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Antoine Lavoisier
Location:Royal Academy of Sciences
Primary Focus:Combustion, Identified Oxygen, Identified Hydrogen, Stoichiometry
Unique:He was the first to prove that matter's shape may change, but its mass will stay the same. -
John Dalton
Location:Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England
Primary Focus:Atomic theory, Law of Multiple Proportions, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, Daltonism
Unique:As a Quaker, also designated as a Dissenter in England, Dalton was not allowed to attend or hold a university position. -
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
Location:Paris
Primary Focus:Coulomb's Law
Unique:Coulomb leaves his legacy as a pioneer in the field of geotechnical engineering for his contribution to retaining wall design. His name is one of the 72 names carved into the Eiffel Tower. -
William Crookes
Location:Chester Diocesan Training College, August Wilhelm von Hofmann
Primary Focus:Thallium
Unique:The investigation had been suggested to him "by eminent men exercising great influence on the thought of the country." -
Eugen Goldstein
Location:Gleiwitz, Prussia
Primary Focus:Discovery of anode rays
Unique:This discovery led to the design of concave cathodes to produce concentrated or focused rays, which became fundamental to numerous experiments. -
Antoine Henri Becquerel
Location:The Department of Bridges and Highways
Primary Focus:Discovery of Radioactivity
Unique:Craters on the Moon and Mars are named for him. -
Ernest Rutherford
Location:Cambridge
Primary Focus:Rutherford started to work with J. J. Thomson on the conductive effects of X-rays on gases, work which led to the discovery of the electron which Thomson presented to the world in 1897. Hearing of Becquerel's experience with uranium, Rutherford started to explore its radioactivity, discovering two types that differed from X-rays in their penetrating power.
Unique:He was knighted in 1914 -
J.J. Thomson
Location:Cambridge
Primary Focus:Several scientists, such as William Prout and Norman Lockyer, had suggested that atoms were built up from a more fundamental unit, but they envisioned this unit to be the size of the smallest atom, hydrogen. Thomson, in 1897 was the first to suggest that one of the fundamental units was more than 1,000 times smaller than an atom, suggesting the subatomic particle now known as the electron.
Unique:In 1908 he was knighted for his contributions to science. -
Max Planck
Location:University of Kiel
Primary Focus:Planck constant, Planck postulate, Planck's law of black body radiation
Unique:In February 1944 his home was completely destroyed by Allied bombs and all of his papers were lost. -
The curies
Location:France
Primary Focus:Polonium and Radium
Unique:Einstein Encouraged Marie During One of the Worst Years of Her Life -
Albert Einstein
Location:University of Zurich, University of Berlin
Primary Focus:General relativity and special relativity, Photoelectric effect, E=mc2, Theory of Brownian motion, Einstein field equations, Bose–Einstein statistics, Bose–Einstein condensate, Gravitational wave, Cosmological constant, Unified field theory, EPR paradox
Unique:He was a great musician. If the whole “genius” thing didn’t work out, Einstein could have become a violinist. -
Niels Bohr
Location:Carlsberg
Primary Focus:Copenhagen interpretation, Complementarity, Bohr model, Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization, Bohr–van Leeuwen, theorem, Sommerfeld–Bohr theory, BKS theory, Bohr–Einstein debates, Bohr magneton, Bohr orbital, Bohr radius, Hafnium
Unique:During the debate about Quantum Theory with Albert Einstein, Einstein said "God does not play dice." Bohr replied by saying "Einstein, stop telling God what to do!" -
Otto Hahn
Location:London
Primary Focus:Discovery of radioactive elements
Unique:He finally received his medal from King Gustav V of Sweden on December 10, 1946. -
Robert Andrews Millikan
Location:Morrison, Illinois, U.S
Primary Focus:Elementary electronic charge and the photoelectric effect.
Unique:In his sophomore year in college at Oberlin he was asked to teach an introductory-level physics class -
Erwin Schrödinger
Location:University of Zurich
Primary Focus:Schrödinger equation
Unique:A moon crater is named after him. -
James Chadwick
Location:Cambridge
Primary Focus:Neutron
Unique:For four years, James Chadwick was a prisoner of war in Germany. -
Leis Meitner
Location:Copenhagen, Berlin-Dahlem
Primary Focus:Nuclear Fission
Unique:In 1946 she was named "Woman of the Year" by the National Press Club and had dinner with the President of the United States. -
Glenn T Seaborg
Location:Berkeley
Primary Focus:His contributions and he was part of a team to the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements
Unique:Working with John J. Livingood, Seaborg discovered iodine-131 and cobalt-60: these are crucial radioisotopes in medical diagnoses and treatments. -
Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig
Location:Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Primary Focus:Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig tentatively put forth the idea of quarks. They suggested that mesons and baryons are composites of three quarks or antiquarks, called up, down, or strange (u, d, s) with spin 0.5 and electric charges 2/3, -1/3, -1/3, respectively (it turns out that this theory is not completely accurate).
Unique:Gell-Mann speaks 13 languages fluently -
W.K. Roentgen
Location:Hohenheim, Württemberg
Primary Focus:X-rays
Unique:He tried to attend the University of Utrecht without having the necessary credentials required for a regular student.
