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Mar 29, 1544
William Gilbert, Pioneer Electricity
William Gilbert, also known as Gilberd, was an English physician, physicist and natural philosopher. He was an early Copernican, and passionately rejected both the prevailing Aristotelian philosophy and the Scholastic method of university teaching. He is remembered today largely for his book De Magnete (1600), and is credited as one of the originators of the term electricity. He is regarded by some as the father of electrical engineering or electricity and magnetism. A unit of magnetomotive forc -
Mar 29, 1550
Napier, Inventor of Logarithms
John Napier was a Scottish mathematician, physicist, astronomer & astrologer, and also the 8th Laird of Merchistoun. He was the son of Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston. John Napier is most renowned as the discoverer of the logarithm. Napier is the inventor of the so-called "Napier's bones". Napier also made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Napier's birthplace, the Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh, Scotland, is now part of the facilities of Edinburgh Napier Univer -
Mar 29, 1564
Galileo Galilei, Father of Modern Science
Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science." Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his -
Mar 29, 1571
Johannes Kepler, Laws Planetary Motion
Johannes Kepler is now chiefly remembered for discovering the three laws of planetary motion that bear his name published in 1609 and 1619). He also did important work in optics (1604, 1611), discovered two new regular polyhedra (1619), gave the first mathematical treatment of close packing of equal spheres (leading to an explanation of the shape of the cells of a honeycomb, 1611), gave the first proof of how logarithms worked (1624), and devised a method of finding the volumes of solids of revo -
Mar 29, 1580
Jan van Helmont, Discovery CO2
Jan Baptist van Helmont was an early modern period Flemish chemist, physiologist, and physician. He worked during the years just after Paracelsus and iatrochemistry, and 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" (from the Greek word chaos) into the vocabulary of scientists. -
René Descartes, French Philosopher
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which continue to be studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Carte -
Blaise Pascal, Inventing a Calculator
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. In 1642, while still a teenager, he star -
Robert Boyle, Natural Philosopher
The Honourable Robert Boyle was an Irish natural philosopher, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of effecting it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, in 1689, of the statute of Henry IV against multiplying gold and silver. With all the important work he accomplished in physics - the enunciation of Boyle's law, the discovery of the part taken by air in -
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch Scientist
Christiaan Huygens came from an important Dutch family. Huygens's first publications in 1651 and 1654 considered mathematical problems. The 1651 publication Cyclometriae showed the fallacy in methods proposed by Gregory of Saint-Vincent, who had claimed to have squared the circle. Huygens' 1654 work De Circuli Magnitudine Inventa was a more major work on similar topics. Huygens soon turned his attention to lens grinding and telescope construction. Around 1654 he devised a new and better way of g -
Robert Hooke, Natural Philosopher
Robert Hooke - natural philosopher, inventor, architect, chemist, mathematician, physicist, engineer. Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in cameras, the universal joint used in motor vehicles, the balance wheel in a watch, the originator of the word 'cell' in biology, he was Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, architect, experimenter, worked in astronomy - yet is known most -
Isaac Newton, Theory of Gravitation
Newton 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. Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However he did not have a corre -
Gottfried W. Leibniz, Discovery of Calculus
German philosopher, physicist, and mathematician whose mechanical studies included forces and weights. He believed in a deterministic universe which followed a "pre-established harmony." He extended the work of his mentor Huygens from kinematics to include dynamics. He was self-taught in mathematics, but nonetheless developed calculus independently of Newton. Although he published his results slightly after Newton, his notation was by far superior (including the integral sign and derivative nota -
Edmond Halley, Astronomer
Edmond Halley, Astronomer, remembered because his name is attached to a comet. Leaving Queen's College, Oxford, without a degree in 1676, he went to St Helena to map the southern stars. After a famous meeting with Wren and Hooke, he visited Newton in Cambridge, and hearing about his work on gravitation, persuaded him to publish it. In 1703 he became professor of astronomy at Oxford, and in 1720 astronomer-royal. He computed the orbits of several comets, and deduced that those of 1456, 1531, 1607 -
Fahrenheit, Inventor Thermometer
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, German physicist and instrument maker. He spent most of his life in the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to the study of physics and the manufacture of precision meteorological instruments. He is best known for inventing a successful alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714) and for developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale, setting zero at the freezing point of an equal mixture of ice and salt. He discovered that water can remain liquid below it -
Willem 's Gravesande, Mathematician
Willem Jacob 's Gravesande was a Dutch philosopher and mathematician. His chief contribution to physics involved an experiment in which brass balls were dropped with varying velocity onto a soft clay surface. His results were that a ball with twice the velocity of another would leave an indentation four times as deep, that three times the velocity yielded nine times the depth, and so on. He shared these results with Émilie du Châtelet, who subsequently corrected Newton's formula E = mv to E = mv
