Alexander Von Humboldt

His last name is something most animal lovers would have already heard of because of the Humboldt squid that lives in the Humboldt Current. This was named after Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt. Simply called Alexander von Humboldt, he was a notable Prussian geographer, explorer, and naturalist. He is widely recognized for his works on botanical geography which is what laid the foundation for biogeography.

Early Life and Education

This naturalist and eager explorer was born on September 14, 1769, in Berlin, Germany. Alexander Georg von Humboldt, his father, had been an army officer who died in 1779 when he was only 9 years old, and he along with his brother Wilhelm were raised by their rather distant and cold mother. They belonged to a prominent Pomeranian family, and this was why they were able to afford tutors to provide them their basic education in mathematics and languages—classic subjects then.

When he was young, he already had a hobby of collecting and labeling different plants, insects, and shells. This was why he earned the moniker “little apothecary,” a playful title used to refer to young Alexander. Since he had an exposure to politics because of his father, he was set for a politically-inclined career.
Because of this he took courses in finance for a span of six months and he attended the University of Frankfurt. After a year he studied at Göttingen. During this time, his many interests had been clear to him and when he had his time off in 1789, Alexander went on an excursion on the River Rhine and was able to come up with the “Mineralogic Observations on Several Basalts on the River Rhine.”

Explorations

Alexander had the opportunity to be under the wing of A.G. Werner, a famous geologist who taught at the Freiberg Academy of Mines. During his time there, Alexander met the man named George Forester who was Captain James Cook’s illustrator. Together, the tandem hiked in different places in Europe and because of his knowledge in geology as well as other fields, Alexander was able to work as a government mines inspector when he was 22 in Franconia, Prussia.
His mother died when he was 27, on the 19th of November, 1796 and this left him a good inheritance which was essential to his explorations. A year after his mother’s death, he left the government service and planned his travels with the botanist Aime Bonpland. He had always wanted to travel and explore, but had been bound to his political obligations. Together with Bonpland, he traveled to Madrid in order to obtain special permission along with passports from King Charles II for their plans on exploring South America.
It was on the 5th of June 1799 when Bonpland and von Humboldt sailed aboard the Pizarro. They had a 6-day stop at Tenerife, an island where the Teide volcano which they planned to explore was. On the 16th of July, they were on the shores of Cumana, Venezuela. During their stay in South America, Bonpland and Humboldt studied the topography, flora, and fauna of the continent. Come 1800, Humboldt had already mapped more than 1700 miles of the Orinco River.
He continued his explorations and even had a trip to the Andes along with a climb to the top of Mt. Chimborazo located in today’s modern Ecuador. Back then, this summit was believed to have been the highest peak in the world. They were not able to make it to the very top, but had ascended over 18,000 feet! While in this area, the ended the exploration by going to Lima, Peru, and this was when Humboldt was able to observe the transit of Mercury. He also studied how guano had fertilizing properties.
While he was on South America’s west coast, Alexander was able to measure and discover the Peruvian Current. This current is also referred to as the Humboldt Current. Bonpland and von Humboldt were still in South America come 1803, and this time, Alexander was offered a position to be one of the members of the Mexican cabinet.
Other notable experiences from his many explorations in South America included being able to see the Leonids on the nights of November 11 and 12 shortly after their arrival in South America, climbing the Avila Mount, and capturing some electric eels with Bonpland from which they received quite a number of electric shocks.

Other Travels and Achievements

After a great amount of exploration in South America, Bonpland and von Humboldt were successfully persuaded by a certain American counselor to pay a visit to Washington, D.C. There they stayed for three weeks and during their time there, Alexander was able to have several meetings with then president Thomas Jefferson who he became good friends with.
In 1804, Alexander travelled to Paris and then he wrote 30 volumes about his different field studies. He stayed in the area for 23 years and during his time there, had the opportunity to meet and have discussions with several other bright minds of his age.
After a time of traveling and self-publishing his reports, his fortune from the inheritance had ultimately run out. This made him find a stable source of income and he became one of the advisors of Prussia’s king. Later on, he was invited to Russia by the tsar himself and he advised them to have observatories all over the country and enlightened them on discoveries like permafrost.
For about a year from 1827, Alexander was in Berlin, giving public lectures. These lectures became so popular that there came a need for new assembly halls. As he was getting old, he decided to write everything which was then known about the earth in a work he called the Kosmos. The first volume was published in 1845. He was 76 then.
He suffered a minor stroke on February 24, 1857. Two years later, his health began to decline and at the age of 89, he died on May 6, 1859. Much of the man’s private life was a mystery since he destroyed most of his private letters. To this day, he is known as one of the most significant contributors to earth sciences.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Remarkably, he only worked on his invention because he misunderstood a technical work he had read in German. His misunderstanding ultimately led to his discovery of how speech could be transmitted electrically.

Images are: A model of Bell’s very first telephone (top-left). Alexander Graham Bell in 1874, aged 26, when he became a professor at Boston University (bottom-left). Bell, aged 45, making the first call from New York to Chicago when the exchange opened in 1892 (right).

Alexander Graham Bell’s Early Life, Early Inventions, and Education

Alexander Graham Bell was born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother’s name was Eliza Grace Symonds.
His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a professor of speech elocution at the University of Edinburgh. His father also wrote definitive books about speech and elocution, which sold very well in the UK and North America.
The young Alexander was home-schooled until he was 11, following which he attended Edinburgh’s Royal High School for four years: he enjoyed science, but did not do well academically.
Although his schoolwork was poor, his mind was very active. One day, he was playing at a flour mill owned by the family of a young friend. Bell learned that de-husking the wheat grains took a lot of effort and was also very boring. He saw that it would be possible for a machine to do the work, so he built one. He was only 12 at the time. The machine he built was used at the mill for several years.
Aged 15, he joined his grandfather who had moved to London, England. His grandfather home-schooled him, which seemed to bring out the best in Bell again. When he was 16, he enrolled at Weston House Academy in Elgin, Scotland, where he learned Greek and Latin and also earned some money teaching elocution.
While he was 16, he and his brother tried to build a talking robot. They built a windpipe and a realistic looking head. When they blew air through the windpipe, the mouth could make a small number of recognizable words.
For the next few years, Bell moved to a new school most years, either teaching elocution or improving his own education.

To Canada

While Bell moved around a lot, he continued to carry out his own research into sound and speech. He worked very hard indeed, and by the time he was 20 he was in very poor health and returned to his family home, which was now in London.
By mid-1870, when Bell was 23, both of his younger brothers had died of tuberculosis. Bell’s parents were terrified that Alexander, whose health was fragile, would suffer a similar fate. He was now the only child of theirs who was still alive.
Bell’s father had gone to Canada when he was younger and found that his poor health had improved dramatically. He now decided that what was left of his family should move to Canada, and by late 1870, they were living in Brentford, Ontario. Thankfully, Alexander Graham Bell’s health began to improve.
While living in Brentford, Bell learned the Mohawk language and put it in writing for the first time. The Mohawk people made him an Honorary Chief.

And the United States

When he was 25, Bell opened his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, MA, where he taught deaf people to speak. At age 26, although he did not have a university degree, he became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory.

The Invention of the Telephone

While he was moving jobs and locations around the UK and North America, Bell had developed an overriding desire to invent a machine that could reproduce human speech.
Speech had become his life: his mother had gone deaf, and Bell’s father had developed a method of teaching deaf people to speak, which Bell taught. His research into mechanizing human speech was a relentless obsession: in the UK it had driven him almost to collapse.
When Bell was only 19 years old, he described the work he had been doing in a letter to the linguistics expert Alexander Ellis. Ellis told Bell his work was similar to work carried out in Germany by Hermann von Helmholtz.

A Mistake Puts Bell on the Right Track

Bell eagerly read Helmholtz’s work, or tried to read it. It was in German, which he did not understand. Instead, he tried to follow the logic of the book’s diagrams. Bell misunderstood the diagrams, believing that Helmholtz had been able to convert all of the sounds of speech to electricity.
In fact, Helmholtz had not been able to do this – he had only succeeded with vowel sounds – but from then on, Bell believed it could be done!
Aged 23, Bell built a workshop in the new family home in Ontario and experimented there with converting music into an electrical signal.
In Boston, aged 25, Bell continued his experiments through the night while working in the day. In summer, he would return to his workshop in Ontario and continue his experiments.

Financial Backing for a Voice Telegraph

And now it was 1874, and Bell was 26. The first electrical telegraph lines had been built forty years earlier, in the 1830s. These allowed electrical clicks (Morse code) to be instantly transmitted over great distances. Bell wanted to transmit human speech instead of clicks, and he was getting close to doing it.
He had found that human speech came in wave like patterns. He now hoped to produce an electrical wave that would follow the same patterns as someone’s speech.
And he won financial backing from Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, two wealthy investors. Hubbard also brought in Anthony Pollok, his patent attorney.
The money enabled Bell to hire Thomas Watson, a skilled electrical engineer whose knowledge would compliment Bell’s.

Patenting the Telephone

Aged 27, in 1875, Bell and his investors decided the time had come to protect his intellectual property using patents.

Alexander Graham Bell’s Telephone Patent. (Click to enlarge.)

Bell had a patent written for transmission of speech over an electrical wire. He applied for this patent in the UK, because in those days UK patents were granted only if they had not first been granted in another country. Bell told his attorney oto apply in the USA only after the patent had been granted in the UK.
By 1876, things in the USA had become murkier. In February of that year, Elisha Gray applied for a US patent for a telephone which used a variable resistor based on a liquid: salt water.
In the transmitter, the liquid resistor transferred to an electric circuit the vibrations of a needle attached to a diaphragm which had been made to vibrate by sound. The electrical resistance of the circuit changed in tandem with the needle’s position in the liquid, and so sound was converted into an equivalent electrical signal. The receiver converted the electrical signal back into sound using a vibrating needle in liquid connected to a diaphragm which vibrated to recreate the sound that had been transmitted.
On the same day, Bell’s attorney filed his US patent application.
It was only in March 1876 that Bell actually got his invention to work, using a design similar to Gray’s. Hence Gray lay claim to have invented the telephone.
On the other hand, Bell had established the concept before Gray, and in all demonstrations of a working phone Bell gave or developed commercially he used his own setup rather than a water based variable resistor. In fact, in 1875, Bell had filed a patent for a liquid mercury based variable resistor, predating Gray’s liquid variable resistor patent.
Bell had to fend off around 600 lawsuits before he could finally rest in bed at night as the legally acknowledged inventor of the telephone.

“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”

The first words spoken in a telephone call: Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor

 

By summer of 1876, Bell was transmitting telephone voice messages over a line several miles long in Ontario.

Making Money

Near the end of 1876, Bell and his investors offered to sell their patent to Western Union for $100,000. Western Union ran America’s telegraph wires, and its top people believed the telephone was just a fad. They thought it would not be profitable.
How spectacularly wrong they were!
By 1878, Western Union’s opinion had altered dramatically. They now thought that if they could offer $25 million to get the patent, they would have gotten it cheaply.
Unfortunately for Western Union, in 1877, the Bell Telephone Company had been launched. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Not Just the Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell had a restless mind. The telephone made him wealthy and famous, but he wanted new challenges, and he continued inventing and innovating.

The Photophone, or Optical Telephone

Today, it is standard practice to transmit huge amounts of data using photons of light through optical fiber.
In 1880, Bell and his assistant Charles Summer Tainter transmitted wireless voice messages a distance of over 200 meters in Washington D.C. The voice messages were carried by a light beam, and Bell patented the photophone. This was two decades before the first radio messages were sent without wires and a century before optic fiber communications became commercially viable.

The receiver of Bell’s photophone. In Bell’s opinion, the photophone was his best invention.

The Metal Detector

In 1881, after President James Garfield was shot, Bell invented the metal detector to locate the bullet precisely. The rudimentary metal detector worked in tests, but the bullet in the President’s body was too deep to be detected by the early detecting equipment.

National Geographic Society

In 1888 Bell was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society. In 1897, he became its second president.

The End

Alexander Graham Bell died aged 75 on August 2, 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He had been ill for some months with complications from diabetes. He was survived by his wife, Mabel, and two daughters – Elsie and Marian.
Every phone in North America was silenced during his funeral in his honor.
The unit of sound intensity, the bel, more usually seen as the smaller unit, the decibel, was named after Bell: it was conceived of in the Bell Laboratories.

Alexander Fleming

Scottish biologist and inventor Alexander Firming is widely regarded for his 1928 discovery of penicillin, a drug that is used to kill harmful bacteria. His work on immunology, bacteriology, and chemotherapy is considered groundbreaking and highly influential.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6, 1881 to Hugh Fleming and Grace Stirling Morton, Alexander Fleming was the third of the four children. He attended medical school in London, England and graduated in 1906. Fleming assisted in battlefield hospitals in France during World War I (1911-1918), where he observed that some soldiers, despite surviving their initial battlefield wounds, were dying of septicemia or some another infection only after a few years.

Contributions and Achievements:

Once the war was over, Fleming looked for medicines that would heal infections. The antiseptics of World War I were not totally efficient, and they primarily worked on a wound’s surface. Spraying an antiseptic made things even worse if the wound was deep.
Fleming came back to his laboratory in 1928 after a long vacation. He carried out an experiment and left several dishes with several bacteria cultures growing in them. After some time, he observed that some of the dishes were contaminated with a fungus, which ruined his experiment. He was about to discard the dishes, but he noticed that in one dish, the bacteria failed to grow in an area around the fungus.
He successfully isolated the fungus and established it was from the Penicillium group or genus. Fleming made his discovery public in 1929, however to a mixed reaction. While a few doctors thought penicillin, the antibiotic obtained from the Penicillium fungus, might have some importance as a topical antiseptic, the others were skeptical. Fleming was sure that the penicillin could also function inside the body. He performed some experiments to demonstrate that the genus of fungus had germ-killing power, even when it was diluted 800 times. Fleming tried to cultivate penicillin until 1940, but it was hard to grow, and isolating the germ-killing agent was even harder. He was unsure if it would ever work in a proper manner.
Luckily, a German Chemist, Ernst Chain, discovered the process to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing agent in penicillin some time later. Another Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey found out the ways of its mass production. During World War I, the goverments of U.S. and Great Britain funded Florey and Chain, therefore the penicillin almost became the magic spell that cured many diseases. Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.

Personal Life and Death:

Fleming married his first wife, Sarah, who died in 1949. Their only child, Robert Fleming, went on to become a general medical practitioner. Fleming married for the second time to Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, with whom he worked at St. Mary’s, on 9 April 1953. She also died in 1986.
Fleming died of a heart failure in London in 1955.

Alexander Brongniart

Alexander Brongniart was a French zoologist, mineralogist, and chemist who had worked hand in hand with Georges Cuvier concerning geology around Paris. He was also the Sevres porcelain factory director and had been responsible for the worldwide fame of the factory. He had been the professor at the Museum of Natural History in Paris teaching mineralogy, and he had established the basic principles of ceramic chemistry. Along with these accomplishments, he had also made contributions to science by introducing a new classification of reptiles, extensively studying trilobites, and contributed to stratigraphy through developing markers which can be used for dating strata.

Personal Life and Education
Born in Paris, France on the 5^th of February back in 1770, Alexandre Brongniart was the son of Anne-Louise Degremont and Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart who was a distinguished architect in Paris. He studied for a time at the École des Mines before moving to the École de Médecine. There was a time when he became the assistant to Antoine-Louis Brongniart who was, at that time, a professor at Jardin des Plantes teaching chemistry. This had been one of his earliest exposures to the field of chemistry and may have been the spark for his interest in this field.
While he was the director of the porcelain factory which to this day remains his legacy, he was able to marry Cecile who was the daughter of Charles-Étienne Coquebert de Montbret, a statesman and a scientist. They had just one son, who became the paleobotanist and botanist named Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart who had gained his own name in the field of science.
Early Career
Alexandre Brongiart gained even more exposure to chemistry when he served as the aide-pharmacien for the French forces which were in the Pyrenees. In 1794 though, he returned to Paris and had been appointed as the ingénieur des mines. Three years later, he then became a professor at the École Centrale des Quatre-Nations, teaching natural history. He was appointed as ingénieur en chef des minesin 1818, and come 1822, he then succeeded the professor of mineralogy, R. J. Haüy at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. In 1815, Alexandre Brongiart was elected as one of the members of the Académie des Sciences.
Most of Alexandre Brongniart’s life was spent in his hometown where he conducted various researches and where he had lived an academic life being a professor and part of the administrations of the universities he was in. He had been known to help his students and had even had gatherings for scientists at his own evening salons.
After the time of the Revolution, he had visited England in order to learn the ceramics techniques. He had been able to travel Western Europe and even published his own geological papers about areas such as Italy and Sweden. It was in 1800 when he became appointed as the director of the Sèvres porcelain factory, and this was the post he had held until his death in October 7, 1847.
Contributions to Science
While he had left his legacy as the director of the porcelain factory and having made contributions to the chemistry of ceramics in particular, his first publications weren’t all about the ceramic industry. It is a given that this industry had been a big part of his life, but he also had other interests. His first papers had been on mineralogy as well as zoology.
In the field of zoology, he had his work called “Essai d’une classification naturelle des reptiles” published in 1800. This paper had emphasized how important comparative anatomy was. Because of this basis, he had been able to further split the class Reptilia, into four more groups.
From his studies on reptiles, he noticed how one of the groups– the batrachians were much different compared to the other three groups. The distinction had been noticeable especially in their reproductive organs which had been a lot more important compared to the much more observable difference of limbless snakes and the others. Because of this finding, Pierre Latreille had moved the batrachians to their separate class—the amphibians, while the reptile grouping of Brongniart of the true reptiles namely saurian, ophidians, and chelonians, remain to this day as part of the modern systematics.
In 1807, he published Traité élémentaire de mineralogy. In this work he had classed basalt and clay despite the difficulty of fine-grained rocks from the true and simple minerals. In his studies about mineralogy, he had emphasized on how important it was to study the different modes of occurrence along with their properties. He did, however, limit his expression concerning the igneous or aqueous origins of basalt back in those days.
His studies concerning mineralogy and zoology may have seemed like two very different scientific fields, but these two met when he began his geological work which had then made him famous in the world of science. He had worked alongside Cuvier who had been working on reconstructions of the extinct animals, specifically the mammals which were in Paris. They had worked in collaboration to survey the area and together they determined the strata order of the fossils they have located. Together, they published the “Essai sur la géographie mineralogiquc des environs de Paris” in Jun 1808, and this paper had included a colored and detailed geological map. Known for his modesty, Brongniart’s name appeared after Cuvier’s, despite the fact that majority of the work in the said paper had been his.
The “Tableau des terrains qui composent l’écorce du globe” was Brongniart’s last major work and was published in 1829, and this work had featured the interpretation and ordered classification of rocks. Unlike his earlier works though, this publication received much less recognition and had minimal influence on the development of geology. Despite this, however, his stratigraphical works had given a great principal model which had served as the pattern of other more productive geological works in the years 1810-1840 in Europe. Because of his works, geology in nineteenth century Europe had been changed and his contributions are still credited even to this day.

Alexander Bain

There are many names that are worth taking note of in the world of philosophy and one name that deserves to be known is Alexander Bain—a Scottish educationalist and philosopher. He is also known as one of the most innovative and prominent minds in different fields that include logic, education reform, psychology, linguistics and moral philosophy. Alexander Bain was also the founder of Mind and this is worth taking note of since it was the very first journal of its kind to focus on psychology as well as analytical philosophy. He was also the man responsible for the application of the scientific method to the study of psychology. At the University of Aberdeen, Alexander Bain also held the inaugural Regius Chair position in Logic. He was also a professor in English Literature and Moral Philosophy. There were a couple of times where he was elected as the Lord Rector at the School.

His Early Life

It was in Aberdeen, Scotland where Alexander Bain was born to Margaret Paul and George Bain on June 11, 1818. George, his father, was a veteran soldier and a weaver. In fact, Alexander Bain left school at 11; he got a weaver job and this is why in the rex philosophorum, he was described as a “Weevir.” Alexander Bain also attended lectures held in the Aberdeen Public Library and the Mechanic’s Institute of Aberdeen. In 1839, he enrolled in Marischal College and met Professor John Cruickshank, a professor of mathematics who was of great influence to Alexander Bain. He also met Thomas Clark, a professor of chemistry, and William Knight who taught Natural Philosophy.
Nearing the completion of his degree as an undergraduate, he associated with the Westminster Review as a contributor and this was where his article The Electrotype and the Daguerrotype was published. At around the same time, his connection to John Stuart Mill was founded and developed into a friendship that lasted a lifetime. During his college studies and career, he stood out for his prowess in mental philosophy, physics and mathematics. He was so good that he even graduated with the highest honors.
Alexander Bain substituted for the regular professor in 1841 and taught Moral Philosophy. The professor then was ill and unable to continue with his academic work. Bain was on the job for three terms while continuing with his article contributions to the Westminster while helping John Stuart Mill make revisions on his Systems of Logic manuscript (1842).

His Academic Career

The year 1845 was a big year for Alexander Bain since he was given the job as a Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Glasgow. In 1846, he quit the position and made more time for writing since he preferred a wider field. Two years later, he decided to make the move to London and took under Sir Chadwick at the Board of Health. His work was focused on becoming a noted affiliate of the intellectual circle along with John Stuart Mill and George Grote. He also devoted a lot of his time and work to social reform.
Several years after when he was 37 years old, he had the chance to publish a major work of his which was The Senses and Intellect. In 1859, he followed it up with another major work that was entitled The Emotions and the Will. Alexander Bain was a very busy man. At the University of London he worked as an examiner in Moral Philosophy and Logic from 1857-61 and 1864-69. It was also there that he became an instructor for Indian Civil Services and Moral Science Examinations.
He later moved to a new position at the University of Aberdeen which as new at the time. It was still newly formed since it was the time that the Scottish Universities Commission amalgamated two universities—Marischal College and King’s College, Aberdeen.
Alexander Bain was a man ahead of his time and it was one of his greatest triumphs that he got people to pay more attention to the study of linguistics. In 1959, the subjects of English and logic were not really a focus in Aberdeen so he put a lot of his time and effort into rectifying any deficiencies. He not only raised the educational standards in North Scotland in the University of Abderdeen, but he also worked to establish the School of Philosophy. His work at Aberdeen also influenced the way grammar and composition was taught in the entire United Kingdom.
His philosophical works were also used in the classroom but they came in condensed versions since his original works were much too long and bulky to be used in the classroom. In fact, in 1870 he published a work entitled Logic which was written specifically to be used in classrooms. The book was loosely based on some works by John Stuart Mill.

Social Reform

Bain had a special interest in development and social justice. In fact, he actively took part in social and political movements in his time. After he retired from the Chair of Logic post, he was twice elected as the Lord Rector at the University of Aberdeen. He worked hard to advocate reform especially when it came to how sciences were taught. He also supported the trust to include modern languages in the school curriculum. He was also known to be a strong supporter of student’s rights.
After Alexander Bain gave up his post as a professor and Chair at the University of Aberdeen, he was succeeded by one of his most brilliant students, William Minto. However, retirement did not stop him from working on the subjects and issues which he was passionate for. He still worked on papers on books about teaching English and rhetoric.
The last years of his life were spent in Aberdeen and in private. He was married twice but never had any children. Alexander Bain died on September 18, 1903 and his last request was that no stone should be put on his grave and his books were to serve as his monuments.

Alessandro Volta

Alessandro Volta was a physicist, chemist and a pioneer of electrical science.
He:
• Invented in 1800 the first electrical battery – which people called the “voltaic pile.” With this invention, scientists could produce steady flows of electric current, unleashing a wave of new discoveries and technologies.
• Was the first person to isolate methane.
• Discovered methane mixed with air could be exploded using an electric spark.
• Discovered “contact electricity” resulting from contact between different metals.
• Recognized two types of electric conduction.
• Wrote the first electromotive series. This showed, from highest to lowest, the voltages that metals produce in a voltaic pile. (We now talk of standard electrode potentials, meaning roughly the same thing.)
• Discovered that electric potential in a capacitor is directly proportional to electric charge.
In recognition of Alessandro Volta’s contributions to electrical science, the unit of electric potential is called the volt.

 

Early Life and Education

Alessandro Volta was born in Como, Lombardy, Italy, on February 18, 1745. His family was part of the nobility, but not wealthy. Until the age of four, he showed no signs of talking, and his family feared he was not very intelligent or possibly dumb. Fortunately, their fears were misplaced.
When he was seven, his father died leaving unpaid debts. The young Alessandro Volta was educated at home by his uncle until he was twelve years old. He then started studies at a Jesuit boarding school. The Jesuit school charged no fees, but pressurized him to become a priest. His family did not want this, and withdrew him from the school after four years. Volta then studied at the Benzi Seminary until reaching eighteen years of age.
Volta’s family wanted him to become a lawyer. Volta had his own ideas! He was interested in the world around him; he wanted to be a scientist.
Although as a child he had been slow to speak Italian, Volta now seemed to have a special talent for languages. Before he left school, he had learned Latin, French, English and German. His language talents helped him in later life, when he traveled around Europe, discussing his work with scientists in Europe’s centers of science.
Aged 18, Volta was bold enough to begin an exchange of letters about electricity with two leading physicists: Jean-Antoine Nollet in Paris, and Giambatista Beccaria in Turin. Beccaria did not like some of Volta’s ideas and encouraged him to learn more by doing his experiments for himself.
When he wrote his first dissertation, Volta addressed it and dedicated it to Beccaria.

“You must be ready to give up even the most attractive ideas when experiment shows them to be wrong.”

Alessandro Volta

Volta’s Career Timeline Before the Battery

Amateur Scientist, Inventor, Teacher and Physics Professor

1765 – Volta had reached 20 years of age. His wealthy friend Giulio Cesare Gattoni had built a physics laboratory in his home. For several years he kindly allowed Volta to do experiments in this laboratory.
1765 – Volta wrote his first scientific paper to Beccaria about static electricity generated by rubbing different substances together – i.e. triboelectricity.
1769 – Volta published a dissertation titled On the Attractive Force of the Electric Fire, and on the Phenomena Dependent On It, which he sent to Beccaria. He discussed his ideas on the causes of electrical attraction and repulsion and compared these with gravity. He set out his position that, like gravity, static electricity involved action at a distance. The main scientists influencing his thinking were Isaac Newton, Roger Boscovich, Benjamin Franklin and Giambatista Beccaria himself.
1771 – Volta read Joseph Priestley’s 1767 review of scientific research in electricity. He learned that some discoveries he had recently made had already been made by others.
1774 – Volta began work overseeing schools in Como. He said that teaching in Como’s classrooms should be modernized. He wanted the children to spend more time learning science and modern languages.
1775 – Volta began teaching experimental physics in Como’s public grammar school, where he worked until 1778.
1775 – Volta wrote a letter to Joseph Priestley. He explained how he had invented a device which was a source of static electricity: the electricity could be transferred to other objects. We call this device the electrophorus. Volta wanted to know if the device was a new invention. Priestly told him Johann Wilcke had invented such a device in 1762, but Volta had invented it independently. Priestley encouraged Volta to keep up his interesting research work.
1776 – Aged 31, Volta was the first person to isolate methane gas. He discovered that a methane-air mixture could be exploded in a closed container with an electric spark. In the future, an electrically started chemical reaction like this would be the basis of the internal combustion engine.
1776 – Volta suggested that the sparking apparatus he used to explode methane could also be used to send an electric signal along a wire from Como to the city of Milan.

“What is it possible to do well, in physics particularly, if things are not reduced to degrees and measures?”

Alessandro Volta, 1792

 

1777 – Volta invented a much better eudiometer than any that had gone before. A eudiometer tests how much oxygen is present in air to determine how good for breathing it is. Volta’s eudiometer was superior to others because it used hydrogen as the gas reacting with oxygen, giving a clean, reliable reaction. The reaction was also cleanly started using an electric spark. The eudiometer worked on the basis that the decrease in volume of hydrogen after sparking was proportional to the amount of oxygen present in air.
1777 – Volta set out on a scientific journey to Switzerland and France. He met other scientists and showed them his innovations in electrical equipment. He also wanted to travel so that his name would become better known outside Italy.
1778 – Volta was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Pavia, about 55 miles (85 km) from Como, a position he would hold for over 40 years.
1778 – Volta discovered that the electrical potential (we now often call this the voltage) in a capacitor is directly proportional to electrical charge.
1781 to 1782 – Volta traveled around most of Europe’s major scientific centers, including the French Academy in Paris, demonstrating his electrical equipment and inventions to eminent people such as Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin. Volta was beginning to become well-known outside Italy.
1782 – Volta wrote about the condenser he had constructed (today we would call it a capacitor) to collect and store electric charge, and how he had used it to study a variety of electrical phenomena.
1788 – Volta built increasingly sensitive electroscopes to detect and measure the effects of electric charge.
1790 – Volta carried out experiments on the behavior of gases. He found an accurate value for air’s increasing volume with rising temperature.
1791 – Recognizing that he had become one of Europe’s foremost electrical scientists, Volta was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
1794 – At the age of 50, Volta was awarded the Royal Society’s top prize – the Copley Medal – for his contributions to scientific understanding of electricity.

Invention of the Electric Battery

A Feud over Frogs’ Legs led to the Battery

Volta did not set out to invent the battery. His experiments in this area were actually performed to show the claims of another scientist were wrong. That scientist was another Italian, Luigi Galvani.

Jumping Frogs’ Legs

Galvani discovered that contact between frog leg nerves and different metals caused the legs to move. We now understand that what he had done was create an electric cell. The frog legs acted as the electrolyte and also moved when stimulated by the flow of electricity.

Galvani was a professor of anatomy. In the late 1780s he noticed that a spark of static electricity carried by a metal scalpel touching the nerves of a dead frog while the legs lay on metal caused the legs to move. This was an amazing discovery: animal movement was based on electricity in some way.
In 1817, this led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. In this novel, a creature made from a monstrous mixture of body parts from dead people is brought to life by Doctor Frankenstein using electricity from a lightning storm.
In 1791, Galvani announced his discovery of animal electricity. He believed that animals generated electricity in their bodies and that a fluid within animals’ nerves carried electricity to muscles, causing movement. He believed that electricity from an outside source released a flow of electrical fluid from the nerves, causing the muscles to jump.
He also believed that animals such as electric eels could build up extra amounts of this fluid and use it to deliver electric shocks.
Galvani concluded that animal electricity was similar to static electricity, but it was different and was a unique property of living things.

Enter Volta

Volta studied Galvani’s phenomenon.
In 1792, Volta said that the “animal” part of Galvani’s animal electricity was not needed. Animals merely responded to normal electricity. There was no difference between animal electricity and electricity.
Volta performed various experiments on frogs’ legs. He found the key to getting them to move was contact with two different metals. Contact with pieces of the same metal did nothing.
Then, moving away from frogs’ legs, in 1794, Volta did experiments to measure the electrical effect of bringing different pairs of metals into contact. He listed the metals in order of what he called their electromotive force.

Volta’s List Of Conductors, Highest Electromotive Force First

Zinc
Lead
Tin
Iron
Copper
Silver
Gold
Graphite
Manganese Ore

This was the first time anyone had listed electrode potentials. It was the first electrochemical series.
In modern language, we would say that the farther apart the substances on this list are, the greater the voltage they will produce when brought into contact.
By 1797, Volta had completely proved his “contact theory” of electricity.
He now knew that the key to producing what today we call a voltage was two metals connected by by something moist, like frogs’ legs. The moist connection between the metals did NOT have to be an animal. Connecting the metals by placing them in a cup of dilute acid was a very effective way of producing electricity.
He formally split electrical conductors into those of the first kind: these were metals, graphite and pure charcoal; and the second kind: these were substances we would now call electrolytes, such as salt water or dilute acids. An electric current would result when a circuit was built using two conductors of the first kind combined with one of the second kind.

An illustration from Volta’s 1800 paper. Pieces of silver (A) and zinc (Z) connected by metal strips and sitting in cups of dilute acid will produce electricity. This could be tested by putting a finger in each of the end cups. You would get an electric shock. Unlike Galvani’s version, no animals need be hurt in this production, except for the human tester who gets a mild electric shock.

Alternatively, connecting the metals with paper soaked in dilute acid or salt water also worked.
Volta said that in Galvani’s work, the frogs’ legs had served two functions:

• They conducted electricity as conductors of the second kind.
• They acted as a very sensitive electroscope. (An electroscope is a device used to detect electricity.)

Diagram from Volta’s 1800 paper. The pile is made using discs of silver (A) and zinc (Z) linked in series with card soaked in salt water. The positive and negative polarities of this battery are as shown. Adding more pairs of discs increases the voltage of the battery.

Volta found that by connecting up lots of pairs of metals connected with moist card, he could produce significant electrical currents.
And so the electrical battery was born.
Volta used alternating zinc and silver discs linked by card or cloth soaked in salt water.
In 1800, Volta described his results in a letter to Joseph Banks, at the Royal Society in London.
Banks showed the letter to other scientists, and arranged for Volta’s description of his discovery to be read out at a meeting of the Society and published.

“I continue coupling a plate of silver with one of zinc, and always in the same order… and place between each of these couples a moistened disk. I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.”

Alessandro Volta, 1800

 

Volta’s Battery Unleashed a Wave of New Scientific Discoveries

The battery that Volta had invented gave chemists a very powerful new method to study substances.
The beauty of Volta’s device was that almost anyone could make one – silver and copper coins were available to many people, as were other metals such as iron, tin and zinc.
Within weeks of Volta’s invention of the battery, William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle built and used a battery to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Within just six years, Humphry Davy had built a powerful battery. With it, he isolated new chemical elements, and deduced that chemical bonds were electrical in nature.

Volta demonstrates his battery to Napoleon Bonoparte in 1801. Napoleon was very impressed by Volta’s work, giving him the aristocratic title of Count.

Davy’s discoveries of the new elements barium, calcium, lithium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and strontium, were all made possible by Volta’s invention of the battery.
By 1820, courtesy of Volta’s batteries, Hans Christian Oersted was investigating the relationship between electricity and magnetism.
By 1821, Michael Faraday had produced an electric motor.
Volta’s battery produced a steady source of electric current for the first time ever. All electrical devices depend on electric current. Without Volta’s invention, there could be no modern technology. Volta’s battery was an absolutely crucial invention in the development of our technology based civilization.

The End

In 1819, at the age of 74, Volta decided it was time to hang up his capacitors, his voltaic piles, his electrophorus, and his administrative work at the university. He retired to a country house close to his home town of Como, where he could spend more time with his wife, Maria Teresa. They had three sons, Zanino, Faminio and Luigi.
Volta lived in Como until his death, aged 82, on March 5, 1827.
In 1881, scientists decided that the unit of electric potential would be called the volt to recognize Volta’s great contributions to electrical science.

Aldo Leopold

In a world where life perishes and modernization gets in the way of natural habitats of different species, wildlife conservation is a key factor in keeping Nature’s gift of life in balance. Aldo Leopold is considered by some as the father of wildlife conservation. He happened to be one of the leaders of what is now known as the American wilderness movement and throughout his life, he had played many roles ranging from being a wildlife manager, naturalist, hunter, poet, visionary, and philosopher to name a few. He is credited for the development of the first national wilderness area in the country back in 1924.

Early Life and Personal Background

A native of Burlington, Iowa, Rand Aldo Leopold was born on January 11, 1887. He was the son of a top manufacturer of fine walnut desks named Carl Leopold, and had been the grandson of a landscape architect who had received education in Germany. He had a comfortable life, and he grew up living in a mansion situated atop a limestone buff which overlooked the Mississippi River. Down this mansion and across the railroad tracks lay a big river, and this river served as a pathway for migrating geese and ducks. For a young boy, this was like a wildlife wonderland waiting to be discovered.

According to his brother named Frederic, Aldo didn’t talk much but was a bright student. He also had a love for reading especially about wood lore. He also knew a great deal about what the animals ate, what chases animals, and which animals ate which other animals. His love for the great outdoors is said to have been something he got from their father.
During early mornings in the fall, he and his father would explore the marsh and wait for the ducks. During the off-season, marsh exploration was still something they did, and during these times, Aldo learned from his father that it was not right to hunt during nesting season—this was a realization instilled upon him long before there were federal laws established about prohibiting hunting during this season.

Education

Gifford Pinchot who was a forester and politician donated money to the Yale University to start one of the country’s first forestry schools. After Aldo heard of this development, he decided to take forestry as his vocation. Before being accepted at Yale, he attended the Lawrenceville School which was a preparatory college situated in New Jersey.
Aldo attended the Burlington High School and his principal there wrote a letter referring Aldo to the Lawrenceville School. It was in January 1904 when he arrived in Lawrenceville School, shortly before turning seventeen. He showed his love for the great outdoors despite Lawrenceville’s mostly rural setup and he was frequently mapping the place while he made notes on the wildlife he saw. He studied there for a year, and was later on accepted to Yale. Since the Yale Forest School only gave graduate degrees, he first had to enroll for the preparatory forest courses in Sheffield Scientific School.
He graduated from Yale with his Master’s Degree in Forestry in June 1909. Afterwards, he joined the United States Forest Service where he was then assigned to the New Mexico and Arizona areas.

Career

Initially, he was one of the forest assistants at the Apache National Forest which is in the Arizona territory. In 1911, Aldo was transferred to northern New Mexico, specifically to the Carson National Forest. This phase of his career kept him in the same location until 1924 and it included developing the very first management plan for the Grand Canyon. He also wrote the Forest Service’s very first fish and game handbook. That time was also when he proposed the Gila Wilderness Area which is the country’s first national wilderness area recorded in the Forest Service system. This proposal was submitted in 1922, and completion of the handbook was in 1923.
He had a fruitful career related to forestry, and in 1924 he was transferred to the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory located in Madison, Wisconsin. There he became an associate director. Nine years later he became the Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department which is known as the first professorship for wildlife management. In 1935, he assisted the founding of the Wilderness Society and in the same year he was able to acquire “The Shack” which was the setting for most of his sketches. In autumn of that same year he studied forestry and wildlife management in Germany since he had a Carl Schurz fellowship.
A few years later in 1939, he became the chairman of the new Department of Wildlife Management which was at the University of Wisconsin. In 1943, he had been appointed by a governor to have a 6-year term in the Wisconsin Conservation Commission which was largely focused on deer policy. A year before his death in 1948, he was still able to submit the revised manuscript titled “Great Possessions” and it was accepted in1948.

Personal Life and Death

Aldo lived with his wife and children in a two-storey home which was near the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His children also became naturalists and teachers. Today, the home of the Leopolds which was occupied by Aldo and his family stands as one of the landmarks of Madison. They purchased this 80-acre area in 1935 and this worn out farm was where Aldo practiced some of his knowledge in building a disrupted landscape. The place was also known as the sand counties, and “The Shack” was an old chicken coop that served as their family laboratory which was also open to friends and other graduate students.
He was able to publish over 300 articles about the wilderness in his lifetime. In 1948, soon after his last work called the “A Sand County Almanac,” he was struck by heart attack and died on April 21. During the incident, he had been fighting a grassfire on one of his neighbor’s farms. He was later on buried in Burlington, Iowa, his hometown.

Albrecht von Haller

One of the greatest and most influental biologists of the 18th century, Swiss scientst Albrecht von Haller is often credited as the “father of experimental physiology”. His contributions ranged across anatomy, physiology, embryology, botany and poetry.

Early Life and Career:

Born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1708, Albrecht von Haller, as a child prodigy, wrote several metrical translations from Ovid, Horace and Virgil when he was hardly fifteen. He studied the form and function of one organ after the other, launching anatomy as an experimental science, and also enforcing dynamic rules to the study of physiology.
Haller analyzed the irritability of muscle and the sensibility of nerves, studying circulation time and the automatic action of the heart. He gave the first to give detailed explanation of respiration.
His publicaton “Elementa Physialogiae Carports Hamani” (Elements of Physiology, 1757-66) proved to be one of the influential works on the subject. Haller consistently broadened the field of anatomy, relating it to physiology by experimentation, and implemented dynamic rules to complex physiological problems.
The approach of Albrecht von Haller was precise, analytical and objective. He was the first person to discover that only nerves produce sensation and only those parts of the body connected to the nervous system can undergo a sensation. Probably his most notable contribution was the formulation of the method of physiological research.

Alberto Santos-Dumont

One of the most prominent names when it comes to aviation, Alberto Santos-Dumont was a well-known Brazilian aviator. He captured the attention of Americans and Europeans with his airship flights. Alberto was the first to have achieved flight of a powered airplane and this was with the No. 14-bis in Europe.

Early Life

Born on the 20th of July in 1873, Alberto was the heir of a rich family who produced coffee. His birthplace was in the village of Cabangu in the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Today, this farm still exists and is called the Santos-Dumont farm. He was the 6th out of eight children, and while he was still young, he was already taught how to drive the locomotive and steam tractors which were used in the family plantation in Sao Paulo. He had always been fascinated by machinery and in the autobiography he wrote, he had mentioned how he had dreamt of flying.

His father was a French-born engineer and made use of the best possible labor-saving machines and inventions on his property. Because of this, Alberto’s father amassed a huge fortune and was also sometimes called the “coffee king of Brazil.” Alberto initially received education from private teachers as well as his parents which was what was normal for wealthy families back then. For a time, he studied at the “Colégio Culto à Ciência” which was in Campinas.
Alberto’s father endured being a paraplegic after falling from his horse in 1981. When Alberto turned 18, his father decided to send him to Paris while the rest of the family moved to Europe after the father’s accident. This was where he had the exposure to physics, chemistry, mechanics, electricity, and astronomy. Shortly after their arrival, Alberto bought his own automobile—indicative of his love for transportation and machines.

Experiments and Inventions

Alberto described himself as the very first “sportsman of the air.” The very first flying experience he had was with an experienced balloon pilot whom he had hired to learn from their experience. Not long after, he began piloting balloons by himself and even went as far as designing his very own balloons. He flew his very first balloon called “Bresil” which had the capacity of 113 cubic meters and was able to lift a ballast which weighed 114.4 lbs. This first flight took place on the fourth of July in 1898.
After a number of balloon flights, Alberto decided to design steerable balloons, which were called dirigibles. Instead of just drifting where the wind took it, dirigibles can be propelled to which direction the pilot wished to take it. A previous experiment about dirigibles had already been successfully flown back in 1884 by Arthur Krebs and Charles Renard, but they lacked funding to continue with the exercise.
From the years 1898 up to 1905, Alberto was able to build and fly a total of 11 dirigibles. Since air traffic control still wasn’t an issue back then, he was known to float at rooftop levels around Paris and would even land near an outdoor café where he fancied having lunch.

Competition and Other Dirigibles

Alberto decided to build a bigger dirigible in order to win the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize and this was what led to the development of dirigible No. 5. On one of his attempts, particularly on the 8th of August 1901, his dirigible unfortunately lost gas and began to descend without being able to clear the area—it therefore hit the Trocadero Hotel roof and a loud explosion was heard in the surrounding area. Alberto survived this explosion and was helped to safety by the Paris fire brigade.
Despite this far from satisfactory attempt at winning the prize, he was still able to snag the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize on October 19 of the same year with dirigible No. 6. The prize was awarded for the first flight which took off from Parc Saint Cloud and then circumnavigated after reaching the Eiffel Tower within just 30 minutes.
There had even been a controversy surrounding the flight, right after he was able to complete it. It was about a certain last minute rule about the precise timing of the dirigible’s flight. After several days of validation and discussion by the committee for the prize, Alberto was still awarded the prize and the prize money which totaled 125,000 francs. He donated 75,000 francs to the poor people in Paris.
Because of his feats in aviation, Alberto became known all over the world and was associated with the rich and the elite. He won several other prizes for his airships and was even invited by none other than then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt himself to the White House. His fame even made him some sort of celebrity, and Parisians called him “le petit Santos” in an affectionate manner. Even his fashion statement was mimicked by people—including the signature Panama hat he wore. He is still considered as one of the most prominent “folk heroes” in Brazil today.

Heavier Aircrafts

After his evident success in lighter airships, he then focused his attention to giving flight to heavier vehicles and come 1905, he was able to finish his first design for a fixed-wing aircraft along with another design for a helicopter. It was on the 23rd of October in 1906 when he was first able to realize his dream of flying a heavier aircraft called the 14-bis. He flew it in front of an audience and the flight had a distance of 60 meters while being 15 feet high in the air.
This was a very well-documented event and it was also the first flight to have been verified by the Aéro-Club de France. Another record set by Alberto was being able to fly a distance of 220 meters in just 21.5 seconds, and this was credited by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
He created several other aircrafts, and along with those inventions, he popularized the newly invented wristwatch since he needed to measure the flight time intervals. He popularized its use by men back in the 20th century, and Cartier came up with the brilliant solution of having a leather-strapped wristwatch which would allow Alberto to check the time while keeping both hands on the plane controls. Since then, Alberto never took flight without his Cartier watch.
There were mysteries surrounding his death – there were several angles which included suicide and murder. He was buried in Rio De Janeiro and his own house in Petrópolis, Brazil is currently a museum.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein rewrote the laws of nature.
He completely changed the way we understand the behavior of things as basic as light, gravity, and time.
Although scientists today are comfortable with Einstein’s ideas, in his time, they were completely revolutionary. Most people did not even begin to understand them.
If you’re new to science, you’ll probably find that some of his ideas take time to get used to!

Quick Guide to Albert Einstein’s Scientific Achievements

Albert Einstein:
• provided powerful confirmation that atoms and molecules actually exist, through his analysis of Brownian motion.
• demonstrated the photoelectric effect, establishing that light can behave as both a wave and a particle. Light particles (he called them quanta) with the correct amount of energy can eject electrons from metals.
• proved that everyone, whatever speed we move at, measures the speed of light to be 300 million meters per second in a vacuum. This led to the strange new reality that time passes more slowly for people traveling at very high speeds compared with people moving more slowly.
• discovered the hugely important and iconic equation, E = mc², which showed that energy and matter can be converted into one another.
• rewrote the law of gravitation, which had been unchallenged since Isaac Newton published it in 1687. In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein showed that matter causes space to curve, which produces gravity.
• showed that the path of light follows the gravitational curve of space.
• showed that time passes more slowly when gravity becomes very strong.
• became the 20th century’s most famous scientist, when the strange predictions he made in his General Theory of Relativity were verified by scientific observations.
• spent his later years trying find equations to unite quantum physics with general relativity. This was an incredibly hard task for him to set himself. To date, it has still not been achieved.

His Beginnings

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He was not talkative in his childhood, and until the age of three, he didn’t talk much. He spent his teenage years in Munich, where his family had an electric equipment business. As a teenager, he was interested in nature and showed a high level of ability in mathematics and physics.
Einstein loved to be creative and innovative. He loathed the uncreative spirit in his school at Munich. His family’s business failed when he was aged 15, and they moved to Milan, Italy. Aged 16, he moved to Switzerland, where he finished high school.
In 1896, he began to study for a degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He didn’t like the teaching methods there, so he bunked classes to carry out experiments in the physics laboratory or play his violin. With the help of his classmate’s notes, he passed his exams; he graduated in 1900.
Einstein was not considered a good student by his teachers, and they refused to recommend him for further employment.

Einstein 1903

While studying at the Polytechnic, Einstein had learned about one of the biggest problems then baffling physicists. This was how to marry together Isaac Newton’s laws of motion with James Clerk Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.
In 1902, he obtained the post of an examiner in the Swiss Federal patent office, and, in 1903, he wedded his classmate Mileva Maric. He had two sons with her but they later divorced. After some years Einstein married Elsa Loewenthal.

Early Scientific Publications

Einstein continued to work in the patent office, during which time he made most of his greatest scientific breakthroughs. The University of Zurich awarded him a Ph.D. in 1905 for his thesis “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions”.

1905: The Year of Miracles

In 1905, the same year as he submitted his doctoral thesis, Albert Einstein published four immensely important scientific papers dealing with his analysis of: Brownian Motion; the equivalence of mass and energy; the photoelectric effect; and special relativity. Each of these papers on their own was a huge contribution to science. To publish four such papers in one year was considered to be almost miraculous. Einstein was just 26 years old.

Mass Energy Equivalence

Einstein gave birth in 1905 to what has become the world’s most famous equation:

E = mc²

The equation says that mass (m) can be converted to energy (E). A little mass can make a lot of energy, because mass is multiplied by c² where c is the speed of light, a very large number.

A small amount of mass can make a large amount of energy. Conversion of mass in atomic nuclei to energy is the principle behind nuclear weapons, and explains the sun’s source of energy.

The Photoelectric Effect

If you shine light on metal, the metal may release some of its electrons. Einstein said that light is made up of individual ‘particles’ of energy, which he called quanta. When these quanta hit the metal, they give their energy to electrons, giving the electrons enough energy to escape from the metal.
Einstein showed that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave. The energy each ‘particle’ of light carries is proportional to the frequency of the light waves.

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity

In Einstein’s third paper of 1905, he returned to the big problem he had heard about at university – how to resolve Newton’s laws of motion with Maxwell’s equations of light. His approach was the ‘thought experiment’. He imagined how the world would look if he could travel at the speed of light.
He realized that the laws of physics are the same everywhere and that, regardless of what you did – whether you moved quickly toward a ray of light as it approached you, or quickly away from the ray of light – you would always see the light ray to be moving at the same speed – the speed of light!
This is not obvious, because it’s not how things work in everyday life, where, for example, if you move towards a child approaching you on a bike he will reach you sooner than if you move away from him. With light, it doesn’t matter whether you move towards or away from the light, it will take the same amount of time to reach you. This isn’t an easy thing to understand, so don’t worry about it if you don’t! (Unless you’re at university studying physics.) Every experiment ever done to test special relativity has confirmed what Einstein said.
If the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their speed, then it follows that some other strange things must be true. In fact, it turns out that time, length, and mass actually depend on the speed we are moving at. The nearer the speed of light we are moving at, the bigger differences we seen in these quantities compared with someone moving more slowly. For example, time passes more and more slowly as we move faster and faster.

Einstein Becomes Known to the Wider Physics Community

As people read Einstein’s papers and argued about their significance, his work gradually gained acceptance, and his reputation as a powerful new intellect in the world of physics grew. In 1908 he began lecturing at the University of Bern, and the following year resigned from the Patent Office. In 1911 he became a professor of physics at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, before returning to Zurich in 1912 to a professorship there.
Working on the general theory of relativity, in 1911 he made his first predictions of how our Sun’s powerful gravity would bend the path of light coming from other stars as it traveled past the Sun.

The General Theory of Relativity – Einstein Becomes Famous Worldwide

A very rough approximation: the earth’s mass curves space. The moon’s speed keeps it rolling around the curve rather than falling to Earth. If you are on Earth and wish to leave, you need to climb out of the gravity well

Einstein published his general theory of relativity paper in 1915, showing, for example, how gravity distorts space and time. Light is deflected by powerful gravity, not because of its mass (light has no mass) but because gravity has curved the space that the light travels through.
In 1919, a British expedition set out to the West African island of Principe to observe an eclipse of the Sun. Under these conditions, they could test whether light from far away stars passing close to the Sun was deflected by the Sun. And they found that it was! Just as Einstein had said, space truly was curved.
On November 7, 1919, the London Times’ headline read:
Revolution in science – New theory of the Universe – Newtonian ideas overthrown.

Honors and More Honors

Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. People are sometimes surprised to learn that the award was not made for his work in special or general relativity, but for his overall services to theoretical physics and one of the works from his miracle year specifically – the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect in 1905.
The Royal Society of London awarded him its prestigious Copely Medal in 1925 for his theory of relativity and contributions to the quantum theory. The Franklin Institute awarded him with the Franklin medal in 1935 for his work on relativity and the photo-electric effect.
Universities around the world competed with one another to award him honorary doctorates, and the press wrote more about him than any other scientist – Einstein became a celebrity.

Einstein’s Later Years

Einstein’s made his greatest discoveries when he was a relatively young man.
In his later years, he continued with science, but made no further groundbreaking discoveries. He became interested in politics and the state of the world.
Einstein had been born German and a Jew. He died an American citizen in 1955. Einstein was in America when Hitler came to power. He decided it would be a bad idea to return to Germany, and renounced his German citizenship. Einstein did not practice Judaism, but strongly identified with the Jewish people persecuted by the Nazi Party, favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine with the rights of Arabs protected.
It was Einstein’s wish that people should be respected for their humanity and not for their country of origin or religion. Expressing his cynicism for nationalistic pride, he once said:
‘If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.’

Albert Abraham Michelson

The nineteenth century physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson, was the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics.
He became famous for his establishment of the speed of light as a fundamental constant and other spectroscopic and meteorological investigations. He had a memorable career that included teaching and research positions at the Naval Academy, the Case School of Applied Science, Clark University, and the University of Chicago.

Life:

Born to a Jewish family on December 19, 1852 Strzelno, Provinz Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Michelson was brought to America when he was only two years old.
He was brought up in the rough mining towns of Murphy’s Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a trader. He completed his high school education in San Francisco and later in 1869 he went to Annapolis as an appointee of President U.S. Grant.

During his four years at the Naval Academy, Michelson did extremely well in optics, heat and climatology as well as drawing. He graduated in 1873. Two years later, he was appointed an instructor in physics and chemistry. After resigning from the post in 1880, he spent two years studying in Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the Collège de France and École Polytechnique in Paris. He developed a great interest in science and the problem of measuring the speed of light in particular.
He was then employed as a professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science at Cleveland, Ohio. Later in 1889 he moved to Clark University as professor of physics, and after three years he was invited to head the department of physics at the new University of Chicago, a position which he held until 1931.
In 1899, he married Edna Stanton and they had one son and three daughters.

Achievements:

During his stay at Annapolis, he carried out his first experiments on the speed of light. With his simple device, made up essentially of two plane mirrors, one fixed and one revolving at the rate of about 130 turns per second from which light was to be reflected, Michelson was successful in obtaining a measure closer than any that had been obtained to the presently accepted figure — 186,508 miles per second.
Michelson executed his most successful experiment at Cleveland in cooperation with the chemist Edward W. Morley. Light waves were considered as ripples of the aether which occupied all space. If a light source were moving through the aether, the pace of the light would be different for each direction in which it was discharged. In the Michelson-Morley experiment two beams of light, passed out and reflected back at right angles to each other, took equal amount of time. Thus the concept of stationary ether had to be discarded.
Michelson is also known for the measurement of the diameter of super-giant star, Betelgeuse, using astronomical interferometer with his colleague Francis G. Pease.
In 1907, Michelson was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid”. During the same year he also won the Copley Medal, the Henry Draper Medal in 1916, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1923. Moreover, a crater on the Moon is also named after him.

Death:

Michelson died on May 9, 1931, while he was working on a more refined measurement of the velocity of light in Pasadena, California.

Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a man before his time.  This brilliant English code-breaker helped turn the tide of World War II, and was arguably one of the fathers of the entire field of computer science.
He was a Renaissance man who studied and made contributions to the philosophical study of the nature of intelligence, to biology and to physics.   His biography reveals that he was also the victim of anti-homosexual attitudes and laws, losing his security clearance and resorting to suicide two years later.


Background:
Born right before the start of WW I, and parked in England by his Indian civil service parents,Turing studied quantum mechanics, a very new field, probability, and logic theory at King’s College, Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow.  His paper-based theoretical model for the Turing Machine, an automatic computational design, proof of the theorem that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems is called the Turing Machine, and contributed significantly to computational theory.  He continued his studies at Princeton in algebra and number theory.

Enigma:
In the years leading up to open hostilities in World War II, he was secretly working in government crypto-analysis.  When England entered the war, he took on the full-time task of deconstructing the operation of the German Enigma machine.  This cipher generator of immense complexityallowed the Germans to create apparentlyunbreakable codes.  Turing embraced this cryptographychallenge, creating a decryption machine specifically aimed at Enigma, named the Bombe.  Enigma’s unraveling was a several year process that achieved success in 1942.  Information gleaned from decoded German messages permitted the Allies to anticipate U-Boat deployment, thereby winning the battle of the Atlantic.

Diversification:
In cooperative US/UK cryptographic efforts in the latter years of the war, Turing was lead consultant.  At war’s end, he joined the National Physical Laboratory to try to invent a digital computer, or thinking machine.To that end, he studied neural nets and tried to define artificial intelligence.  Disappointed by the reception his ideas received at the NPL, he moved to Manchester University, in England’s gritty industrial region.  His department unveiled the first practical mathematical computer in 1949.
One triumph followed another.  In 1950, hedeveloped Turing Test for machine intelligence assessment: In brief, if an observer cannot tell whether they are interacting with human or machine, the machine is intelligent.
As always a polymath, he also did work on non-linear growth in biological systems, and physics, that promised to bear fruit.

Scandal:
However, a bio of Alan Turing is not complete without addressing the facts of his personal life.  According to 1952 legal charges, he became involved with what was termed ‘a bit of rough trade’.  In other words, he had a short term sexual liaison with a laborer who was down on his luck financially.  The scandal of this British national intellectual treasure, a Fellow of the Royal Society, innovator in a whole new discipline of study, and the savior of the navy, being revealed as a homosexual, was immense.  The humiliating trial ruined his career and his life.  He was stripped of his security clearance, because at that time it was believed that a homosexual was vulnerable to blackmailand enemy (read Communist) subversion.
This punishment effectively cut off from the work that he had pioneered.  He poisoned himself in 1954, leaving behind much intriguing unfinished work in physics and biology.