History of Science - Cast of Characters
History of Science – Our Cast of Characters
Our Universe starts ~13.8 billion years ago...after some delay, our planet is formed ~4.54 billion years ago
Thales c625-550 Greek philosopher
Anaximander 611-547 Greek philosopher
Pythagoras of Samos c560-480 Greek mathematician and astronomer
Hippocrates of Cos c460-370 Greek physician
Democritus c450-370 Greek natural philosopher
Plato (Aristocles) c428-c348 Greek mathematician and philosopher
Eudoxus 408-355 Greek mathematician and astronomer
c385 Plato’s Academy founded
Aristotle 384-322 Athenian philosopher and naturalist
Theophrastus 372-287 Greek philosopher and botanist
Epicurus 341-270 Greek philosopher
Euclid c300 Greek mathematician
335 Aristotle founded his Lyceum
Herophilus 335-280 Greek physician
Aristarchus of Samos c320-250 Greek astronomer
Archimedes of Syracuse 287-212 Sicilian Greek mathematician and natural philosopher
c285 Royal Library of Alexandria founded
Eratosthenes of Cyrene c270-190 Greek astronomer (240 – measures the circumference of the Earth)
Apollonius c260-190 Greek mathematician
Diophantus c250 Greek mathematician
Hipparchus of Rhodes c170-125 Greek astronomer and geographer
46 Julian Calendar introduced
BCE/BC___________________________________________CE/AD
Hero of Alexandria c10-70CE Greek natural philosopher
Ptolemy of Alexandria c90-170 Egyptian-Greek astronomer
Galen 129-199 Roman physician, anatomist and physiologist
Hypatia of Alexandria 370-415 Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer
Final destruction of the Library of Alexandria c642 (previously damaged c390)
Al-Khwarizmi c800-c850 Persian mathematicianAlhazen c965-1038 Egyptian natural philosopher
Abu Rayhan Biruni 973-1048 Persian polymath
1088 University of Bologna founded – before 1167 University of Oxford founded and University of Paris c1150
University of Cambridge founded in 1209
Roger Bacon c1214-1292 English philosopher and alchemistUniversities founded – 1413 St Andrews, 1451 Glasgow, Aberdeen 1495, Edinburgh 1583, Dublin 1592
Johannes Muller (Regiomontanus) 1436-1476 German mathematician, astronomer and astrologerNicolaus Copernicus 1473-1543 Polish astronomer
Paracelsus 1493-1541 Swiss alchemist and physician
Andreas Vesalius 1514-1564 Flemish anatomist
Tycho Brahe 1546-1601 Danish astronomer
William Gilbert 1544-1603 English physician and natural philosopher
Thomas Digges 1546-1595 English astronomer, inventor and writer
Giordano Bruno 1548-1600 Italian natural philosopher, priest, astronomer/astrologer
Willebrord Snel (or Snell) 1580-1626 Dutch natural philosopher
Francis Bacon 1561-1626 Statesman and natural philosopher
Galileo Galilei 1564-1642 Italian natural philosopher and astronomer
Johannes Kepler 1571-1630 German mathematician and natural philosopher
William Harvey 1578-1637 English physician
Jan Baptista van Helmont c1579-1644 Flemish alchemist and chemist
1582 Gregorian Calendar introduced
Rene Descartes 1596-1650 French philosopher and mathematician1597 Gresham College founded
John Wallis 1616-1703 English mathematicianBlaise Pascal 1623-1662 French mathematician and natural philosopher
Giovanni Cassini 1625-1712 Italian-French astronomer
Robert Boyle 1627-1691 Irish chemist
Christiaan Huygens 1629-1695 Dutch natural philosopher and astronomer
Antony van Lueuwenhoek 1632-1723 Dutch microscopist
Christopher Wren 1632-1723 English mathematician, natural philosopher and architect
Robert Hooke 1635-1703 English natural philosopher, inventor, surveyor and architect
Isaac Newton 1642-1727 English mathematician and natural philosopher
Ole Romer 1644-1710 Danish astronomer
John Flamsteed 1646-1719 English astronomer and first Astronomer Royal
Gottfried Leibniz 1646-1716 German mathematician
1654 - Archbishop James Ussher states that the Earth was created on 26th October 4004BCE at 9am (time zone?)
1657 Christiaan Huygens invents the pendulum clock
1660 Royal Society founded by Charles II
Academie des Sciences founded in 1666 and Paris Observatory in 1667
Edmond Halley 1656-1742 English natural philosopher, mathematician and second Astronomer RoyalGreenwich Royal Observatory commissioned 1675
Thomas Newcomen 1664-1729 English engineerGabriel Fahrenheit 1686-1736 German natural philosopher and experimenter
Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) published 5th July 1687
Pieter van Musschenbroek 1692-1761 Dutch natural philosopherJames Bradley 1693-1762 English astronomer – third Astronomer Royal
Daniel Bernoulli 1700-1782 Dutch born Swiss mathematician
Anders Celsius 1701-1744 Swedish natural philosopher
Carl Linnaeus 1707-1778 Swedish botanist
Leonhard Euler 1707-1783 Swiss mathematician and natural philosopher
Georges-Louis Leclerc (Comte de Buffon) 1707-1788 French naturalist and natural philosopher
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The Lunar Society 1765-1813
Guillaume Le Gentil 1725-1792 French astronomer (and traveller!)Matthew Boulton 1728-1809 English manufacturer and engineer
Erasmus Darwin 1731-1802 English physician and botanist
James Kier 1735-1820 Scotish engineer, physician, chemist, inventor, geologist, industrialist
Joseph Priestley 1733-1804 English chemist, clergyman, philosopher and educator
James Watt 1736-1819 Scottish engineer and inventor
Josiah Wedgewood 1730-1795 English industrialist
Richard Arkwright 1732-1792 English engineer and inventor
John Baskerville 1706-1775 English printer
Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826 American - Third President of the US, polymath
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 American inventor and natural philosopher
William Small 1734-1775 Scottish physician and natural philosopher
Joseph Wright 1734-1797 English landscape and portrait painter
John Wilkinson 1728-1808 English industrialist
William Murdoch 1754-1839 Scottish engineer and inventor
Antoine Lavoisier 1743-1794 French chemist
Martin Klaproth 1743-1817 German chemist
William Withering 1741-1799 English physician and botanist
Samuel Galton Jr. 1753-1832 English industrialist
John Smeeton 1724-1792 English civil and mechanical engineer, natural philosopher
James Wyatt 1746-1813 English architect
Samuel Wyatt 1737-1807 English architect
Pilatre de Rozier 1754-1785 French chemist and aeronaut
Thomas Beddoes 1760-1808 English physician and chemist
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John Mitchell 1724-1793 English natural philosopher and geologist
Joseph Black 1728-1799 Scottish physician, chemist and natural philosopher
James Cook 1728-1779 English explorer, navigator and cartographer
Henry Cavendish 1731-1810 English natural philosopher, chemist and eccentric
Charles Messier 1730-1817 French astronomer
Thomas Young 1733-1829 English natural philosopher, physician and polymath
Charles Coulomb 1736-1806 French natural philosopher
Luigi Galvani 1737-1798 Italian anatomist and biologist
William Herschel 1738-1822 German born British astronomer
Carl Scheele 1742-1786 Swedish chemist
Jacques Charles 1746-1823 French chemist, natural philosopher, inventor and balloonist
Alessandro Volta 1745-1827 Italian natural philosopher
Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827 French mathematician and astronomer
Edward Jenner 1749-1823 English physician
Caroline Herschel 1750-1848 German born British astronomer
Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) 1753-1814 Anglo-American natural philosopher
Heinrich Olbers 1758-1840 German astronomer, natural philosopher and physician
Thomas Beddoes 1760-1808 English physician and chemist
John Goodricke 1764-1786 English astronomer
William Woolaston 1766-1828 English chemist
21st November 1783 Man flies for the first time. In a balloon of course.
Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes fly in the Montgolfieres’ balloon.
John Dalton 1766-1844 English chemist and natural philosopherGeorges Cuvier 1769-1832 French zoologist and anatomist
Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859 German naturalist and explorer
Robert Brown 1773-1858 Scottish botanist
Andre Ampere 1775-1836 French natural philosopher
Humphry Davy 1778-1829 English chemist and natural philosopher
Joseph Gay-Lussac 1778-1850 French chemist and natural philosopher
Amedeo Avogadro 1776-1856 Italian chemist
Hans Oersted 1777-1851 Danish natural philosopher
Jons Jacob Berzelius 1779-1848 Swedish chemist
Mary Somerville 1780-1872 Scottish mathematician, natural philosopher and writer
George Stephenson 1781-1848 English Engineer
Friedrich Bessel 1784-1846 German astronomer and mathematician
William Buckland 1784-1856 English geologist and palaeontologist
Jean Dominique Arago 1786-1853 French natural philosopher
Joseph von Fraunhofer 1787-1826 German natural philosopher
Georg Ohm 1789-1854 German natural philosopher
Michael Faraday 1791-1867 English natural philosopher, chemist and experimenter
Charles Babbage 1791-1871 English mathematician and engineer
John Herschel 1792-1871 English natural philosopher and astronomer
Friedrich von Struve 1793-1864 German astronomer
1796 Edward Jenner uses the first vaccine
Charles Lyell 1797-1875 Scottish geologist
1800 Royal Institution founded
William Parsons 1800-1867 Irish astronomerChristian Doppler 1803-1853 Austrian natural philosopher and mathematician
Richard Owen 1804-1892 English biologist, anatomist and palaeontologist
Robert Fitzroy 1805-1865 English meteorologist, surveyor and hydrographer
Isambard Kingdom Brunel 1806-1859 English engineer
Charles Darwin 1809-1882 English naturalist
James Simpson 1811-1870 Scottish physician
Urbain Le Verrier 1811-1877 French mathematician
Robert Bunsen 1811-1899 German chemist
John Snow 1813-1858 English physician and epidemiologist
Horace Wells 1815-1848 American dentist
Ada Lovelace 1815-1852 English computer programmer
Christophorus Buys Ballot 1817-1890 Dutch meteorologist and chemist
William Morton 1819-1868 American dentist
George Stokes 1819-1903 Irish natural philosopher
James Joule 1818-1889 English natural philosopher
Leon Foucault 1819-1868 French natural philosopher
John Couch Adams 1819-1892 English mathematician and astronomer
Hermann von Helmholtz 1821-1894 German natural philosopher and physician
Gregor Mendel 1822-1884 Austrian botanist
Louis Pasteur 1822-1895 French microbiologist and chemist
Alfred Wallace 1823-1913 Welsh naturalist and biologist
Gustav Kirchhoff 1824-1887 German natural philosopher
William Thomson(Lord Kelvin) 1824-1907 Scottish natural philosopher and engineer
Thomas Huxley 1825-1895 English biologist
Joseph Lister 1827-1912 English surgeon
Joseph Swan 1828-1914 English natural philosopher and chemist
Friedrich Kekule 1828-1896 German chemist
James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879 Scottish mathematician and natural philosopher
1831 British Association for the Advancement of Science founded (now the British Science Association)
Alfred Nobel 1833-1896 Swedish chemist and industrialist1833 The word ‘scientist’ is first used (by William Whewell, an English polymath)
1834 BAAS recognise the word ‘physics’
Dmitri Mendeleev 1834-1907 Russian chemist1838 Friedrich Bessel measures the distance to the star 61 Cygni
Edward Morley 1838-1923 American physicistGeorges Leclanche 1839-1882 French electrical engineer
John Strutt*(Lord Rayleigh) 1842-1919 English physicist
James Dewar 1842-1923 Scottish physicist
Walther Flemming 1843-1905 German biologist
Wilhelm Rontgen* 1845-1923 German physicist and first Nobel Prize winner
Thomas Edison 1847-1931 American Inventor
Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922 Scottish physicist and inventor
Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925 English physicist
Henri Becquerel* 1852-1908 French physicist
William Ramsay 1852-1916 Scottish chemist
1854 British Met Office formed
Albert Michelson* 1852-1931 Polish-American physicistHenri Poincare 1854-1912 French mathematician and physicist
Percival Lowell 1855-1916 American astronomer
Heinrich Hertz 1857-1894 German physicist
J J Thomson* 1856-1940 English physicist
Nikola Tesla 1856-1943 Croatian-American physicist
Max Planck* 1858-1947 German physicist
Pierre Curie* 1859-1906 French chemist and physicist
William Bragg* 1862-1942 English physicist and chemist
Annie Jump Cannon 1863-1941 American astronomer
Marie Curie** (Sklodowska) 1867-1934 Polish-French chemist and physicist
Henrietta Leavitt 1868-1921 American astronomer
Felix Hoffmann 1868-1946 German chemist
Robert Millikan* 1868-1953 American physicist
Charles Wilson 1869-1959 Scottish physicist
Ernest Rutherford* 1871-1937 New Zealand nuclear physicist
Guglielmo Marconi* 1874-1937 Italian electrical engineer
1873 World Meteorological Organisation founded
Karl Schwarzschild 1873-1916 German astrophysicist James Jeans 1877-1946 English physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician
Frederick Soddy* 1877-1956 English radiochemist
Albert Einstein* 1879-1955 German-Swiss-American theoretical physicist
1878 Sir Joseph Swan patents the first electric lamp
1880 Thomas Edison patents the first electrical distribution system
Alexander Fleming* 1881-1955 Scottish biologistArthur Eddington 1882-1944 English astrophysicist
Max Born* 1882-1970 German physicist
1884 Greenwich meridian agreed
Niels Bohr* 1885-1962 Danish physicistHarlow Shapley 1885-1972 American astronomer
Henry Moseley 1887-1915 English physicist
Erwin Schrodinger* 1887-1961 German physicist
John Cockcroft 1887-1967 English physicist
John Logie Baird 1888-1946 Scottish electrical engineer
Thomas Midgley 1889-1944 American engineer, inventor and environmental disaster!
Ernest Marsden 1889-1970 English physicist
Edwin Hubble 1889-1953 American astronomer
Lawrence Bragg* 1890-1971English physicist
James Chadwick* 1891-1974 English physicist
Milton Humason 1891-1972 American astronomer
Louis de Broglie* 1892-1987 French physicist
Hams Geiger 1892-1945 German physicist
Edward Appleton 1892-1965 English physicist
Father Georges Lemaitre 1894-1966 Belgian cosmologist
Piotr Kapitsa 1894-1984 Russian physicist
Howard Florey* 1898-1968 Australian pathologist
Wolfgang Pauli* 1900-1958 Austrian physicist
Enrico Fermi* 1901-1954 Italian physicist
Ernest Lawrence* 1901-1958 American physicist
Werner Heisenberg* 1901-1976 German physicist
From 1901 - Nobel Prizes are awarded
Linus Pauling** 1901-1994 American chemistPaul Dirac* 1902-1984 English physicist
Walter Brattain* 1902-1987 American physicist
Ernest Walton* 1903-1995 Irish physicist
1903 Wright brothers make the first controlled, powered flight
Robert Oppenheimer 1904-1967 American physicist1906 Einstein’s Annus Mirabilus
Clyde Tombaugh 1906-1997 American astronomerJohn Bardeen** 1908-1991 American physicist
Edward Teller 1908-2003 Hungarian physicist
William Shockley* 1910-1989 English-American physicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar* 1910-1995 Indian-American astrophysicist
Dorothy Hodgkin* 1910-1994 English chemist and crystallographer
Alan Turing 1912-1954 English mathematician and computer scientist
Werhner von Braun 1912-1977 German-American engineer
Bernard Lovell 1913- English physicist and astronomer
James Van Allen 1914-2006 American physicist
Fred Hoyle 1915-2001 English (Yorkshire!) astrophysicist
1916 Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is published
Francis Crick* 1916-2004 English molecular biologist and physicistMaurice Wilkins* 1916-2004 New Zealand physicist
Richard Feynman* 1918-1988 American physicist
1922 first met forecast on BBC radio
John Logie Baird 1922 BBC starts world’s first public radio service and in 1926 demonstrates television
Rosalind Franklin 1920-1958 English physical chemist and crystallographerPatrick Caldwell-Moore 1923-2012 English astronomer, writer and broadcaster
James Watson* 1928- American molecular biologist
Peter Higgs 1929- English cosmologist and physicist
Murray Gell-Mann* 1929- 2019 American physicist
Roger Penrose 1931- English theoretical physicist
Arno Penzias* 1933- American physicist
Carl Sagan 1934-1996 American astronomer, astrobiologist and writer
1932 Cockroft and Walton ‘split the atom’
1933 dark matter is first proposed
2nd December 1942 First nuclear reactor – built in a squash court under the football stadium at Chicago University by Enrico Fermi
1942-1946 Manhattan Project
Richard Dawkins 1941- British (b. Kenya) biologist and science writerStephen Hawking 1942- 2018 English theoretical physicist
Jocelyn Bell Burnell 1943- Irish astronomer
February 1944 First computer, Colossus (Bletchley Park, England)
16th July 1945 The first atomic bomb detonated
1947 practical transistor
1949 integrated circuit
4th October 1957 Russia launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1
1960 laser is made
12th April 1961 Yuri Gagarin orbits our planet
1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover the 3 degree cosmic background radiation
August 1964 US launches first geostationary satellite
21st July 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on our Moon
1972 e-mail used
1977 Voyagers 1 and 2 are launched
1990-2003 Human Genome Project
1990 CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) proposes the World Wide Web
1998 Researchers find that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating-dark energy
March 2006 – results from the WMAP satellite are announced. The Universe is 13.8 billion years old +/- 200 million years. 4.9% we can detect, 26.8% is dark matter and 68.3% dark energy. 2008 Large Hadron Collider is completed (started late 2009)
*Nobel Laureates:
222 in medicine 216 in Physics 186 in Chemistry [117 Literature 86 Economics (since 1969)]
962 Laureates and 25 organisations (e.g. International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International) have been awarded the Nobel Prize since 1901. That includes just 11 women who have received the Prize for science or medicine (35 total). The youngest winner was Lawrence Bragg when he was 25, awarded with his father in 1915. Four married couples have Prizes and one mother and daughter. The Curie family have five Prizes. One father and daughter have awards and six fathers and sons! Just three scientists have been awarded the Prize twice but only Marie Curie twice in two sciences. Prizes need not be awarded every year and no more than three people can share a Prize. The categories are Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Economics and lastly Peace. The Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.
The Fields Medal is for mathematics but is awarded only every four years and for up to four mathematicians (under 40 years old).
From Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’:
There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true. Humans everywhere share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos provides the largest possible context. Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival.
There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the
scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
February 14th 1990-Voyager 1 turned around to take a picture of the Earth, 3.8 billion miles away. These are Carl Sagan’s thoughts on the ‘Pale Blue Dot’:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
