John Logie Baird born on August 13, 1888 pioneered early television with the mechanical scanning system he developed from 1923 to the late 1930s. He is remembered today as an inventor (178 patents) with considerable insight, who was in many ways ahead of his time. Among his pioneering ideas were early versions of colour television, […]
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler, (Dec. 27, 1571-Nov. 15, 1630) was the first strong supporter of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and the discoverer of the three laws of planetary motion.At the age of 24, Kepler published Cosmographic Mystery, 1596, in which he defended the Copernican theory and described his ideas on the structure of
Sir Joseph John Thomson was born in Cheetham Hill, a suburb of Manchester on December 18, 1856. He enrolled at Owens College, Manchester, in 1870, and in 1876 entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar.He became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1880 and he remained a member of the College for the rest
Jagadish Chandra Basu was born in India in 1858. He received his education first in India, until in 1880 he went to England to study medicine. Basu returned to India, taking up a post initially as officiating professor of physics at the Presidency College in Calcutta. Here he converted a small enclosure adjoining a bathroom
Jean Bernard Leon Foucault born on 18 September 1819 was a French physicist best known for the invention of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of the Earth’s rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, invented the gyroscope, and discovered eddy currents. The Foucault crater on the Moon
James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20 October, 1891. He attended Manchester High School prior to entering Manchester University in 1908; he graduated from the Honours School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under Professor (later Lord) Rutherford in the Physical Laboratory in Manchester, where he worked on various
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Maxwell’s early education was provided by his Christian mother and included studying the Bible. Maxwell went to Edinburgh Academy in his youth. In 1845, at the age of 14, Maxwell wrote a paper describing mechanical means of drawing mathematical curves with a piece of string.In 1854, Maxwell
James Watt was born in Greenock in 1736. Watt had little formal education due to poor health in his youth, but pottering about in his father’s shop he developed an interest in trying to make things ‘work like clockwork’.In his late teens he went to London to learn to be a ‘mathematical and philoso-phical instrument
Isaac Newton (1641-1727) was born very premature and not expected to survive. It was said he could be fitted into a quart pot. His father had died three months earlier. When Isaac was three, his mother married a wealthy elderly clergyman from the next village, and went to live there, leaving Isaac behind with his
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1904 for research pertaining to the digestive system. Pavlov was widely-known for first describing the phenomenon now known as conditioning in his experiments with dogs.Pavlov was investigating the gastric
Hippocrates (460 B.C.-380 B.C.) made such an impression on medical history that his name is still very much associated with medicine today. All newly qualified doctors take what is called the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ and some see Hippocrates as the father of modern medicine even though he did most of his work some 430 years before
Dr. Hargovind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 at Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan).He obtained his M.Sc. Honours in Organic Chemistry from the Punjab University in 1945 and later received his Ph. D. from the University of Liverpool in England.The most fruitful and creative decade of Dr. Khorana’s career began in 1960 when he
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) was born in Hamburg, Germany. His father was a prominent lawyer and legislator. In his youth Heinrich enjoyed building instruments in the family workshop.Hertz began his college studies at the University of Munich. After a short time he transferred to the University of Berlin, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy
Humphry Davy was born on December 17, 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, England. He received his education in Penzance and in Truro. His father died in 1794, and Davy, in an effort to help support his family, became an apprentice to a surgeon.Davy’s most important investigations were devoted to electrochemistry. Following Galvani’s experiments and the discovery
Hugo Marie de Vries born on 16 February 1848 a Dutch biologist, was one of three men who in 1900 rediscovered Gregor Mendel’s work on genetics. De Vries was educated at the Universities of Leiden, Heidelberg and Wruzburg. He became a professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam in 1878.De Vries conducted a series