If You Want To Do Right, You Have To Be Responsible

I give up. I'm tired. This is bullshit. Wave the white flag, sign the god-damn Potsdam agreement. Bring in the foreign ministers, to hell with the hinterland. flush it all down the toilet...

One of the things about bleeding hearts is that they are ridiculously inefficient as a means of intervention. One bleeding heart social worker will spend hours a week with a manipulative, needy, insatiable client, at the expense of those several clients that really need/could use/are deserving of social work intervention.

If you want to change the system, then you have to be efficient. You have to be able to say "no" you have to be able to define who it is you are supposed to work with and who it is that doesn't meet your criteria. There's a huge difference between someone that's totally jacked up, desperate, needy and has a bunch of issues, and someone that you can actually help. Sometimes they aren't the same person.

People want all kinds of things. If you are a professional, then it's your job to find out what they NEED. Not what they WANT. We are not here to take dictation from folks that have proven themselves to be train wrecks.

and everything comes at a price. If we give, then we must "get". behaviors have to change. some different pattern must be engaged. there must be accountability.

This is what is meant by "responsible". If you want to do right, then it's more than being a bleeding heart, and handing out endless band aids. We're teaching folks to fish, and helping those that can't fish for themselves.

it is becoming increasingly difficult with profit motive putting so much pressure on the system, changing the game, using new terminology, new goals, new missions, new philosophies an definitions.

it is our role, as social workers, to wade through this morass, make sense of it, and bring order to it. But you can't be a bleeding heart.

Whether you work in the medical, mental health, health care, benefits, housing, drug treatment... no matter. As social workers, we must be every mindful as well as armed with our knives to cut through the veils of illusion, to get to that which is real. Name it, sustain it and turn it loose.

Einstein's Great Leap.

During a 4 month period from March to June 1905, Einstein wrote 4 papers and his doctoral dissertation. In a very casual and understated letter written to his friend Conrad Habicht, he announced his intentions.

Dear Habicht,
Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I brek it now wiht some inconsequential babble.. So what are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked dried canned piece of soul...? Why have you still not sent me your dissertations? Don't you know that I am one of the 1&1/2 fellows who would read it with interest and pleasure, you wretched man? I promise you four papers in return. The first deals with radiation and the energy properties of light and is very revolutionary, as you will see if you send me your work first. The second paper is a determination of the true sizes of atoms... The third proves that bodies on the order of magnitude of 1/1000 mm, suspended in liquids, must already perform an observable random motion that is produced by thermal motion ... The fourth paper is only a rough draft at this point, and is an electrodynamics of moving bodies which employs a modification of the theory of space and time.

The four papers he was talking about were,
1. Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light, which is an explanation of the photoelectric effect.
2. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat, which was his successful third attempt at getting a doctoral thesis.
3. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, concerning his Invention of the theory of special relativity, and finally,
4. Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content? which extends his invention of the theory of special relativity, and introduces the E = mc2 equasion.

To come up with these great ideas, Einstein had to dispense with 2 generations of belief that there was an all pervading "ether" AND assert that light is both a wave and a (quanta) photon. To do this, he had to answer the question, "What is light?" and "Why is the velocity of light always 186,000 miles per second?" To figure out the answer to this question required Einstein to make one of the most astounding realizations in science.

1. The nature of light: One of the great mysteries of Einstein's time was how was light transmitted? Was it "sprayed" out in a shower of particles or photons? Or was it something else? As Einstein started to ponder this he had to think of what it would mean if light was in the form of particles rushing forth from a source. One of the problems in this is that if light was in the form of particles or photons, then if it were emanating from a source at it's known velocity of 186,000 miles per second, then if the source were moving towards you at say, 10,000 miles per second, then the velocity of light would appear to you to be moving towards you at 196,000 miles per second. But tests had shown that regardless of where the light was coming from, or how fast the source was moving towards you or away from you, it was always a constant 186,000 miles per second. That didn't make sense to Einstein (or anybody else). Equally as disturbing was the fact that if the light were stationary, and the recipient were moving (say, on a train) either towards the source, or away from the source, the velocity of the light still remained at 186,000 miles per second. If light were in the form of particles or beams, then the only way it could maintain a constant velocity, regardless of how fast the source was moving, or the recipient, would be if the particles were encoded, or otherwise knew that how fast the source and recipient was moving. Test showed that this was not the case.

Another mystery was how did light move through space? The generally accepted notion was that space was composed of a type of super, seemingly imperceptible, low viscosity "ether" that served as a medium for the light particles or waves to pass through, much like water conducted waves, or atmospheric gases carried the force of wind. Despite many experiments, this "ether" could not be detected.

2. While walking and talking to his friend, Michaela Besso, Einstein was suddenly hit with one of the most profound realizations in the history of mankind. Suddenly the point of conjecture that had perplexed man for years, was illuminated. Einstein realized that if light was a constant, then time can not be absolutely be defined. TIME itself must be a variable.. This realization changed physics from that day forward. Newton had contemplated this problem in his day, and to solve it he resorted to the conclusion that the divine being was the one watcher that had been observing existence from the moment of it's creation. From the time that Einstein made his realization, It was only a mere 5 weeks before he produced the paper, "The electrodynamics of moving bodies".

Einstein explained the concept in the following way (paraphrased). Two events that appear to be simultaneous to one observer, may not be simultaneous to a second observer, therefore, there's no way to prove that the event was simultaneous.

Einstein used a thought experiment to illustrate this. suppose two lightning bolts strike opposite sides of a railroad embankment, we may define the strikes as simultaneous if we are standing exactly between the two strikes, HOWEVER, if there is someone on a train and they were rushing towards one one of the lightning strikes it will appear to them that the lightening bolt they are heading towards will strike before the other one. The point is that two different individuals will perceive the same event as happening at different times, or at the same time, depending upon their perspective. The point? Time is relative.

While explaining his paper at a conference, a question arose from the audience. Someone wanted to know if in Einstein's universe, since time was relative, would it be possible for twins to age differently? Einstein paused for a few seconds and then answered, "Yes". This question and answer, is now what is known as the "twin paradox".

If one twin went on a round-trip to a destination 21 light years away traveling at the speed of light, upon returning, 42 years would have passed on Earth, but only 12 hours, would have passed on the spaceship. . . If the trip were to the edge of the known universe (9 billion light years away), and back, although 18 billion years would have passed on Earth, only 1 day and 6 hours would have passed on the space ship. . . In Einstein's concept of general relativity, there is space/time seeing as they are both relative.
Space Ship Calculator

Our Delirious Stumble Into The Ditch Of Diagnosis

Disturbing Trends. Disturbing Trends.
This past Sunday an article appeared in the S.F. Gate "Insight" supplement concerning an ethical breach involving the U.S.'s preeminent child psychiatrists and his unreported millions from drug companies. Beneath this wholesale money grab is the crux of the true issue, which is the proliferation of psychiatric medications being routinely dispensed to children. Children. In my present employment, I face these individuals, all grown up, on a daily basis. The thought that they are being medicated as young as 2 years old, is shocking, heart-breaking and akin to the wave of barbaric lobotomy's that were practiced in the last century.

In this article by Dr. Lawrence Diller, he reveals that one in nine 11-year old boys are currently on Ritalin for ADHD. There is currently a "bi-polar" wave sweeping across the nation that currently has 2 year olds on 2-3 different psychiatric medications. The Doctor who is leading this charge is Dr. Joseph Biederman of Harvard University, and he was paid $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees, and his research, researchers, research MD's are all being paid by drug companies. The main problem with all of this, is that Dr. Biederman, who is a major trendsetter in terms of best practices and cutting edge treatments, didn't bother to tell anyone, including Harvard, his patients, employees, or organizations he consults with and lectures to, that he had this arrangement.

Dr. Diller states: "The fortune 500 drug companies, by their sheer economic clout have become the single most dominant influence in our health care system. the ambiguities of children's mental health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to such influence... direct advertisements to parents tilt families and doctors to biologically brain based solutions rather than non drug... approaches."

The level of carnage is even greater than Dr. Diller states, for every community mental health center, community care center, youth authority, juvenile detention facility, jail and prison is now one of the largest cash cows in the entire mental health system. Inmates who use and abuse drugs, have traumatic childhoods, depression, brain damage, and issues dealing with their incarceration are being tossed psychiatric medications faster and easier than any group of individuals in the U.S.

The MD's that dispense these medications do not have to worry about getting paid, or the state of the inmates insurance, or their co-pay, or ability to pay, or if they need a low costs generic, or if they can get to the pharmacy or even make the next appointment. The more they prescribe, the less they have to talk, while at the same time, the more invaluable they become to the system. and the drug companies can direct market to the psychiatrists in the system. In addition, the Psychiatrists in these settings are, by a large margin, the highest paid psychiatrists in the State, County and City government. in 2007, 38 of the top 100 highest paid California State Employees were psychiatrists.

The Budget for the Alameda County Jail is over $1.2 million, just for medications for the last year, and has increased by over 10% a year for the last 10 years. At any given time 18% of the jails population is being served by the Mental Health Unit (700 of 3,800).

The more we diagnose, the more people we will label, and the more diagnoses we will develop. In psychiatry, the trend is that anyone who feels sad, excited, confused, distraught, can't sleep, can't stay awake, doesn't behave as desired, does not progress as the "average" is a candidate for psychiatric medications.

There was a show that profiled Dr. Kiki Change of Stanford University, who had begun to dispense medications to children, not because they had a psychiatric condition, but rather, because they exhibited signs that lead this MD to believe that one day they may develop a mental health condition, and so, this MD was prescribing adult anti-psychotic, mood stabilizing and anti-depressants to children in an effort he described as "protecting them".

from the website:

As Director of the Pediatric Bipolar Disorders Program, Dr. Chang conducts research into various facets of bipolar disorder. He is currently conducting phenomenologic, biologic, pharmacologic, and genetic studies of bipolar disorder in adults and children. These studies include brain imaging (MRI, MRS, fMRI) and medication and therapy trials. He is particularly interested in detecting prodromal bipolar disorder in children who might then be treated to prevent the development of full bipolar disorder. To do this, he has been studying children of parents with bipolar disorder who are at high risk for developing the disorder themselves.

All of these trends are inter-related. Once we have lowered the bar on what children are liable to do, and are expected to do, and what is appropriate for them to do, then what we have in effect done, is leave them out in the cold and vulnerable to be diagnosed as something being "wrong" with them. In our jails and prisons, mental hospitals and outpatient centers where these children may end up, they are much more likely to be diagnosed.

The problem I face on a daily basis is maintaining a highly trained and discriminating workforce that has the ability to function outside of the bounds of the DSM-IV, and has the interest and capacity to engage in a discussion with an individual about their lives and choices they've made and what resources they have at their disposal. We need workers who can understand what's going on in people's lives. Recognize patterns, discuss options and solutions, instead of merely taking dictation and then an order for medications.

Having gained an appreciation for the issue of persons with mental illness on the streets and in outpatient centers and inpatient locked mental health facilities, I appreciate the value of major psychiatric medications in combination with therapy, counseling and social services, to allow individuals who would otherwise be in locked settings or in a dilapidated social condition, to live and work in society. But even with that, the number of individuals who require this type of intervention constitutes at best 1-2% of a given population.

How did we get to a point in our society, where we have such little faith in our ability to resolve our issues, solve our problems and live, learn and grow that we must throw a pill at anyone that isn't experiencing an inner subjective feeling other than contentment? As long as we continue to spiral down in ever increasing budgets for high costs psychiatric medications and the even more highly inefficient infrastructure that supports the psychiatric/mental health system, we will be robbed of our ability to make an effective change in the lives of individuals who need the guidance and support of society at large.

Afro-Christianity II

In the continuing investigation into the originals and defining characteristics of the "Black Church" and Afro-Christianity in in the United States. I stumbled upon some thoughts by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, a researcher and academic on religion with a special focus on Af-Am religion.

By 1810 the slave trade to the United States had come to an end. With fewer migrants who had experienced Africa personally, these transformations allowed the myriad cultures and language groups of enslaved Africans to blend together, making way for the preservation and transmission of religious practices that were increasingly "African-American."

Beginning in the 1770s, increasing numbers of slaves converted to evangelical religions such as the Methodist and Baptist faiths. Many clergy within these denominations actively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to the slaves. They also encouraged worship in ways that many Africans found to be similar, or at least adaptable, to African worship patterns, with enthusiastic singing, clapping, dancing, and even spirit-possession.

In the slave quarters, however, African Americans organized their own "invisible institution." Through signals, passwords, and messages not discernible to whites, they called believers to "hush harbors" where they freely mixed African rhythms, singing, and beliefs with evangelical Christianity. It was here that the spirituals, with their double meanings of religious salvation and freedom from slavery, developed and flourished; and here, too, that black preachers, those who believed that God had called them to speak his Word, polished their "chanted sermons," or rhythmic, intoned style of extemporaneous preaching. Part church, part psychological refuge, and part organizing point for occasional acts of outright rebellion, these meetings provided one of the few ways for enslaved African Americans to express and enact their hopes for a better future.

When the Civil War finally brought freedom to previously enslaved peoples, the task of organizing religious communities was only one element of the larger need to create new lives--to reunite families, to find jobs, and to figure out what it would mean to live in the United States as citizens rather than property. For both Southern and Northern blacks, Emancipation promised a meeting between two African-American religious traditions that had moved far apart, in terms of both theology and ritual, and sociological transformation in the previous seventy years.

A long history of antislavery and political activity among Northern Black Protestants, White Quakers, and other religious and morally convicted White individuals. In a massive missionary effort, Northern black leaders such as Daniel A. Payne and Theophilus Gould Steward established missions to their Southern counterparts, resulting in the dynamic growth of independent black churches in the Southern states between 1865 and 1900. Within a decade the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches claimed Southern membership in the hundreds of thousands, far outstripping that of any other organizations. They were quickly joined in 1870 by a new Southern-based denomination, the Colored (now "Christian") Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by indigenous Southern black leaders. Finally, in 1894 black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, an organization that is currently the largest black religious organization in the United States.

In many ways this missionary effort was enormously successful. It facilitated a remarkable increase in Southern black literacy (from 5% in 1870 to approximately 70% by 1900), and, as had been the case in the North, it promoted the rise of many African American leaders who worked well outside the sphere of the church in politics, education, and other professions. But it also created tensions between Northerners, who saw themselves in many respects as the superiors and mentors of their less fortunate Southern brethren, and Southerners, who had their own ideas about how to worship, work, and live. Not all ex-slaves welcomed the "help" of the Northerners, black or white, particularly because most Northern blacks (like whites) saw Southern black worship as hopelessly "heathen." Missionaries like Daniel Payne, an AME bishop, took it as their task to educate Southern blacks about what "true" Christianity looked like; they wanted to convince ex-slaves to give up any remnants of African practices (such as drumming, dancing, or moaning) and embrace a more sedate, intellectual and whitewashed style of religion. Educational differences played a role in this tension as well: Southern blacks, most of whom had been forbidden from learning to read, saw religion as a matter of oral tradition and immediate experience and emotion; Northerners, however, stressed that one could not truly be Christian unless one was able to read the Bible and understand the creeds and written literature that accompanied a more textually-oriented religious system.

Generally, poorer and more rural churches tended to cling more tenaciously to older customs, and to more experiential forms of worship, and since the vast majority of Southern blacks remained in rural areas, many of the traditions inherited from the "hush harbors" of slavery--including root work, chanted preaching, and particularly musical styles--remained a part of church life. In Southern cities, as the numbers of educated and middle-class African Americans grew, so too did the interest in a more codified and uniform religious experience like that of the North.

Meanwhile, African American religion in urban areas of the North was also being changed by the infusion of Southern Blacks who were migrating for opportunities. These churches provided the vital spiritual link that helped to establish a support structure and a taste of home for the many less educated Blacks that re-joined their relatives in the north. In truth, besides the established lower middle class Blacks, most Blacks in the north had little more opportunity than southern Blacks. However, they did understand trades, work, and a growing cash economy system forced upon Blacks by segregation and increasingly divisive governmental policies.

What do the following individuals have in common?

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.