The Worlds Xtreme 10

Scientist is a person who uses observation, experimentation and theory to learn about a subject (Biologists, physicists, chemists, geologists and astronomers are all scientists.

The scientists mentioned below have been regarded as the greatest scientists of all time. They reached xtreme zeniths because of their vision, they believed in the saying Failures are stepping stones to success.

1. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
2. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
3. Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
4. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
5. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
6. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
7. Hermann Emil Fischer (1852-1919)
8. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
9. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)
10. Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

1.JOHANNES KEPLER(1571-1630):

He has been regarded as the greatest scientist of all time. He is known for his contribution to “modern astronomy.”

Childhood:

He was born on 27 December 1571 wielder Stadt, Württemburg, in the Holy Roman Empire of Germany.He hailed from a poor family,but it didn’t stop his enthusiasm towards education.His intelligence fetched him a scholarship to study in the university of Tübingen.

writings:

• Astronomia Pars Optica
• dioptrice

Achievements:

He supported the Copernicus heliocentric theory(i.e..sun is center of universe).Kepler made the monumental discovery of time.he proposed that earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical manner.

Three laws of planetary motion, they are

1. Planets revolve around the Sun in an elliptical path, with the Sun occupying one of the foci of the ellipse.
2. Straight line joining sun and planet sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time.
3. Squares of planets’ orbital periods are proportional to the cubes of the semi major axes of their orbits.

• First to investigate the formation of pictures with a pin hole camera;
• First to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye;
• First to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness;
• First to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception.

• First to describe: real, virtual, upright and inverted images and magnification;
• First to explain the principles of how a telescope works;
• First to discover and describe the properties of total internal reflection.

Honors:

• Kepler Space Observatory, a solar-orbiting, planet-hunting telescope due to be launched by NASA in 2009
• The Kepler Solids, a set of geometrical constructions, two of which were described by him
• Kepler’s Star, Supernova 1604, which he observed and described
• Kepler, a crater on the moon
• Kepler, a crater on Mars
• 1134 Kepler, an asteroid
• Two rockets, the Kepler and the Kepler II, appear in Kim Possible episodes Car Alarm and Graduation respectively.

2. GALILEO GALILEI(1564-1642):

Childhood and Education:

Galileo was born on February 15,1564 at Pisa in Italy .Mathematician/astronomer/physicist who made numerous contributions to modern science.Galileo was first to use telescope to  gather evidence proving the earth revolves around the sun.He has been regarded as “father of modern physics”,  ” the father of science”, and “the Father of Modern astronomy.

Achievements:

• In 1609, Galileo was among the first to use a “refracting telescope” as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons.
• he was the first to discover that bodies falling from a height are accelerated uniformly i.e.. time of descent is independent of mass.
• He had discovered three of Jupiter’s four biggest satellites.
• Galileo observed that Venus  exhibited a full set of phases similar to that of the Moon.
• Galileo was one of the first Europeans to observe sunspots.
• Galileo was the first to report lunar mountains and craters, whose existence he deduced from the patterns of light and shadow on the Moon’s surface. He even estimated the mountains’ heights from these observations. This led him to the conclusion that the Moon was “rough and uneven, and just like the surface of the Earth
• Between 1595–1598, Galileo devised and improved a Geometric and Military Compass suitable for use by gunners and surveyors
• About 1593, Galileo constructed a thermometer, using the expansion and contraction of air in a bulb to move water in an attached tube.
• In 1612, having determined the orbital periods of Jupiter’s satellites, Galileo proposed that with sufficiently accurate knowledge of their orbits one could use their positions as a universal clock, and this would make possible the determination of longitude
• Galileo arrived at the correct mathematical law for uniform acceleration: the total distance covered, starting from rest, is proportional to the square of the time ( d ∝ t ² ), already discovered by Domingo de Sotto
• Galileo also claimed (incorrectly) that a pendulum’s swings always take the same amount of time, independently of the amplitude.It is popularly believed that he came to this conclusion by watching the swings of the bronze chandelier in the cathedral of Pisa, using his pulse to time it. It appears however, that he conducted no experiments because the claim is true only of infinitesimally small swings as discovered by Christian Huygens.
• Galileo is lesser known for, yet still credited with, being one of the first to understand sound frequency

Writings:

1. “The Little Balance” (La Billancetta) describing an accurate balance to weigh objects in air or water.
2. “Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico et Militare” on the operation of a geometrical and military compass.
3. Galileo’s 1610 The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius) was the first scientific treatise to be published based on observations made through a telescope and include the discovery of the Galilean moons.

Honors

1. The Galileo spacecraft,the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Jupiter, the proposed “Galileo global satellite navigation system”.
2. The transformation between “inertial systems” in “classical mechanics” denoted “Galilean transformation” and the “Gal (unit)”

SIR ISAAC NEWTON(1643-1727)

Childhood and Education:Newton was born on 4 January,1643 in Lincolnshire, England.

Newton began his schooling in the village schools and was later sent to The King’s  school Grantham, where he became the top student in the school. At King’s, he lodged with the local apothecary, William Clarke and eventually became engaged to the apothecary’s stepdaughter, Anne Storer, before he went off to the University of Cambridge at the age of 19.

There can be no outstanding scientist list without Sir Isaac Newton; he made revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.

Writings:

1. Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
2. Method of Fluxions(1671)
3. De Motu Corporum in Gyrum(1684)
4. Opticks (1704)
5. Reports as Master of the Mint (1701–25)
6. Arithmetica Universalis(1707)

Achievements:

Newton proposed three laws,

1. A body continues in a state of rest, or motion with a constant velocity, unless compelled to change by an unbalanced force.

2. The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting upon it and inversely proportional to its mass.
mathematically it can be stated as F=ma.Where F=force,m=mass,a=acceleration.

3. For every action force, there is an equal and opposite reaction force

• He was the first to discover gravity in the following way
  When Newton saw an apple fall, he found , in that slight startle from his contemplation —
  A mode of proving that the earth turned round
  In a most natural whirl, called “gravitation;”
  And this is the sole mortal who could grapple,
  Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.
• He proposed universal law of gravitation which states that “every body in the universe attracts every other body with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to square of distances between them.

F=(G*m1*m2)/(r*r)

where F=force,G=gravitational constant,m1,m2=masses,r=distance between objects

• In mechanics, Newton enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum.
• In optics, he invented the reflecting telescope and developed a theory of color based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into a visible spectrum.
• He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.
• In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
• He also demonstrated the generalized binomial theorem, developed the so-called “Newton’s method” for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
• he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colors, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicolored spectrum into white light.
• He also showed that the colored light does not change its properties by separating out a colored beam and shining it on various objects.

Honors:

1. French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that he was also “the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.
2. the SI-unit of force “newton” has been named after him.

4.CHARLES DARWIN(1809-1882):

Childhood and Education:Charles Darwin was born on 12 February,1809 at Shropshire in  England.Charles joined the day school, run by a  preacher.he went to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, to study medicine, but he was revolted by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies.In 1831 after receiving his degree, Darwin served as an unpaid naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle for a five-year scientific expedition to the Pacific coast of South America.

Writings:

1.The Voyage of the Beagle

2.The Origin of Species

3.The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

4.The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to sex.

5.The Power of Movement in Plants.

Achievements:

• Darwin worked mainly on origin of species and proposed that “monkey was the ancestral parent of humans”.
• Evolutionary change was gradual and required thousands to millions of years.
• Primary mechanism for evolution was process called natural selection.
• Millions of species alive today arose from single original life form through branching process called “specialization.”
• His studies found evidence for homology, the radical theory that all animals have similar organs which differ only in complexity, thus showing common descent.
• Darwin made a presentation to the Plinian of his own discovery that the black spores often found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech.
• Darwin found and excavated rare fossils of gigantic extinct mammals in strata with modern seashells, indicating recent extinction and no change in climate or signs of catastrophe
• As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form

Note:Darwin’s theory of Species was opposed by Harun Yahya an English philosopher in his book Darwinism Refuted. You can read the book at www.harunyahya.com

Honors:

• Royal Medal(1853)
• Wollaston Medal (1859)
• Copley Medal (1864)
• Darwin has been the subject of many exhibitions, including the “Darwin” exhibition, which opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2006.

5.LOUIS PASTEUR(1822-1895):

Childhood and Eduction:He was born on 27 December,1822 in France.Louis’s aptitude was recognized by his college headmaster, who recommended that the young man apply for the École Normale Supérieure, which accepted him.He became professor of chemistry at Strasbourg University.

French chemist/biologist who made numerous contributions to science.

Writings:

1. Bibliotheque Nationale
2. The Story of San Michele, Axel Munthe.
3. The Germ Theory and its Application to Medicine and Surgery.

Achievements:

• He invented the vaccine for “Small pox.”
• Separated mirror image molecules and studied effect of polarized light.
• Found that Yeast is an organism and does not require oxygen for fermentation
• Pasteurization (mild heating) after fermentation kills microorganisms and prevents souring.
• Identified parasite responsible for killing silkworms and saved French silk industry.
• Proposed germ theory of disease urging doctors to use clean instruments, wash hands, and
  disinfect bandages
• Pasteur publicly claimed he had made the anthrax vaccine by exposing the bacillus to oxygen.But it was a Failure.
• Pasteur produced the first vaccine for rabies by growing the virus in rabbits, and then weakening it by drying the affected nerve tissue
• In Pasteur’s early works as a chemist, he resolved a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid (1849). A solution of this compound derived from living things (specifically, wine lees) rotated the plane of polarization of light passing through it. The mystery was that tartaric acid derived by chemical synthesis had no such effect, even though its chemical reactions were identical and its elemental composition was the same.
• He was the first to demonstrate about chiral molecules.

Honors:

1. Leeuwenhoek medal, microbiology’s highest honor, in 1895
2. Grand Croix of the Legion of Honor
3. Université Louis Pasteur was a university named after him.

6.JAMES CLERK MAXWELL (1831-1879):

Childhood and Education:He was born on June 13, 1831 at Edinburgh, Scotland in United Kingdom.Recognizing the potential of the young boy, his mother Frances took responsibility for James’ early education, which in Victorian era was largely the job of the woman of the house.at the age of 16 and began attending classes at the University of Edinburgh.He then studied in Cambridge University.

Maxwell is considered the scientist of the 19th century who had  the greatest influence on 20th century physics. In 1931 Einstein described Maxwell’s work as “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”

Einstein himself described Maxwell’s work as the “most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.“

Writings:

1. Theory of Heat (1871)
2. On the Equilibrium of Elastic solids.
3. Matter and Motion (1876)
4. On the Stability of Saturn’s Rings
5. On Physical Lines of Force

Achievements:

• His most significant achievement was the development of the classical electromagnetic theory.
• His set of equations—Maxwell’s equations—demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and even light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon: the electromagnetic field
• Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light
• Maxwell also developed the Maxwell distribution, a statistical means to describe aspects of the kinetic theory of gases
• This lead to revolution in the field of special relativity and quantum mechanics.
• He is also known for creating the first true color photograph in 1861.
• Maxwell showed that the equations predict the existence of waves of oscillating electric and magnetic fields that travel through empty space at a speed that could be predicted from simple electrical experiments; using the data available at the time, Maxwell obtained a velocity of 310,740,000 m/s.
• His formula, called the Maxwell distribution, gives the fraction of gas molecules moving at a specified velocity at any given temperature.

Honors:

1.Smith’s Prize
2.Rumford Medal
3.Adams Prize

7.HERMANN EMIL FISCHER(1852-1919):

Childhood and Education:Fischer was born on October 9,1852 at Euskirchen, in Germany.He was the son of a business man.After graduating he wished to study natural sciences, but his father compelled him to work in the family business until determining that his son was unsuitable.Fischer then attended the University of Bonn in 1872, but switched to the University of Strasbourg in 1872. He earned his doctorate in 1874 with his study of phthalein and was appointed to a position at the university.

No one made greater contributions to chemistry than Fisher

Achievements:

• Fischer’s  discovery of phenylhydrazine was one of his greatest achievements.
• At Erlangen Fischer studied the active principles of tea, coffee and cocoa, namely, caffeine and theobromine, and established the constitution of a series of compounds in this field, eventually synthesizing them.
• Fischer’s fame chiefly rests, was his studies of the purines and the sugars. This work, carried out between 1882 and 1906 showed that various substances, little known at that time, such as adenine, xanthine, in vegetable substances, caffeine and, in animal excrement, uric acid and guanine, all belonged to one homogenous family.
• He established the relation between glucose, fructose and mannose, which he discovered in 1888.
• He established structures for the 16 stereoisomers of the aldohexoses (C6H12O6)?glucose being the most prominent member
• Fisher advanced our knowledge of protein by developing methods to separate/identify individual amino acids.
• Fisher devised cross representations (today called Fisher projections) and proposed the often used lock & key model to explain the fit of a drug onto a receptor site.

Honors:

1. Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1902)
2. The Prussian Order of Merit
3. Maximilian Order for Arts and SciencesMany consider Fischer to be the most brilliant chemist who ever lived, as his numerous contributions to science, especially chemistry and biochemistry. Many names of chemical reactions and concepts are named after him:
   • Fischer indole synthesis
   • Fischer projection
   • Fischer oxazole synthesis
   • Fischer peptide synthesis
   • Fischer phenylhydrazine and oxazone reaction
   • Fischer reduction
   • Fischer-Speier esterification
   • Fischer glycosidation

8.ALBERT EINSTEIN(1879-1955):

Childhood and Education:Albert Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany.His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer.When Einstein was five, his father showed him a pocket compass. Einstein realized that something in empty space was moving the needle and later stated that this experience made “a deep and lasting impression.”Albert attended a Catholic elementary school.He was a top student in elementary school.Rather than completing high school, Einstein decided to apply directly to the ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland

“Einstein is probably the most famous scientist of all time.  He burst on the scene in 1905 when he managed to solve three of the outstanding problems of physics: photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special theory of relativity.”

Writings:

1. “The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation”
2. Physikalische Zeitschrift

Achievements:

• His paper on the particulate nature of light put forward the idea that certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect, could be simply understood from the postulate that light interacts with matter as discrete “packets” (quanta) of energy, an idea that had been introduced by Max Planck in 1900 as a purely mathematical manipulation, and which seemed to contradict contemporary wave theories of light (Einstein 1905a). This was the only work of Einstein’s that he himself called “revolutionary.”
• His paper on Brownian motion explained the random movement of very small objects as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory. (Einstein 1905c)
• His paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies introduced the radical theory of special relativity, which showed that the observed independence of the speed of light on the observer’s state of motion required fundamental changes to the notion of simultaneity. Consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body slowing down and contracting (in the direction of motion) relative to the frame of the observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether—one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous. (Einstein 1905d)
• In his paper on mass–energy equivalence (previously considered to be distinct concepts), Einstein deduced from his equations of special relativity what later became the well-known expression: E = mc², suggesting that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy. (Einstein 1905e)

“velocity of light was calculated through this equation was 300000m/s but it was found to be incorrect later.”

Honors:

1. Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)
2. Copley Medal (1925)
3. Max Planck Medal (1929)

9.EDWIN HUBBLE((1889-1953):

Childhood and Education:he was born on November 20, 1889 at Marshfield, Missouri in U.S.He was born to an insurance executive.In his younger days he was noted more for his athletic prowess than his intellectual abilities, although he did earn good grades in every subject except for spelling. He won seven first places and a third place in a single high school track meet in 1906. That year he also set a state record for high jump in Illinois.His studies at the University of Chicago concentrated on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy which led to a BS degree in 1910. Hubble also became a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and in 1948 was named Kappa Sigma “Man of the Year.”

Writings:

1. “Photographic Investigations of Faint Nebulae”.

Achievements:

• Hubble supported “Big Bang theory.”
• He  discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the distance of that galaxy from the Milky Way. This became known as Hubble’s law, and would help establish that the universe is expanding.
• Hubble was the first to use 200-inch Hale Telescope.
• Using the Hooker Telescope, Hubble identified Cepheid variables (a kind of star; see also standard candle) in several spiral nebulae, including the Andromeda Galaxy.
• is observations, made in 1922–1923, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own.
• Hubble also devised the most commonly used system for classifying galaxies, grouping them according to their appearance in photographic images. He arranged the different groups of galaxies in what became known as the Hubble sequence.
• Hubble and  his friend Humason were able to plot a trend line from the 46 galaxies they studied and obtained a value for the Hubble-Humason constant of 500 km/s/Mpc, which is much higher than the currently accepted value due to errors in their distance calibrations.
• In 1929 Hubble and Humason formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays termed simply Hubble’s law, which, if the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space.
• Hubble discovered the asteroid 1373 Cincinnati on August 30, 1935. He also wrote The Observational Approach to Cosmology and The Realm of the Nebulae around this time.

Honors:

1. Nobel prize
2. Bruce Medal in 1938.
3. Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1940.
4. Medal of Merit for outstanding contribution to ballistics research in 1946.
5. Asteroid 2069 Hubble.
6. Hubble crater on the Moon.
7. Orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
8. Edwin P. Hubble Planetarium, located in the Edward R. Murrow High School, Brooklyn, NY.
9. Edwin Hubble Highway, the stretch of Interstate 44 passing through his birthplace of , Missouri
10. The Edwin P. Hubble Medal of Initiative is awarded annually by the city of  Missouri - Hubble’s birthplace
11. Hubble Middle School in Wheaton, Illinois—renamed for Edwin Hubble when Wheaton Central High School was converted to a middle school in the fall of 1992.

10.PAUL DIRAC(1902-1984):

Childhood and Education:Dirac was born on 8 August,1902 at Bristol in England.Paul Dirac was born in Bristol,^] England and grew up in the Bishopston area of the city. . His early family life appears to have been unhappy due to his father’s unusually strict and authoritarian nature. He was educated first at Bishop Road Primary School and then at Merchant Venture’ Technical College (later Cotham Grammar School,where his father was a French teacher. The school was an institution attached to the University of Bristol, which emphasized scientific subjects and modern language.Dirac studied electrical engineering at the University of Bristol, completing his degree in 1921.

Writings:

1. Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930): This book summarizes the ideas of quantum mechanics using the modern formalism that was largely developed by Dirac himself. Towards the end of the book, he also discusses the relativistic theory of the electron (the Dirac equation, which was also pioneered by him. This work does not refer to any other writings then available on quantum mechanics.
2. Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (1966): Much of this book deals with quantum mechanics in curved space-time.
3. General Theory of Relativity (1975): This 68-page work summarizes Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Achievements:

• The following uncertanity principle fetched him fame

“It is impossible to find the exact velocity and momentum of a sub atomic particle”

• Dirac noticed an analogy between the Poisson brackets of classical mechanics and the recently proposed quantization rules in Werner Heisenberg’s matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. This observation allowed Dirac to obtain the quantization rules in a novel and more illuminating manner. For this work, published in 1926, he received a Ph.D. from Cambridge.
• He proposed the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wavefunction of the electron. This work led Dirac to predict the existence of the positron, the electron’s antiparticle, which he interpreted in terms of what came to be called the Dirac sea.
• Dirac’s equation also contributed to explaining the origin of quantum spin as a relativistic phenomenon.
• In 1933, following his 1931 paper on magnetic monopoles, Dirac showed that the existence of a single magnetic monopole in the universe would suffice to explain the observed quantization of electrical charge.
• During World War II, he conducted important theoretical and experimental research on uranium enrichment by gas centrifuge.

Honors:

1. Nobel prize(1933)
2. Royal Meda(1939)
3. Copley Medal(1952)
4. Max Planck medal(1952)
5. American Physical Society (1948).

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