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(Gottfried Wilhelm) Leibniz
German mathematician and philosopher. He is best known for co-inventing calculus, concurrently but independently from Sir Issac Newton.
(Albert) Einstein
German-born Swiss-American physicist. One of the greatest scientists of all time, he is known for many discoveries including the Theory of Relativity, an explanation of Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect (1921 Nobel Prize in physics). A Jew, he left Germany during Hitler's rise to power and stayed in the US. A pacifist, he urged F.D.R. to investigate the possibilities of an atomic bomb because of the danger that Germany might have such a weapon. After the war, he worked hard to prevent nuclear proliferation. In 1940 he became an American citizen, and held a post at Princeton from 1933 until his death.
(Charles) Goodyear
American inventor of vulcanized rubber.
(Elias) Howe
American inventor credited with the invention of the Sewing Machine (1845).
(Joseph) Priestley
English scientist. He discovered sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and "dephlogisticated air", the gas Lavoisier later named Oxygen.
(Warner) Heisenberg
German physicist. Famous for his uncertainty principle that states that it is impossible to accurately determine both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle at the same time. He received the 1932 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on quantum theory.
(Earnest Orlando) Lawrence
American physicist best known for his invention of the cyclotron particle accelerator and for his studies on atomic structure. Received the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics.
(Orville and Wilbur) Wright
American inventors of the airplane. They made their first flight on December 17th, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
(George Washington) Carver
African-American agriculturalist. Born a slave, he became director of agricultural research (1896-1943) at the Tuskegee Institute. He is most famous for discovering hundreds of uses for the peanut, soybean, and sweet potato.
(Albert Bruce) Sabin
Russian-born American physician and microbiologist best known for developing a live-virus, oral vaccine for polio.
(Gail) Borden
American inventor of many food processes, most notably the process of evaporating milk.
(Harold) Urey
American chemist and discoverer of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) for which he won the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
(Samuel) Colt
American inventor of the revolving pistol (1835).
(John) Bardeen
American physicist. The first person to win a Nobel Prize twice in the same field, he shared the 1956 physics prize with Walter Brattain and William Shockley for developing the transistor, and the 1972 physics prize with Leon Cooper and John Schreiffer for their work in superconductivity.
Eratosthenes
Greek geographer and astronomer who created the system of latitude and longitude. He was the first Greek to calculate the circumference of the earth, as well as calculate the leap day, and the distance from the sun to Earth. His nickname was "Beta".
(Wilhelm) Roentgen
German physicist famous for discovering X-Rays for which he received the first Nobel Prize in physics (1901).
(George) Westinghouse
American inventor of the railroad airbrake (1868).
(Robert) Millikan
American physicist. He received the 1923 Nobel Prize in physics for determining the charge of an electron.
(Antoine) Becquerel
French physicist famous for discovering radioactivity in Uranium in 1896, and for sharing the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with the Curies.
(Neils) Bohr
Danish physicist. Awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on atomic structure, he postulated that electrons move in restricted orbits around the atom's nucleus. He explained how the atom emits and absorbs energy by combining the quantum theory with his new concept of atomic structure.
(James) Hutton
Scottish geologist. Known for formulating the uniformitarianism of the earth, which stressed the slowness and gradualness of rates of change.
(Saint Albertus) Magnus
Dominican philosopher. Called the "universal doctor", he was the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas. Also a scientist, and was the first to produce arsenic in a free form.
(Linus) Pauling
American chemist. The recipient of two Nobel Prizes, one in chemistry (1954) and the Peace prize in 1962. He was a proponent of massive doses of Vitamin C for the common cold, and wrote a classic study of the chemical bond.
(Chester) Carlson
American inventor of xerography (1938)
(Carl) Ritter
German geographer. Occupied the first chair in Geography at the University of Berlin until his death in 1859. Along with Humboldt, considered a founder of modern geography. Wrote 'The Science of the Earth in Relation to the Nature and the History of Mankind'.
(Dmitri) Mendeleev
Russian chemist remembered for inventing the periodic table and formulating the periodic law.
(Alessandro) Volta
Italian physicist. He invented the voltaic cell. A unit of electrical measurement is named after him.
(Albert) Michelson
American physicist. Known for measuring the speed of light to a new level of accuracy, conducting the famous ________-Morley experiment, and becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
(Sir Isaac) Newton
English mathematician and scientist. In the early 1660s he discovered the law of universal gravitation, discovered that white light is composed of every color in the spectrum, and began to develop Calculus. His monumental work, 'Principia Mathematica' (1687) included his law of universal gravitation, his 3 laws of motion, fluid mechanics, the motions of bodies in the solar system, and the tides. His 'Opticks' (1704) put forth the particle theory of light. He also built the first reflecting telescope in 1668.
John Bernoulli
This Bernoulli was famous for his work in integral calculus.
(John) Napier
Scottish mathematician. He invented logarithms, introduced the decimal point in writing numbers, and developed ____'s bones (a method of multiplication using numbered rods)
(Sir William) Herschel
English astronomer. He discovered the planet Uranus (1781), the Saturn moons Mimas and Enceladus, and the Uranus moons Titania and Oberon.
(Karl Wilhelm) Scheele
Swedish chemist. Famous for his discovery of oxygen, independently of, but published later than Joseph Priestley. Also discovered nitrogen, manganese, and his work led to the discovery of barium and chlorine.
(Wernher) Von Braun
German-American rocket engineer. He led the design team responsible for the German V-2 rocket. He was brought to the US in 1945, where he worked on NASA projects such as the Saturn rocket and the Apollo missions.
(Samuel) Morse
American inventor, The inventor of modern telegraphy, drawing off the work of other scientists including Andre Ampere.
(Cyrus) McCormick
American inventor of the reaper (1813).
(Charles) Coulomb
French physicist. Known for his work on electricity and magnetism, the unit of electric charge is named for him.
(Roger) Bacon
English scientist and philosopher often credited with foreseeing many great scientific advances including the microscope, gunpowder, the aircraft, etc. Scholars today doubt the authenticity of these claims. Also known as Doctor Mirabilis ("wonderful teacher"), and is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method.
(Jethro) Tull
English agriculturalist and inventor of the mechanical seed drill used for sowing seeds (1701).
(Igor) Sikorsky
Russian-born American engineer known for inventing the modern helicopter.
(Gregor) Mendel
Austrian monk and geneticist. Noted for his work in heredity, he conducted experiments on pea plants involving controlled pollination and careful statistical data analysis. His finding were first published in 1866, but were ignored and lost until rediscovered in 1900. His conclusions are the basic tenets of the science of Genetics.
(Christiaan) Barnard
South African surgeon who completed the first successful human heart transplant in 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa.
(Johann Wilhelm) Ritter
German physicist who carried out early work on electrolytic cells and discovered ultraviolet radiation.
(Robert) Hooke
English scientist. He is known for improving astronomical instruments, watches, and clocks. He is best known today for his law of elasticity.
(Sir James) Chadwick
English physicist best known for discovering the Neutron. He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics.
(Percival) Lowell
American astronomer and brother of poet Amy ______. He postulated that there was a planet beyond Neptune. This was confirmed in 1930 when Pluto was discovered.
(Carl) Sagan
American astronomer famous for popularizing science in his books including 'The Dragons of Eden' and creating and hosting the television series 'Cosmos' (1980).
(Thomas) Newcomen
English inventor of an early atmospheric steam engine. (1711)
(Sir Charles) Lyell
English geologist. Best known for his 'Principles of Geology', He helped gain acceptance of James Hutton's theory of uniformitarianism and Darwin's evolution theory.
(Charles) Darwin
English evolutionist. As a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle (1831-36), he began accumulating the data he used to formulate the concept of evolution. In 1858, he and Alfred Russell Wallace simultaneously published the first works putting forth the concept of natural selection. His works include 'Origin of the Species' and 'The Descent of Man'.
(Joseph Louis) Gay-Lussac
French chemist. Discovered in 1802 that at a constant pressure the volume of an enclosed gas is directly proportional to its temperature. This is now known as ______'s law. He also formulated the law of combining volumes, which states that gases combine by volume in simple multiple proportion.
(Robert) Boyle
Irish chemist. Often called the father of modern chemistry, he is best known for the discovery of his own gas law.
(Joseph) Black
Scottish chemist. In addition to discovering carbon dioxide (which he called fixed air), he is known for his theories of latent heat and specific heat.
(Lee) De forest
American inventor. A pioneer in the development of wireless telegraphy and television, he invented the triode in 1906.
(Francis) Crick
English scientist. With James Watson, he elucidated the structure and function of the DNA double helix. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Watson and Maurice Wilkins.
(Robert) Fulton
US inventor. His greatest achievement was the steamboat 'Clermont', launched in 1807. The voyage of the Clermont from NY City to Albany pioneered the use of the steamboat as a passenger vehicle.
(Paul) Ehrlich
German bacteriologist. A pioneer in chemotherapy, he shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on the treatment of syphilis.
(Ivan) Pavlov
Russian physiologist. For his work on the digestive system he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He is best known for the famous experiment in which he conditioned a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell after associating the bell with the dog's feedings.
Ptolemy
2nd century AD astronomer and mathematician. Famous for his work 'Almagest' that presented the geocentric theory known as the ________ system.
(Max) Planck
German physicist. His hypothesis that atoms emit and absorb energy in discreet bundles that he called quanta led to the development of quantum physics. He also received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on blackbody radiation.
(Alfred) Wegener
German goelogist known for his theory of continental drift, set forth in his 'The Origin of Continents and Oceans' (1915).
(Christiaan) Huygens
Dutch physicist. Famous for using a pendulum in clocks, discovering the Saturn moon Titan, developing a wave theory of light, and discovering the polarization light.
(Jan Hendrik) Oort
Dutch astronomer. He proposed in 1950 that comets originated in a cloud of material orbiting the sun at a great distance. This cloud is now called the ____ Cloud.
(Sir Hans) Krebs
German-born English biochemist. He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on the Citric Acid Cycle, the major source of energy production in organisms.
(James) Hargreaves
English inventor of the spinning jenny in 1764.
(Murry) Gell-Man
American physicist. In 1963 he and George Zweig independently postulated the existence of quarks. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics.
(Eli) Whitney
American inventor of the Cotton Gin (1793).
(Jean) Foucault
French physicist famous for his invention of the Gyroscope (1852) and the pendulum that demonstrated the rotation of the earth.
(Louis) Pasteur
French chemist. Noted for his studies of fermentation and bacteria, he pioneered his namesake process and developed rabies and anthrax vaccines.
Hippocrates
Greek physician regarded as the 'Father of Medicine'. He taught medicine based on objective observation and deductive reasoning. The ______ oath, an ethical code formulated in ancient Greece, is still administered in medical colleges to this day.
(Gerardus) Mercator
Flemish cartographer, born Gheert Cremer. His surname means "Merchant", and he is credited with creating a special map projection that was named after him. In his projection, parallels and meridians are drawn at 90 degrees.
(James Prescott) Joule
English physicist. He established the mechanical theory of heat, and was the first to determine the relationship between mechanical and heat energy. The mechanical unit of work, is named for him.
(Stephen) Hawking
British physicist best known for his research on black holes and the big bang theory. He wrote 'A Brief History of Time' (1988). He was paralyzed in 1962 as a result of a motor neuron disease.
Archimedes
Greek mathematician and inventor. He is remembered for supposedly crying "Eureka!" (I have found it) after discovering his principle of buoyancy.
(Fritz) Haber
German Chemist. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of the ____ process used for synthesizing ammonia from its elements.
(Gottleib) Daimler
German inventor. His construction of the first high-speed internal combustion engine (1885) led to the development of the automobile.
(James) Watson
American scientist. With Francis Crick, he elucidated the structure and function of the DNA double helix. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Crick and Maurice Wilkins. He served as the head of the Human Genome Research program from 1989 to 1992.
(Edward) Teller
American physicist who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb.
(Sir Joseph John) Thomson
English physicist who discovered the electron in 1897 and won the 1906 Nobel Prize in physics.
(Sir Humphrey) Davy
English chemist known for his isolation of Sodium, Potassium, Boron, Calcium, Magnesium, and Barium.
(Charles) Best
Canadian scientist. He, Frederick Banting, and John Macleod, are crediting with isolating the hormone insulin. He also discovered the anticoagulant heparin.
(John) Dalton
English scientist renowned as the originator of the modern chemical atomic theory of matter.
(Jacques) Charles
French physicist. Discovered his law in 1787, and was the first to use hydrogen gas in balloons.
James Bernoulli
This Bernoulli was one of the developers of ordinary calculus.
(Sir William) Ramsay
Scottish chemist known as the discoverer of Argon, Krypton, Neon, and Xenon. He won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on gases.
(Louis) de Broglie
French physicist. Wave mechanics, a form of quantum mechanics, was developed from his hypothesis that particles should exhibit certain wavelike properties. He was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in physics.
(Johannes) Kepler
German astronomer, famous for the three laws of planetary motion derived from Tyco Brahe's accurate observations. The first of his laws states that each planet's orbit is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.
(Wolfgang) Pauli
Austro-American physicist. Won the 1945 Nobel Prize for his exclusion principle which states that no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state in an atom.
(Johannes) Van der Waals
Dutch physicist known for discovering the weak forces of mutual attraction now known as ___________ forces. He won the 1910 Nobel Prize in physics.
(Vladimir) Prelog
Bosnian-born Swiss organic chemist who studied alkaloids and antibiotics. The comprehensive molecular topology that evolved from his work on stereochemistry is gradually replacing classical stereochemistry. He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of organic molecules and their reactions.
(Rene) Descartes
French thinker. Famous for his work as a mathematician, philosopher, and scientist. He founded analytical geometry and originated the Cartesian coordinate system. His philosophical works include 'Discourse on Method' (1637) and Meditations (1641). He asserted Cogito, ergo sum (I think therefore I am).
(George) Eastman
American inventor. He invented the Kodak camera (1888) and founded the Kodak Company in 1892.
(Alexander Graham) Bell
Scottish-American inventor of the telephone (1876). He also helped found the magazine 'Science' in 1880.
(Jons Jakob) Berzelius
Swedish chemist who discovered the elements Selenium, Cerium, and Thorium. Also credited with coining the words allotropy, isomerism, and protein.
(Hans Christian) Oersted
Danish physicist and chemist famous for initiating the study of electromagnetism and for isolating Aluminum.
(James) Watt
Scottish inventor. Famous for his improvements in the steam engine and for coining the term horsepower. The SI unit of power is named after him.
Euclid
Greek mathemetician famous for his invention of elementary plane geometry. His presentation of mathematics is contained in his work entitled 'Elements'.
(Amadeo) Avogadro
Italian physicist. In 1811 he advanced the hypothesis, now known as _______'s law, that equal volumes of gases under identical pressure and temperature conditions contain the same number of molecules. This hypothesis led to the determination of the value of the number of molecules in one mole, now known as _______'s number. (6.022 x 10^23
(Glenn) Seaborg
American chemist who co-discovered the elements Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Berkelium, Californium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Mendelevium, and Nobelium.
(Elisha) Otis
American inventor of the first passenger elevator (1857).
(Edwin) Land
American inventor, in 1937, he established the Polaroid Corporation and invented the Polaroid camera in 1947.
(Jean Louis) Agassiz
Swiss-American zoologist and geologist famous for first proposing the ice ages.
(J. Robert) Oppenheimer
American physicist. He was the director of the laboratory at Los Alamos, NM that designed the first Atomic Bomb. Later a proponent of control of atomic energy, he strongly opposed the creation of the hydrogen bomb.
(Edmund) Cartwright
English inventor of the power loom (1785).
(Blaise) Pascal
French scientist. In physics, his experiments with fluids led to the contribution of the hydraulic press. In mathematics, he founded the modern theory of probability and contributed to the advance of differential calculus.
(Heinrich) Hertz
German physicist. In honor of his work with electromagnetic waves, the unit of frequency is named for him.
(Alfred) Nobel
Swedish chemist and inventor. He is known for his invention of dynamite and for establishing the fund to provide the annual Nobel Prizes.
(Guglielmo) Marconi
Italian physicist. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for his development of wireless of telegraphy.
Daniel Bernoulli
son of John Bernoulli, was called the first mathematical physicist. His major work, 'Hyrdodynamica' (1738), included the principle now known as Bernoulli's principle.
(Jean) Lamarck
French scientist. His theory of evolution put forth that acquired characteristics could be transmitted to its offspring. His theory, though disproved by the study of heredity, was an important forerunner to today's evolutionary theory.
(Samuel) Crompton
English inventor of the spinning mule, an improvement on Arkwright's water frame and Hargreaves' spinning jenny.
(Ernest) Rutherford
English physicist. He discovered alpha and beta radiation; said that the atom was a small, heavy nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons; and was the first to split atomic nuclei artificially. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
(Clarence) Birdseye
American inventor and founder of the frozen-food industry. His successful experiments with food freezing processes led to the founding of General Foods Company in 1924.
(Edwin) Hubble
American astronomer. He put forth ____'s Law that supported the theory of an expanding universe and discovered several large galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
(Ludwig) Prandtl
German physicist who put fluid mechanics on a sound theoretical basis and originated the boundary-layer theory. His work in aerodynamics resulted in major changes in wing design and streamlining of aircraft.
(Marie and Pierre) Curie
French scientists. For their owrk in radioactivity, they shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Antoine Becquerel. She became the first person to win a second Nobel Prize when she received the 1911 chemistry prize for the discovery of Polonium, named after her native Poland, and Radium. He is also known for the discovery of piezoelectricity with crystals (1883). Their daughter, Irene Joliot-___ shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry with her husband Frederic.
(Andre) Ampere
French scientist. Furthered the work of Hans Oersted on the relationship between electricity and magnetism. The basic unit of electric current is named after him.
(Otto) Hahn
German physicist and chemist. He won the 1944 Nobel Prize in chemistry for splitting the Uranium atom five years earlier. His work led to the development of the atomic bomb.
(Antoine) Lavoisier
French chemist and physicist. A founder of modern chemistry, He is known for his pioneering work in the chemistry of combustion and is known for nameing Priestley's "dephlogistated air" as Oxygen.
(Richard) Gatling
American inventor of the precursor of the modern machine gun.
Bernoulli
Swiss scientific and Mathematical family. included John, James, and John's son, Daniel.
(Fritz) Pregl
Austrian chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1923 for devising during his research on bile acids, new techniques for microanalysis (the analysis of very small quantities). He scaled down his analytic equipment and designed a new balance that could weigh to an accuracy of 0.001 mg. This breakthrough in organic chemistry paved the way for modern biochemistry.
(Carl) Anderson
American physicist who discovered the positron in 1932. He shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in physics with V.F. Hess.
(Ernst) Mach
American physicist. The _____ number, the ratio between the speed of an object and the speed of sound, is named for him.
(Thomas) Edison
American inventor. Despite very little formal schooling and progressive deafness, He is often regarded as the greatest inventor of all time. His inventions include the microphone, record player, and kinetoscope. Perhaps his most significant invention was the development of the first commercially successful incandescent lamp (1879). His pioneering workshops in Menlo Park and West Orange, New Jersey employed several scientists instead of a lone inventor.
(Edmund) Haley
English astronomer. He became the first to predict the return of a comet, predicting the return of Halley's comet in 1759.
(Robert) Bunsen
German scientist famous for inventing and improving various laboratory equipment, most notably the _____ burner. Also (with Gustav Kirchhoff) discovered the elements Cesium and Rubidium using spectroscopy.
(Andrei) Sakharov
Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist. In the 60s he became a harsh critic of the arms race and of Soviet repression, though he helped develop the USSR's hydrogen bomb a decade earlier. His internal exile to the city of Gorky in 1980 set off a worldwide protest. This exile was lifted by Gorbachev in 1986. In 1975, he became the first Soviet citizen to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
(Vladimir) Zworykin
American physicist and inventor of the ionoscope and the kinescope, a cathode-ray tube used in the first televisions.
(Alexander von) Humboldt
German geophysicist, botanist, geologist, and writer. With Aime Bonpland, he explored the regions of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers. He was a founder of ecology, published the Kosmos, and is called the father of Modern Geography.
(John) Tyndall
English physicist famous for describing the scattering of light by colloids, now known as the _______ effect.
(Tyco) Brahe
Danish astronomer. His precise observations of the planets were the basis for Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
(Nicholas) Copernicus
Polish astronomer who put forth the heliocentric theory of planetary motion. This theory was put forth around 1512, and was published in his classic work 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' (1543).
(Gian) Cassini
Italian-French astronomer. He determined the rotational periods of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus; discovered four of Saturn's satellites; and studied the division in Saturn's ring system that is named for him.
(Louis) Braile
French inventor of the Braile system of writing for the blind. His system was based on a much more complex system developed by Charles Barbier.
(Anders) Angstrom
Swedish physicist after with the length unit equal to 10^-10 meters is named.
(Henry) Cavendish
English chemist. Famous for his work on the composition of water and air, he isolated a gas he called inflammable air. This element was later named Hydrogen.
(Erwin) Schrodinger
Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing wave mechanics and the wave equation that bears his name.
(Joseph) Henry
American physicist famous for improving the electromagnet and for his discovery of self-inductance. The unit of inductance is named in his honor.
(Jacques) Cousteau
French oceanographer. A pioneer in the development of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba), he was the co-inventor (with Emil Gagnan) of the aqualung. Famous for his documentary films of his oceanographic expeditions aboard his ship 'Calypso'.
(Michael) Faraday
English scientist and developer of the first dynamo, the precursor of the modern electrical generator. Also discovered electromagnetic induction (1831) and the compound Benzene.
(Jonas Edward) Salk
American physician and microbiologist famous for developing the first vaccine against polio.

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