As a young man, his main interests were collecting beetles and studying geology in the countryside, occasionally skipping out on his classes at the University of Edinburgh Medical School to do so. It was a chance invitation in to join a journey around the world that would make Darwin, who had once studied to become a country parson, the father of evolutionary biology. Aboard the HMS Beagle , between bouts of seasickness, Darwin spent his five-year trip studying and documenting geological formations and myriad habitats throughout much of the Southern Hemisphere, as well as the flora and fauna they contained.
He noticed small differences between members of the same species that seemed to depend upon where they lived. The finches of the Galapagos are the best-known example: From island to island, finches of the same species possessed differently shaped beaks, each adapted to the unique sources of food available on each island. This suggested not only that species could change — already a divisive concept back then — but also that the changes were driven purely by environmental factors, instead of divine intervention.
Today, we call this natural selection. When Darwin returned, he was hesitant to publish his nascent ideas and open them up to criticism, as he felt that his theory of evolution was still insubstantial.
Instead, he threw himself into studying the samples from his voyage and writing an account of his travels. Through his industrious efforts, Darwin built a reputation as a capable scientist, publishing works on geology as well as studies of coral reefs and barnacles still considered definitive today. Darwin also married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, during this time. This was a level of attention uncommon among fathers at that time — to say nothing of eminent scientists.
That wasn't all that made Darwin unique. He had an appreciation for taxidermy and unusual food, and suffered from ill health. Through it all, the theory of evolution was never far from his mind, and the various areas of research he pursued only strengthened his convictions. Darwin slowly amassed overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution in the 20 years after his voyage. All of his observations and musings eventually coalesced into the tour de force that was On the Origin of Species , published in when Darwin was 50 years old.
The page book sold out immediately, and Darwin would go on to produce six editions, each time adding to and refining his arguments. It was based on two ideas: that species can change gradually over time, and that all species face difficulties brought on by their surroundings. From these basic observations, it stands to reason that those species best adapted to their environments will survive and those that fall short will die out. Nikola Tesla grips his hat in his hand. He points his cane toward Niagara Falls and beckons bystanders to turn their gaze to the future.
This bronze Tesla — a statue on the Canadian side — stands atop an induction motor, the type of engine that drove the first hydroelectric power plant. His designs advanced alternating current at the start of the electric age and allowed utilities to send current over vast distances, powering American homes across the country. He developed the Tesla coil — a high-voltage transformer — and techniques to transmit power wirelessly. Cellphone makers and others are just now utilizing the potential of this idea.
Tesla is perhaps best known for his eccentric genius. He once proposed a system of towers that he believed could pull energy from the environment and transmit signals and electricity around the world, wirelessly. But his theories were unsound, and the project was never completed. San Diego Comic-Con attendees dress in Tesla costumes. The American Physical Society even has a Tesla comic book where, as in real life, he faces off against the dastardly Thomas Edison.
While his work was truly genius, much of his wizardly reputation was of his own making. It was around for decades. But his ceaseless theories, inventions and patents made Tesla a household name, rare for scientists a century ago. And even today, his legacy still turns the lights on. Around Dec. But his conclusions changed history. And his law of inertia allowed for Earth itself to rotate.
The church declared the sun-centered model heretical, and an inquisition in ordered Galileo to stop promoting these views. They placed him under house arrest until his death in , the same year Isaac Newton was born. To say she was ahead of her time would be an understatement. Their collaboration started in the early s, when Lovelace was just 17 and still known by her maiden name of Byron. She was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron. Babbage had drawn up plans for an elaborate machine he called the Difference Engine — essentially, a giant mechanical calculator.
In the middle of his work on it, the teenage Lovelace met Babbage at a party. There, he showed off an incomplete prototype of his machine. Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention. It was mathematical obsession at first sight. The Analytical Engine was more than a calculator — its intricate mechanisms and the fact that the user fed it commands via a punch card meant the engine could perform nearly any mathematical task ordered.
Lovelace even wrote instructions for solving a complex math problem, should the machine ever see the light of day. Many historians would later deem those instructions the first computer program, and Lovelace the first programmer. Memories of middle or high school geometry invariably include an instructor drawing right triangles on a blackboard to explain the Pythagorean theorem. The lesson was that the square of the hypotenuse, or longest side, is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides.
A proof followed, adding a level of certainty rare in other high school classes, like social studies and English. Pythagoras, a sixth-century B. Greek philosopher and mathematician, is credited with inventing his namesake theorem and various proofs.
But forget about the certainty. Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians used the equation centuries before Pythagoras, says Karen Eva Carr, a retired historian at Portland State University, though many scholars leave open the possibility he developed the first proof.
Even so, we know enough to suspect Pythagoras was one of the great mathematicians of antiquity. His influence was widespread and lasting. Read More: Hey, I know that name. Meet the scientists behind the measurement units you use in your daily life. It started in Sweden: a functional, user-friendly innovation that took over the world, bringing order to chaos.
No, not an Ikea closet organizer. He lived at a time when formal scientific training was scant and there was no system for referring to living things. The 18th century was also a time when European explorers were fanning out across the globe, finding ever more plants and animals new to science.
He intended the simple Latin two-word construction for each plant as a kind of shorthand, an easy way to remember what it was. The names moved quickly from the margins of a single book to the center of botany, and then all of biology. Linnaeus started a revolution, but it was an unintentional one. Today we regard Linnaeus as the father of taxonomy, which is used to sort the entire living world into evolutionary hierarchies, or family trees.
But the systematic Swede was mostly interested in naming things rather than ordering them, an emphasis that arrived the next century with Charles Darwin. But his naming system, so simple and adaptable, remains. Linnaeus gave us a system so we could talk about the natural world. But no one mentioned Rosalind Franklin — arguably the greatest snub of the 20th century.
The British-born Franklin was a firebrand, a perfectionist who worked in isolation. Franklin was also a brilliant chemist and a master of X-ray crystallography, an imaging technique that reveals the molecular structure of matter based on the pattern of scattered X-ray beams. Her early research into the microstructures of carbon and graphite are still cited, but her work with DNA was the most significant — and it may have won three men a Nobel.
But in , in the prime of her career, she developed ovarian cancer — perhaps due to her extensive X-ray work. Franklin continued working in the lab until her death in at age Read More: Check out some of the lesser known science heroes.
Isaac Asimov — Asimov was my gateway into science fiction, then science, then everything else. A trained biochemist, the Russian-born New Yorker wrote prolifically, producing over books, not all science-related: Of the 10 Dewey Decimal categories, he has books in nine. Richard Feynman — Feynman played a part in most of the highlights of 20th-century physics. In , he joined the Manhattan Project. As part of the space shuttle Challenger disaster investigation, he explained the problems to the public in easily understandable terms, his trademark.
Feynman was also famously irreverent, and his books pack lessons I live by. FitzRoy founded the U. But after losing his fortunes, suffering from depression and poor health, and facing fierce criticism of his forecasting system, he slit his throat in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck — Lamarck may be remembered as a failure today, but to me, he represents an important step forward for evolutionary thinking.
Before he suggested that species could change over time in the early 19th century, no one took the concept of evolution seriously. Lucretius 99 B. My path to the first-century B. Instead, she married rich. She also fought to make her alma mater more accessible to women, leading to an all-female dormitory, allowing more women to enroll.
A champion of the national parks enough right there to make him a hero to me! Rolf O. As the wolf population has nearly disappeared and moose numbers have climbed, patience and emotional investment like his are crucial in the quest to learn how nature works. Marie Tharp — I love maps. So did geologist and cartographer Tharp. In the midth century, before women were permitted aboard research vessels, Tharp explored the oceans from her desk at Columbia University.
With the seafloor — then thought to be nearly flat — her canvas, and raw data her inks, she revealed a landscape of mountain ranges and deep trenches. Her keen eye also spotted the first hints of plate tectonics at work beneath the waves.
Science needs to get out of the lab and into the public eye. Over the past hundred years or so, these scientists have made it their mission. Sean M. Carroll — : The physicist and one-time Discover blogger has developed a following among space enthusiasts through his lectures, television appearances and books, including The Particle at the End of the Universe, on the Higgs boson.
The grammar school had a lot of famous scientist teachers and students. Dubourdieu specializes in winemaking processes for white wines, and has been called wines most famous scientist. He is the very famous scientist in the area of biogerontology calling to manage a multi-billion dollar project to fight aging.
He dreamed of being a great inventor or a discoverer or a traveler or a famous scientist. Each release is named after a famous scientist. He later became a famous scientist who discovers x-ray waves. He was a famous scientist , public man. Many famous scientists were forced to denounce themselves and even to attribute their research work to individualism.
From the Cambridge English Corpus. That being so, would it not be wise to listen to the warnings of these famous scientists about the long-distance genetic dangers of continuing tests?
From the Hansard archive. Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.
Many famous scientists work here as senior lecturers. Involvement of famous scientists facilitated the rapid formation of highly skilled research team. Several famous scientists have sent in corrections to the author of the book.
He also wrote non-mathematical papers, memoirs about famous scientists, and philosophical essays dealing with the moral values of science. Originally, the gables face at the right side of the figure was painted with the images of famous scientists. Many people who successfully defended their phd theses in that time then became famous scientists.
Go to the definition of famous. Go to the definition of scientist. See other collocations with scientist. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day kind-hearted. About this. Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More. November 08, To top. Examples of famous scientist.
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