Srinivasa Ramanjan (1887-1920): in 1913, the English mathematician G. H. Hardy received a strange letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The ten-page letter contained about 120 statements of theorems on infinite series, improper integrals, continued fractions, and number theory. Thus was Srinivasa Ramanujan , Born in South India, Ramanujan was a promising student, winning academic prizes in high school. But at age 16 his life took a decisive turn after he obtained a book titled A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics. In Ramanujan it inspired a burst of feverish mathematical activity, as he worked through the book's results and beyond. His total immersion in mathematics was disastrous for Ramanujan's academic career: ignoring all his other subjects, he repeatedly failed his college exams. With the encouragement of friends, he wrote to mathematicians in Cambridge seeking validation of his work. Twice he wrote with no response; on the third try, he found Hardy. In March 1914, Ramanujan boarded a steamer for England. Ramanujan's arrival at Cambridge was the beginning of a very successful five-year collaboration with Hardy. Cambridge granted him a Bachelor of Science degree "by research" in 1916, and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (the first Indian to be so honored) in 1918. In 1917 he was hospitalized, his doctors fearing for his life. By late 1918 his health had improved; he returned to India in 1919. But his health failed again, and he died the next year.
Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727): was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution. 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 colour 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. In a 2005 poll of the Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton was deemed much more influential than Albert Einstein.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): was a Tuscan (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. His contributions to observational astronomy include the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design. Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. Galileo's theoretical and experimental work on the motions of bodies, along with the largely independent work of Kepler and René Descartes, was a precursor of the classical mechanics developed by Sir Isaac Newton. Galileo also put forward the basic principle of relativity, that the laws of physics are the same in any system that is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, regardless of its particular speed or direction. Hence, there is no absolute motion or absolute rest.
Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543): was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. His epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution. Although Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus, his publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations, and became a landmark in the history of modern science that is known as the Copernican Revolution. Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classical scholar, translator, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist.
Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882): was an English naturalist, eminent as a collector and geologist, who proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life. His 1859 book On the Origin of Species established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954): was an Italian physicist most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity and is today regarded as one of the top scientists of the 20th century. He is acknowledged as a unique physicist who was highly accomplished in both theory and experiment.
Kurt Godel (1906-1978): was an Austrian American logician, mathematician and philosopher. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel's work has had immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead and David Hilbert, were pioneering the use of logic and set theory to understand the foundations of mathematics. Gödel is best known for his two incompleteness theorems, published in 1931 when he was 25 years of age, one year after finishing his doctorate at the University of Vienna. The more famous incompleteness theorem states that for any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the naturals that cannot be proved from the axioms. To prove this theorem, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. He made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): was an 18th-century German philosopher Russia. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment. Among his most important works are the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, which examine the relation of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. It can be said that Kant wanted to know whether metaphysics, or, in other words, the science that discovers which properties do and do not adhere in objects that cannot be given in experience, is possible. To search for clues, he examined how it was possible for us to know that an object must have a certain property prior to the experience of said object. In the end, he came to the conclusion that the mind can only think in a particular manner, so all objects that it can think about must conform to this manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can only think in terms of causality. Kant said we can know some things through reason, but these things are only of how the world appears to us, and that the world we know is objective, compromising with the rationalists. But he also said that what we know through pure reason can only be applied to experience, and that it is through experience that we get most of our knowledge, compromising with the empiricists.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His 600 compositions include works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.
Thomas Edison (1847–1931): was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937): was a Bengali polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and science fiction writer. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made extremely significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. He is considered the father of radio science, and is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first from the Indian subcontinent to get a US patent, in 1904. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. Subsequently, he made some pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention crescograph to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues.
Guglielmo Marchese Marconi (1874-1937): was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
Carl F. Gauss (1777–1855): was a German mathematician and scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Sometimes known as the princeps mathematicorum and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. Gauss was a child prodigy. There are many anecdotes pertaining to his astounding precocity while a mere toddler, and he made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. He completed Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, his magnum opus, in 1798 at the age of 21, though it would not be published until 1801. This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day.
Linus Pauling (1901–1994): was an American scientist, peace activist, author and educator. He is considered one of the most influential chemists of the 20th century and ranks among the most important scientists in history. Pauling was one of the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry, molecular biology and orthomolecular medicine. He is also a member of a small group of individuals who have been awarded more than one Nobel Prize, one of only two people to receive them in different fields (the other was Marie Curie). In 1932, Pauling published a landmark paper, detailing his theory of orbital hybridization and analyzed the tetravalency of carbon. That year, he also established the concept of electronegativity and developed a scale that would help predict the nature of chemical bonding. In 1954, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As a biochemist, Pauling conducted research with X-ray crystallography and modeling in crystal and protein structures. This type of approach was used by English scientists to discover the double helix structure of the DNA molecule.
Archimedes of Syracuse (287 B.C.–212 B.C.): was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and the explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of Pi. Archimedes had proved that the sphere has two thirds of the volume and surface area of the cylinder (including the bases of the latter), and regarded this as the greatest of his mathematical achievements. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance.
Leonhard Euler (1707–1783): was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany. Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.[3] He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, optics, and astronomy. Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. He is also one of the most prolific; his collected works fill 60–80 quarto volumes.
Marie Curie (1867–1934): was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. She was the wife of fellow-Nobel-laureate Pierre Curie and the mother of a third Nobel laureate, Irène Joliot-Curie. Madame Curie named the first new chemical element that she discovered (1898) "polonium" for her native country
Euclid of Alexandria (300 BC): also known as Euclid of Alexandria and the "Father of Geometry", was a Greek mathematician of the Hellenistic period who was active in Alexandria, almost certainly during the reign of Ptolemy I (323 BC–283 BC). His Elements is the most successful textbook in the history of mathematics. In it, the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry are deduced from a small set of axioms. Euclid also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, and rigor.
Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866): was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry. These would subsequently become major parts of the theories of Riemannian geometry, algebraic geometry, and complex manifold theory. This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology, and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics. Riemann made major contributions to real analysis. In a single short paper, he introduced the Riemann zeta function. He made a series of conjectures about properties of the zeta function. He applied the Dirichlet principle from variational calculus to great effect; Its justification took at least a generation. His work on monodromy and the hypergeometric function in the complex domain made a great impression, and established a basic way of working with functions by consideration only of their singularities.
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912): was a French mathematician and theoretical physicist, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous problems in mathematics. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. Poincaré introduced the modern principle of relativity and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity.
Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665): was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus, as well as his research into the theory of numbers. He also made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics.
