Amedeo Avogadro 1776 – 1856.The first scientist to realize that elements could exist in the form of molecules rather than as individual atoms; originator of Avogadro’s law.
Jacob Berzelius 1779 – 1848.A founder of modern chemistry: the first person to measure accurate atomic weights for the chemical elements; discovered three elements: cerium, thorium, and selenium; devised the modern symbols for elements; described how chemical bonds form by electrostatic attraction.
Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962.Founded quantum mechanics when he remodeled the atom so electrons occupied ‘allowed’ orbits around the nucleus while all other orbits were forbidden; architect of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Robert Boyle 1627 – 1691.Transformed chemistry from a field bogged down in alchemy and mysticism into one based on measurement. He defined elements, compounds, and mixtures; and he discovered the first gas law – Boyle’s Law.
Lawrence Bragg 1890 – 1971.Discovered how to locate the positions of atoms in solids using X-ray diffraction, enabling scientists to build 3D models of the atomic arrangements in solids. The discovery was arguably the most significant experimental breakthrough of twentieth century science.
Hennig Brand 1630 – 1710.Discovered phosphorus, becoming the first named person in history to discover a chemical element.
Georg Brandt 1694 – 1768.The first named person in history to discover a new metal – cobalt; was one of the first scientists to condemn alchemy, publicly demonstrating tricks used by alchemists to make people think they could make gold.
Robert Bunsen 1811 – 1899.Discovered cesium and rubidium; discovered the antidote to arsenic poisoning; invented the zinc-carbon battery and flash photography; discovered how geysers operate.
Marie Curie 1867 – 1934.Codiscovered the chemical elements radium and polonium; made numerous pioneering contributions to the study of radioactive elements; carried out the first research into the treatment of tumors with radiation.
John Dalton 1766 – 1844.Dalton’s Atomic Theory is the basis of chemistry; discovered Gay-Lussac’s Law relating gases’ temperature, volume, and pressure; discovered the law of partial gas pressures.
Democritus c. 460 — c. 370 BCDevised an atomic theory featuring tiny particles always in motion interacting through collisions; advocated a universe containing an infinity of diverse inhabited worlds governed by natural, mechanistic laws rather than gods; deduced that the light of stars explains the Milky Way’s appearance; discovered that a cone’s volume is one-third that of the cylinder with the same base and height.
Empedocles c. 490 BC – c 430 BC.An ancient theory of natural selection; mass conservation; and the four elements which are now often misattributed to Aristotle.
Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867.Discovered electromagnetic induction; devised Faraday’s laws of electrolysis; discovered the first experimental link between light and magnetism; carried out the first room-temperature liquefaction of a gas; discovered benzene.
Rosalind Franklin 1920 – 1958.Provided much of the experimental data used to establish the structure of DNA; discovered that DNA can exist in two forms; established that coal acts as a molecular sieve.
Willard Gibbs 1839 – 1903.Gibbs invented vector analysis and founded the sciences of modern statistical mechanics and chemical thermodynamics.
George de Hevesy 1885 – 1966.Discovered element 72, hafnium. Pioneered isotopes as tracers to study chemical and biological processes; discovered how plants and animals utilize particular chemical elements after they are taken in as nutrients.
Fred Hoyle 1915 – 2001.Established that most of the naturally occurring elements in the periodic table were made inside stars and distributed through space by supernova explosions.
Irene Joliot-Curie 1897 – 1956.Co-discovered how to convert stable chemical elements into ‘designer’ radioactive elements; these have saved millions of lives and are used in tens of millions of medical procedures every year.
Martin Klaproth 1743 – 1817.Discovered the chemical elements uranium, zirconium, and cerium – naming the first two of these elements; verified the discoveries of titanium, tellurium, and strontium, again naming the first two.
Stephanie Kwolek 1923 – 2014.Invented kevlar, the incredibly strong plastic used in applications ranging from body armor to tennis racquet strings.
Antoine Lavoisier 1743 – 1794.A founder of modern chemistry; discovered oxygen’s role in combustion and respiration; discovered that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen; proved that diamond and charcoal are different forms of the same element, which he named carbon.
Ernest Lawrence 1901 – 1958.Invented the cyclotron, used by scientific teams in his laboratories to discover large numbers of new chemical elements and isotopes. Founded big science.
Jane Marcet 1769 – 1858.Author of Conversations on Chemistry, a unique textbook for its time written for people with little formal education, such as girls and the poor. The book inspired Michael Faraday to overcome his poor origins to become a great scientist.
Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907.Discovered the periodic table in a dream. Utilized the organizing principles of the periodic table to correctly predict the existence and properties of six new chemical elements.
Henry Moseley 1887 – 1915.Proved that every element’s identity is uniquely determined by its number of protons, establishing this is the true organizing principle of the periodic table; correctly predicted the existence of four new chemical elements; invented the atomic battery.
Giulio Natta 1903 – 1979.Discovered how to produce polymer chains with orderly spatial arrangements – i.e. stereoregular polymers.
Alfred Nobel 1833 – 1896.Invented dynamite, the blasting cap, gelignite, and ballistite; grew enormously wealthy manufacturing explosives; used his wealth to bequeath annual prizes in science, literature, and peace.
Hans Christian Oersted 1777 – 1851.Discovered electromagnetism when he found that electric current caused a nearby magnetic needle to move; discovered piperine and achieved the first isolation of the element aluminum.
Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895.The father of modern microbiology; transformed chemistry and biology with his discovery of mirror-image molecules; discovered anaerobic bacteria; established the germ theory of disease; invented food preservation by pasteurization.
Linus Pauling 1901 – 1994.Maverick giant of chemistry; formulated valence bond theory and electronegativity; founded the fields of quantum chemistry, molecular biology, and molecular genetics. Discovered the alpha-helix structure of proteins; proved that sickle-cell anemia is a molecular disease.
Marguerite Perey 1909 – 1975.Discovered francium, the last of the naturally occurring chemical elements to be discovered – all elements since have been produced artificially.
William Perkin 1838 – 1907.At age 18 started the synthetic dye revolution when his discovery of mauveine brought the once formidably expensive color purple to everyone. Perkins’ revolution took the world by storm, transforming textiles, foods, and medicine.
C. V. Raman 1888 – 1970.Discovered that light can donate a small amount of energy to a molecule, changing the light’s color and causing the molecule to vibrate. The color change acts as a ‘fingerprint’ for the molecule that can be used to identify molecules and detect diseases such as cancer.
William Ramsay 1852 – 1916.Predicted the existence of the noble gases and discovered or was first to isolate every member of the group; created the world’s first neon light.
Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937.The father of nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics; discovered and named the atomic nucleus, the proton, the alpha particle, and the beta particle; discovered the concept of nuclear half-lives; achieved the first laboratory transformation of one element into another.
Glenn Seaborg 1912 to 1999.Took part in the discovery of ten of the periodic table’s chemical elements. His work on the electronic structure of elements led to the periodic table being rewritten.
Hermann Staudinger 1881 – 1965.Founded macromolecular chemistry when he established that molecules made of hundreds of thousands of atoms exist; demonstrated that synthetic polymers can make fibers similar to natural fibers; discovered polyoxymethylene; discovered pyrethroid natural insecticides.
J. J. Thomson 1856 – 1940.Discovered the electron; invented one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry – the mass spectrometer; obtained the first evidence for isotopes of stable elements.
Harold Urey 1893 – 1981.Discovered deuterium; showed how isotope ratios in rocks reveal past Earth climates; founded modern planetary science; the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that electrically sparking simple gases produces amino acids – the building blocks of life.
Alessandro Volta 1745 – 1827.Pioneer of electrical science; invented the electric battery; wrote the first electromotive series; isolated methane for the first time; discovered a methane-air mixture could be exploded using an electric spark – the basis of the internal combustion engine.
Sergei Winogradsky 1856 – 1953.Founded microbial ecology; discovered chemosynthetic life forms which obtain energy from chemical reactions rather than from sunlight; discovered nitrogen-fixing bacteria in soil that make nitrates available to green plants.
Alhazen c. 965 – c. 1040.Discovered a general method to find the sum of any integral power and hence the volume of a paraboloid; solved ‘Alhazen’s problem’ concerning the reflection of light from curved surfaces.
Archimedes c. 287 BC – 212 BC.Founded the sciences of mechanics and hydrostatics, calculated pi precisely, devised the law of exponents, created new geometrical proofs, invented numerous ingenious mechanical devices and more.
Charles Babbage 1791 – 1871.In the 1830s Babbage designed the world’s first first general-purpose programmable computer.
Daniel Bernoulli 1700 – 1782.Discovered the Bernoulli Effect explaining how aircraft wings generate lift; formulated a kinetic theory relating particle speeds in gases to temperature; made major discoveries in the theory of risk.
Brahmagupta 597 – 668.Established zero as a number and defined its mathematical properties; discovered the formula for solving quadratic equations.
René Descartes 1596 – 1650.One of the greatest philosophers of all time; advocate of skepticism in the scientific method; creator of new mathematical ideas including the independent founding of analytical geometry. Cartesian coordinates are named in his honor.
Diophantus c. 210 – c. 295 AD.Known as the father of algebra; solved hundreds of algebraic equations in his great work Arithmetica; first to use algebraic notation and symbolism.
Eratosthenes c. 276 BC – c. 194 BC.Devised the famous prime number sieve; accurately calculated Earth’s size 2,500 years ago; founded the science of geography.
Euclid c. 325 – c. 270 BC.Authored the Elements, the most famous and most published mathematical work in history; another great work, Optics, explained light’s behavior using geometrical principles – the basis of artistic perspective, astronomical methods, and navigation methods for more than two thousand years.
Eudoxus c. 400 — c. 347 BC.Created the first mathematical model of the universe; produced the first rigorous definition of real numbers; developed the method of exhaustion and used it to prove the formulas for cone and pyramid volumes.
Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783.Published more mathematics than any other single mathematician, much of it groundbreaking. An astonishing fraction of the total research work in mathematics and the physical sciences between 1730 and 1780 was carried out solely by Euler.
Pierre de Fermat 1607 – 1665.Co-founded the disciplines of analytic geometry and probability theory and was a key player in the invention of calculus. There’s more to Fermat than his famous last theorem.
Fibonacci c. 1170 – c. 1245.The rebirth of Western mathematics: Fibonacci’s Book of Calculation introduced the Indian number system, now used worldwide, to Europe.
Ronald Fisher 1890 – 1962.Invented experimental design; devised the statistical concept of variance; unified evolution by natural selection with Mendel’s rules of inheritance, so defining the new field of population genetics.
Martin Gardner 1914 – 2010.Creator of Scientific American’s Mathematical Games column; became the twentieth century’s greatest popularizer of mathematics; prime mover in founding the skeptic movement against pseudoscience.
Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855.The last master of all mathematics, Gauss revolutionized number theory and invented the method of least squares and the fast Fourier transform. His profound contributions to the physical sciences include Gauss’s Law & Gauss’s Law for Magnetism.
Sophie Germain 1776 – 1831.Self-taught mathematican who pretended she was a man. Developed elasticity theory and made significant progress in her personal program to prove Fermat’s last theorem.
Willard Gibbs 1839 – 1903.Gibbs invented vector analysis and founded the sciences of modern statistical mechanics and chemical thermodynamics.
Thomas Harriot c. 1560 – 1621.Transformed algebra from a field based mainly on word equations to today’s concise discipline based on symbols. Probably the first person to observe sunspots with a telescope, allowing him to determine the sun’s rotation rate.
David Hilbert 1862 – 1943.Famed for his 23 problems, Hilbert propelled mathematics to new heights. He replaced Euclid’s axioms dating from 2,000 years earlier, allowing the unification of 2D and 3D geometry; and he created Hilbert Space, now essential in advanced physical science.
Hipparchus c. 190 BC – c. 120 BC.One of antiquity’s greatest scientists: founded the mathematical discipline of trigonometry; measured the earth-moon distance accurately; discovered the precession of the equinoxes; and documented the positions and magnitudes of over 850 stars. His combinatorics work was unequalled until 1870.
Grace Hopper 1906 – 1992.Pioneer of electronic computers: invented the first compiler; was the principal architect of COBOL, the most widely used computer language of the twentieth century.
Hypatia c. 370 – 415 AD.The greatest mathematician of her time, Hypatia’s murder signaled the coming of the dark ages.
Omar Khayyam 1048 – 1131.A poet, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, Khayyam calculated the length of a year to the most accurate value ever, and showed how the intersections of conic sections can be utilized to yield geometric solutions of cubic equations.
Johannes Kepler 1571 to 1630.Discovered the solar system’s planets follow elliptical paths; identified the tides are caused mainly by the moon; proved how logarithms work; discovered the inverse square law of light intensity; his laws of planetary motion led Newton to his law of gravitation.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange 1736 – 1813.Principle founder of the calculus of variations; coined the word derivative; introduced the ∂ notation and created the first partial differential equations; was a founder of group theory.
Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852.The mother of computing science; contributed to the first published computer program; was the first person to see that computers could do more than mathematical calculations, recognizing that musical notes and letters of the alphabet could be turned into numbers for manipulation by computers.
Isaac Newton 1643 to 1727.Profoundly changed our understanding of nature with his law of universal gravitation and his laws of motion; invented calculus, the field of mathematics that dominates the physical sciences; generalized the binomial theorem; built the first ever reflecting telescope; showed sunlight is made of all the colors of the rainbow.
Emmy Noether 1882 – 1935.Probably the greatest female mathematician in history, Noether’s theorem revealed a fundamental property of our universe, that for every conservation law there is an invariant. Her founding work in abstract algebra revolutionized mathematics.
William Oughtred 1574 – 1660.Invented the slide-rule, producing an upsurge in calculation speeds and accelerated scientific progress; introduced the familiar multiplication × sign.
Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912.The first mathematical description of chaos; founded algebraic topology; gave the modern form of the Lorentz transformations; originator of the famous Poincaré conjecture.
Proclus 412 – 485 AD.Produced an alternative statement of Euclid’s famously problematical parallel postulate: Proclus’s version came to be known as Playfair’s Axiom after it was restated by John Playfair in 1846.
Pythagoras c. 570 BC – 497 BC.Believed the universe was constructed using mathematics and everything could be described with numbers; established a link between mathematics and music; proved Pythagoras’s theorem; discovered irrational numbers; discovered the Platonic Solids.
Adolphe Quetelet 1796 – 1874.First to apply the statistical normal distribution to characteristics of human populations; introduced the height-weight measure we know today as the body mass index.
Srinivasa Ramanujan 1887 – 1920.A largely self-taught pure mathematician, he enriched number theory with thousands of new identities, equations and theorems.
Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866.Transformed geometry with curved space and n-dimensional space providing the mathematical foundation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity; provided the first rigorous definition of the integral; the Riemann hypothesis has become the most famous unresolved problem in mathematics – its holy grail.
Mary Somerville 1780 – 1872.Self-taught mathematician and polymath; bestselling popularizer of science; acclaimed for her translation and revision of Pierre Laplace’s groundbreaking book on celestial mechanics.
Niccolo Tartaglia 1500 – 1557.Founded the modern science of ballistics; refuted Aristotle’s claim that air sustained motion; provided general solutions for cubic equations.
Thales of Miletus c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC.The first scientist in history, Thales looked for patterns in nature to explain the way the world worked. He replaced superstitions with science. He was the first person to use deductive logic to find new results in geometry.
Theon of Alexandria c. 335 – c. 405 AD.The father of Hypatia; Theon’s edition of Euclid’s Elements supplanted all others, including the original – Theon simplified some of Euclid’s proofs and added new proofs of his own to the Elements.
John Wallis 1616 – 1703.A founder of infinitesimal calculus; introduced the ∞ symbol for infinity; the first person to use the number line with both positive and negative numbers; a champion of algebra; discovered the concept of conservation of momentum.
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