-
100
Claudius Ptolemy
Ptolemy's geocentric theory was an expansion of a theory created by the Greeks even earlier. His theory stated that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that all planets rotated around it at different distances, which he assigned different names. At the time, this was such a significant event because the construction of the universe wasn't something many people thought about, so it seemed like a genius proposal. For thousands of years after, people just presumed the theory correct -
Period: 100 to
Scientific Revolution
-
1260
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon was an English monk and scholar that helped pioneer the idea of science being used to understand the world around us. This idea was met with backlash, especially from the church. They were upset because, before, religion would be used to explain the world's mysteries and whatever they said was considered truth. He even wrote a book called Opus Majus which dealt with such topics as mathematics, optics, alchemy, and astronomy. -
1543
Nicolaus Copernicus
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus finally challenged the geocentric theory that was proposed over a millennium ago. He did this in his book, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres," where the new heliocentric theory was proposed. This theory stated that the sun was the center of the universe and that all planets and entities revolved around it using very complicated maths. Most scientists weren't entirely convinced with this theory at the start but other scientists would help to prove it later -
1543
Andreas Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius is most famous for his intricate study of the human body. He followed in the footsteps of the great painter, Leonardo Davinci, who also believed that the study of the human body was important. At the time, Vesalius was one of the first people to even really care about this field of science, and the term anatomy didn't exist before him. Therefore, his book, On the Fabric of the Human Body, was revolutionary at the time, and pioneered a whole new type of science. -
1572
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer and alchemist (before chemistry was invented). He is known for countless events, but the commonality they all share is that they were all extremely accurate. In 1572, he observed a bright star coming from the constellation Cassieopeia, and he identified it as a supernova. This discovery even led him to go after astronomy as a career. Although his discoveries weren't revolutionary at the time, we know now that this man was an absolute genius. -
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer and polymath (someone who studies multiple subject areas). He was another supporter of heliocentrism at a time where not many people were. However, his greatest accomplishments were inventing the telescope, a device that let him see into the stars. This was one of the big ways he tried to prove heliocentrism right. The telescope was a controversial device among the church because it was proving all of their ideas wrong. Some even considered it satanic. -
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer and a firm believer in the heliocentric theory proposed by Copernicus. He created models (as seen in picture) and used complex maths to try and prove it right. In his book, The Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler uses models created by Ptolemy to explain why the heliocentric theory is correct. His contributions to the scientific community, along with Galileo, were a big reason for the support of the heliocentric theory. -
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and scientist. His most famous idea is believing that science should only be proven through repeated, reliable experiments. The Baconian Method, as he named it, was not really thought about too much for a long time. Most people ignored it because for such a long time, scientists could prove things just fine without having to do experiments. But nowadays, scientists are pretty much required to do experiments to prove anything in the scientific community. -
William Harvey
William Harvey was another English physician that made major contributions to anatomy. His biggest accomplishments include being the first person to study the human heart and the circulatory system as a whole. His book, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, was revolutionary because this part of the body had never been explained before. Without his work, scientists may never even care or have studied the heart to this day, and we wouldn't be able to treat some diseases. -
René Descartes
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist. Contrary to the belief of Francis Bacon, Descartes believed that science could be proven only through observation, what we could see or feel, and logic. This led him to develop his own theories about the universe, completely separate from the heliocentric and geocentric theory, though it never garnered much attention. To this day, we're only really allowed to prove information with the Baconian method (repeated experiments). -
Evangelista Torricelli
Evangelista Torricelli was an Italian physicist and mathematician that created the barometer - a tool that measures atmospheric pressure using the power of the element mercury. He even got a unit of measurement named after him, the Torr, even though René Descartes had discovered the same thing almost 12 years earlier with no recognition. The barometer is still used today by scientists to study atmospheric pressure, even though some of them work a little differently today. -
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle was an Irish scientist that is most famous for the creation of chemistry. This field of science was completely new at the time, and it derives from the old term, alchemy. Alchemy was the "science" of people turning one object into another. Most often, it wasn't very scientific, though, and it was considered magical. He also created/discovered Boyle's law, a chemical principle that deals with the pressure of a gas as it relates to the temperature of the gas. -
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton is proclaimed to be one of the most revolutionary scientists of all time. He studied physics and astronomy, which led him to eventually discover gravity. Or rather, to explain it. He proposed the idea of universal gravitation, meaning everything gets pulled toward each other a little bit, and bigger things pulled with more force. This idea, like I said, was completely genius at the time. Other accomplishments include the invention of calculus and explaining how colors work. -
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch scientist / businessman and is the founder of microbiology. He created a microscope originally to get a better view of the fabric he sold at his store. But in doing so, he discovered very tiny organisms that moved around. Thus, he named them animalcules, meaning "tiny animal." This, like other discoveries in the scientific revolution, was completely mind-blowing. Nobody even knew these bacteria and such existed before Leeuwenhoek accidentally discovered them. -
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier was the second "father of modern chemistry," following in the footsteps of Robert Boyle. He most notably named a lot of the elements that are on the periodic table today. He recognized and named oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and silicon (although people knew sulfur existed, they just didn't know it was an element). Unfortunately, Lavoisier was executed for conning money out of the government, and they chose not to spare his life because scientists weren't "important enough."
