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John Tyndall (02 August, 1820, Leighlinbridge, Ireland - 04 December, 1893)
A prominent 19th-centrury Irish physicist whose fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. In 1859, he showed that gases including carbon dioxide and water vapour can absorb heat. His heat source was not the Sun, but radiation from a copper cube containing boiling water. In modern terms, this was infrared radiation - just like that emanating from the Earth's surface. He's published more than a dozen science books and was a professor of physics at the Royal Institution of GB. -
Friedrich Engels (28 November, 1820 Barmen, Prussia - 05 August, 1895)
A German socialist philosopher who helped define modern communism. He's the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, an 1848 pamphlet regarded as one of the world's most influential political documents. As a son of a factory owner, he eventually became a successful businessman himself, never allowing his criticism of capitalism to interfere with the profitable operations of his firm. He consolidated Marx's influence among competing revolutionary programs in a variety of works. -
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russel (18 May, 1872 Trellech, Wales - 02 Feubruary 1970)
Bertrand Russell was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. His contributions to logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics established him as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. His many works included The Principles of Mathematics (1903), Pincipia Mathematica (1910, with Alfred North Whitehead), and Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). -
Paul Oppenheim (June 17, 1885, Frankfurt am Main - June 22, 1977)
After studying natural sciences and chemistry at the University of Freiburg, Oppenheim earned his doctorate in chemistry and philosophy. He was active in the chemical industry until 1933 and later worked as a private scholar in Princeton upon emigrating to the US. He published with Hempel and Grelling on philosophy and philosophy of science, including Gestalt psychology. Oppenheim is co-founder of the so-called Hempel-Oppenheim schema (Deductive-nomological model).