100 Greatest Science Discoveries - Part1

Today i started reading 100 Greatest Science Discoveries of All Time Book By Kendall Haven.

Nice book written by Kendall Haven.

I wanted to share few important quotations i found from this book from 1 - 50 top discoveries

Later i will update next 50 amazing discoveries.

i) Introduction

Dis covery! The very word sends tin gles surging up your spine. It quickens your pulse.Discoveries are the moments of “Ah, ha! I understand!” and of “Eureka! I found it!”

When we say that Columbus “discovered” the New World, we don’t mean that he created it, developed it, designed it, or invented it.

ii) Vera Rubin discovered cosmic dark matter in 1970.She wasn’t searching for dark matter. In fact, she didn’t known that such a thing existed until her discovery proved that it was there. She even had to invent a name (dark matter) for it after she had discovered its existence.

iii) Einstein’s theory of relativity produced no new products,practices, or concepts that affect our daily life. Neither did Kepler’s discovery of the ellipti-cal or bits of the planets around the sun. The same is true of Alfred Wegener’s discovery that the continents drift. Yet each represents a great and irreplaceably important advance in our understanding of our world and of the universe.

Below are now the 100 Greatest discoveries

1) Levers and Buoyancy

a) Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. 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. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.

b) 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.

c) Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. 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. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulas for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.

Fun Facts: When Archimedes discovered the concept of buoyancy, he leapt form the bath and shouted the word he made famous: “Eu reka!” which means “I found it!” That word be came the motto of the state of Califor nia after the first gold rush miners shouted that they had found gold.

2) The Sun is the Center of Universe

a) Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 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

b) Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in a house on St. Anne's Street (now Copernicus Street) in the city of Torun (Thorn). Torun, situated on the Vistula River, was a city in Royal Prussia, an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Poland. Nicolaus was named after his father, who about 1458 had moved from Krakow. The father was a wealthy copper trader who had become a respected citizen of that city. Nicolaus' mother, Barbara Watzenrode (died after 1495), had been born into a wealthy merchant family that was part of the patrician class in Torun.

c) At that time people still believed a model of the universe created by the Greek scientist,
Ptolemy, more than 1,500 years ear lier.In his Commentariolus Copernicus had summarized his system with the following list of seven assumptions:

There is no one center of all the celestial circles or spheres.

The center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only of gravity and of the lunar sphere.

All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe.

The ratio of the earth's distance from the sun to the height of the firmament is so much smaller than the ratio of the earth's radius to its distance from the sun that the distance from the earth to the sun is imperceptible in comparison with the height of the firmament.

Whatever motion appears in the firmament arises not from any motion of the firmament, but from the earth's motion. The earth together with its circumjacent elements performs a complete rotation on its fixed poles in a daily motion, while the firmament and highest heaven abide unchanged.

What appear to us as motions of the sun arise not from its motion but from the motion of the earth and our sphere, with which we revolve about the sun like any other planet. The earth has, then, more than one motion.

The apparent retrograde and direct motion of the planets arises not from their motion but from the earth's.

The motion of the earth alone, therefore, suffices to explain so many apparent inequalities in the heavens

Fun Facts: Approximately one million Earths can fit inside the sun. But that is slowly changing. Some 4.5 pounds of sunlight hit the earth each second.

3) Human Anatomy

Andreas Vesailus (Brussels, December 31, 1514 - Zakynthos, October 15, 1564). Vesailus is the Latinized form of Andreas van Wesel. He is sometimes also referred to as Andreas Vesal. He was an anatomist, physician, and is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. He was the author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica, (1543), (On the Workings of the Human Body). This work, considering the era, showed fairly accurate drawings of various internal organs and tissues. The illustrations were done by a fellow Belgian, Jan van Calcar, who had studied under none other than Titian himself. It was a large work of about 700 pages and he discusses the skeletal system, muscles, circulatory system, nerves and internal organs. The only really serious error in this work was his postulation of "pores" through which he supposed blood to flow from one side of the heart to the other. (Although pores are found in many vertebrates.

When still a teenager, his father sent him to the Catholic University of Leuven to study medicine but he found the atmosphere not conducive to furthering his studies in biology. He therefore moved to the University of Paris where he studied anatomy and medicine for three years. After the publication of his book and the subsequent renown that this brought him, as well as his other writings, he was offered a professorship at the University of Padua where his lectures drew hundreds of interested listeners. Here he performed public dissections of cadavers (in the winter months when decay of corpses was slower).

Vesalius did not hesitate to point out errors in the work of his forerunners Aristotle and Galen and this angered many thinkers of the time who denounced his ideas. Some even accused him of being "degenerate", possessed by demons, and a grave robber. These accusations unfortunately ended Vesalius' research career and it wasn't until about one hundred years later that others began to disagree with Galen

Fun Facts: The average human brain weighs three pounds and contains 100 billion brain cells that connect with each other through 500 trillion dendrites! No wonder it was hard for Vesalius to see individual neurons.

4) Law of Falling Objects -- Objects fall at the same speed regardless of their weight.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 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. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics" the "father of science", and “the Father of Modern Science.” The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, 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.

Fun Facts: Speaking of falling objects, the highest speed ever reached by a woman in a speed skydiving com petition is 432.12 kph (268.5 mph). Italian dare devil Lucia Bottari achieved this re cord-breaking veloc ity above Bottens, Switzerland, on September 16, 2002, during the annual Speed Skydiving World Cup.

5) Planetary Motion - The planets orbit the sun not in perfect circles, but in ellipses.

Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century astronomical revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astrononomy. They also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the court mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II, a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. He also did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and helped to legitimize the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.

Fun Facts: Pluto was called the ninth planet for 75 years, since its dis -covery in 1930. Pluto’s or bit is the least circular (most elliptical) of all planets. At its far thest, it is 7.4 bil lion km from the sun. At its nearest it is only 4.34 bil lion km away. When Pluto is at its closest, its or bit actually
slips in side that of Neptune. For 20 years out of every 248, Pluto is actually closer to the sun than Nep tune is. That occurred from 1979 to 1999. For those 20 years Pluto was actually the eighth planet in our so lar system and Neptune was the ninth!

6) Jupiter’s Moons - Other planets (besides Earth) have moons.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 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. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics" the "father of science", and “the Father of Modern Science.” The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, 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.

Fun Facts: Galileo would have been astonished to learn that Jupiter resembles a star in composition. In fact, if it had been about 80 times more massive, it would have been clas sified as a star rather than a planet.

7) Human Circulatory System - The first complete under tanding of how arteries, veins, heart, and
lungs function to form a single, complete circulatory system.

William Harvey (April 1, 1578 – June 3, 1657) was an English physician who is credited with being the first in the Western world to describe correctly and in exact detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped around the body by the heart.

Harvey was born in his house (the nearest hospital to Folkestone (in Ashford) is named after him) to a prosperous yeoman, Thomas Harvey, of Folkestone, Kent (1578 – 3 June 1657), Turkey Company merchant, and wife Joan Halke, of Hastingleigh Kent (1555-1556 – 8 November 1605), and educated at The King's School, Canterbury. At 16 years of age he was awarded a medical scholarship (founded by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, the first such scholarship in England, for which preference was given to Kentish Men) to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, through which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1597. John Caius, who refounded the college before Harvey’s time, used to advise his students to seek some part of their medical education abroad: like him, Harvey went on to the University of Padua (also attended by Copernicus), where he studied under Hieronymus Fabricius, and the Aristotelian philosopher Cesare Cremonini graduating in 1602. He returned to England and married Elizabeth.C.Browne, daughter of Lancelot Browne, a prominent London physician. The couple had no children. He practiced as a physician in London, where he had an appointment at St Bartholomew's Hospital (1609–43) and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. After his time at St Bartholomew's he returned to Oxford and became Warden (head of house) of Merton College. In 1651 William Harvey donated money to the college for building and furnishing a library, which was dedicated in 1654. In 1656 he gave an endowment to pay a librarian and to present a yearly oration, which continues to happen to the present day in his honour. Harvey also left money in his will for the founding of a boys' school in his native town of Folkestone; opened in 1674, the Harvey Grammar School has had a continuous history to the present day.

Fun Facts: Americans donate over 16 million pints of blood each year.That’s enough blood to fill a swimming pool 20 feet wide, 8 feet deep,and one-third of a mile long!

8) Air Pressure - Air (the atmosphere) has weight and presses down on us.

Evangelista Torricelli (October 15, 1608 – October 25, 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer.

Torricelli was born in Faenza, then part of the Papal States. He was left fatherless at an early age and educated under the care of his uncle, a Camaldolese monk, who first entered young Torricelli in a Jesuit College in 1624 to study mathematics and philosophy until 1626, when he sent Torricelli to Rome in 1627 to study science under the Benedictine Benedetto Castelli, professor of mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza in Pisa.

Fun Facts: Home barometers rarely drop more than 0.5 inch of mercury as the weather changes from fair to stormy. The greatest pressure drop ever re orded was 2.963 inches of mer cury, measured inside a South Da - kota tornado in June 2003.

9) Boyle’s Law - The volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the force squeezing it

Robert Boyle (January 25, 1627 – December 30, 1691) was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and early gentleman scientist, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law. Although his research and personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.

Robert Boyle was born in Lismore Castle, in County Waterford, Ireland, as the seventh son and fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Richard Boyle had arrived as an entrepreuner in Ireland in 1588 and by the time Robert was born in 1627 he had amassed enormous landholdings in Ireland. While still a child, Robert learned to speak Latin, Greek, and French. He was only eight and three quarters years old when, following the death of his mother, he was sent to Eton College in England, of which his father's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, was then provost. After spending over three years at the college, he went to travel abroad with a French tutor. Nearly two years were passed in Geneva. Visiting Italy in 1641, he remained during the winter of that year in Florence, studying the "paradoxes of the great star-gazer" Galileo Galilei. (Galileo was elderly but still alive in Florence in 1641.)

Fun Facts: Oceanographer SylviaEarle set the women’s depth record for solo diving (1,000 meters or 3,281 feet). According to the concept Boyle discovered, pressure at that depth is over 100 times what it is at the surface!

10) The Existence of Cells - The cell is the basic building block of all living organisms.

Robert Hooke, FRS (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English natural philosopher and polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work.

Hooke is known principally for his law of elasticity (Hooke's Law). He is also remembered for his work as "the father of microscopy" — it was Hooke who coined the term "cell" to describe the basic unit of life — he also assisted Robert Boyle and built the vacuum pumps used in Boyle's gas law experiments. Hooke was an important architect of his time, and a chief surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire, built some of the earliest Gregorian telescopes, observed the rotations of Mars and Jupiter, and was an early proponent of the theory of evolution through his observations of microscopic fossils. He investigated the phenomenon of refraction, deducing the wave theory of light, and was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated and that air is made of small particles separated by relatively large distances. He also deduced from experiments that gravity follows an inverse square law, and that such a relation governs the motions of the planets, an idea which was subsequently developed by Newton. Much of Hooke's work was conducted in his capacity as curator of experiments of the Royal Society, a post he held from 1662.

Fun Facts: Cell biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.

11) Universal Gravitation - Gravity is the attractive force exerted by all objects on all other
objects.

Sir Isaac Newton, (January 4, 1643 – March 31, 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 the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed the so-called "Newton's method" for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.

Newton was also highly religious (though unorthodox), producing more work on Biblical hermeneutics than the natural science he is remembered for today.

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.

Fun Facts: The Flower of Kent is a large green variety of apple. According to the story, this is the apple Isaac Newton saw falling to ground from its tree, in spiring his discovery of universal gravitation.

12) Fossils - Fossils are the remains of past living organisms.

Nicolas Steno (January 10, 1638 - November 25, 1686) was a pioneer in both anatomy and geology. Already in 1659 he decided not to accept anything simply written in a book, instead resolving to do research himself. He is considered the father of geology and stratigraphy.

Steno published his discovery and supporting evidence in 1669. In addition to proving that fossils were really the ancient bones of living creatures, Steno investigated how these bones came to lie in the middle of rock layers. Through this work he dis covered the process of sedimentation and of creating sedimentary rock layers. For this discovery Steno is also credited with founding modern geology.

Fun Facts: When we think of fossils, we think of giant dinosaurs. But, the world’s largest rodent fossil re mains were discovered in northern South America in 2003. The fossil remains of this giant rodent weighed 1,500 pounds (700 kilograms) and dated back some eight million years.

13) Distance to the Sun - The first accurate calculation of the distance from the earth to the
sun, of the size of the solar system, and even of the size of the universe.

Giovanni Domenico Cassini (June 8, 1625–September 14, 1712) was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, engineer, and astrologer. Cassini, also known as Giandomenico Cassini, was born in Perinaldo, near Sanremo, at that time in the Republic of Genoa.

Cassini was an astronomer at the Panzano Observatory, from 1648 to 1669. He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna and became, in 1671, director of the Paris Observatory. He thoroughly adopted his new country, to the extent that he became interchangeably known as Jean-Dominique Cassini —although that is also the name of his great-grand-son.

Along with Robert Hooke, Cassini is given credit for the discovery of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter (ca. 1665). Cassini was the first to observe four of Saturn's moons, which he called Sidera Lodoicea; he also discovered the Cassini Division (1675). Around 1690, Cassini was the first to observe differential rotation within Jupiter's atmosphere.

In 1672 he sent his colleague Jean Richer to Cayenne, French Guiana, while he himself stayed in Paris. The two made simultaneous observations of Mars and thus found its parallax to determine its distance, thus measuring for the first time the true dimensions of the solar system.

Cassini was the first to make successful measurements of longitude by the method suggested by Galileo, using eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter as a clock.

Our understanding of the universe depends on two foundations—our ability to measure the distances to far away stars, and our ability to measure the chemical composition of stars. The discovery that allowed scien tists to determine the composition of stars is described in the 1859 entry on spectrographs. The distance to the sun has always been regarded as the most important and fundamental of all galactic measurements. Cassini’s 1672 measurement, however, was the first to accurately estimate that distance.

Cassini’s discovery also provided the first shocking hint of the truly immense size of the universe and of how small and in significant Earth is. Before Cassini, most scientists believed that stars were only a few million miles away. After Cassini, scientists re alized that even the closest stars were billions (if not trillions) of miles away!

Fun Facts: The sun’s diameter is 1.4 million km (875,000 miles). It is approximately 109 times wider than the earth.

14) Bacteria - Microscopic organisms exist that cannot be seen by the human eye.

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (October 24, 1632 – August 30, 1723) was a Dutch tradesman and scientist from Delft, the Netherlands. He is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist. He was born the son of a basketmaker. At age 16, he secured an apprenticeship with a Scottish cloth merchant in Amsterdam. He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology. Using his handcrafted microscopes he was the first to observe and describe single celled organisms, which he originally referred to as animalcules, and which we now refer to as microorganisms. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in capillaries (small blood vessels).

During his lifetime Van Leeuwenhoek ground over 500 optical lenses. He also created over 400 different types of microscopes, only nine of which still exist today. His microscopes were made of silver or copper metal frames holding hand-ground lenses. Those that have survived the years are able to magnify up to 275 times. It is suspected, though, that Van Leeuwenhoek possessed some microscopes that could magnify up to 500 times. Although he has been widely regarded as a dilettante or amateur, his scientific research was of remarkably high quality.

Fun Facts: In 1999 scientists discovered the largest bacterium ever. The organism can grow to as large as .75 mm across—about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The new found bacterium is 100 times larger than the pre vi ous re cord holder. For comparison, if the newly discovered bacterium was the size of a blue whale, the average bacterium would be the size of a new born mouse.

15) Laws of Motion - The fundamental relationships of matter, force, and motion upon which are built all physical science and engineering.

Sir Isaac Newton, (January 4, 1643 – March 31, 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 the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed the so-called "Newton's method" for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.

Newton was also highly religious (though unorthodox), producing more work on Biblical hermeneutics than the natural science he is remembered for today.

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.


Fun Facts: For every motion, there is a force. Gary Hardwick of Carlsbad, California, created enough force to set a skate board speed record (standing position) of 100.66 km/h (62.55 mph) at Fountain Hills,
Arizona, on September 26, 1998.

16) Order in Nature - All living plants and animals can be grouped and organized into a simple hierarchy.

Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of Binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology (see History of ecology).

Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. His father was the first in his ancestry to adopt a permanent last name; prior to that, ancestors had used the patronymic naming system of Scandinavian countries. His father adopted the Latin-form name Linnaeus after a giant linden tree on the family homestead. Linnaeus got most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures of botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735–1738 where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 60s he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, and published several volumes. At the time of his death, he was widely renowned throughout Europe as one of the most acclaimed scientists of the time.

Fun Facts: The world’s most massive living tree is General Sherman,the giant sequoia (Se quoia den dron giganteum) growing in the Sequoia National Park in California. It stands 83.82m (274.9 ft.) tall and has a diam e ter of 11.1 m (36 ft., 5 in.). This one tree is estimated to contain enough wood to make five bil lion matches—one for almost every person on Earth.

17) Galaxies - Our sun is not the center of the universe but is rather part of a giant,disc-shaped cluster of stars that floats through space.

Our sun is not the center of the universe but is rather part of a giant,disc-shaped cluster of stars that floats through space.

Thomas Wright (1711 - 1786) was an English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect and garden designer.

Wright is best known for his publication An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe (1750), in which he explains the appearance of the Milky Way as "an optical effect due to our immersion in what locally approximates to a flat layer of stars." This idea was taken up and elaborated by Immanuel Kant in his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven.

Wright's Observatory/Folly at WestertonWright was born at Byers Green in County Durham. In 1730 he set up a school in Sunderland, where he taught mathematics and navigation. He later moved to London to work on a number of projects for his wealthy patrons. (This was before retiring to County Durham and building a small observatory at Westerton.)

Sir Frederick William Herschel, FRS KH (15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer who became famous for discovering Uranus. He also discovered infrared radiation and made many other discoveries in astronomy.

Fun Facts: The central galaxy of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster, 1,070 million light years distant in Virgo, has a diameter of 5,600,000 light years, 80 times the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy.

18) The Nature of Electricity - All forms of electricity are the same.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity and as a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.

Fun Facts: Pop eye uses spinach to power his muscles. Now scientists are looking to spinach as a power source for supplying electricity. Chemical substances extracted from spinach are among the ingredients needed to make a solar cell that converts light into electricity.

19) Oceans Control Global Weather - By pumping massive amounts of heat through the oceans, vast
ocean currents control weather and climate on land.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity and as a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.

Fun Facts: The Gulf Stream is bigger than the combined flow of the Mississippi, the Nile, the Congo, the Am azon, the Volga, the Yangtze, and virtually every other major river in the world.

20) Oxygen - The first gas separated and identified as a unique element.

Joseph Priestley (13 March 1733 (Old Style) – 6 February 1804) was an 18th-century British theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in its gaseous state, although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also have a claim to the discovery.

During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of soda water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). However, Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the Chemical Revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.

Fun Facts: Without oxygen, biological death begins to occur within three minutes. Free-diving World Cham pion Pipin Ferreras holds the world record for holding his breath: 8 minutes, 58 seconds.

21) Photosynthesis - Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide in the air into new plant matter.

Jan IngenhouszJan Ingenhousz or Ingen-Housz (December 8, 1730, Breda - September 7, 1799) was Dutch physiologist, biologist and chemist. He is best remembered for showing that light is essential to plant respiration, a vital step in the discovery of photosynthesis. He was a physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.

In 1779, Ingenhousz discovered that, in the presence of light, plants give off bubbles from their green parts while, in the shade, the bubbles eventually stop.[1] He identified the gas as oxygen (for this discovery he is known affectionately as "the Oxygen man"[citation needed]). He also discovered that, in the dark, plants give off carbon dioxide. He realized as well that the amount of oxygen given off in the light is more than the amount of carbon dioxide given off in the dark. This demonstrated that some of the mass of plants comes from the air, and not only the soil.

In 1785, he described the irregular movement of coal dust on the surface of alcohol and therefore has a claim as discoverer of what came to be known as Brownian motion.

Fun Facts: Some species of bamboo have been found to grow at up to 91 cm (3 ft.) per day. You can almost watch them grow!

22) Conservation of Matter - The total amount of matter (mass) always remains the same no matter what phys ical or chemical changes take place.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 – May 8, 1794;), the father of modern chemistry, was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. He stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass, recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), abolished the phlogiston theory, introduced the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He was also an investor and administrator of the "Ferme Générale" a private tax collection company; chairman of the board of the Discount Bank (later the Banque de France); and a powerful member of a number of other aristocratic administrative councils. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. However, because of his prominence in the pre-revolutionary government in France, he was beheaded at the height of the French Revolution.

Fun Facts: The Furnace Constellation (Fornax) was created to honor the famous French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was guillotined during the French Revolution in 1794.

23) The Nature of Heat - Heat comes from friction, not from some internal chemical property of each sub stance.

Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (in German: Reichsgraf von Rumford), FRS (26 March 1753 – 21 August 1814) was an Anglo-American physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics.

Fun Facts: Friction with air molecules is what burns up meteors as they plunge into the atmosphere. That same friction forced NASA to line the bottom of every space shuttle with hundreds of heat-resistant ce ramic tiles. Failure of one of those tiles led to the explosion of the Columbia in 2004.

24) Erosion of the Earth. The earth’s surface is shaped by giant forces that steadily, slowly
act to build it up and wear it down.

James Hutton MD (3 June 1726 OS Edinburgh – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, naturalist, chemist and experimental farmer. He is considered the father of modern geology. His theories of geology and geologic time, also called deep time, came to be included in theories which were called plutonism and uniformitarianism.

Fun Facts: Millions of years ago flowing water eroded the surface of Mars, leaving behind the gullies, banks, and dry riverbeds scientists have found there. Now Mar’s atmosphere is too thin to support liquid wa ter. A cup of water on Mars would instantly vaporize and vanish, blown away by the solar winds.

25) Vaccinations - Humans can be protected from disease by injecting them with mild forms of the very disease they are trying to avoid.

The Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (26 May 1689 – 21 August 1762) was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”.

Edward Jenner, FRS, (May 17, 1749 – January 26, 1823) was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. He is often credited as the first doctor to introduce and study the smallpox vaccine.

Fun Facts: The World Health Organization declared small pox eradicated in 1979, and the President George H. Bush said that since then authorities have not detected a single natural case of the disease in the world.

26) Infrared and Ultraviolet - Energy is radiated by the sun and other stars outside of the narrow
visible spectrum of colors.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS (March 7, 1792 – May 11, 1871) was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor. He was the son of astronomer Sir William Herschel and the father of 12 children.

Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He made many contributions to the science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays.

Johann Wilhelm Ritter (December 16, 1776 – January 23, 1810) was a German chemist and physicist. He was born in Samitz bei Haynau, Silesia.

Ritter made very important discoveries regarding electrochemistry and ultraviolet light. He is credited with discovering the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum and the dry pile electric battery.

He died young in Munich, possibly due to using his own body in electrical experiments.

Fun Facts: A TV remote control uses infrared light to adjust the volume or change the channel.

27) Anesthesia - A medication used during surgery that causes loss of awareness of pain in patients.

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth elements, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He invented the Davy lamp, which allowed miners to enter gassy workings. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." This paper was central to any chemical affinity theory in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Fun Facts: The common phrase “biting the bullet” dates from the days before anesthetics were available on the battle field. Biting on the soft lead of a bullet ab sorbed the pressure of the bite with out damag ing a soldier’s teeth.

28) Atoms - An atom is the smallest particle that can exist of any chemical element.

John Dalton FRS (September 6, 1766 – July 27, 1844) was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness (sometimes referred to as Daltonism, in his honour).

Fun Facts: The smallest atom is the hydrogen atom, with just one electron circling a single proton. The largest naturally occurring atom is the uranium atom, with 92 electrons circling a nucleus stuffed with 92 protons and 92 neutrons. Larger atoms have been artificially created in the lab but do not occur naturally on earth.

29) Electrochemical Bonding - Molecular bonds between chemical elements are electrical in nature.

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth elements, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He invented the Davy lamp, which allowed miners to enter gassy workings. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." This paper was central to any chemical affinity theory in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Fun Facts: A popular use of electrochemical bonding is in cookware.The process unites the anodized surface with the aluminum base, creating a nonporous surface that is 400 percent harder than aluminum.

30) The Existence of Molecules - A molecule is a group of attached atoms. An atom uniquely identifies one of the 100+ chemical elements that make up our planet. Bonding a number of different atoms together makes a molecule, which uniquely identifies one of the many thousands of substances that can exist.

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto (August 9, 1776 – July 9, 1856) was an Italian savant. He is most noted for his contributions to the theory of molarity and molecular weight and also formulated Avogadro's Law. In tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in one mole of a substance, 6.022142 x 1023, is known as Avogadro's number.

Amedeo Avogadro was born in Turin to a noble family of Piedmont, Italy.

Fun Facts: The smallest molecule is the hydrogen molecule—just two protons and two electrons. DNA is the largest known naturally occurring molecule, with over four billion atoms—each containing a number of
protons, neutrons, and electrons.

31) Electromagnetism - An electric current creates a magnetic field and vice versa.

Hans Christian Ørsted (August 14, 1777 – March 9, 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late nineteenth century. He is best known for discovering the relationship between electricity and magnetism known as electromagnetism. He was also the first modern thinker to explicitly describe and name the thought experiment.

Fun Facts: The aurora borealis, or “northern lights,” are an electromagnetic phenomenon, caused when electrically charged solar particles collide with Earth’s mag netic field. In the Southern hemisphere these
waving curtains of light form around the south pole and are called the aurora australis, or “southern lights.”

32) First Dinosaur Fossil - The first proof that giant dinosaurs once walked the earth.

Gideon Algernon Mantell (February 3, 1790 – November 10, 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and paleontologist. He is credited with discovering the first fossils identified as originating from a dinosaur, which were teeth belonging to an Iguanodon.

The Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD (Axminster, 12 March 1784 – Islip, 14 August 1856) was an English geologist, palaeontologist and Dean of Westminster, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur. He was a proponent of Old Earth creationism, who later became convinced of Louis Agassiz' glaciation theory.

Fun Facts: The word dinosaur comes from the Greek words meaning “terrible lizard.” Lots of dinosaurs were named after Greek words that suited their personality or appearance. Velociraptor means “speedy rob -
ber” and triceratops means “three-horned head.”

33) Ice Ages - Earth’s past includes periods of radically different climate—ice ages—than the mild pres ent.

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (May 28, 1807—December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-American zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist, the husband of educator Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz (married in 1850), and one of the first world-class American scientists.

Fun Facts: During the last ice age the North American glacier spread south to where St. Louis now sits and was over a mile thick over Minne -sota and the Dakotas. So much ice was locked into these vast glaciers that sea level was almost 500 feet lower than it is to day.

34) Calories (Units of Energy) - All forms of energy and mechanical work are equivalent and can be converted from one form to another.

James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after him. He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop the absolute scale of temperature, made observations on magnetostriction, and found the relationship between the current through a resistance and the heat dissipated, now called Joule's law.

Fun Facts: The calories on a food package are actually kilocalories, or units of 1,000 calories. A kilocalorie is 1,000 times larger than the calorie used in chemistry and physics. A calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. If you burn up 3,500 calo ries during exercise, you will have burned up and lost one pound. How ever, even vigorous exercise rarely burns more than 1,000 calories per hour.

35) Conservation of Energy - Energy can neither be created nor lost. It may be converted from one form to an other, but the total energy always remains constant within a closed system.

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science. In physiology and physiological psychology, he is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and empiricism. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and on a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. As a philosopher, he is known for his philosophy of science, ideas on the relation between the laws of perception and the laws of nature, the science of aesthetics, and ideas on the civilizing power of science. A large German association of research institutions, the Helmholtz Association, is named after him.

Fun Facts: Conservation of energy plus the Big Bang tell us that all of the energy that ever was or ever will be any where in the universe was present at the moment of the Big Bang. All of the fire and heat burn ing in ever star, all of the fire and en ergy in every volcano, all of the energy in the motion of every planet, comet, and star—all of it was released at the moment of the Big Bang. Now that must have been one BIG explosion!

36) Doppler Effect - Sound- and light-wave frequencies shift higher or lower depending on whether the source is moving to ward or away from the observer.

Christian Andreas Doppler (November 29, 1803 – March 17, 1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist, most famous for the hypothesis of what is now known as the Doppler effect which is the apparent change in frequency and wavelength of a wave that is perceived by an observer moving relative to the source of the waves.

Fun Facts: Doppler shifts have been used to prove that the universe is expanding. A convenient analogy for the expansion of the universe is a loaf of unbaked raisin bread. The raisins are at rest relative to one an other in the dough be fore it is placed in the oven. As the bread rises, it also expands, making the space between the raisins increase. If the raisins could see, they would observe that all the other rai sins were moving away from them although they them selves seemed to be stationary within the loaf. Only the dough—their “uni verse”—is ex panding.

37) Germ Theory - Micro organisms too small to be seen or felt exist every where in the air and cause dis ease and food spoilage.

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of disease. His experiments supported the germ theory of disease, also reducing mortality from puerperal fever (childbed), and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to stop milk and wine from causing sickness - this process came to be called pasteurization. He is regarded as one of the three main founders of microbiology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch. He is also credited with dispelling the theory of spontaneous generation with his experiment employing chicken broth and a goose neck flask. He also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the asymmetry of crystals. He is buried beneath the Institut Pasteur, an incredibly rare honor in France, where being buried in a cemetery is mandatory save for the fewer than 300 "Great Men" who are entombed in the Panthéon.

Fun Facts: The typical house hold sponge holds as many as 320 million disease-causing germs.

38) The Theory of Evolution - Species evolve over time to best take advantage of their surrounding
environment, and those species most fit for their environment survive best.

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 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.

Fun Facts: Bats, with their ultrasonic echolocation, have evolved the most acute hearing of any terrestrial animal. With it, bats can detect insects the size of gnats and objects as fine as a human hair.

39) Atomic Light Signatures - When heated, every element radiates light at very specific and
characteristic frequencies.

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (March 12, 1824 – October 17, 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission are named "Kirchhoff's laws" after him.

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (31 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He worked on emission spectroscopy of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered caesium and rubidium. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, he was a pioneer in photochemistry, and he did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen Burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use.

Fun Facts: Kirchhoff and Bunsen used their spectrograph to discover two new elements: cesium in 1860 (they chose that name because cesium means “sky blue,” the color of its spectrograph flame) and rubidium in
1861. This element has a bright red line in its spectrograph. Rubidium comes from the Latin word for red.

40) Electromagnetic Radiation/Radio Waves - All electric and magnetic energy waves are part of the one electro -magnetic spectrum and follow simple mathematical rules.

James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was the development of the classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory. His set of equations—Maxwell's equations—demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and even light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon: the electromagnetic field. From that moment on, all other classical laws or equations of these disciplines became simplified cases of Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's work in electromagnetism has been called the "second great unification in physics", after the first one carried out by Newton.

Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light. Finally, in 1864 Maxwell wrote A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field where he first proposed that light was in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. His work in producing a unified model of electromagnetism is considered to be one of the greatest advances in physics.

Fun Facts: Astronomers have concluded that the most efficient way of making contact with an intelligent civilization orbiting another star is to use radio waves. However, there are many natural processes in the universe that produce radio waves. If we could translate those naturally produced radio waves into sound, they would sound like static we hear on a radio. In the search for intelligent life, astronomers use modern computers to distinguish between a “signal” (possible message) and the “noise” (static).

41) Heredity - The natural system that passes traits and characteristics from one generation to the next.

Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was a German speaking Austrian Augustinian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of the discipline of genetics.

Fun Facts: Gregor Mendel’s concept of heredity required two parents.Dolly the sheep made scientific history in 1997 when she was created from the cells of a single adult sheep in a Scottish lab. She was cloned, an
exact genetic duplicate of her mother, with no contributing gene cells from a father.

42) Deep-Sea Life - Eternally black, deep ocean waters are not life less deserts, but support abun ant life

Charles Thomson radically changed science’s view of deep oceans and of the requirements for life in the oceans. There existed no light in the ocean depths, yet he discovered abundant and varied life. He proved that life can exist without light. He even proved that plants can thrive in the lightless depths (though it took another century before scientists figured out how plants live with out photosynthesis).Thomson’s discovery extended known ocean life from the thin top layer of the oceans into the vast depths and provided the first scientific study of the deep oceans. For his discoveries, Thomson was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1877.

Fun Facts: The largest giant squid ever studied was 36 feet long when it washed up dead on a South American beach. The circular suckers on its two long arms measured 2.2 inches across. Sperm whales have been
caught with fresh scars from giant squid suckers measuring over 22 inches across. That translates to a mon ster squid over 220 feet long! They’re out there, but no human has seen one since sailors talked of
meeting giant sea monsters hundreds of years ago.

43) Periodic Chart of Elements - The first successful organizing system for the chemical elements
that compose Earth.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (8 February 1834 – 2 February 1907), was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements. Unlike other contributors to the table, Mendeleev predicted the properties of elements yet to be discovered.

Fun Facts: Mendeleyev’s periodic chart helped dispel the ancient al chemist’s myth of turning lead into gold. In 1980, American scientist Glenn Seaborg used a powerful cyclotron to remove protons and neutrons from several thousand atoms of lead (atomic number 82), changing it into gold (atomic num ber 79). No, he didn’t create instant wealth. The process is so expensive that each atom of gold he created cost as much as several ounces of gold on the open market.

44) Cell Division - The process by which chromosomes split so that cells can divide to produce new cells.

Walther Flemming (April 21, 1843 - August 4, 1905) was a German biologist and the founder of cytogenetics.

He was born in Sachsenberg near Schwerin as the fifth child and only son of the psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Flemming (1799-1880) and his second wife, Auguste Winter. He did his basic studies at the Gymnasium der Residenzstadt, where one of his colleagues and lifelong friends was writer Heinrich Seidel.

Fun Facts: Like all living species, humans grow from a single egg cell into complex organisms with trillions of cells. Louise Brown, born July 25, 1978, in Oldham, England, was the first human test-tube baby. Her first cell divisions took place not in her mother’s womb, but in a lab oratory test tube.

45) X-Rays - High-frequency radiation that can penetrate through human flesh.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (March 27, 1845 – February 10, 1923) was a German physicist, who, on November 8, 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Fun Facts: The Z Machine at the Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico, can, very briefly, produce X-rays with a power out put roughly equivalent to 80 times that of all of the world’s electrical generators.

46) Blood Types - Humans have different types of blood that are not all compatible.

Karl Landsteiner (June 14, 1868 – June 26, 1943), was an Austrian biologist and physician. He is noted for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups from his identification of the presence of agglutinins in the blood, and in 1930 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. With Alexander S. Wiener, he identified the Rh factor in 1937. Landsteiner and [[Erwin Popper] discovered the poliovirus in 1909. He was awarded a Lasker Award in 1946 posthumously.

He was born in Vienna, Austria to Leopold Landsteiner, a journalist and newspaper editor who was also a doctor of law. His father died when Karl was 827, and he was raised by his mother, Fanny Hess. He earned a medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1891, and was also wellgrounded in chemistry, having studied under Hermann Emil Fischer. In 1908 he became professor of pathology at the University of Vienna. In 1916 he married Helen Wlasto, and the couple had one son. Following World War I, he left for the Netherlands. In 1922 he joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, and he remained there for the remainder of his life. During this period he became an American citizen. Karl Landsteiner died of a heart attack while still working at his laboratory.

Fun Facts: Humans have four blood types (A, B, AB, and O). Cats have the same number of possible blood types. Cows, however, have over 800!

47) Electron - The first subatomic particle ever discovered.

Sir Joseph John “J.J.” Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel laureate, credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer. He was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron and his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.

Fun Facts: If an electron weighed the same as a dime, a proton would weigh the same as a gallon of milk

48) Virus - The smallest, simplest living organism and causative agent for many human diseases, from simple colds to deadly yellow fever.

Dimitri Iosifovich Ivanovsky was a Russian biologist who was the first to discover viruses (1892).

Ivanovsky studied in the University of St Petersburg in 1887, when he was sent to investigate a disease affecting tobacco and referred to as "wildfire". Three years later, they asked him to look into another disease of tobacco plants, this time raging in the Crimea. He discovered that both diseases were caused by an infinitely minuscule agent, the tobacco mosaic virus, capable of permeating porcelain filters, something which bacteria could never do. He described his findings in an article (1892) and a dissertation (1902).

Martinus Willem Beijerinck (March 16, 1851 - January 1, 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist. He was born in Amsterdam.

Beijerinck studied at Leiden University and became a teacher in microbiology at the Agricultural School in Wageningen (now Wageningen University and later at the Polytechnische Hogeschool Delft (Delft Polytechnic, currently Delft University of Technology) (from 1895). He established the Delft School of Microbiology. His studies of agricultural microbiology and industrial microbiology yielded fundamental discoveries in the field of biology. His achievements have been perhaps unfairly overshadowed by those of his contemporaries Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, because unlike them, Beijerinck never studied human disease

Fun Facts: What’s the most common disease-causing virus? The common group of rhinoviruses, of which there are at least 180 types.Rhinoviruses cause colds and are al most universal, affecting everyone
except for those living in the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

49) Mitochondria - All-im portant parts of every cell that provide cell energy and also have their own separate DNA.

Mitochondria are tiny energy producers in every cell. One of many tiny structures floating in the cell’s cy to plasm (fluid) that are collectively called organelles, mitochondria are considered the most important of all cell parts—be sides the nucleus.Amazingly, mitochondria have their own separate DNA. You depend on them. They depend on you. And yet they are separate living organisms that have proved in valuable in
tracking human history and evolution as well as for understanding cell operation. Their discovery in 1898 marked a great turning point for microbiology.

Fun Facts: Mito hondria are called the “pow er house of the cells,” where all cell energy is produced. That includes the energy for you to blink your eyes, for your heart to beat, or for you to per form amazing tasks like completing the annual race up the 1,576 steps of the Empire State Building.The current record holder is Belinda Soszyn (Australia) in 1996, with a time of 12 minutes, 19 seconds. Imagine how much en ergy her mitochondria had to produce!

50) Radioactivity - Atoms are not solid balls and the smallest possible particles of matter, but contain a number of smaller partiles within them.

Marie Curie (November 7, 1867 – July 4, 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.

Curie was born Maria in Warsaw, Vistula Country, Russian Empire, and lived there until she was 24. In 1891 she followed her elder sister Bronislawa to study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her scientific work. 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, Irene Joliot-Curie.

While an actively loyal French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. Madame Curie named the first new chemical element that she discovered (1898) "polonium" for her native country, and in 1932 she founded a Radium Institute in her home town, Warsaw, headed by her physician-sister Bronislawa.


Fun Facts: Female Nobel Prize laureates accounted for only 34 out of a total of 723 prizes awarded as of 2005. Ma rie Curie is not only the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, but also one of four persons to have been awarded the Nobel Prize twice.