Edward Jenner was born in 1749 and died in 1823. Edward Jenner’s great gift to the world was his vaccination for smallpox. This disease was greatly feared at the time as it killed one in three of those who caught it and badly disfigured those who were lucky enough to survive catching it.Edward Jenner was […]

The youngest, of at least, fourteen children, Dimitri Ivanovitch Mendeleev was born at Tobolsk, Siberia, on 7 February, 1834. His father, Ivan, was the director of the local gymnasium, and his mother, Marya, came from a family that had introduced glass and paper making to Siberia. Ivan diedwhen Dimitri was quite young and Marya had

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born on November 7, 1888. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics so that from the very childhood he was immersed in an academic atmosphere. He entered Presidency College, Madras, in 1902, and in 1904 passed his B.A. examination, winning the first place and the gold medal inphysics; in

Christian Huygens was born at the Hague on April 14, 1629, and died there on July 8, 1695.In 1654, his attention was directed to the improvement of the telescope. Together with his brother, Christian Huygens devised a new and better way of grinding and polishing lenses. As a result of theseimprovements, Huygens was able during

Sir Benjamin Thompson alias Count Rumford was born on March 26, 1753.Perhaps it was John Fowle, the Harvard educated village teacher who first noticed signs of talent in young Thompson—his skill with mechanical devices, his almost faultless command of language and grammar before his thirteenth year. These skills laterwon him the right, along with friend

Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. Darwin was the British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection. Like several scientists before him, Darwin believed all the life on earth evolved over millions of years from a few common ancestors.From 1831 to 1836 Darwin served

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont on June 19, 1623. His father moved to Paris in 1631, partly to prosecute his own scientific studies, partly to carry on the education of his only son, who had already displayed exceptional ability.His father, struck by his display of ability, gave him a copy of Euclid’s Elements, a

Birbal Sahni was born on November 14, 1891, at Bhera (Punjab) now in Pakistan. His father was a chemistry teacher who was interested in the study of nature. During vacations the older Sahni used to take the boy on treks in the mountains. Together they used to collect rocks, plants and fossil-bearing rocks. The young

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706.A list of Franklin’s inventions reveals a man of many talents and interests. It was the scientist in Benjamin that brought out the inventor. His natural curiosity about things and the waythey workmade him try to find ways to make them work better.Benjamin had poor vision

Count Alessandro Volta was born in Como, Italy, into a noble family. Alessandro Volta was the inventor of the voltaic pile, the first electric battery. In 1775 he invented the electrophorus, a device that, once electrically charged by having been rubbed, could transfer charge to other objects.Between 1776 and 1778, Volta discovered and isolated methane

Amedeo Carlo Avogadro was born in Turin, Italy on 9 August, 1776. Avogadro went to school in Turin. Coming from a family of well established lawyers, Avogadro was guided toward a legal career, and became a bachelor of jurisprudence in 1792, at the young age of just 16 years. Four years later he gained his

Andreas Vesalius was born on December 31, 1514 in Brussels, then in the Holy Roman Empire to a family of physicians. His father enrolled him in the Brothers of the Common Life School in Brussels to learn Greek and Latin according to standards of the era.In 1528 Vesalius entered the University of Louvain taking arts,

Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) first encountered magnifying glasses when he was sixteen. He was working in Amsterdam as an apprentice and bookkeeper to a Scottish textile merchant, where magnifying glasses were used to count thread densities for quality control purposes.In April 1673 he reported his first observations—bee mouthparts and stings, a human louse and a fungus—to the

Sir Alexander Fleming was born at Lochfield near Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6, 1881. He attended Louden Moor School, Darvel School, and Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London where he attended the Polytechnic. He spent four years in a shipping office before entering St. Mary’s Medical School, LondonUniversity. He qualified with distinction in

Born in 287 B.C., in Syracuse, a Greek seaport colony in Sicily, Archimedes was the son of Phidias, an astronomer. Except for his studies at Euclid’s school in Alexandria, he spent his entire life in his birthplace. Archimedes proved to be a master at mathematics and spent most of his time contemplatingnew problems to solve,