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Some Scientists

Entry 2106, on 2021-02-03 at 12:33:46 (Rating 1, Science)

Random stuff often appears in my Facebook feed. When I say "random" I don't mean it is genuinely random, because Facebook is watching me and providing material I want to see, but at least it seems random because it is unexpected and covers a aide range of topics. Anyway, the particular item which I want to write about here is an ad for a t-shirt which thanked a series of scientists, presumably because their work has lead to so many benefits for society.

Being a science geek, I recognised most of the names, although there were a few who might be controversial and I had to Google to get more information about. There are several important inventions and discoveries which were created by various people, and who was genuinely first, or who made the biggest contribution might be debatable. When I list the people involved, you will probably see what I mean. But that warning aside, let's see the list, along with my comments - you didn't think you could avoid that, did you?

Newton (1642). Arguably the greatest scientist of all time, he made massive contributions to our understanding of light and gravitation, along with inventing a new branch of maths: calculus. He was a complex character, who seemed to encompass rigorous hypothesising and experimenting, along with a deep religious belief and a dedication to what we would now see as pseudoscience, like alchemy. While his initial findings have now been replaced with more advanced theories, like relativity to replace classical gravitation, and quantum theory to replace his theories of light, his findings are still very relevant as a "good, simplified approximation".

Einstein (1879). Einstein is the classic example of a brilliant genius scientist, and if you ask most people to name a scientist, his name would be the most likely to be used. Like Newton, he worked in several fields, including with the photoelectric effect, which is what he gained a Nobel prize for, and special and general relativity. Relativity seems like a very obscure theory with no practical applications, but it is one of the most important founding theories in physics, and does have real uses, such as in the calculations used for GPS.

Galilei (1564). Galileo Galilei has been called the father of observational astronomy, the father of modern physics, the father of the scientific method, and the father of modern science. That is an impressive list and his importance cannot be overstated. Maybe only Newton, whose work was in some ways an extension of Galileo's, might deserve those accolades more, although he did his work about 80 years later. Galileo was famously persecuted by the church for his heretical views, especially about heliocentrism, and although he seems to have been deliberately confrontational, that was primarily because of his search for the truth.

Maxwell (1831). James Clerk Maxwell discovered that magnetism and electricity were wave phenomena which travel at the speed of light, and proposed that they combine to form light. This lead to the development of quantum theory, and Einstein considered his work derived more from Maxwell than Newton.

Feynman (1918). If you follow this blog you might be aware of how much I admire Richard Feynman. Not only was he a brilliant scientist, but he was a real character as well. See my post "Fantastic Feynman" from 2015-10-21 for details. Feynman worked in the field of theoretical physics, especially quantum electrodynamics, superfluidity, and the yield of atomic weapons (he was involved with the Manhattan Project). He was a member of the commission which investigated the Challenger disaster, and correctly blamed the NASA managers rather than the engineers, leading to the famous observation by the commission chairman that "Feynman is becoming a real pain the ass."

Fibonacci (1170). Fibonacci was a mathematician from the medieval period. He is probably most well known for the Fibonacci sequence, although this had been discovered by Indian mathematicians centuries earlier. There was another, maybe more important, contribution he made from Indian maths though: he popularised the Hindu-Arabic number system we use today, where numbers are written using the digits 0 to 9 and their place indicates a power of 10. Before that Roman numerals were common, but those are notoriously difficult to use for calculation.

Fleming (1881). Fleming won a Nobel prize for discovering the antibacterial properties of penicillin. It wasn't until a few years after his initial work that it was used in medicine, but Fleming made the basic discovery. Of course, antibiotics are an extremely important part of modern medicine, so the discovery of the first effective one was really important.

Franklin (1706). Franklin was an important politician and public figure, as well as doing scientific research. He created a theory of electricity involving negative and positive charges, and showed that lightning is electrical in nature. To be honest, I don't think his scientific work was enough to put him on this list, but his fame in other areas increased his prominence.

Bardeen (1908). John Bardeen was an American physicist who won two Nobel Prizes for his work. He got one for his work where he helped create the first transistor, and the other for work on superconductivity. The transistor might be argued to be the most important invention ever, given its ubiquity in modern electronics, so everyone who uses a computer, phone, TV, etc should thank him for that. Note that William Shockley is more commonly given credit for the transistor, but Shockley, Bardeen, and another researcher should share the credit.

Meucci (1808). Meucci was an Italian engineer who is often attributed with inventing the telephone. Bell created and patented his about 15 years after Meucci, but he was better organised so usually gets most of the fame which Meucci really deserves.

Rosalind Franklin (1920). Franklin was involved in the work done in discovering the structure of DNA. Controversially, the two people usually given the credit for this are Watson and Crick, and they received the Nobel Prize for it. It is often said that Franklin's work was not valued as highly because she was a woman, but that interpretation is unnecessary because the others created the real theory and wrote the paper, and it could be argued that Franklin just did the menial work (I wouldn't necessarily agree) which is a similar situation for many men doing that sort of work. Clearly, the fact that Franklin's name was on the t-shirt, instead of Watson's or Crick's is making a "political" point!

Curie (1867). Marie and Pierre Curie did some important early work on radioactivity, and both of them died from the complications of receiving too much radiation, because it was not well understood at the time. They discovered new radioactive elements, and their work lead to a better theoretical understanding of radioactivity. Marie received two Nobel prizes for her work, and for many people she is the most well known (or maybe the only) female scientist in history.

Pauling (1901). Linus Pauling was a well-known chemist who clarified the structure and bonding in various molecules, especially proteins. his ideas on helical structures helped lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA. He was also active in anti-nuclear politics, and had some controversial views on diets and vitamin mega-dosing. He won both the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mendeleev (1834). Mendeleev created the periodic table. By that I mean he figured out how the elements fit together in groups because they have similar characteristics, and arranged them in a table which made this apparent. His table had some gaps which he predicted would contain new elements which would be discovered in the future. And he was right, showing his theory was accurate.

Heisenberg (1901). Werner Heisenberg was a German mathematical physicist and philosopher. He is most well known for his work on the maths of quantum theory, especially the uncertainty principle which is named after him. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1932.

Tesla (1856). Nicola Tesla is a bit of a folk hero in the history of invention and his battles with Edison are still well known. Tesla was brilliant, there is no doubt about that, but some of what he was trying to do was impractical or even physically impossible (at least in the form he was using). But he did make many important contributions to electrical motors and other electricity related inventions. His name is used today for the the SI unit of magnetic flux density, and one of the most important and prominent modern companies: Tesla Cars.

Darwin (1809). The Theory of Evolution is another of the founding theories of science. It explains the diversity of life on Earth and how different species are related. Darwin did some excellent and very thorough work before he presented his theory, because he knew it would need to be strongly supported because it contradicted the dominant religion, Christianity. In fact he spent so much time refining it that he was almost beaten to publishing his results by Alfred Russel Wallace, who had arrived at a similar conclusion independently.

Mendel (1822). Gregor Mendel demonstrated the basic principles of genetic inheritance through his famous experiments on peas. He tried to extend this to animals using bees, but that was probably a bad choice considering bees have an unusual reproductive strategy. His scientific work was curtailed because of his increased time spent on religious administration work after he received a promotion in the church.

Schrodinger (1887). Erwin Schrodinger was responsible for some of the early discoveries in quantum theory, especially involving the energy levels of atoms. Many people might know him through his famous thought experiment: Schrodinger's cat. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933.

Da Vinci (1452). Leonardo da Vinci is another name in the list which almost everyone has heard of (along with Newton and Einstein, and Galileo, Darwin, and Tesla to a lesser extent). Apart from his art, which is very well known - including the world's most famous painting - he also made contributions to medicine, anatomy, and science in general, as well as inventing several devices such as helicopters and submarines. It is doubtful whether some of these would have worked, but the designs were useful for when the basic science and materials caught up.

So that's the list - one which ended up being more substantial that I had thought - which is probably not exactly what I would have chosen but is still a good one. Most of the comments came from memory, so let me know in the comments if I made any mistakes!

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