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The Telescope
The first telescope was created by Hans Lippershey, a Dutch eyeglass maker. The telescope could magnify things three times and would be improved on by Galileo years later. The telescope allows us to see across vast distances and even into space in some cases. This technology is still being improved on today. Source(http://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html) -
Robert Hooke Discovers the Cell
Robert Hooke used a very early version of the microscope to observe the cells of a sample of cork. This marked the first time in history a person had ever seen cells. This revolutionized almost every aspect of society from our understanding of the human body to our knowledge of chemistry. As the years passed, more and more advanced versions of the microscope appeared, allowing us to look even closer into cells. -
Isaac Newton Creates the Laws of Motion
Sir Isaac Newton, renowned scientist, created the classic Three Laws of Motion and observed the effects of gravity. This discovery changed our understanding of celestial bodies and motion as a whole and even today changes and additions to the laws of gravity and motion continue to take place. -
Benjamin Franklin Invents the Lightning Rod
Benjamin Franklin created the lightning rod as part of his revolutionary exploration of electricity. It was created to attract lightning and discharge the energy safely into the ground to prevent nearby buildings from being struck and set alight. This technology is still being used today to protect our skyscrapers and even provide a way to someday harness lightning's energy. -
William Herschel Discovers Uranus
While observing different planets through a telescope he had created, Herschel saw a strange body that he had thought was a star. After some observation, he came to the conclusion that it was indeed another planet. This discovery made him famous overnight, as it expanded the known solar system for the first time in many years. -
Antoine Lavoisier Fathers Modern Chemistry
Antoine Lavoisier came up with the Law of Conservation of Mass, the basis of chemistry. This, in turn, marked the beginning of modern chemistry, leading to incredible strides in technology. -
Hanaoka Seishū Invents General Anesthesia
Hanaoka Seishū, a Japanese doctor from Osaka, first used an anesthetic when removing a cancerous tumor from a patient's breast. His drug was a mixture of a few different Chinese medicines which both dulled pain and rendered the user unconscious. Due to his success, many doctors flocked to Japan to learn his techniques and the science of anesthesia rapidly developed across the world. Source(https://www.general-anaesthesia.com/misc/seishu-hanaoka.html) -
William Herschel Discovers Infrared Radiation
By passing light through a prism and onto a thermometer. Herschel discovered that the heat produced was more than what was normal for the visible light spectrum. This lead him to believe that there was another invisible kind of light, infrared radiation. -
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Thomas Edison's Life
Thomas Edison is widely considered one of the greatest scientific minds to have ever lived. His inventions include the light-bulb, phonograph, record player, glass harmonica, and many many others. His inventions have changed the way we live forever. -
Lord Kelvin Calculates Absolute Zero
Kelvin, a famed mathematician with an interest in thermodynamics, devised a scale of temperatures, calculating the value of Absolute Zero to be at about -273 degrees Celsius -
Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution
During a trip to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin observed different type of finches on the islands, each uniquely suited to their environment. Using this information, Darwin created his theory on evolution through natural selection. This theory is still debated today, but is widely thought to be true. -
Gregor Mendel's Genetic Experiments
Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, grew pea plants in the gardens of the monastery. While gardening one day, he noticed similarities between specific plants and plants that were grown from the plant's seeds. This led him to experiment with different combinations of plants and thus genetics as a scientific field was born. Source(http://www.dnaftb.org/1/bio.html) -
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Marie Curie's Life
Marie Curie was a renowned nuclear physicist that was dedicated to studying x-rays and radioactivity. She is often credited for the discovery of polonium, radium, and radioactivity. She died at the age of 66 due to overexposure to radioactive materials as she often carried test-tubes of tellurium in her pockets as she worked. -
Mendeleev Creates the First Periodic Table
Mendeleev compiled all of the known elements and arranged them into groups according to their chemical properties, reactivity, and atomic radius. This created the framework for the periodic table we know today. The arrangement of elements based on properties was an important aspect of the first periodic table as it defined the most and least reactive materials. Source(http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/history/about) -
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Erwin Schrodinger's Life
Erwin Schrodinger was an incredibly famous physicist who is credited with much of the research into quantum mechanics and many other fields of science. He is most known for his "Schrodinger's Cat" thought experiment, a theoretical situation that suggest a cat being both dead and alive at the same time. -
Dmitri Ivanovski Discovers the Virus
Ivanovski was the first to use a high-powered microscope to observe virus cells. Virus cells need to be smaller than regular human cells to be able to inject their DNA and produce more viruses in order to infect a host. Dmitri's observation paved the way for incredible strides in medical technology and understanding, leading to the first vaccination and the development of penicillin. -
Marie Curie Researches Radioactivity
Shortly after the discovery of X-rays and the tendency of uranium to emit something similar, Curie decided to study this radiation emitted by uranium as a subject for a thesis. Eventually she and her husband published a paper that stated their findings on two new elements, radium and polonium, and coined the term radioactivity. This eventually lead to the beginning of nuclear energy. Source(https://web.lemoyne.edu/giunta/ea/CURIEann.HTML) -
Ernest Rutherford Discovers the Nucleus
After J.J. Thomson discovered the electron, Rutherford had decided to study atoms and attempt to figure out what exactly these particles were orbiting. Eventually, he had found out that there was a cluster of particles called a nucleus in the center of each atom. This led to the discovery that an element's properties are mostly based on the number of protons and electrons that they contain and a periodic table based on this knowledge. -
Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin
Alexander Fleming made what is arguably one of the most important discoveries in medical history by accident. After a lengthy vacation, Fleming was looking through petri dishes and discarding them after they had been neglected and contaminated. One of the dishes, however, contained a fungus that had somehow killed the bacteria around it. This was the first discovery of an antibacterial agent in medical history. -
Dolly the Sheep is Cloned
Dolly was the first living thing to be completely cloned from a single mammary cell. Dolly technically has 3 mothers, one that provided the cell, one that provided the DNA, and a third that served as a surrogate mother to the blastocyst. She was created by transferring the nucleus of a cell into an unfertilized egg cell from a sheep. This is an incredible stride into cloning whose impact is yet unknown. Source(http://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/)
