Top:/Science/Scientists

Dr. K's Famous Scientists...4000 Years of Women in Science Biography Listing,Academy of Achievement, Albert Einstein, Alessandro Giuseppe Anastasio Volta, Alexander Graham Bell, ...

Luis Walter Alvarez  American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles

André-Marie Ampère (January 20, 1775 – June 10, 1836), was a French physicist who is generally credited as one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism. The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him.

ARCHIMEDES...(c.287 BC - c. 212 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer. Although little is known about his life, he is regarded as one of the most important scientists in classical antiquity. In addition to making important discoveries in the field of mathematics and geometry, he is credited with producing machines that were well ahead of their time.

Amedeo Avogadro, (August 9, 1776–July 9, 1856) was an Italian savant. He is most noted for his contributions to the theory of molarity and molecular weight. As a tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in one mole of a substance, 6.02214199x1023, is known as Avogadro's number.

Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, and mechanical engineer who originated the idea of a programmable computer.

Francis Bacon, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He is also known as a proponent of the scientific revolution. His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method.

Leo Baekeland...Setting out to make an insulator, he invented the first true plastic and transformed the world

Frederick Grant Banting, KBE, MC, MD, FRSC (November 14, 1891 – February 21, 1941) was a Canadian medical scientist, doctor and Nobel laureate noted as one of the co-discovers of insulin.

John Bardeen (May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in physics: in 1956 for the transistor, along with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Brattain, and in 1972 for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity together with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, now called BCS theory

Sir William Maddock Bayliss (May 2, 1860 - August 27, 1924) was an English physiologist. He graduated in physiology from Wadham College, Oxford..He and Ernest Henry Starling discovered the hormone secretin and the Peristalsis of the intestines. The Bayliss effect is named after him.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847. Throughout his life, Bell had been interested in the education of deaf people. This interest lead him to invent the microphone and, in 1876, his "electrical speech machine," which we now call a telephone.

Jocelyn Bell earned a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Glasgow. Later that same year she began work on her Ph.D. at Cambridge University. It was while she was a graduate student at Cambridge, working under the direction of Antony Hewish, that Jocelyn Bell discovered pulsars.

Claude Bernard (July 12, 1813 – February 10, 1878) was a French physiologist. He is considered as the "Father of Physiology".

Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Senior Researcher at MIT's CSAIL where he leads the Decentralized Information Group (DIG), and Professor of Computer Science at Southampton ECS.

Jöns Jakob Berzelius (August 20, 1779 – August 7, 1848) was a Swedish chemist. He invented the modern chemical notation, and is together with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle considered a father of modern chemistry.

Hans Albrecht Bethe; (July 2, 1906--March 6, 2005), was a German-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory developing the first atomic bombs.

Alfred Binet (July 8, 1857 – October 18, 1911), French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, the basis of today's IQ test.

Joseph Black (April 16, 1728 - December 6, 1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide.

Professor Linda Blackall, A leading environmental engineer and biotechnologist,won the prestigious Ardern-Lockett Award - an international lifetime achievement award for her work in biological wastewater treatment.

Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942[1]) was a German-born American pioneer of modern anthropology and is often called the "Father of American Anthropology".

NIELS BOHR...was a physicist who was the first to apply the quantum theory, which restricts the energy of a system to certain discrete values, to the problem of atomic and molecular structure. For this work he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. He developed the so-called 'Bohr theory of the atom and liquid model of the atomic nucleus.'

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (February 20, 1844 – September 5, 1906) was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. He was one of the most important advocates for atomic theory when that scientific model was still highly controversial.

Robert Boyle (25 January 1627 – 30 December 1691) was an Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and early gentleman scientist, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law.

Tycho Brahe,(December 14, 1546 – October 24, 1601), was a Danish nobleman famed for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations. Brahe was well known in his lifetime as an astrologer and alchemist.

Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926) [1] was an American botanist, horticulturist and a pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career.

Annie Jump Rope Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) was an American astronomer whose cataloguing work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organise and classify stars based on their temperatures.

Rachel Carson...Before there was an environmental movement, there was one brave woman and her very brave book

George Washington Carver (July 12, 1864 – January 5, 1943)[1] was an American botanical researcher and agronomy educator.

Henry Cavendish,(October 10, 1731 - February 24, 1810) was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air".

Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century.

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1927) for discovery of the Compton effect named in his honor.

NICHOLAS COPERNICUS...was a Polish astronomer who proposed that the planets have the Sun as the fixed point to which their motions are to be referred; that the Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow, long-term changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes.

Charles Augustin de Coulomb (born June 14, 1736 - died August 23, 1806, Paris, France) was a French physicist. He is best known as the discoverer of Coulomb's law: the definition of the electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion. The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, was named after him.

Jacques Cousteau' (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, scientist, photographer and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.

Francis Crick (1916-2004) , Nobel laureate, is inextricably tied to the discovery of the double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953, considered the most significant advance in the understanding of biology since Darwin's theory of evolution.

Marie Curie and the science of radioactivity - Using photographs, drawings, and extensive quotes from Curie’s writings and letters, the new exhibit (http://www.aip.org/history/curie/brief ) reaches out to grade school and junior high school students to encourage them to learn about an importa

Georges Cuvier possessed one of the finest minds in history. Almost single-handedly, he founded vertebrate paleontology as a scientific discipline and created the comparative method of organismal biology, an incredibly powerful tool. It was Cuvier who firmly established the fact of the extinction of past lifeforms.

Daimler, Gottlieb Wilhelm...German engineer who pioneered the car and the internal-combustion engine together with Wilhelm Maybach. In 1885 he produced a motor bicycle and in 1889 his first four-wheeled motor vehicle. He combined the vaporization of fuel with the high-speed four-stroke petrol engine.

John Dalton (September 6, 1766 – July 27, 1844) was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist, born at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumbria. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness

About Darwin...The life and times of Charles Darwin. Includes an illustrated Beagle Voyage, Darwin chronology, biographical information, ...

Leonardo da Vinci April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was a Tuscan (Italian) polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, poet and writer.As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Devra Lee Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H., designated a National Book Award Finalist for When Smoke Ran Like Water –– heads up the Environmental Oncology Center at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Honored for her research and public policy work by various national and international groups, Dr. Davis is professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School, honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and expert advisor to the World Health Organization.

Louis- de Broglie (August 15, 1892 – March 19, 1987) was a French physicist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate. He also served as Perpetual Secretary of the Académie des sciences, France.

Max Delbrück (September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German-American biophysicist and Nobel laureate.

Dr. Stefanie Dimmeler, winner of the 1.55 million euro 2005 Leibniz Prize for research based on the programmed cell death of the endothelial cells of the human being., received her graduate and Ph.D. degree in molecular cardiology at the University of Konstanz. She then completed a fellowship in Experimental Surgery at the University of Cologne and in Molecular Cardiology at the University of Frankfurt.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac,(August 8, 1902 – October 20, 1984) was a British theoretical physicist and a founder of the field of quantum mechanics.

Theodore Dobzhansky ( January 25, 1900 to December 18, 1975) was a noted geneticist and evolutionary biologist.

Sir Arthur Eddington was one of the most prominent and important astrophysicists of his time. He made several significant contributions to the area of physics. He was one of the first physicists who understood the early ideas of relativity along with Albert Einstein

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb.

Paul Ehrlich (March 14, 1854 – August 20, 1915) was a German scientist who won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is noted for his work in hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy. Ehrlich predicted autoimmunity calling it "horror autotoxicus". He coined the term "chemotherapy" and popularized the concept of a "magic bullet". He is credited with the first empirical observation of the blood-brain barrier and the development of the first antibiotic drug in modern medicine.

Einstein - American Museum of Natural History exhibit on the life and theories of the most famous scientist of the 20th century.

Einstein Archives Online - The site allows viewing and browsing of approx. 3,000 high-quality digitized images of Einstein’s writings, available for viewing in two sizes: a standard resolution image, as well as a high-resolution image for closer inspection.

“Inside Einstein’s Universe” - the NASA-Smithsonian UniverseForum is creating a portfolio of highly visual, dramatic interactive learning resources especially for use by museums, science centers, planetariums and other science education organizations.

Gertrude Belle Elion (January 23, 1918 – February 21, 1999) was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, and a 1988 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT.

Philip Emeagwali (born in 1954) is a Nigerian-born computer scientist/geologist who was one of two winners of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, a prize from the IEEE, for his use of the Connection Machine supercomputer – a machine featuring over 65,000 parallel processors – to help analyze petroleum fields.

Euclid (fl. 300 BC), also known as Euclid of Alexandria, "The Father of Geometry" was a Greek mathematician of the Hellenistic period who flourished in Alexandria, Egypt, almost certainly during the reign of Ptolemy I (323 BC-283 BC). His Elements is the most successful textbook in the history of mathematics.

Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician who made enormous contibutions to a wide range of mathematics and physics including analytic geometry, trigonometry, geometry, calculus and number theory.

Daniel Fahrenheit (24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a German physicist and engineer who worked most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The °F Fahrenheit scale of temperature is named after him.

Michael Faraday... discoverer of electro-magnetic induction, electro-magnetic rotations, the magneto-optical effect, diamagnetism, field theory...

Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 – November 28, 1954) was an Italian physicist most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity.

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician.  He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and cut to the heart of the Challenger disaster. 

Hermann Emil Fischer (October 9, 1852 - July 15, 1919) was a German chemist and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902.

Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. His best-known achievements are the discovery of the enzyme lysozyme in 1922 and isolation of the antibiotic substance penicillin from the fungus Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Florey and Chain

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6 1705] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 Kensington, London – 16 April 1958 Chelsea, London) was an English biophysicist and crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which formed the framework of Watson and Crick's hypothesis of the double helical structure of DNA

Sigmund Freud... opened a window on the unconscious — where, he said, lust, rage and repression battle for supremacy — and changed the way we view ourselves.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)was a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution................The Galileo Project is a source of information on the life and work of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Our aim is to provide hypertextual information about Galileo and the science of his time to viewers of all ages and levels of expertise.

Francis Galton (February 16, 1822 – January 17, 1911), was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. ..He was a pioneer in eugenics, coining the very term itself and the phrase "nature versus nurture".

Carl Friedrich Gauss (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians.

Murray Gell-Mann (born September 15, 1929 in Manhattan, New York City, U.S.) is an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles.

William Gilbert, ( May 24, 1544 – London, England, November 30, 1603) is known for his investigations of magnetism and electricity. Gilbert is credited as one of the originators of the term "electricity", and many regard him as the father of electrical engineering or father of electricity.

Sheldon Lee Glashow...American theoretical physicist who, with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for their complementary efforts in formulating the electroweak theory, which explains the unity of electromagnetism and the weak force.

Robert Goddard ... launched the space age with a 10-ft. rocket in a New England cabbage field

Kurt Gödel... turned the lens of mathematics on itself and hit upon his famous "incompleteness theorem" — driving a stake through the heart of formalism

Maria Goeppert-Mayer (June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist. In 1963 she received the Nobel Prize in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus,

Jane Goodall, (born April 3, 1934) is an English UN Messenger of Peace, primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist. She is best-known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life in Gombe Stream National Park for 45 years, and for founding the Jane Goodall Institute.

Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation, leading many commentators to call him "America's unofficial evolutionist laureate."

Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400 – February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer, who is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe (c. 1439) and mechanical printing globally. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line bible, has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

Ernst Haeckel (February 16, 1834 — August 9, 1919), was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist. He named thousands of new species , mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista . Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial "recapitulation theory"

Alice Hamilton, the founder of occupational medicine, first woman professor at Harvard Medical School and the first woman to receive the Lasker Award in public health, was born in 1869 in New York

William Harvey (1578 - 1657)...was an English physician who was the first to describe accurately how blood was pumped around the body by the heart.

STEPHEN HAWKING’S UNIVERSE - "I want you to share my excitement at the discoveries, past and present, which have revolutionized the way we think. From the Big Bang to black holes, from dark matter to a possible Big Crunch, our image of the universe today is full of strange sound

Werner Karl Heisenberg (December 5, 1901 – February 1, 1976) was a celebrated German physicist and Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics and acknowledged to be one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.

Sir William Herschel, Probably the most famous astronomer of the 18th century, discovered, in addition to the planet Uranus, many new nebulae, clusters of stars and binary stars. He was the first person to correctly describe the form of our Galaxy, The Milky Way.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, German physicist,    Hertz clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884.  Hertz proved that electricity can be transmitted in electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light and which possess many other properties of light.  His experiments with these electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio. 

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin,(12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a British founder of protein crystallography. She pioneered the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the determination of the structure of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Robert Hooke,(July 18, 1635 – March 3, 1703) was an English polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work.

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins OM FRS (June 20, 1861 Eastbourne, Sussex - May 16, 1947 Cambridge) was an English biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929, with Christiaan Eijkman, for the discovery of vitamins. He also discovered the amino acid tryptophan, in 1901.

Grace Murray Hopper, Rear Admiral, (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I calculator, and she developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.[1] Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace".

Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953) who was first to show that the universe is expanding, and is considered by many to be the father of observational cosmology.

Christiaan Huygens...Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, who founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and made original contributions to the science of dynamics—the study of the action of forces on bodies.

Edward Jenner was an English country doctor who pioneered vaccination. Jenner's discovery in 1796 that inoculation with cowpox gave immunity to smallpox, was an immense medical breakthrough and has saved countless lives.

Irène Joliot-Curie née Curie, (12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Irène was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.

James Prescott Joule, December 24, 1818 – October 11, 1889) studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work (see energy). This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after him

August Kekule (September 7, 1829 – July 13, 1896) was a German organic chemist. One of the most prominent organic chemists in Europe from the 1850s until his death, especially in the theoretical realm, he was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure.

Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer who discovered that the Earth and planets travel about the sun in elliptical orbits. He gave three fundamental laws of planetary motion. He also did important work in optics and geometry.

John Maynard Keynes...His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism

Har Gobind Khorana (born January 9, 1922) is an American molecular biologist born of Punjabi heritage in British India. He was awarded the Nobel prize (shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) in 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.

Jack Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) is a Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments (TI). He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer.

Alfred Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956), was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology. Kinsey's research on human sexuality profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States and many other countries in the West which went through the sexual revolution starting in the 1960s.

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (March 12, 1824 – October 17, 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.

Robert Koch ...( December 11, 1843 – May 27, 1910) was a German physician. He became famous for isolating Bacillus anthracis (1877), the tuberculosis bacillus (1882) and the cholera vibrio (1883) and for his development of Koch's postulates. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis findings in 1905. He is considered one of the founders of bacteriology

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926)... Father of modern psychiatry... Discovered Schizophrenia & Manic-depression

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (August 1, 1744 – December 18, 1829) was a French soldier, naturalist, academic and an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.

Karl Landsteiner ...Austrian American immunologist and pathologist who received the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the major blood groups and the development of the ABO system of blood typing that has made blood transfusion a routine medical practice.

Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (March 23, 1749 - March 5, 1827) was a French mathematician and astronomer whose work was pivotal to the development of mathematical astronomy.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 – May 8, 1794), the father of modern chemistry, was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics.

Leakey Family...Without the groundbreaking — and backbreaking — efforts of Louis, Mary and Richard, the story of how we evolved would still be largely untold

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (September 7, 1707 – April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, biologist, cosmologist and author. Buffon's views influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.

Tsung-Dao Lee (born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese American physicist, well known for parity violation, Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars. In 1957, Lee, at age 31, with C. N. Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the violation of parity law in weak interaction

Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900), is generally credited with designing the world's first internal-combustion engine

Claude Lévi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who developed structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture

Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist, famous for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology.

Carl Linnaeus, (May 13, 1707[1] – January 10, 1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy." He is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology

Joseph Lister, (5 April 1827 – 10 February 1912) was an English surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He successfully introduced carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilize surgical instruments and to clean wounds.

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (November 7, 1903 in Vienna – February 27, 1989 in Vienna) was an Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology,

Guglielmo Marconi (25 April 1874 - 20 July 1937) was best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

Lynn Margulis (born March 15, 1938) is a biologist and University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[1] She is best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles, and her contributions to the endosymbiotic theory—which is now generally accepted for how certain organelles were formed.

Matthew Fontaine Maury (January 14, 1806 – February 1, 1873), USN - American astronomer, astrophysicist, historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer, author, geologist, educator. He was nicknamed Pathfinder of the Seas and Father of modern Oceanography and Naval Meteorology and later, Scientist of the Seas,

James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was aggregating a set of equations in electricity, magnetism and inductance — eponymously named Maxwell's equations — including an important modification of Ampère's Circuital Law. It was the most unified model of electromagnetism yet.

Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904, Kempten, Germany – February 3, 2005, Bedford, Massachusetts U.S.), was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist.

Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 – September 2, 1992) was a pioneering American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists.

Margaret Mead...1901-1979... was arguably the most renowned anthropologist of all time, contributing to the development of the discipline, as well as, introducing its insights to thousands of people outside the academy. Her work continues to contribute to the understanding of people around the world today.

Lise Meitner (November 17,[1] 1878 – October 27, 1968) was an Austrian born, later Swedish physicist who studied radioactivity and nuclear physics. Lise Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize. Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of scientific achievement that was ostensibly overlooked by the Nobel committee.

Gregor Johann MENDEL was an Austrian monk and biologist whose work on heredity became the basis of the modern theory of genetics.

Dmitri Mendeleev, Born in Siberia, the last of at least 14 children, revolutionized our understanding of the properties of atoms and created a table that probably adorns every chemistry classroom in the world.

Joseph Michel Montgolfier (26 August 1740 – 26 June 1810) and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (6 January 1745 – 2 August 1799) were the inventors of the montgolfière, globe airostatique or European hot air balloon. The brothers succeeded in launching the first manned ascent to carry a young physician and an audacious army officer into the sky.

Thomas Hunt Morgan...American zoologist and geneticist, famous for his experimental research with the fruit fly (Drosophila) by which he established the chromosome theory of heredity.

Henry Moseley (November 23, 1887 – August 10, 1915) was an English physicist. His main contributions to science were the quantitative justification of the previously empirical concept of atomic number, and Moseley's law.

Thomas Newcomen (born 28 February 1663; died 5 August 1729) Newcomen perfected a practical steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen steam engine. Consequently, he is often referred to as a father of the Industrial Revolution[

Isaac Newton was the greatest English mathematician of his generation. He laid the foundation for differential and integral calculus. His work on optics and gravitation make him one of the greatest scientists the world has known.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel  (October 21, 1833, Stockholm, Sweden – December 10, 1896, Sanremo, Italy) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. He owned Bofors, a major armaments manufacturer, In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes. The synthetic element Nobelium was named after him.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes...Dutch winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913 for his work on low-temperature physics and his production of liquid helium. He discovered superconductivity, the almost total lack of electrical resistance in certain materials when cooled to a temperature near absolute zero.

J. Robert Oppenheimer...(April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist, best known for his role as the director of the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons, at the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. Known as "the father of the atomic bomb," Oppenheimer was shocked by the weapon's killing power after it was used to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Blaise Pascal, (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher.

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in microbiology. He is best known to the general public for showing how to stop milk and wine from going sour - this process came to be called pasteurization.

Linus Pauling: the nature of the chemical Bond- Utilizing over 800 scanned documents, photographs, audio clips and video excerpts, this website narrates the incredible achievement of Linus Pauling and others in the discovery of the nature of the chemical bond. Scattered throughout the project are image

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( September 14, 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for research pertaining to the digestive system. Pavlov is widely known for first describing the phenomenon now known as classical conditioning in his experiments with dogs.

Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called "genetic epistemology".

Max Planck (April 23, 1858 in Kiel, Germany – October 4, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany) was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and therefore one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.

Joseph Priestley (March 26, 1733 – February 8, 1804) was an eighteenth-century British natural philosopher, Dissenting clergyman, political theorist, theologian, and educator. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen gas

Ellen Swallow Richards (December 3, 1842 – March 30, 1911) was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 1800s, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its first female instructor, the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (March 27, 1845 – February 10, 1923) was a German physicist, of the University of Würzburg, who, on November 8, 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Ronald Ross...British doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria.

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson...(30 August 1871 - 19 October 1937), widely referred to as Lord Rutherford, was a nuclear physicist who became known as the "father" of nuclear physics. He pioneered the orbital theory of the atom

Florence Rena Sabin (1871-1953) was an American anatomist and medical researcher. Her excellent and innovative work on the origins of the lymphatic system, blood cells, and immune system cells, and on the pathology of tuberculosis was well-recognized during her lifetime. She was also a trailblazer for women in science: the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and astrochemist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American physician and researcher best known for the development of the first successful polio vaccine

Frederick Sanger, OM, CH, CBE, FRS (born 13 August 1918) is an English biochemist and a two time Nobel laureate in chemistry. He is the fourth person in the world to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes.

Erwin Schrödinger; August 12, 1887 – January 4, 1961) was an Austrian - Irish physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933.

Hans Selye   endocrinologist known for his studies of the effects of stress on the human body.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele (December 9, 1742 - May 21, 1786) a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist, born in Stralsund, Western Pomerania, Germany (at the time under Swedish rule), was the discoverer of many chemical substances, most notably discovering oxygen before Joseph Priestley and chlorine before Humphry Davy.

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was a British scientist known for his contributions to physiology and neuroscience. He shared the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edgar Douglas Adrian for "for their discoveries regarding the functions of neurons".

William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was a British-born American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation.

George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. Simpson was the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century and a major participant in the Modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944) and Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals (1945).

B. F. Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990), Ph.D. was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform. He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology — the experimental analysis of behavior. In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

Frederick Soddy (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research in radioactive decay and particularly for his formulation of the theory of isotopes.

Nettie Maria Stevens (1861-1912) was a biologist and cytogeneticist and one of the first American women to be recognized for her contributions to scientific research.... discovered that chromosomes determine sex.

Edward Teller...(January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb."

Nikola Tesla was the genius who ushered in the age of electrical power.

Sir Joseph John “J.J.” Thomson, (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British scientist and Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate, credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, the proposition of the plum pudding model of the atom, and the invention of the mass spectrometer.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a British mathematical physicist, engineer, and outstanding leader in the physical sciences of the 19th century. He did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. He is widely known for developing the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature measurement.

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for initiating the development of the Linux kernel. He now acts as the project's coordinator.

Charles Hard Townes (born July 28, 1915) is an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator. Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices.

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science.

Jan Baptist van Helmont (January 12, 1577 – December 30, 1644) was a Flemish chemist, physiologist, and physician. He is sometimes considered to be "the founder of pneumatic chemistry".Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" into the vocabulary of scientists.

Anton Van Leeuwenhoek is considered the father of microscopy because of the advances he made in microscope design and use.

Andreas Vesalius (Brussels, December 31, 1514 - Zakynthos, October 15, 1564) was an anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body). Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.

Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (born October 13, 1821, in Schivelbein (Pomerania); died September 5, 1902, in Berlin) was a German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician. He is referred to as the "Father of Pathology".

Alessandro Volta of Italy built the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity.

Albrecht von Haller (October 16, 1708–December 12, 1777) was a Swiss anatomist, physiologist and poet.

Hermann von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) was a German physician and physicist. In the words of the 1911 Britannica, "his life from first to last was one of devotion to science, and he must be accounted, on intellectual grounds, as one of the foremost men of the 19th century."

Alexander von Humboldt  (September 14, 1769, Berlin – May 6, 1859, Berlin) was a Prussian naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography.

Max von Laue  German recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X rays in crystals. This enabled scientists to study the structure of crystals and hence marked the origin of solid-state physics, an important field in the development of modern electronics.

Justus von Liebig (May 12, 1803 – April 18, 1873) was a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time.

John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was an Austria-Hungary-born American mathematician who made contributions to quantum physics, functional analysis, set theory, topology, economics, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), statistics and many other mathematical fields as one of history's outstanding mathematicians.

Selman Abraham Waksman (22 July 1888 – 16 August 1973) was an American biochemist and microbiologist whose research into organic substances—largely into organisms that live in soil—and their decomposition lead to the discovery of Streptomycin, and several other antibiotics. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for four decades, his work led to the discovery of over twenty antibiotics (a word which he coined) and the procedures that have lead to the development of many others.

James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA

Robert Alexander Watson-Watt,(April 13, 1892–December 5, 1973), is considered by many to be the "inventor of radar".

James Watt (19 January 1736 – 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution.

Alfred Lothar Wegener (Berlin, November 1, 1880 – Greenland, November 2 or 3, 1930) was a German interdisciplinary scientist and meteorologist, who became famous for his theory of continental drift

Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907–9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air Force officer and is seen as the father of jet propulsion.

Edward Osborne Wilson (born June 10, 1929) is an American biologist (Myrmecology, a branch of entomology), researcher (sociobiology, biodiversity), theorist (consilience, biophilia), and naturalist (conservationism).

Ludwig Wittgenstein...He began by trying to reduce all mathematics to logic and ended by finding most metaphysics to be nonsense

the Wright Experience! - all about our encampent on the Outer Banks, and our successful flights in the 1903 Flyer! Please click here to read descriptions of all our attmepts, see images and films, download Kevin Kochersberger’s analysis of the flights, revisit the Centennial

Wilhelm Wundt (August 16, 1832-August 31, 1920) was a German psychologist, physiologist, and professor who is, along with William James, regarded as the father of psychology.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (born on July 19, 1921 ) is an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique.