2 Nobel
Rosalind Franklin DNA structure, X-Rays, molecular structure
Elizabeth Blackwell 1st female medical graduate in US (NY)
Jane Goodall chimpanzee behavior in Africa Tanzania
Jennifer Doudna genetic engineering human babies UCBerkeley disease treatment
Katherine Freese physics dark matter Sweden Princeton Columbia Chicago UTexas
Rachel Carson marine biologist, environmentalist PA, Johns Hopkins M.S.
Maria Goeppert Mayer physics nuclear shell Nobel Prize 1963 Germany and Johns Hopkins
Sara Seager discovered 715 planets with Kepler Space Telescope
Jane Cook Wright cancer research at Harvard, MD
Vera Rubin astronomy dark matter existence Cornell Georgetown U
Sau Lan Wu particle physics Higgs Boson (Hong Kong)
Barbara Mclintock genetic transportation, genetics of corn
Rita Levi-Montalcini Italian neurologist Nobel 1986 Nerve growth factor
Gertrude Elion biochemist pharmacologist leukemia kidney transplants Nobel
Dorothy Hodgkin British chemist X-ray crystallography
Marie Tharp developed first seafloor maps with Bruce Hezeen, ocean ridges
Katherine Johnson space science mathematics NASA
Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin PhD Harvard stars composed of hydrogen & helium
Lise Meitner physics element 109 nuclear fission discovery w/Otto Hahn 1944 Auger Effect
Grace Hopper computer programming languages, math, COBOL language
Chien-Shiung Wu physics beta decay, Manhattan Project, red blood cells
Alice Augusta Ball chemist skin disease leprosy, Hawaii kava plant, not credited for work
Mary Anning English fossils paleontology
Ada Lovelace English mathematician world’s 1st computer programmer with Charles Babbage
Gail Hanson particle physics discoveries Ohio, MIT
Henrietta Leavitt astronomer measuring distance of galaxies
Inge Lehmann geophysics 1936 discovery solid inner core inside molten outer core
Janet Darbyshire British epidemiologist and administrator 2018 MRC Millennium Medal for her "world-leading research on clinical trials and epidemiology has prevented disease and saved lives across the world"
Annie Cannon PhD astronomy classifying stars
Caroline Herschel German British astronomer, comet discoveries, William Hershel’s sister
Western Scientists from Ancient Greece to the Americas
Thales of Miletus
Pythagoras (570-497 B.C.) Greek mathematician, geometry, Pythagorean theorem
Ptolemy
Eratosthenes
Hipparchus
Hero of Alexandria
Xenocrates
Antiphon
Diocles
Anaxagoras
Diophantus
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek astronomy, physics, math, biology
Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) Greek mathematics, physics, engineering
Galen (129-216 A.D.) Roman Greek physician, philosopher
Leonhard Euler
LaPlace
Bernhard Riemann
Gottfried Leibniz
Gauss
Euclid
Blaise Pascal
Fibonacci
Alan Turing
David Hilbert
Sophie Germain
John von Newmann
Katherine Johnson
Maryam Mirzhakhani
Pierre de Fermat
George Boole
Terence Tao
Mary Jackson
Georg Cantor
Rene Descartes
Evariste Galois
Luca Pacioli
Charles Babbage
Daniel Bernoulli
Andrew Wiles
John Forbes Nash
John Napier
Grigori Perelman
Joseph Fourier
G.H. Hardy
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish Italian mathematician, astronomer, planet orbits
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientific method
Galileo Galilei (1609) Italian astronomy, physics, engineering
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) Irish chemist, physicist, inventor, 1st modern chemist, Boyle’s Law
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) English scientist, microscope, microorganisms
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) British philosopher physics, gravitation laws, calculus
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) French chemist, modern chemistry
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) Swedish biologist, physician, classification of biosphere taxonomy
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) British physicist electromagnetism inductions, chemistry
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) German founder of genetics, heredity, traits dominant/recessive
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) microbiology, chemistry, germ theory, pasteurization, fever, vaccines
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Scottish physicist described electromagnetic radiation-electricity, magnetism, and light as one phenomenon
Dimitry Mendelev (1834-1907) Russian, Modern Periodic Table of the Elements
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera
George Washington Carver (1860-1943) agricultural scientist, inventor
Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish scientist, Radioactivity, Nobel physics, chemistry
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Serbian scientist & inventor, AC current, radio-x-rays, radar, Markoni used Tesla’s ideas for radio, Roentgen used his ideas for x-rays, Watson-watt used his ideas for radar. Also hydroelectricity, cryogenic engineering, transistors, radio wave recorder
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) American physics, relativity theory, photoelectric effect Nobel 1921
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Scottish physician, antibiotics, penicillin
Neils Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist atomic structure quantum theory Nobel
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) chemist, crystallographer, DNA structure, virus, coal, graphite
Enrico Fermi Italian US physicist created 1st nuclear reactor in world 1942 Manhattan Project, Nobel Prize 1938 discovery of new radioactive substances, power of slow neutrons, part of 1st nuclear fission experiment in U.S.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) English physicist and astronomer
by Owen Borville
July 9, 2024
Science, History
Top Scientists in History List from Around the World in History
A
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss born scientist, biology, geology, discovered glaciers, fishes, anti-evolution
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) Italian philosopher, 1st famous female mathematician/writer
Al-Battani (Albategnius) (850-929 A.D.) Persian philosopher; astronomy distance approx. of stars, moon, planets
Abu Nasr al-Farabi (Alpharabius) (870-950) Persian philosopher studied Greek philosophy and introduced it to the Islamic world; created musical instruments
Alhazen (al-Haytham) (965-1040) Persian philosopher, optics, light travels straight lines, astronomy, math, philosophy
Jim al-Khalili (1962) Iraqi-British theoretical physics, quantum mechanics and biology
Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850) Persian polymath, algebra, astronomy, geography
Mihailo Petrovic Alas (1868-1943) Serbian mathematician, differential equations
Angel Alcala (1929-2023) Filipino ecologist, conservationist, biodiversity, reptiles, amphibians
Salim Ali (1896-1987) Indian ornithologist 1st bird studies, surveys in India
Luis Alvarez (1911-1988) American Nobel Prize in 1968 in physics (particle), hydrogen bubble chamber analysis
Andre Ampère (1775-1836) French physicist, electromagnetism, fluorine, proposed electron
Anaximander (610) B.C. Greek philosopher of Miletus, astronomy, philosophy, world map, boundless theory
Carl Anderson (1905-1991) American physicist, discovered positron, muon, 1936 Nobel prize
Mary Anning (1799-1847) English paleontologist, fossils in cliffs, plesiosaur
Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) American physician, Apgar score, newborn child health
Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 B.C.) Greek scientist, engineer, inventor, lever, screw, claw
Agnes Arber (1879-1960) British botanist, Royal Society fellow
Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) Greek astronomer, 1st Heliocentric model of universe
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek philosopher, polymath, geocentric model, 4 elements=earth, air, fire, water
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) Swedish scientist; electric current conducted in chemical solutions
Oswald Avery (1877-1955) American scientist; showed DNA was the transforming principle of genes
Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) Italian scientist Avogadro’s law of gasses, physical chemistry
Avicenna (ibn Sina) (980-1037 A.D.) Persian philosopher and physician who published a five-volume medical encyclopedia, the Cannon of Medicine, that was used in the Islamic world and Europe until the 18th century and the Book of Cure.
B
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) English mathematician & inventor; developed 1st automatic digital computer
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, philosophy of science, the scientific method
Alexander Bain (1810-1877) Scottish inventor, Engineer, electric clock, railway telegraph lines, fax machine
John Logie Baird (1888-1946) Scottish inventor, Engineer, the 1st live working television system
Joseph Banks (1743-1820) English botanist, discovered acacia, mimosa, eucalyptus, banksia, plus birds
Ramon Barba (1939-2021) Filipino horticulturalist inventor, inducing mango tree flower crop
John Bardeen (1908-1991) U.S. physicist awarded two Nobel Prizes, in 1956 for semiconductors and transistor effect; in 1972 for quantum mechanics
Charles Barkla (1877-1944) British physicist Nobel Prize 1917 in X-ray spectroscopy radiation of the elements
Ibn Battuta (1304-1377) Moroccan traveler, author of Rihlah, a famous travel log book, describing people, places, cultures traveled through north Africa, Mali, Kenya, East Europe, Arabia, Persia, India, China and Indonesia
William Bayliss (1860-1924) English physiologist, discovered hormone secretin, biochemistry
George Beadle (1903-1989) U.S. geneticist, awarded Nobel Prize for gene control formation of enzymes
Arnold Orville Beckman (1900-2004) U.S. chemist, inventor of pH meter and spectrophotometer
Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) French physicist, radiation discovery Nobel Prize awarded in 1903 along with Marie Curie
Emil Adolf Behring (1854-1917) German physician awarded Nobel Prize in 1901 for finding diphtheria antitoxin cure
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish Canadian; U.S. inventor of 1st telephone
Emile Berliner (1851-1929) German U.S. inventor, improved telephone phonograph technology
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, discovered glycogenic function of the liver
Timothy John Berners-Lee (1955) English computer science researcher, invented World Wide Web in 1989
Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) Swiss mathematician, physicist, described properties of fluid flow pressure, density, velocity
Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) Swedish chemist, discovered cerium, selenium, isolated silicon, thorium, titanium, zirconium
Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) English inventor, economical steel manufacturing, Bessemer convertor
Hans Bethe (1906-2005) German-U.S. physicist, awarded 1967 Nobel Prize on stellar nucleosynthesis, energy production in stars
Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1909-1966) Indian nuclear physicist and leader of Indian nuclear program
Alfred Binet (1857-1911) French psychologist, 1st IQ tests, Intelligence theory
Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956) U.S. inventor, frozen food industry methods, double belt freezer
Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) Norwegian physicist, atmospheric electric currents, sun source of Northern Lights explanation
James Black (1924-2010) Scottish physician, developed the drug propranolol heart calmer
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) British physician, 1st woman in U.S. medical degree, opened medical college for women
Alfred Blalock (1899-1964) U.S. surgeon, worked on shock blood loss treatment and blue baby syndrome with Vivian Thomas
Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979) U.S. physicist, chemist, work on invisible non-reflective glass
Guy Bluford (1942) 1st African American in space with NASA
Franz Boas (1858-1942) German-U.S. father of modern anthropology; applied scientific method to anthropology, research first
David Bohm (1917-1992) U.S. Brazilian British physicist, quantum theory, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind
Aage Bohr (1922-2009) Danish nuclear physicist awarded Nobel Prize for 1975 particle motion
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist awarded Nobel Prize in 1922 for atomic structure, quantum theory, and the Bohr Model of the atom
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) Austrian physicist, statistical mechanics, statistics of 2nd law of thermodynamics
Max Born (1882-1970) German-British physicist quantum mechanics, the wave function, statistical probability of particle position, awarded 1954 Nobel Prize
Carl Bosch (1874-1940) German chemist awarded Nobel Prize, high pressure methods of synthesis of ammonia
Robert Bosch (1861-1942) German engineer, devices that generate current for ignition of ICE engines
Amar Gopal Bose (1929 - 2013) was an American engineer, academic, and entrepreneur who founded the audio company Bose Corporation in 1964. Bose was a pioneer in modern acoustics and a professor at MIT for over 45 years. His work includes: loudspeakers, noise cancelling headphones, Video Wave TV, flatscreen TV with speaker technology, 901 speaker system.
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) British-Indian scientist, biologist, plant movement stimuli
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) Indian physicist, quantum mechanics, Bose-Einstein Statistics, Condensate and theory
Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (1891-1957) German physicist, coincidence method, particle energy conservation
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) Anglo-Irish chemist and inventor, 1st modern chemist; Law of Gases
Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971) Australian-British physicist, X-ray crystallography diffraction Nobel Prize 1915
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Danish astronomer, geo-heliocentric model, supernovae, comets
Brahmagupta (598-668 AD) Indian mathematician-astronomer, geometry formulas, cyclic quadrilateral
Hennig Brand (1630-1710) German alchemist, discovered element phosphorus, 1st discovered element
Georg Brandt (1694-1768) Swedish chemist & mineralogist, discovered cobalt (a metal unknown in ancient times); He also exposed fraudulent alchemists claiming to turn metals into gold
Werner Von Braun (1912-1977) German-American aerospace engineer, father of rocket science, developed rocket missiles for military
J. Harlen Bretz (1882-1981) American geologist, researched the Missoula floods in Northwest America. “The Channeled Scablands of the Columbia Plateau,” in which he presented his theory that the unique landscape was created by a massive flood originally called the Spokane Flood.
Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) French physicist who researched "the wave nature of electrons," awarded 1929 Nobel Prize, proposed all matter has wave properties
Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) French chemist mineralogist, stratigraphy of the Tertiary period near Paris, cross-reference strata with fossils
Robert Brown (1773-1858) Scottish botanist, nucleus of the cell and Brownian motion random movement of particles
Michael Edw. Brown (1965) American astronomer, objects in Kuiper Belt, including dwarf planets, TNOs Trans-Neptunian objects
Lester R. Brown (1934) American environmentalist, Green Movement, think tank founder, author, sustainable development, conservation
Eduard Buchner (1860-1917) German chemist, fermentation, 1907 Nobel Prize, discovered that yeast extract with no living yeast fungi can form alcohol from a sugar solution.
Linda Buck (1947) American biologist, discovered olfactory receptors (nose) connection to brain, awarded 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology-medicine
William Buckland (1784-1856) English theologian, geologist, discovered "Megalosaurus" (first dinosaur discovery)
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) French naturalist, geologic history in series of stages and extinctions, leading to paleontology, created a comprehensive encyclopedia of natural history connecting all of the natural sciences; collision theory of sun with a comet = solar system
Robert Bunsen (1811-1899) German chemist, Bunsen burner in chemical labs, spectrometry, discovered cesium, rubidium, invented zinc-carbon battery
Luther Burbank (1849-1926) American botanist, horticulturalist, developed plant breeding into modern science, fruits, flowers, vegetables, grasses
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) Irish astrophysicist, discovered radio pulsars while a graduate student, which led to Noble Prize, but was not given credit
Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985) Australian virologist, immunology, discoveries about viral diseases; 1960 Nobel Prize, predicted acquired immune tolerance and theory of clonal selection
Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) English theologian, cosmogonist, Sacred Theory of the Earth, speculated Hollow Earth with water until Noah's Flood.
C
Benjamin Cabrera (1920-2001) Filipino physician, public health, medical parasitology, developed treatments for various diseases of parasites
Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) Spanish neuroscientist, discovered neuron (nerve cell) as basic unit of nervous system; 1906 Nobel Prize in medicine physiology; first Spanish Nobel Prize winner
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) American marine biologist; writings on environmental pollution and natural history of sea; marine conservation
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) American agriculturalist, inventor, teacher, pioneering crop rotation, applications of plant products
Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) English natural philosopher, discovered the element hydrogen in 1766, or elemental nature of hydrogen
Anders Celsius (1701-1744) Swedish astronomer, Celsius temperature scale (centigrade scale) (0-100) based on the freezing and boiling points of water with mercury thermometers
James Chadwick (1891-1974) English physicist, discovered the neutron (neutral subatomic particle in nucleus) in 1932, Nobel Prize in 1935
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) Indian-American physicist; Chandrasekhar limit (the maximum mass of a white dwarf star) or the minimum mass that must be exceeded for a star to collapse into a neutron star or black hole (following a supernova); led to discovery of Black Holes, awarded 1983 Nobel Prize
Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) Austria-Hungarian American biochemist whose work showed that in natural DNA the number of guanine units equals the number of cytosine units and the number of adenine units equals the number of thymine units.
Noam Chomsky (1928) American professor, Father of Modern Linguistics, politics, cognitive science, war critic
Steven Chu (1948) American physicist Nobel Prize 1997 for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light
Leland Clark (1918-2005) American biochemist; invention of Clark membrane oxygen electrode, for measuring oxygen in blood, water, and liquid
John Cockcroft (1897-1967) British physicist; developed nuclear accelerator, split atomic nucleus, development of nuclear power, Nobel Prize 1951
Francis Collins (1950) American physician; discovered important genes associated with human diseases; leader of Human Genome Project; founder of BioLogos
Arthur Compton (1892-1962) American physicist; Compton effect demonstrates the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish astronomer; proposed heliocentric sun at center of solar system and rotating planets including earth
Gerty Theresa Cori (1896-1957) Austrian American biochemist; cycle of carbohydrates (Cori Cycle); body glucose conversion to glycogen; Nobel Prize 1947
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) French physicist; Coulomb's Law: electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion; also worked with friction
Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) French oceanographer, undersea investigations, co-invented 1st fully automatic compressed air-aqua lung
Brian Cox (1968) English physicist and musician, public presenter of science programs, worked at CERN Large Hadron Collider
Francis Crick (1916-2004) English molecular biologist; worked with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, which led to the identification of DNA structure in 1953 and Nobel Prize 1962
James Croll (1821-1890) Scottish scientist; theory of climate variability and multiple ice ages based on changes in the Earth's orbit 60 years before Milankovitch
Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) English botanist, physician, his herbalist systematisation work led to the development of modern pharmaceuticals
Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish-French physicist-chemist, discovery of radium and polonium, finding cancer treatments with radiation, discovery and understanding of radioactivity; Nobel Prize in Physics (radiation) and chemistry (isolating pure radium)
Pierre Curie (1859-1906) French physicist, discovered radium and polonium with his wife, along with the discovery of radioactivity
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) French naturalist, father of paleontology; comparative organismal biology, extinction of past lifeforms
Adalbert Czerny (1863-1941) Austrian pediatrician; modern pediatrics; reducing child mortality
D
Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) German engineer, industrialist, modern (internal combustion) gas engine, 1st 4-wheel automobile in 1885
John Dalton (1766-1844) English chemist, physicist, meteorologist, development of atomic theory in chemistry, color-blindness, human optics
Raymond Damadian (1936-2022) American physician inventor of the first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanning machine for human medicine and performed the first full body scan in 1977, detecting tumors & tissue response signal wavelengths, cancer diagnosis, robbed of Nobel Prize, creationist
James Dwight Dana (1813-1895) American geologist, mineralogist, mountain-building, volcanic activity, origin & structure of continents and oceans, responsible for the term "geosyncline", believed earth contraction from cooling created mountains, also a zoologist, published textbooks on geology, zoology, developed mineral classification system
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist, evolutionary biology by natural selection of inherited variations, The Origin of Species 1859 , all life from common ancestry
Humphry Davy (1778-1829) British chemist, invented Davy safety lamp, Electric Arc Lamp, 1st electric light, electric battery, isolation of sodium, potassium, metals, proved oxygen not part of all acids, invented laughing gas nitrous oxide
Peter Debye (1884-1966) Dutch-American physicist, chemist, 1936 Nobel for dipole moments of molecules, X-ray diffraction, light scattering in gases
Max Delbruck (1906-1981) German-American biophysicist, molecular biology; replication mechanism and genetic structure of viruses; Nobel medicine
Jean Andre Deluc (1727-1817) Swiss geologist; latent heat hypothesis; invented & improved measuring instruments; said creation 6 days epochs of time
Democritus (460-370 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher of atomic theory of the universe; believed everything made of small, invisible atoms
René Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher scientist; I think, therefore I am; deductive reasoning; math variable notation; Cartesian plane points
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (1858-1913) German inventor engineer; invented diesel engine using diesel fuel and internal combustion; fuel efficiency
Diophantus (200-284 A.D. Greek mathematician, number theory, notations, father of polynomials, positive rational numbers, algebraic notation
Paul Dirac (1902-1984) English mathematical theoretical physicist; one of founders of quantum mechanics & quantum electrodynamics); positron; relativistic quantum theory
Prokop Divis (1698-1765) Czech theologian and scientist; developed 1st grounded lightning rod to prevent thunderstorms
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) American geneticist; evolutionary biology; theistic evolution
Frank Drake (1930-2022) American astrophysicist; the Drake Equation for number of possible intelligent life forms to be discovered
K. Eric Drexler (1955) American engineer introduced molecular nanotechnology; high performance solar sail; making metals in space
E
John Eccles (1903-1997) Australian neurophysiologist; worked on synapse, or measuring small variations in electrical charges at contact surfaces between nerve cells, Nobel Prize 1963
Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) English astronomer; helped prove or confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1919 during a solar eclipse, when light travels around curved space caused by mass and gravity of a large object like the sun
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, businessman, electric power devices, mass communication, sound recording, motion pictures, incandescent light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera, improving the telegraph and telephone
Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) German physician scientist, discovered 1st antibiotic treatment for syphilis; chemotherapy; identification of bacteria and blood cells to diagnose blood diseases; Nobel Prize
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German theoretical physicist; theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity and motion; photoelectric effect Nobel
Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) American biochemist; pharmacologist: Nobel Prize 1988 for innovative methods of rational drug design for development of new drugs for treating various diseases like leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes.
Empedocles (492-432 B.C.) Greek philosopher; four elements of all matter: fire, air, water, earth; unsuccessfully threw himself into volcano to prove he was a god; inventor of rhetoric and founder of the science of medicine in Italy
Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) Greek polymath, philosopher; geographer; prime numbers; measuring diameter of earth and earth's axial tilt; distance from earth to sun and moon; global projection with parallels and meridians; scientific chronology for historical dates; librarian at Alexandria
Euclid (300 B.C.) Greek mathematician, geometry, Elements=points, lines, planes; spherical and conic sections, number theory
Eudoxus of Cnidus (390-340 B.C.) Greek astronomer, mathematician, geometry, theory of proportions, magnitudes, geocentric theory of earth
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) Swiss mathematician, scientist, functional notation f(x), trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan); Euler's formula relation with trigonometric and exponential functions
F
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) English scientist; electromagnetism; electrochemistry; electromagnetic induction; diamagnetism, electrolysis; father of the electric motor, electric generator, electric transformer, and electrolysis, self taught
Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665) French mathematician; infinitesimal calculus; finding ordinates in curved lines, led to differential calculus; finding tangents to curves and their maximum and minimum points; number theory
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) Italian-American physicist, creator of 1st nuclear reactor, leading to production of 1st atomic bomb in 1942; Nobel Prize for artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist; quantum mechanics; quantum electrodynamics, physics of superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium; Parton model of particle physics
Fibonacci, Leonardo of Pisa (1170-1240) Italian mathematician; top western mathematician of the Middle Ages; popularized the Indo-Arabic numeral system in the western world by his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation); introduced the sequence of Fibonacci numbers, where each number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two numbers
Emil Fischer (1852-1919) German chemist Nobel prize 1902, discovered caffeine and other purines, and the molecular structures of sugars and proteins. Fischer discovered the Fischer esterification. Fischer also developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms. He also hypothesized lock and key mechanism of enzyme action.
Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) British mathematician, scientist, developed the application of statistical procedures to the design of scientific experiments.
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Scottish physician who discovered the antibiotic penicillin, which greatly saved lives from infections; Nobel Prize
Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) English electrical engineer; father of modern electronics; 1st vacuum tube; radio-transmitter for 1st trans-Atlantic radio transmission; right hand rule in physics for magnetic field forces
Howard Florey (1898-1968) Australian pharmacologist & pathologist, shared Nobel prize with Fleming & Chain for penicillin discovery.
Henry Ford (1863-1947) American industrialist engineer, founder of Ford Motor Company; his Model T assembly line made it affordable
Lee De Forest (1873-1961) American inventor, electrical engineer; electronic amplifier; Audion triode vacuum tube; live radio broadcasting
Dian Fossey (1932-1985) American primatologist (mountain gorillas) and conservationist to preserve population of mountain gorillas
Leon Foucault (1819-1868) French physicist, pendulum demonstration, for proof of Earth's rotation on its axis; early measurement of speed of light; discovered eddy currents; named the gyroscope
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American scientist and inventor, statesman, diplomat. He coined the terms “battery,” “positive charge,” and “negative charge,” and discovered new ways to generate, store, and deploy electricity. His design and promotion of the use of lightning rods helped prevent untold numbers of structural fires throughout the world.
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) British chemist, X-ray crystallographer, work led to identify molecular structure of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, graphite; robbed of Nobel prize that went to Watson and Crick for DNA structure discovery
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian neurologist, father of psychology, founder of psychoanalysis; theories of conscious and unconscious mind, the id, ego, superego, dream interpretation
Elizabeth Smith Friedman (1892-1980) American cryptanalyst, (for deciphering enemy codes) served in both world wars, the military, and international crime cases
G
Galen (129-216 A.D.) Roman-Greek physician, surgeon, philosopher; Galen believed that the body contained four important liquids called humors, which were phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. These humors must remain in balance for a person to remain healthy. If there was too much of one humor, illness occurred. The excess fluid was removed; for example, blood was removed by bleeding and excess bile could be removed with a purgative. The theory of the humors was an accepted medical teaching until the Renaissance period. Hajar R. Medicine from Galen to the Present: A Short History. Heart Views. 2021 Oct-Dec;22(4):307-308. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer; stars, lunar mountains and craters; Jupiter's moons, phases of Venus, sunspots; heliocentric model; rings of Saturn
Francis Galton (1822-1911) British scientist, behavioral genetics, 340 publications, statistical correlation, regression toward the mean, fingerprints, human intelligence, eugenics
Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) Italian physician, physicist, electricity in animal tissue (frogs), studied the effect of electric spark on nerves, muscles, as conductors-receptors of brain stimuli
George Gamow (1904-1968) Soviet-American physicist; promoted Lemaitre's Big Bang Theory expanding universe, atomic nucleus, star activity, creation of elements, genetic code of life; predicted temperature of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Martin Gardner (1914-2010) American mathematician, science writer, popularizer of recreational mathematics (games for students)
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) German mathematician, physicist, number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary science, theory of functions, electromagnetism, potential theory
Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) American theoretical physicist; theorized existence of quarks as elementary subatomic particles, only subatomic particles that experience all 4 forces of nature; Nobel prize
Sophie Germain (1776-1831) French mathematician-physicist, 1st woman to receive math award; elasticity theory, Fermat's last theorem; number theory; mean curvature
Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) American scientist, thermodynamics, physical chemistry; statistical mechanics; Gibbs Free Energy; 1st PhD in engineering (Yale)
William Gilbert (1544-1603) English physician, physicist, created science of magnetism and electricity: discovered Earth is a magnet
Sheldon Lee Glashow (1932) theoretical physicist, unified electromagnetic force and the weak interaction of elementary particles into one force, Nobel Prize
Robert Goddard (1882-1945) American physicist, inventor; created world's first controlled, liquid fuel rocket 1926; father of American rocketry; solid fuel rocket
Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972) German-American theoretical physicist, magic numbers; atomic shells; Nobel prize, nuclear shell model of atomic nucleus, protons and neutrons in a nucleus arrange themself in distinct energy levels just like electron shells.
Thomas Gold (1920-2004) Austrian-American physicist, promoted steady state theory of the universe, the universe is the same everywhere all the time
Jane Goodall (1934) English biologist, primatologist, research on chimpanzees of Tanzania (Gombe Stream Nat.Park) and their interactions with each other
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) American biologist, paleontologist, evolutionary theory; theory of punctuated equilibrium=long stability, swift punctuated specialization
Fredrick Gregory (1941) American astronaut, engineer, Air Force pilot, one of first 3 African Americans in space NASA
Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) German physicist, engineer, 1st air pump 1650, vacuums, role of air in combustion and respiration, fluids and gases
H
Fritz Haber (1868-1934) German chemist, Haber-Bosch process, nitrogen and hydrogen from air to fertilizer, producing ammonia, Nobel prize
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) German zoologist, discovered thousands of new species, coined new terminology, genealogical tree, homology of embryos & evolution
Otto Hahn (1879-1968) German chemist, pioneer in radioactivity, radiochemistry, father of nuclear chemistry & nuclear fission discovery; thorium isotope
Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) Swiss physiologist; father of modern physiology; irritability property of muscle tissue, sensibility exclusive property of nervous tissue
Edmund Halley (1656-1742) English astronomer, physicist, 1st to calculate orbit of a comet & the comet was named after him (Halley's Comet)
Ken Ham (1951) Australian-American founder of Answers in Genesis
Alister Hardy (1896-1985) English marine-biologist, invented CPR, continuous plankton recorder, allowing mapping of world's plankton distribution and changes
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) English astronomer, mathematician, theory of refraction of light, sine law; 1st observed sunspots with telescope; 1st to see moon with a telescope and created the 1st map of the moon; one of 1st astronomers to use a telescope; shape of cannonball flight as parabola because of gravity and air resistance; accurate observations of Halley's comet; symbolic algebra, binary arithmetic, infinite series, foundation of calculus, correcting errors with navigation tools
William Harvey (1578-1657) English physician, 1st to correctly describe blood circulation in the body; heart pumps blood through arteries and veins quickly to make a complete circuit through the body heart to heart
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) English theoretical physicist; black holes, origin of universe, author
Otto Haxel (1909-1988) German nuclear physicist; German nuclear energy project; Max Plank Institute
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist; pioneer of theory of quantum mechanics; Nobel prize; hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, atomic nucleus, subatomic particles, cosmic rays, ferromagnetism
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) German physicist; opthalmoscope to see inside eyes; energy conservation, vortex equations for fluid dynamics, free energy in thermodynamics
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644) Belgian chemist, physiologist; gas classification, stomach acid in digestion
Joseph Henry (1797-1878) American scientist; 1st secretary of Smithsonian Inst.; property of inductance in electric circuits, electromagnetic inductance led to development of the telegraph, telephone, and electric motor
Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) German-British astronomer, identified several comets, and nebulae gas clouds
John Herschel (1792-1871) English polymath, photographer, blueprint, botanist
William Herschel (1738-1822) German-British astronomer, discovered planet Uranus, proposed that nebula contain stars, theory of stellar evolution; discovered infrared light radiation; discovered thousands of nebulae and star clusters
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887-1975) German physicist, Nobel on inelastic electron collisions in gasses, lose energy as electrons collide; electrons hold discrete quantized states of energy
Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) German physicist; demonstrated that electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell actually exist; his name used for unit of frequency
Karl F. Herzfeld (1892-1978) Austrian-American physicist; kinetic theory; ultrasonics; behavior of liquids and gases
George de Hevesy (1885-1966) Hungarian radiochemist; Nobel Prize for radiotracer principle to study chemical processes in animals; father of nuclear medicine
Antony Hewish (1924-2021) British radio-astronomer; Nobel prize for role in discovering pulsars, a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles.
David Hilbert (1862-1943) German mathematician discovered and developed invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory).
Maurice Hilleman (1919-2005) American microbiologist developed over 40 vaccines, top vaccine scientist of the 20th century
Hipparchus (190-120 B.C.) Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician, early trigonometry, precession of the equinoxes, calculated length of a year; created the 1st star catalog
Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) Greek physician, father of Greek medicine, books; prognosis; clinical observation; systematic categorization of diseases; established medicine as a distinct profession, clinical medicine
Shintaro Hirase (1884-1939) Japanese biologist (malacologist); mollusk collection; taxonomy; new species discovered; journal publications
Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) English chemist; X-ray crystallography of biomolecules; molecular structure of penicillin, insulin, Nobel prize
Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English polymath; designed microscope; coined the term cell; cell theory, living things are made of cells; Hooke's law of elasticity force to extend-compress a spring directly proportional to displacement of spring; gravity inverse square law; identified rotations of Mars and Jupiter; believed Earth was not static; extinction of species; uplift and erosion of land surface; helped rebuild London
Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1861–1947) British biochemist; discovered essential vitamins in animals; Nobel; discovered amino acid tryptophan essential to proteins
William Hopkins (1793-1866) English mathematician geologist, private tutor for Cambridge undergraduate mathematics students
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) American computer scientist-mathematician; pioneer in computer programming languages; development of UNIVAC first commercial computer; wrote 1st computer manual; contributed to creation of COBOL language in 1959
Frank Hornby (1863–1936) English inventor; Meccano toy kits for children; model railway trains, Dinky toys, Meccano magazine; Parliament member
Jack Horner (1946) American paleontologist; discovered Maiasaura dinosaur; evidence for nesting and parental care among dinosaur
Bernardo Houssay (1887-1971) Argentine physiologist, Nobel prize for work on pituitary hormones in regulating glucose blood sugar levels in animals
Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) English astronomer; stellar nucleosynthesis of heavy elements; nuclear reactions in cores of stars for elements up to iron; promoted steady state universe model over big bang theory
Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) American astronomer; discovered new galaxies beyond Milky way; measured galactic distances; Hubble's Law: evidence for universe expansion
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) German scientist; plant biogeography and ecosystems, proposed Atlantic continents' coastlines were once together; father of ecology and environmentalism; plant distribution, climate, geography, ecosystem intereconnectedness
Russell Humpheys (1942) American physicist; creationist model for planetary magnetic fields, distant starlight; Starlight and Time author
James Hutton (1726-1797) Scottish geologist, chemist; uniformitarianism and deep time model of earth history
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) Dutch scientist; formulated wave theory of light; derived formula for centrifugal force in classical mechanics; rings of Saturn, discovered Titan; invented pendulum clock
Hypatia (350-415 A.D.) Roman Alexandria, Egypt neo-Platonist taught philosopher, astronomer; wrote commentary about mathematics works; daughter of Theon
I
Ernesto Illy (1925-2008) Italian chemist; chairman of coffee manufacturer; researched coffee and espresso quality, espresso machines, and packaging
Ernst Ising (1900-1998) German physicist; phase transitions; ferromagnetism; linear chain of magnetic moments with only two possible positions: “up” or “down.” The Ising model describes a system of interacting spins (quantum angular momenta) on a lattice, where each spin can be either “up” or “down.” Ising’s work laid the foundation for understanding how magnetic materials transition from a paramagnetic (random spin orientations) to a ferromagnetic (aligned spins) state.
Keisuke Ito (1803-1901) Japanese medical practitioner; botanist; devised a smallpox vaccine in 1852; studied Japanese flora and fauna
J
Mae Carol Jemison (1956) American astronaut, engineer, physician; 1st African-American woman in space; research technology company, nonprofit
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) English physician; created smallpox vaccine, world's 1st vaccine; pioneered concept of vaccines
J. Hans D. Jensen (1907-1973) German nuclear physicist; separation of uranium isotopes; 1963 Nobel for nuclear shell model
Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956) French chemist, physicist; joint-Nobel prize in 1935 with husband Frederic Joliot-Curie for discovery of induced radioactivity (daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie)
James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) English physicist, studied relationship between heat and mechanical work, leading to the law of conservation of energy and the 1st law of thermodynamics; the unit of energy is named after him, the joule
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) Percy Julian chemist, pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants such as soybeans. Julian had a large role in the development of industrial scale chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as physostigmine, progesterone, testosterone, and corticosteroids.
K
Michio Kaku (1947) American physicist, author, science communicator, professor of theoretical physics
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) Dutch physicist, Nobel for studying material behavior when cooled to near absolute zero; liquified helium for the 1st time; discovered superconductivity.
Pyotr Kapitsa (1894-1984) Soviet physicist, Nobel for work on low-temperature physics
Friedrich August Kekulé (1829-1896) German organic chemist; theory of chemical structure; Kekule structure of benzene
Frances Kelsey (1914-2015) Canadian-American pharmacologist physician; FDA reviewer; refused to authorize thalidomide, later shown to cause birth defects
Pearl Kendrick (1890-1980) American bacteriologist co-developed 1st successful whooping cough vaccine along with Grace Eldering and Loney Gordon (1930s)
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer; laws of planetary motion; books; influenced Isaac Newton's law of gravitation
Abdul Qadeer Khan (1936-2021) Pakistani nuclear physicist; Pakistan's atomic weapons program
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Persian polymath, astronomer, philosopher, poet; known for finding geometric solutions to cubic equations; conics; Euclid's parallel axiom; calculated duration of solar year; designed a solar calendar as basis to the current Persian calendar.
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) American scientist on human sexual reproduction
Gustav Kirchoff (1824-1887) German physician and mathematician; electric circuits; spectroscopy, black-body radiation by heated objects; Kirchoff's laws of circuits and thermal radiation, thermochemistry
Martin Klaproth (1743-1817) German chemist; apothecary; systemizer of analytical chemistry; inventor of gravimetric analysis; discovered uranium, zirconium, titanium, strontium, cerium, chromium, confirmed discovery of tellurium, beryllium
Robert Koch (1843-1910) German physician, microbiologist, discovered causes of infectious diseases tuberculosis, cholera, anthrax; founder of modern bacteriology; father of microbiology; proof of germ theory of diseases; created scientific basis of public health; modern medicine; Nobel 1905
Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) German psychiatrist; origin of psychiatric disease is biologic and genetic malfunction
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) American historian and philosopher of science; scientific revolutions; paradigm shifts of scientific advancement
Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014) American chemist; invented Kevlar, a strong, heat resistant synthetic fibers; worked with DuPont
L
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) Italian-French mathematician, physicist, astronomer; He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) French naturalist, proponent of biological evolution according to natural laws
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) Austrian-American actress and inventor; developed concept of "frequency hopping" along with George Antheil which helped enable wireless communication technology, such as Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth. Frequency hopping, also known as frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS), is a radio transmission method that involves rapidly switching between multiple frequency channels. This technique is used to minimize the risk of unauthorized interception or jamming of telecommunications.
Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991) American scientist and inventor; lead the Polaroid corporation to the first instant photography system
Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) Austrian-American biologist, physician; humans have different types of red blood cells and can clump when mixed together; led to blood transfusions of similar blood type or group; Nobel prize 1930
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) French mathematician, astronomer, physicist; stability of solar system; theory of magnetic, electrical, and heat wave propagation; Laplace equation; Laplace transformation, differential operator, to simplify the solution to many differential equations that describe physical processes
Max von Laue (1879-1960) German physicist; discovery of diffraction of X-rays by crystals; 1914 Nobel prize
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) French chemist; father of modern chemistry; named oxygen; discovered oxygen is a key substance in combustion; developed the modern system of naming chemical substances; law of conservation of mass
Ernest Lawrence (1901-1958) American physicist; 1939 Nobel Prize for inventing the cyclotron, which proved instrumental in the production of fissionable isotopes and success of the Manhattan Project.
Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921) American astronomer; developed tools to map out the stars of the universe; correlation between period and luminosity; helped map the sky and universe; measured distances from earth to stars, brightness, magnitude of stars
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) Dutch scientist; father of microbiology; described size and shape of blood cells; discovered blood circulation through capillaries; discovered bacteria in water; discovered sperm cells and fertilization when sperm and egg unite; insects reproduce like larger organisms; discovered many microorganisms; studied plant anatomy; made microscopes
Inge Lehmann (1888-1993) Danish seismologist; discovered the Earth's inner core in 1936 by using seismic wave data
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) German mathematician; differential and integral calculus, independent of Isaac Newton; binary system
Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) Belgian scientist; 1st proposed Big Bang Theory scientifically; universe began from explosion of super atom
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian scientist, engineer; envisioned airplane flying machine, helicopter, tank, concentrated solar power; a calculator; the double-hull; artist, painter; sculptor, draftsman, architect
Niccolo Leoniceno (1428-1524) Italian physician; translated ancient Greek, Arab medical texts into the Latin language; wrote 1st scientific paper on syphilis.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American scientist; environmental ethics and wilderness conservation
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012) Italian neurobiologist; 1986 Nobel with Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor, mechanisms that regulate growth of cells and organs
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) French anthropologist; structuralism paradigm in social sciences
Willard Frank Libby (1908-1980) American physical chemist; development of radiocarbon dating in 1949 for archaeology and paleontology
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) German chemist and agriculturalist; development of nitrogen-based fertilizer; beef extract; helped found organic chemistry; analytical methods
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) Swedish biologist; created modern system of naming organisms (binomial system) ; the father of modern taxonomy
Joseph Lister (1827-1912) British surgeon scientist, pathologist, pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative healthcare; father of modern surgery
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and physician, enlightenment thinker; father of liberalism; limited government; theory of natural rights: life, liberty, and property; opposed divine right of kings; social contract theory: government exists only by the consent of the people in order to protect basic rights and promote the common good of society. Locke opposed the divine right of kings; he believed that kings who don't respect natural rights could be removed
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) Dutch physicist; 1902 Nobel prize for Zeeman effect, the effect of splitting of a spectral line into several components in the presence of a static magnetic field. Lorentz studied connections between electricity, magnetism, and light. Lorentz electron theory= in matter there are charged particles, electrons, that conduct electric current and whose oscillations give rise to light.
Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) Australian zoologist; animal behavior; principle of attachment or imprinting between newborn animal and its caregiver; 1973 Nobel prize
Ada Lovelace (1815-1882) English mathematician; worked on Charles Babbage's personal computer; recognized that the computer had applications beyond calculations; Lovelace was recognized as the 1st computer programmer
Percival Lowell (1885-1916) American businessman and scientist; predicted existence of Pluto (9th planet), predicted canals on Mars
Lucretius (99-51 B.C.) Roman poet and philosopher; author of the philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe)
Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Scottish geologist; natural causes of earth's history; uniformitarianism; author: Principles of Geology; worked with Charles Darwin
M
Ernst Mach (1838-1916) Austrian physicist and philosopher; physics of shock waves; speed of sound; super-sonic motion; the ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor
Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) Italian physician; founder of microscopical anatomy; histology; father of physiology and embryology; link between arteries and veins; red blood cells; oxygen and blood circulation in lungs; skin pigmentation mechanism; sensory mechanism of the tongue; connection between spinal cord and brain; discovery of pulmonary capillaries and alveoli
Jane Marcet (1769-1858) English author of science textbooks
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) Italian inventor scientist; used radio waves to transmit signals over a distance of several kilometers. He developed the technology in later years to achieve greater range of signals, establishing the foundation for both wireless telegraphy and radio. Nobel prize 1909.
Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) American biologist; theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges central tenets of neo-Darwinism. She argued that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Endosymbiotic theory is an evolutionary theory that explains the origin of eukaryotic cells from prokaryotes; Mitochondria from chloroplasts; It states that several key organelles of eukaryotes originated as a symbiosis between separate single-celled organisms.
Barry Marshall (1951) Australian physician; 2005 Nobel with Robin Warren; discovery that stomach ulcers are an infectious disease caused by bacteria
Polly Matzinger (1947) French born immunologist; danger model theory of immune system, which suggests that the immune system is far less concerned with things that are foreign than with those that do damage. The danger model of the immune system proposes that it differentiates between components that are capable of causing damage, rather that distinguishing between self and non-self.
Matthew Maury (1806-1873) American oceanographer; discovered ocean currents and mapped them; father of oceanography; currents, winds, weather conditions across the world's oceans
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Scottish physicist; classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) German-American biologist; biological species concept; linked Darwin to Mendelian genetics
Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) American scientist; Nobel prize for the discovery of genetic transposition proving that genes can move on a chromosome, causing certain physical characteristics to turn on or off. She also was 1st to identify all ten maize chromosomes.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) Jewish Austrian physician; discovered the radioactive element protactinium and 1st to describe nuclear fission; overlooked for Nobel prize
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Austrian biologist; discovered fundamental laws of inheritance; father of genetics; genes come in pairs and are inherited, one from each parent; principles of heredity; mathematical foundation of scientific genetics
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) Russian chemist and inventor; formulated the Periodic Law and the Periodic Table of the Elements in 1869
Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) German physician and astronomer; developed system of therapeutics called mesmerism, the forerunner of hypnotism.
Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) Italian inventor; invented 1st telephone (according to several sources) or voice communication apparatus
John Michell (1724-1793) English natural philosopher; predicted black holes, seismology, manufacture of magnets, mass of earth
Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) Prussian-American; measured speed of light; Nobel prize; Michelson-Morley experiment=speed of light is constant in all directions enabling calculation of distances in space, confirmed E=mc2; invented echelon telescope; measured diameter of a star
Thomas Midgeley Jr. (1889-1944) American engineer; solved problem of engine knock by creating tetraethyl lead gasoline, increasing efficiency; developed freon for refrigerators and air conditioners
Milutin Milanković (1879-1958) Serbian mathematician; developed theory relating Earth motions to long-term climate change cycles
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) American astronomer; 1st female astronomer in U.S., 1st American scientist to discover a comet, in 1847
Mario Molina (1943-2020) Mexican physical chemist; 1995 Nobel co-prize for discovery of Antarctic ozone hole and the threat to Earth's ozone layer from chloroflurocarbon gases.
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) American biologist; Nobel prize for discovery of role of chromosomes in heredity; confirmed the chromosomal theory of inheritance; confirmed genes are stored in chromosomes inside the nucleus of the cell
Henry Morris (1918-2006) American engineer and creationism promoter; father of modern creation science; co-authored the book The Genesis Flood with John C. Whitcomb in 1961.
Samuel Morse (1791-1872) American inventor; electric telegraph, long-distance communication; transmitted electric signals by wire between stations; co-developed Morse Code text for the telegraph communication; painter
Henry Moseley (1887-1915) English physicist; pioneering studies of X-rays emitted from the elements, Moseley's law leading to the concept of atomic number arrangement on the Periodic Table based on X-ray frequency; atomic structure; predicted elements
N
Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-1962) Japanese physicist; glaciology; created 1st artificial snowflakes in laboratory; he explained the mechanism of growth and thermal behavior of Tyndall figures (negative crystals) in ice crystals with his experiments. Also in this period he compiled many data on plastic deformation of ice crystals which made it clear that the ice crystal slips in the basal plane in layers. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Journal of Glaciology, 1.30.2017)
John Napier (1550-1617) Scottish mathematician, physicist, known for his discovery-invention of logarithms to help in mathematical calculations, which helped the invention of analog computers and slide rules. Also invented Napier's bones (rods), which could be assembled in different ways to multiply or divide large numbers by reading across the columns of figures. Napier also made common use of the decimal point in mathematics.
Giulio Natta (1903-1979) Italian chemical engineer; Nobel 1963 with Karl Ziegler for work on high-density polymers. He discovered a catalyst that formed molecular chains with their parts oriented in certain directions, making it possible to produce rubbery and textile-like materials. He discovered plastics contain very large molecules containing long chains of smaller molecules.
John Needham (1713-1781) English biologist and priest; theory of spontaneous generation; living organisms can develop from non-living matter; claimed to grow microbes in laboratory experiment after boiling a broth mixture and letting it cool
John von Neumann (1903-1957) Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, engineer; early development of computers; MANIAC; game theory
Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) English inventor; created atmospheric steam engine, 1st practical, fuel burning engine in 1712 (steam engine)
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) English mathematician, physicist, astronomer who formulated laws of motion of objects and universal gravitation into math formula equations; published the book Principia; invented calculus, reflecting telescope, new theory of light and color, alchemist, theologian, natural philosopher
Charles Nicolle (1866-1936) French bacteriologist; 1928 Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries about typhus disease prevention research (lice)
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) English social reformer, statistician; founder of modern nursing; hospital management; author
Tim Noakes (1949) South African scientist; exercise science; nutrition; author of scientific books
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor; invented dynamite; founded the Nobel prizes; many patents
Emmy Noether (1882-1935) German mathematician; abstract algebra; proved Noether's 1st and 2nd theorems; top mathematician of 20th century and called the most important female mathematician in history by Albert Einstein and others; developed theory of rings, fields, algebras. Group theory, number theory. Noether's theorem explains physics connections between symmetry and conservation laws. She proved two theorems that were basic for both general relativity and elementary particle physics.
Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (1942) German biologist; 1995 joint Nobel prize for research on mechanisms of early embryonic development
Bill Nye (1955) American science communicator, television personality for science educational programming; engineer
O
Hans Christian Orsted (1777-1851) Danish physicist chemist; discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, which was the first connection found between electricity and magnetism. Oersted's law and the oersted unit are named after him. Discovered and produced aluminum.
Georg Ohm (1789-1854) German physicist mathematician; Ohm's law, describing the mathematical relationship between electrical current, resistance and voltage. V=IR (Voltage (V) equals current (I) times resistance (R); He also developed the Ohm's torsion balance, a device used to measure current, and Ohm's acoustic law.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) American theoretical physicist; director of Manhattan Project Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II; had a leading role in developing, researching, and designing the first atomic bombs
Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) German chemist; founder of physical chemistry; rates of chemical reactions; acids and bases; Nobel prize for work on definition of catalyst, which can affect a chemical reaction's speed, but is not included in its end products; applications to industrial chemical reactions and biochemical reactions; chemical equilibria and rates of reactions; discovered law of dilution of electrolytes
William Oughtred (1574-1660) English mathematician, clergyman; invented earliest form of the slide rule in 1622 using logarithms and logarithmic scales, lines, or rules. Used the slide rule to perform multiplication and division; created math symbols x for multiplication, and sin and cos for the sine and cosine functions.
P
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician scientist; foundation of modern theory of probability; Pascal's triangle for binomial expansion; Pascal's principle of pressure; early digital calculator, syringe, a hydraulic press, and roulette wheel; atmospheric pressure; proved existence of vacuum above atmosphere
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French chemist and biologist; discovered principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, which kills microbes and prevents spoilage in food products such as milk; disproved theory of spontaneous generation; proposed that life only comes from life and that diseases are caused by microscopic organisms; discovered principles of vaccination and created vaccines for rabies and anthrax in 1885; discovered fermentation, molecular asymmetry, and that virulence (severity of disease) can be increased or decreased
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900-1958) Austrian theoretical physicist; pioneer of quantum mechanics; explained the Zeeman effect (splitting of spectral line into components in the presence of a static magnetic field); proposed the existence of the neutrino elementary particle; developed Paul Exclusion Principle (no two electrons in the same atom can have identical values for all four of their quantum numbers-no more than two electrons in each orbital and two electrons in the same orbital must have opposite spins)
Linus Pauling (1991-1994) American chemist; nature of the chemical bond; developed concepts of resonance and hybridization with chemical bond shared electrons; cause of sickle-cell anemia; developed accurate oxygen meter for submarines; helped create synthetic plasma; determined the spiral structure of proteins; helped lead Watson and Crick to their discovery of DNA structure; Nobel Prize; developed electronegativity scale for elements; concept of molecular disease; the role of antigens and antibodies in the immune system
Randy Pausch (1960-2008) American computer science professor; developed "Alice" software project which create animations, builds interactive narratives, or programs simple games in 3D.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian neurologist-physiologist; discovered theory of classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs; He was awarded the 1904 Nobel prize in medicine for research on digestion and digestive glands
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) British-American astronomer; discovered that the Sun and the other stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. Heavier elements, such as those making up the bulk of the Earth, make up less than two percent of the mass of the stars.
Wilder Penfield (1891-1976) American-Canadian neurosurgeon; developed the Montreal Procedure, which enabled surgeons to operate on the brains of epileptic patients and destroy the cells where seizures originated. He also discovered that stimulation of the temporal lobes provoked startlingly vivid recollections, which is proof of the physical basis of memory.
Marguerite Perey (1909-1975) French physicist and student of Marie Curie; discovered francium in 1939 by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium.
William Perkin (1838-1907) British chemist; discovered mauvine, the first commercialized synthetic dye; and other synthetic dyes
John Philoponus (490-570) Byzantine Greek philosopher, Christian author; creation of universe ex-nihilo; prime matter as 3D extension; projectile motion by impetus; theory of impetus
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist; theory of child cognitive development; 4 major stages of cognitive development: (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking, with each stage being an age group, the last of which is age 12 and up
Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) French physician; father of modern psychiatry; he advocated humane treatment of mentally ill (moral therapy); he developed diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders; his work influenced modern psychotherapy
Max Planck (1858-1947) German physicist; 1918 Nobel prize for discovery of elementary energy quanta (discrete values) in his quantum theory; Plank's law is also applied to radiation law where energy is only emitted in discrete values or quanta
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (23-79 A.D.) Roman philosopher and author, published 1st encyclopedia Natural History (an encyclopedia of natural science)
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French scientist who researched the three-body problem and discovered that orbits can be non-periodic. Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. Poincare is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology; dynamic systems theory and the solar system; worked on special relativity theory; gravitational waves; electromagnetic theory
Karl Popper (1902-1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science, who promoted the theory of falsification, which is a way to separate science from non-science by saying that a theory is scientific only if it is testable and conceivable to be proven false. If a theory cannot be tested, then it is not scientific. So Popper rejected evolution theory as unscientific because it cannot be tested. Popper is known for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences.
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) English children's author, scientist, conservationist; studied fungi and mushroom reproduction
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) English chemist, minister, inventor, discovered oxygen and a dozen chemical compounds, published a paper about electricity, invented carbonated water, pencil eraser.
Proclus (412-485 A.D.) Greek neo-platonic philosopher, most well-known philosopher of late antiquity, helped transfer platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages
Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 A.D.) Alexandrian scientist; geocentric theory of the universe that lasted for 1,400 years; astronomy, mathematics, geography, music theory, optics
Pythagoras (570-495 B.C.) Greek philosopher and polymath; influenced Plato and Aristotle; Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, theory of proportions, sphericity of Earth; astronomy; the morning and evening stars as planet Venus; he was known as the father of philosophy-systematic thinking, reasoning, rational inquiry; father of mathematics; father of music; music theory: pitch intervals based on string length
Q
Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist; founded and directed Brussels Observatory; introduced statistical methods to the social sciences; he collected population data about births, deaths, crimes, and censuses; his average man theory found truths about population using statistics about social behaviors and studying their distributions and averages.
Harriet Quimby (1875-1912) American aviator, journalist, film screenwriter; 1st woman to receive a pilot's license; 1st woman to fly solo over the English Channel
Thabit ibn Qurra (836-901 A.D.) Abbasid polymath, astronomy, medicine, translated ancient Greek texts into Arabic
R
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata (C.V.) Raman (1888-1970) Indian physicist known for his work in the field of light scattering. Using a spectrograph that he developed, Raman and his student K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the deflected light scatters, changing its wavelength and energy. Named Raman Effect or Raman Scattering. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics, and he was the 1st Asian to win the prize.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) Indian mathematician who reshaped twentieth-century mathematics with his various contributions in several mathematical domains, including mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions, number theory, and game theory is recognized as one of history's greatest mathematicians.
William Ramsay (1852-1916) Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases as a new group on the periodic table and received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1904. He first discovered argon, neon, krypton, xenon. Helium and radon already known.
John Ray (1627-1705) English naturalist; produced a widely-accepted biological definition of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy
Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944) Indian chemist who discovered stable compound mercurous nitrite; Father of Indian chemistry; founded India's 1st pharmaceutical company; 1st to synthesize mercury, pioneered the use of mercury for skin diseases; discovered element thallium; published books and articles
Francesco Redi (1626-1697) Italian physician; founder of experimental biology; father of modern parasitology; 1st to challenge theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies; proved that cells don't come from nonliving matter; proved life comes from life by reproduction (theory of biogenesis) and therefore proved a major pillar of cell theory
Sally Ride (1951-2012) American astronaut and physicist; 1st American woman to travel in space and 3rd woman to travel in space; technology career promoter
Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series; Reimann surfaces, Reimann hypothesis; analytic number theory; differential geometry; mathematics of general relativity; He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
Edouard Roche (1820-1883) French astronomer who calculated the Roche (limit) or Roche radius, which is the distance from a celestial body within which a second celestial body, held together only by its own force of gravity, will disintegrate because the first body's tidal forces exceed the second body's self-gravitation. Also calculated Roche sphere (gravitational sphere of influence, such as with an astronomical body) and Roche lobe (region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star).
Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) German engineer and physicist; discovered X-rays, or electromagnetic radiation (rays) in the wavelength range assigned to X-rays accidentally while experimenting with cathode rays and fluorescence in vacuum tubes. He was awarded the inaugural Nobel prize in physics in 1901. The discovery of X-rays revolutionized the medical field by allowing doctors to see inside the human body and diagnose diseases easier.
Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) Swiss psychiatrist who developed a projective test with an inkblot designed to reflect unconscious parts of the personality that "project" onto the stimuli. The inkblot test used for diagnosing psychopathology.
Ronald Ross (1857-1932) British physician, polymath; awarded Nobel prize in medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria parasites by mosquitos
Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroes in Europe) Andalusian polymath who wrote about many subjects from philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, law, and linguistics
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand physicist; father of nuclear physics; pioneering study of radioactivity and the atom; he discovered two types of radiation: the alpha and beta particles from uranium. Rutherford discovered that the atom is mostly empty space, and the mass is concentrated in the centrally positively charged nucleus of the atom; discovery of atomic nucleus; discovery of the proton; Nobel prize in chemistry for 1908. Rutherford model of the atom; discovery of radon; artificial disintegration of elements; proposed laws of radioactive decay
S
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American astronomer and science communicator; possibility of extraterrestrial life and experimental production of amino acids from chemicals and light exposure
Abdus Salam (1926-1996) Pakistani physicist: awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, along with Glashow and Weinberg, for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current. Salam realized that at high temperatures, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear force were the same. He showed that the two forces were components of one unified force, the electroweak force. Many physics topics can be taught in connection to unified theory. Salam's notable achievements also include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photons, vector mesons, Grand Unified Theory, and work on supersymmetry, quantum field theory, neutrinos, neutron stars, black holes, and quantum mechanics.
Jonas Salk (1914-1995) American virologist who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines
Frederick Sanger (1918-2013) British biochemist awarded Nobel prize in chemistry twice for determining the structure of the insulin molecule (1958) and determining the base sequence of nucleic acids (1980).
Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) Brazilian inventor and aviation pioneer designed and flew balloons and flying machines. He made the first significant flight of a powered airplane in France in 1898, where he and his machine (a dirigible) reached 1300 feet before crash landing.
Walter Schottky (1886-1976) German physicist; theory of electron and ion emission phenomena; invented screen-grid vacuum tube (1915); co-invented the ribbon microphone and ribbon loudspeaker (1924); later described electron holes in semiconductors; published Thermodynamik
Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) Austrian physicist and pioneer in quantum theory and mechanics; He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1933. Schrodinger believed that matter and electrons could be particles and waves and formulated a wave equation that accurately calculated the energy levels of electrons in atoms in 1926. He also applied Albert Einstein's theory of relativity to his work on quantum mechanics and determined that the electron must have a spin of 1/2. He is known as the father of quantum physics. He used differential equations to describe how the quantum state of a physical system changes over time. Schrodinger's famous thought experiment demonstrated quantum mechanics, where a cat is locked inside a box with potentially lethal poison. The status of the cat's safety is impossible to know, until the box is opened. In theory, the cat could be alive or dead at the same time. Schrodinger also published a paper on color perception and luminosity.
Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) German physician and physiologist; his work extended cell theory to animals; discovered all animals are made of cells; worked with German scientist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, who discovered that cells are the basic structure for plants; Cell theory describes how cells can be independent, compacted, fused, or elongated to form various tissues and organs. Schwann isolated the enzyme responsible for digestive processes in the stomach, and named it pepsin; Schwann also studied nerve cells, fermentation of yeast, metabolism, microorganisms, embryology.
Glenn Seaborg (1912-1999) American chemist who discovered and synthesized ten transuranium elements along with his colleagues, including plutonium; he also helped identify over 100 isotopes of elements of the periodic table; Seaborg was awarded a share of the 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry.
Hans Selye (1907-1982) Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist who studied organism response to stressors; Selye's Stress Theory: Selye's Syndrome or General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is the negative biological response to stress identified by Dr. Selye in 1936. GAS has three phases, according to Selye: an initial alarm phase, a resistance or adaptation phase, and finally a stage of exhaustion, illness, and death.
Charles Sherrington (1857-1952) British neurophysiologist whose research established the concept of spinal reflex as a system with connected neurons (the neuron doctrine), and coined the term "synapse" to describe the connection between two neurons; awarded Nobel prize in medicine in 1932 for his work. He also researched spinal reflexes from nerve cells from the spinal chord to muscles.
Gene Shoemaker (1928-1997) American geologist; co-founder of planetary science; co-discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994, the first such collision seen by scientists. Shoemaker discovered about 30 comets, and his wife also discovered about 30 comets.
Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892) German electrical engineer, inventor, industrialist known for his contributions to electrical engineering and telegraphy, the pointer telegraph, telegraph cables, and the dynamo machine. The dynamo electric principle established electricity as a power source and allowed large scale generation of electricity by mechanical means.
George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) American paleontologist, one of the most well known paleontologists of the 20th century; intercontinental migrations of animal species in past geologic times; modern synthesis of evolution theory; used mathematical methods in paleontology
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor; Skinner's theory of learning for conditioning of human behavior: stimulus exposure, response, reinforcement of response.
William Smith (1769-1839) English geologist; created 1st nationwide geologic map; identified rock layers by the fossils that the rock layers contained.
Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) English radiochemist co-work with Ernest Rutherford found that that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements and researched the nature and origin of isotopes. Soddy was awarded the Nobel prize in 1922, along with Francis William Aston.
Mary Somerville (1780-1872) Scottish polymath and astronomer, had a vital role in the discovery of planet Neptune.
Arnold Sommerfeld (1868-1951) German physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, and taught many students.
Hermann Staudinger (1881-1965) German organic chemist who discovered existence of macromolecules, which he called polymers and became known as the father of polymer chemistry; He also discovered ketenes and the Staudinger reaction. Staudinger was awarded the 1953 Nobel prize in chemistry
Nicolas Steno (1638-1686) Danish scientist and pioneer in anatomy and geology; explained that the Earth's crust contains rock layers with fossils that can reveal the chronologic geologic history of Earth.
Nettie Stevens (1861-1912) American geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes.
William John Swainson (1789-1855) English scientist, artwork of shells, flowers, and birds; studied thousands of plant species
Leo Szilard (1898-1964) Hungarian physicist and inventor; helped conduct the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
T
Niccolo Tartaglia (1499-1557) Italian mathematician and engineer known for his discovery of solutions to the cubic equation, however, other before him also found solutions to the cubic equation, such as Omar Khayyam in the 12th century and Scipione del Ferro in the 16th century.
Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American physicist and chemical engineer known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb," helped to successfully test the hydrogen bomb, and worked on the concept of submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Serbian-American inventor and engineer, pioneered the generation, transmission, and use of alternating current electricity system, which can be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current. Tesla's inventions and contributions include work on: remote control, neon and fluorescent lights, wireless transmission, computers, smartphones, laser beams, x-rays, robotics, along with alternating current, which is the basis of our current electric system. The Tesla coil, an electric circuit used to generate low-current, high-voltage electricity. Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power plant in Niagara Falls, New York. Tesla's name is used for the unit of measure of the strength of magnetic fields.
Thales of Miletus (626-548 B.C.) Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher regarded as the first Greek philosopher, who used natural philosophy instead of mythology in his works, which included mathematics, science, and deductive reasoning; he believed nature's existence was based on one universal substance, water. He calculated and researched heights, distances, astronomy, weather, and engineering, including river diversion.
Theon of Alexandria (335-405 A.D.) Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt and published commentaries of Euclid and Ptolemy. Wrote about solar and lunar eclipses. His daughter Hypatia also was a well known mathematician and astronomer of her time.
Vivien Thomas (1910-1985) American laboratory supervisor best known for his role in developing a groundbreaking surgical technique to correct a potentially fatal birth defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot, that resulted in oxygen-poor blood leaving the heart, which is also known as blue baby syndrome. He also developed techniques and tools that would lead to today's modern heart surgery.
Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) American-British scientist and inventor known for his experiments on heat and light and for his inventions of heating and cooking stoves.
J. J. Thomson (1856-1940) British physicist credited with discovering the electron, the 1st subatomic particle, in 1897 with cathode rays in a high-vacuum tube. Thomson worked on an atomic model of the structure of the atom. In 1906, Thomson was awarded the Nobel prize for work on the electrical conductivity of gases. Thomson's work also led to the development of the spectrograph.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907) British scientist who developed the international temperature system for absolute temperature. Also developed the plum pudding model of the atom, which described negatively charged electrons (plum pieces) embedded into a positively charged pudding.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American naturalist-philosopher; believed transcendentalism; innate goodness of humanity; civil liberty advocate, wrote Walden
Kip S. Thorne (1940) American physicist; gravitation and astrophysics; 2017 Nobel prize for his work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the observation of gravitational waves.
Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997) American astronomer who discovered planet Pluto in 1930, which was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. He also discovered hundreds of variable stars, asteroids, and two comets.
Susumu Tonegawa (1939) Japanese scientist of (MIT), was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity." At a time when the question of how a limited number of genes could produce such a vast array of antibodies perplexed immunologists, Tonegawa demonstrated that antibody diversity was a result of the rearrangement of genes in somatic cells. His findings have allowed for advancements in the areas of vaccination, organ transplantation, and the treatment of autoimmune diseases. (American Association of Immunologists)
Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) Italian physicist and mathematician, student of Galileo; invented the barometer, worked with optics and the method of indivisibles. He was the 1st to create a sustained vacuum. The unit of measurement torr is named after him; He also worked with geometry, which led to the development of integral calculus.
Charles Townes (1915-2015) American physicist who worked on the theory and application of the maser (invisible light); obtained patent for maser; worked in quantum electronics associated with maser and laser (visible light) devises; maser led to development of laser; Townes won Nobel prize in 1964.
Youyou Tu (1930) Chinese malariologist and chemist who discovered, artemisinin, a drug from ancient Chinese herbal medicine to treat malaria, and was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine in 2015.
Alan Turing (1912-1954) English mathematician known for his work with the first modern computers, known as the father of modern computer science; developed the Turing Test, which formed the basis for artificial intelligence; worked with encryption
Neil Degrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator; research in cosmology, stellar formation, glaxies, and bulges
U
Harold Urey (1893-1981) American chemist known for work on isotopes; Nobel prize in chemistry in 1934; discovery of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope, also known as heavy hydrogen. Also known for participation in Miller-Urey experiment that claimed to be successful in producing organic molecules under primitive Earth conditions
V
Craig Venter (1946) American biotechnologist who led one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembling the first team to transfect a cell with synthetic chromosome.
Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) Russian geochemist considered one of the founders of geochemistry and biogeochemistry; one of the first to recognize the potential of radioactivity as a source of thermal energy and geochemical processes in the Earth.
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) Belgian physician; father of anatomy; one of the first physicians to accurately record and illustrate human anatomy, published De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, one of the most important books on anatomy; researched through autopsies and dissections
Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) German physician; founder of cellular pathology and modern pathology. He stated that all diseases involve changes in normal cells, that is, all pathology ultimately is cellular pathology.
Artturi Virtanen (1895-1973) Finnish chemist who won the 1945 Nobel prize in chemistry for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder (hay) preservation method"; chemistry of nutrients; dairy products
Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Italian physicist and chemist who pioneered electricity and power; credited with inventing the first electric battery (the first source of continuous current) and discovered methane; invented the electric cell; developed the law of capacitance; the volt unit is named after him; along with voltage, voltmeter
W
Selman Waksman (1888-1973) Jewish-Ukrainian scientist whose research on soil microbes led to the discovery of a new antibiotic, streptomycin, the first effective cure for tuberculosis, cholera, and typhoid fever. Waksman was awarded the Nobel prize in 1952 for his work. He also discovered other antibiotics.
George Wald (1906-1997) American scientist who studied pigments in the retina of the eye. He won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1967 for research on the molecular basis of photo-reception.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) English naturalist; proposed the idea of evolution by natural selection independently from Charles Darwin, however Wallace's work is not as well-known as Darwin's work.
John Wallis (1616-1703) English clergyman and mathematician who made substantial contributions to the development of calculus; was the top English mathematician before Isaac Newton; Wallis introduced the infinity symbol; exponent notation; interpolation; conic sections; gravitation; infinitesimals
Ernest Walton (1903-1995) Irish physicist and 1951 Nobel laurate who first split the atom; helped along with John Cockroft construct one of the first particle accelerators
James Watson (1928) American biologist proposed with Francis Crick the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, and was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Rosalind Franklin had a major role in the discovery, and produced much of the data evidence from her X-ray image, but was not recognized for her work.
James Watt (1736-1819) Scottish inventor, known for inventing different types of steam engines and coined the term horsepower. The basic unit of energy, the watt, is named after him. He also developed a rotary engine that mechanized weaving, spinning, and transport. Invented a copy machine, tachometer (revolution counter), micrometer for measuring distances, civil engineering work with flexible water mains.
Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) German climatologist, meteorologist, polar researcher, originator of continental drift hypothesis (1912) that led to the theory of plate tectonics. Researched polar air circulation in Greenland.
John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) American physicist and a leading theoretical physicist of the twentieth century, contributing particularly to the fields of general relativity, gravitation, unified field theory, and quantum mechanics. Wheeler was a pioneer in the study of black holes, celestial phenomena which he named.
Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) New Zealand-born British biophysicist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA, and was co-Nobel Laurate with Francis Crick and James Watson. Wilkins research focused on phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction.
Thomas Willis (1621-1675) English physician who researched anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and founded comparative neuroanatomy, clinical neurology, and neuropathology; and coining the term neurologia or neurology. Willis established neurology as a distinct discipline and made significant original contributions to many related fields including anatomy, pathology, cardiology, endocrinology, and gastroenterology. He is most remembered for his work in elucidating the function and anatomy of the circle of Willis.
E. O. Wilson (1929-2021) American biologist known for the field of sociobiology, the genetic basis of social behavior in animals and humans; he was also the leading world authority on ants.
Sven Wingqvist (1876-1953) Swedish engineer and founder of a world-leading spherical ball-bearing and roller-bearing maker; he also invented the multi-row, self-aligning ball-bearing in 1907.
Sergei Winogradsky (died 1953) Ukrainian-Russian microbiologist; pioneered the cycle of life concept; father of modern environmental and soil microbiology; showed how microorganisms can use inorganic substances to make their own nutrients and energy; nitrogen and sulfur cycles
Carl Woese (1928-2012) American microbiologist and biophysicist who discovered and defined Archaea (a group of single-cell prokaryotic organisms) by phylogenetic taxonomy
Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) German chemist; organic and inorganic chemistry; 1st to isolate aluminum, beryllium and yttrium in pure metallic form; 1st to prepare several inorganic compounds; he was the 1st to synthesize an organic compound from an inorganic substance
Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) American aviation pioneers who made the 1st successful powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) German psychologist; father of experimental psychology; established psychology as a science; opened the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology in Germany, published the 1st textbook on psychology; his research methods studied the human mind experimentally.
Y
Chen-Ning Yang (1922) Yang-Mills theory; he found that parity not conserved when certain subatomic particles decayed; awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1957; first Chinese scientist to win the Nobel Prize
Z
Ahmed Zewail (1946-2016) Egyptian-U.S. chemist, and father of femto-chemistry. In the late 1980s, Ahmed Zewail developed methods for studying chemical reactions in detail by using laser technology to produce flashes of light just a few femtoseconds long, allowing reactions to be mapped. (NobelPrize.org 1999) Chemical reactions of molecular vibrations and rotations occur at speeds in femtoseconds (10^-14s).
Nobel Prize Winners in the Sciences List: African, American, Asian, Australian, European
African American Scientists and Inventors
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) 1st African-American scientist, astronomer, mathematician, almanac series, accurate clock, agriculture irrigation, surveyor
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) agriculturalist, inventor, teacher, MSc Iowa St, pioneering crop rotation=rotate cotton with peanuts and soybeans, which would restore nitrogen in the soil and increase protein levels in human’s diets. Crop rotation can help to manage your soil and fertility, reduce erosion, improve your soil's health, and increase nutrients available for crops (USDA). Also crop rotation can enhance soil health, reduce pests, optimize nutrient cycling, improve yields, and promote biodiversity (tracextech). Sustainable agriculture. Carver developed 300 uses for peanuts, Tuskegee Institute 40 years agriculture department, advised
Edward Bouchet physics 1st African-American Ph.D in USA, Yale 1876, Educator (father from Charleston, SC)
Tbello Myokong chemistry Ph.D 1987, 450 publications, patent
Neil deGrasse Tyson Ph.D Astrophysics 1991 Columbia, researcher, science promoter
Thomas Mensah chemical Engineer, fiber optics, nanotechnology, patents, Ph.D 1978
Marie Daly 1921-2003, Biochemist, Columbia Ph.D 1st African American chemistry Ph.D, protein synthesis
Mae Jemison engineer, physician, NASA Astronaut
Walter Lincoln Hawkins chemistry, helped pioneer polymer chemistry
Charles Henry Turner biologist known for his research on the behavior of insects, particularly bees and ants, he showed that insects can hear and alter behavior based on previous experience, produced over 70 research papers
Percy Julian chemist, pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants.
Ernest Everett Just, biologist Ph.D 1916 Chicago from Charleston, SC SCSU, marine egg fertilization
Emmett Chapelle bioluminescence in living organisms produce light, biochemistry
Lonnie Johnson engineer, heat pump, Super Soaker water spray toy
Ronald McNair physicist, NASA astronaut, 1986 challenger, 2nd African-American astronaut
Otis Boykin patents on electrical devices, computer, pacemaker enhancement
Norbert Rillieux (AGS) sugar processing enhancement devices
George Robert Carruthers physics ultraviolet camera spectrograph
J. Earnest Wilkins physics gamma radiation from the Sun
Herman Branson biochemistry alpha helix protein structure
Willie Hobbs Moore 1st African-American female PhD Physics, Engineer, U.Michigan
Samuel P. Massey Arkansas chemistry, cancer drugs, medicines, uranium isotopes, Manhattan Project
Bettye Washington Greene chemistry, polymers, 3 patents
Margarett S. Collins entomology, termites, Ph.D Chicago
St. Elmo Brady 1st African American PhD Chemistry, physical organic chemistry research
Arthur B.C. Walker physicist, optics, telescopes for the solar corona
Jewel Plummer Cobb skin cell cancer research, lungs, leukemia
Alma Levant Hayden scientist for NIH and FDA in DC, spectrophotometry, discovered fraudulent medicine
Lloyd Quarterman physics atomic science hydrogen fluoride
James Andrew Harris chemist who discovered elements 104, 105
Lloyd Hall developed method of curing meats using a particular salt combination in 1932 as preservative
Roger Arliner Young 1st bf PhD zoology Chicago studied w/Ernest Everett Just radiation sea urchin eggs
Marguerite Williams PhD geology Howard-Columbia-Catholic U discovered humans accelerate erosion
Lloyd Noel Ferguson PhD chemistry publications on carbon molecule structure, cancer chemotherapy
Henry Cecil McBay chemistry hydrogen peroxide research Phd Chicago, teacher
Mack Gibson Ph.D geology Chicago clay minerals, shales, from SC, USC faculty
John E. Hodge chemist UKansas = studied Maillard chemical reaction in foods that produce flavor & color
Beebe Steven Lynk chemistry professor Lane College, U. West Tennessee
Roland Jefferson Howard U botanist cherry tree preservation, seed exchange, US National Arboretum DC
Michael P. Anderson UWash physics, Air Force, NASA Astronaut, Space Shuttle Columbia 2003
Joan Murrell Owens PhD geology marine biology discovered species of button corals GWU from FL
Valerie Thomas data science programs NASA, inventor patent illusion transmitter, publications
Jospehine Silone Yeates professor & dept. head chemistry, English Lincoln U, Missouri, M.S. Nat. U, IL
Ruth Smith Lloyd PhD anatomy, physiology, fertility, Case Western Reserve U, teaching=Howard U.
Warren M. Washington Ph.D Penn St, atmosphere, climate, computer models 1960’s, publications
George Edward Alcorn physics/engineer inventor professor PhD HowardU XRay spectrometer circuit etching
Erich Jarvis neuroscience vocal learning circuits in humans and animals PhD Rockefeller U NY
Elmer Imes quantum physics, high resolution infrared spectroscopy of molecules NYU, Michigan PhD
Overta Fuller microbiology immunology PhD UNC, UMich Med Sch, virus and cell research, COVID
Virgil Trice Chemical engineer, M.S. Purdue U nuclear energy and radioactive waste IL Inst. Tech. M.S.
Leroy Walker
Louis Roberts physics Ph.D MIT UMich, teaching, research, optics, microwaves, 11 patents, publications
Arlie Petters physics Ph.D MIT, mathematical theory of gravitational lensing, prof. Duke U (from Belize)
Sylvester James Gates physics PhD MIT supersymmetry, supergravity, superstring theory (from FL)
African Science and Scientists
Ancient Egypt, North Africa and Sahara, Nile Valley East Africa, West Africa, South Africa
Scientists and scientific achievements of Asia ancient to present
Mesopotamia-Babylon
Indian Subcontinent
C.V. Raman
Satyendra Nath Bose
Jagadish Chandra Bose
Homi Bhabha
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Prafulla Chandra Ray
Salim Ali
Gandhi and Theodore Roosevelt
Ramanujan
Aryabhata
East Asia
Sau Lan Wu particle physics Higgs Boson (Hong Kong)
Chin Ni Yang, particle physics Yang Mills Theory
Persian Scientist and Philosopher List
Albucasis (Al-Zahrawi) physician, Father of Surgery
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) astronomy, math, physics
Alkindus (Al-Kindi) math
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) philosopher and scientist
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Banu Musa brothers (math, astr., engineering)
Biruni (Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni) (optics)
Farghani (Al-Farghani) (Alfraganus) astronomy and math
Firnas (Ibn Firnas) inventor scientists, first to fly
Hayyan (Jābir ibn Ḥayyān) chemist, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid discovery
Idrisi (al-Idrisi) cartographer, world maps
Jahiz (al-Jahiz) polymath and writer
Jayani (Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī) (math)
Jazari (Ismail al-Jazari) engineering
Kashi (Jamshīd al-Kāshī) (math)
Khandun (Ibn Khaldun) sociology
Khwarizmi (Muhammad Musa al-Khwarizmi) mathematics, algebra, algorithms
Khayam (Omar Khayam) mathematics, astronomy, and poetry
Nafis (Ibn al Nafis) physician, polymath, and philosopher
Rhazes (physician) (Abū Bakr al-Rāzī), physician, chemist
Shatir (Ibn al-Shatir) astronomy, math, engineering
Sufi (Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi) (astronomer)
Taqi (Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf ash-Shami al-Asadi) engineer, steam energy; steam engine
Tusi (Nasir al-Din al-Tusi) (astronomy)
Persian Poet, Artist, Musician List
Farabi (Al-Farabi) music theorist and philosopher, book of music
Ferdowsi
Hafez
Khayam (Omar)
Khusrow, Amir
Kindi (Al-Kindi music)
Nizami
Rumi
Saadi
Ud Din, (Farid) poet and philosopher
1001 Knights folk tales (Aladdin, Alibaba, Sinbad)
Calligraphy written language Arabic and Farsi
Lut (music instrument like guitar)
Safi al-Din al-Urmawi musician
Avicenna Ibn Sina philosophy, music
Averroes Ibn Rushd philosophy
Tufail (Ibn Tufail) philosophy
Ziryab musician
Persian Inventions and Contributions to the World
Agriculture=Qanats (water supply system, aqueduct, irrigation) Gonabad, Iran (oldest known)
Architecture styles from over 4,000 years ago seen spanning from Turkey, Africa, China, India, geometric designs, Roman influence, domes, arches, aqueducts
Bricks (first Bricks)
Astronomy=Biruni, Khayam, Tusi, Maragheh Observatory (13th c.)
Postal Service and Roads=1st Postal service in world and highways (according to Herodotus)
Medicine = Modern Medicine (Ibn Sina-Avicenna), medical encyclopedia
The Teaching Hospital
Chemistry=Sulfuric Acid (Razi)
Alcohol distillation (Razi) for drinks, foods, preservatives
Foods=Daily Tea, Rose, Spinach, Grape vines and wine, dessert
Perfumes
Mathematics=Algebra (Khwarizmi)
Engineering= Refrigerator (yakchal) pyramid-shaped, air conditioning
Engineering=the wheel, the windmill
Engineering = 1st Battery (Parthian) Baghdad Battery
Animation on artwork
World Empire=1st world empire Persian Empire on 3 continents: Asia, Africa, Europe
Banned slavery
Military units and uniforms
Heavy armored Cavalry
Government=Taxation system (Archaemenid period)
Human Rights=1st Human rights charter = Cyrus Cylinder
Religion=Monotheism (Zoroastrianism and religious tolerance)
The Banquet
Banks=1st private banks established, Bank of Egibi
Bazaars=The Bazaar shopping center
Music=Guitar (Lut), the Orchestra
Textile Industry=pants and long coats, Persian Rugs, Gloves
Sports=Games=Polo the sport (chovgan),
Chess (India or Persia)
Sports=Backgammon=1st Board Game (“nard”, found at Sukhteh city)
Arts=Pottery and ceramics
Cutlery= the 1st Cutlery
Literature=1st Persian national epic novel Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
Landscaped Gardens, Gardening, Tree Planting, Flower Planting
Pierre Omidyar founder of Ebay
Gas Masks=Banu Musa Brothers=to protect well workers from pollution
The word “paradise”
Birthday celebrations
Female Scientists of the West
Marie Curie chemistry and physics radioactivity 2 Nobel
Rosalind Franklin DNA structure, X-Rays, molecular structure
Elizabeth Blackwell 1st female medical graduate in US (NY)
Jane Goodall chimpanzee behavior in Africa Tanzania
Jennifer Doudna genetic engineering human babies UCBerkeley disease treatment
Katherine Freese physics dark matter Sweden Princeton Columbia Chicago UTexas
Rachel Carson marine biologist, environmentalist PA, Johns Hopkins M.S.
Maria Goeppert Mayer physics nuclear shell Nobel Prize 1963 Germany and Johns Hopkins
Sara Seager discovered 715 planets with Kepler Space Telescope
Jane Cook Wright cancer research at Harvard, MD
Vera Rubin astronomy dark matter existence Cornell Georgetown U
Sau Lan Wu particle physics Higgs Boson (Hong Kong)
Barbara Mclintock genetic transportation, genetics of corn
Rita Levi-Montalcini Italian neurologist Nobel 1986 Nerve growth factor
Gertrude Elion biochemist pharmacologist leukemia kidney transplants Nobel
Dorothy Hodgkin British chemist X-ray crystallography
Marie Tharp developed first seafloor maps with Bruce Hezeen, ocean ridges
Katherine Johnson space science mathematics NASA
Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin PhD Harvard stars composed of hydrogen & helium
Lise Meitner physics element 109 nuclear fission discovery w/Otto Hahn 1944 Auger Effect
Grace Hopper computer programming languages, math, COBOL language
Chien-Shiung Wu physics beta decay, Manhattan Project, red blood cells
Alice Augusta Ball chemist skin disease leprosy, Hawaii kava plant, not credited for work
Mary Anning English fossils paleontology
Ada Lovelace English mathematician world’s 1st computer programmer with Charles Babbage
Gail Hanson particle physics discoveries Ohio, MIT
Henrietta Leavitt astronomer measuring distance of galaxies
Inge Lehmann geophysics 1936 discovery solid inner core inside molten outer core
Janet Darbyshire British epidemiologist and administrator 2018 MRC Millennium Medal for her "world-leading research on clinical trials and epidemiology has prevented disease and saved lives across the world"
Annie Cannon PhD astronomy classifying stars
Caroline Herschel German British astronomer, comet discoveries, William Hershel’s sister
Western Scientists from Ancient Greece to the Americas
Thales of Miletus
Pythagoras (570-497 B.C.) Greek mathematician, geometry, Pythagorean theorem
Ptolemy
Eratosthenes
Hipparchus
Hero of Alexandria
Xenocrates
Antiphon
Diocles
Anaxagoras
Diophantus
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek astronomy, physics, math, biology
Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) Greek mathematics, physics, engineering
Galen (129-216 A.D.) Roman Greek physician, philosopher
Leonhard Euler
LaPlace
Bernhard Riemann
Gottfried Leibniz
Gauss
Euclid
Blaise Pascal
Fibonacci
Alan Turing
David Hilbert
Sophie Germain
John von Newmann
Katherine Johnson
Maryam Mirzhakhani
Pierre de Fermat
George Boole
Terence Tao
Mary Jackson
Georg Cantor
Rene Descartes
Evariste Galois
Luca Pacioli
Charles Babbage
Daniel Bernoulli
Andrew Wiles
John Forbes Nash
John Napier
Grigori Perelman
Joseph Fourier
G.H. Hardy
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish Italian mathematician, astronomer, planet orbits
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientific method
Galileo Galilei (1609) Italian astronomy, physics, engineering
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) Irish chemist, physicist, inventor, 1st modern chemist, Boyle’s Law
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) English scientist, microscope, microorganisms
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) British philosopher physics, gravitation laws, calculus
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) French chemist, modern chemistry
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) Swedish biologist, physician, classification of biosphere taxonomy
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) British physicist electromagnetism inductions, chemistry
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) German founder of genetics, heredity, traits dominant/recessive
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) microbiology, chemistry, germ theory, pasteurization, fever, vaccines
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Scottish physicist described electromagnetic radiation-electricity, magnetism, and light as one phenomenon
Dimitry Mendelev (1834-1907) Russian, Modern Periodic Table of the Elements
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera
George Washington Carver (1860-1943) agricultural scientist, inventor
Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish scientist, Radioactivity, Nobel physics, chemistry
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Serbian scientist & inventor, AC current, radio-x-rays, radar, Markoni used Tesla’s ideas for radio, Roentgen used his ideas for x-rays, Watson-watt used his ideas for radar. Also hydroelectricity, cryogenic engineering, transistors, radio wave recorder
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) American physics, relativity theory, photoelectric effect Nobel 1921
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Scottish physician, antibiotics, penicillin
Neils Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist atomic structure quantum theory Nobel
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) chemist, crystallographer, DNA structure, virus, coal, graphite
Enrico Fermi Italian US physicist created 1st nuclear reactor in world 1942 Manhattan Project, Nobel Prize 1938 discovery of new radioactive substances, power of slow neutrons, part of 1st nuclear fission experiment in U.S.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) English physicist and astronomer