Benjamin Cabrera

Filipino scientist Benjamin Cabrera is one person that really deserves a pat on the back because not only is he a physician but he is also known for his works on public health and medical parasitology. He is a scientist that never seems to run out of ideas and uses his brain to bring advances solutions to problems. He has had a lot of achievements and while most of the have been significant, there are some works of his that just really stand out and are still significant and in use up until today. He boasts more than a hundred scientific publications to his name. His specialities were focused on public health and parasitology and this is where he did a lot of work and introduced a lot of breakthroughs in. It is important to note that he made his discoveries and breakthroughs during a time when technology wasn’t yet too advanced and yet he managed and excelled and made some of the most ground-breaking breakthroughs and innovations in his chosen field and speciality.

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His Life

Dr. Benjamin Cabrera was born on March 18, 1920 and enrolled in the University of the Philippines in 1945 when he was about 25. This was where and when he got his medical degree after which he decided to pursue further studies in the US and enrolled at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was where he studied for and earned a Master’s Degree in Public Health. He majored in Public Health and Parasitology. He finished with this schooling in 1950.

Dr. Cabrera was quite prolific and published more than a hundred studies that on medical parasitology and public health. Not only did he write and publish his findings but he also made some very important innovations that changed the way diseases from mosquitoes were treated. He also made headway into developing treatments for parasite-infested agricultural soil. Seeing as his native country relied heavily in agriculture, his findings and innovations brought a lot of benefits to his homeland and alleviate a lot of their problems with land and parasites.

11 years after he graduated with his Master’s Degree, he and a certain Lee M. Howard conducted the very first study that focused on simian malaria. The study was conducted in the Philippines where they found that 8.6% of the animals they tested had malaria. The study was admittedly somewhat limited but it did show significant findings and suggested that the cases of simian malaria weren’t really all that significant and didn’t pose a real threat to the Filipino population.

His works were all significant but one stood out above the rest and it was about the study he conducted on filariasis which is an infectious and parasitic tropical disease that is brought about by infestations of thread-like nematode worms that belong to the Filariodea family. Dr, Cabrera’s work on this tropical disease is what garnered him the Philippine Legion of Honor which was a Presidential Award back in the year 1996. In his study, he came to know the life cycles and the epidemiology of these parasites and that was how he figured out how to come up with drug treatments that were necessary in keeping people safe from the disease. He also figured out ways in which people can stay free of the mosquitoes that spread the parasites that lead to the disease. The country was in danger of an epidemic from the mosquitoes and the disease they carried and his study was the one thing that saved them all from disaster. His work didn’t just garner him a prestigious award but it also saved a lot of his country-men from developing the disease so it as indeed an award that he truly deserved.

Aside from his work with filariasis, Dr. Cabrera also invested in some time in figuring out a way to control ascariasis which is a disease humans get by way of parasitic roundworms. He conducted some studies and with the results, he was able to come up with a model that allowed people to reduce the hazards brought about by the helminths that were found on the soil. His study also touched on how the parasites could be reduced and until today, the measures he introduced are still in place.

Significance of his Works

Seeing as the Philippines is both a tropical and agricultural country, it just makes sense that his works and innovations were considered innovative and ground-breaking. They really changed the way people lived and the quality of their lives. His findings gave the people and government a fighting chance to defend themselves against the many parasites that plagues them.

Of course, his studies and breakthroughs weren’t just important to the Filipino people since they were used in other tropical and agricultural countries as well. Many countries in the tropics made use of his findings to protect their own citizens from the same diseases and infestations. It just goes to show how significant his studies and breakthroughs were since they are still considered important up until today. Of course, there are other breakthroughs since then but these breakthroughs were all based on his studies.

Dr. Cabrera was a man before his time and because his work is proof of his forward-thinking ways. There is no telling want could have happened if Dr. Cabrera didn’t make the findings that he did when he did because the health of a whole country would have been at stake. At the time of his death, he was remembered as one of the most important and prolific Filipino scientists of his time and is being honoured in his alma mater up until today. These days, it is not rare for his works to be cited in more modern studies because he was very thorough. Any modern vaccines and measures taken against the parasites and diseases he studied before look back to his own works. Truly, this is a world-class scientist that did his best to bring honour not just to family but also to his country.

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter may be a familiar name in children’s literature, but what a lot do not know is that she is a notable woman of science as well. Her stories about Peter Rabbit and a lot of other fictional characters she created served as an outlet in her frustration to break into a career in science.

Early Life and Education

She was born Helen Beatrix Potter on July 28, 1866 in London as the older of the two children of Rupert Potter and Helen Leech. Rupert Potter was a lawyer and the Potters lived a comfortable life. Her parents mingled with politicians, writers and artists, and enjoyed drawing and painting immensely. This is why Beatrix has always possessed a keen eye for details which showed in the art she created from her younger years to adulthood.

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Beatrix Potter may have come from a well-off family, but she did not grow up to be like the other wealthy ladies of the same age. She spent most of her time at home under the care of a governess while her brother Bertram was sent to some of the finest schools known. When he was home however, they spent a lot of time together playing with creatures that they found around their property and in the woods where they explored. They would often bring these creatures home and draw or paint them. Their collection included a hedgehog, some rabbits, bats and mice, as well as a few insects. She grew up to be a very shy girl and would rarely share her thoughts with anyone. She wrote in a secret diary using a code that only she can understand.

Beatrix’s interest in natural science was spurned when her uncle who was a chemist gave her the permission to use his microscope and other equipment. She would study and inspect plants, insects and other animals, and she would draw each of them in great detail.

Notable Contributions

It was in South Kensington Museum that Beatrix Potter further developed a keen interest in a lot of natural sciences. She was eager to learn more about botany, mycology and entomology, among others.

What fascinated Beatrix the most were fungi. She started a detailed study of them when she turned 21. Her drawings showed in great detail how lichens, a common type of fungi found on rocks and trees, were actually not one but two different organisms that lived together. Her studies showed that this was actually a union between an alga and a fungus. She was the first Briton to recognize this fact and was also among the first few in the world who did. This was how she formulated her conclusion of symbiosis. Through symbiosis, two different organisms are able to live together with each of them benefitting the other in some way. In this case, the fungus provided a haven for the alga. It was responsible for gathering the water and minerals that they needed to complete the process of photosynthesis. In turn, the alga is the one that converted the sunlight into nourishment which is basically the photosynthesis process.

It took her 13 long years to complete her research and finalize her paper on the things she discovered. Of course, her theory was not given the support that it needed and botanists she showed her work to refused to even discuss the drawings she made. The only time she was given the permission to present her work to The Linnaean Society of British Scientists was when her uncle interceded for her. She submitted her study “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae” but was not allowed to read it herself because only men were invited to their meetings. The organization at that time was not yet open to the thought of accepting women in their midst.

Other Achievements

It was very frustrating for Beatrix Potter not to be accepted in the science circles. Because of this she started to concentrate on her drawing and writing instead. She had always been a self-taught artist and used different media in her work. She had the ability to illustrate using pencils, oils, watercolor, pen and ink. She also followed her father’s footsteps in developing her talent in photography.

She became famous for the characters that she told stories about in the children’s books she wrote and illustrated with Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle Duck being among some of the most well-loved. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902 when she was 36 years old. All in all, she had 28 books published, all of which are still read by children all over the world. Over 150 million copies of her books have been sold with all of them translated into 35 different languages.

As her books gained popularity, she channeled all the profit towards a large property called Hill Top. Found in England’s Lake District, this was her first farm. She enjoyed the quiet and solitude that the property brought her which allowed her to work more efficiently. Aside from being a farmer and landowner, she also became recognized as a sheep breeder. She never lost her love for nature and became an advocate of traditional farming and the preservation of the wild environment surrounding the area.

This was where she found William Heelis, a handsome solicitor who was 5 years younger. He became Beatrix’s legal adviser and eventually, Beatrix’s husband of 30 years. The marriage did not bear them any children.

She continued buying patch after patch of land as she continued to enjoy living surrounded by nature. The British Natural Trust eventually became recipient to her donation of 4,000 acres of land which includes 15 farms and cottages. By doing so, she hoped to further pursue her dream to provide land for the creatures that she grew to love.

Beatrix Potter died of bronchitis in 1943, leaving behind a legacy across different fields of study. Upon her death, the secret diary she kept as a child was also released, setting forth a story of frustration for not being given the chance to pursue her passion for science early on.

Barbara McClintock

Barbara McClintock made a great name as the most distinguished cytogeneticist in the field of science. Her breakthrough in the 1940s and ’50s of mobile genetic elements, or “jumping genes,” won her the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. Among her other honors are the National Medal of Science by Richard Nixon (1971), the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal by the Genetics Society of America (all in 1981) and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1982).

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Early Life, Education and Career Achievements:

Barbara McClintock was born on June 16, 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was the third child of Sara Handy McClintock and Thomas Henry McClintock, a physician. After completing her high school education in New York City, she enrolled at Cornell University in 1919 and from this institution received the B.Sc degree in 1923, the M.A. in 1925, and the Ph.D. in 1927.

When McClintock began her career, scientists were just becoming aware of the relationship between heredity and events they could actually examine in cells under the microscope. She served as a graduate assistant in the Department of Botany for three years from 1924-27 and in 1927, following completion of her graduate studies, was employed as an Instructor, a post she held until 1931. She was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship in 1931 and spent two years as a Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving the Guggenheimn Fellowship in 1933, she spent a year abroad at Freiburg. She returned to the States and to the Department of Plant Breeding at Cornell the following year. McClintock left Cornell in 1936 to take the position of an Assistant Professorship in the Department of Botany at the University of Missouri. In 1941 she became a part of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and began a happy and fruitful association which continued for the rest of her life.

In 1950, Dr. McClintock first reported in a scientific journal that genetic information could transpose from one chromosome to another. Many scientists during that time assumed that this unconventional view of genes was unusual to the corn plant and was not universally applicable to all organisms. They were of the view that genes generally were held in place in the chromosome like a necklace of beads.

The importance of her research was not realized until the 1960s, when Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod discovered controlling elements in bacteria similar to those McClintock found in corn and in 1983 McClintok received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of mobile genetic elements. Her work has been of high value assisting in the understanding of human disease. “Jumping genes” help explain how bacteria are able to build up resistance to an antibiotic and there is some indication that jumping genes are involved in the alteration of normal cells to cancerous cells.

Death:

McClintock died in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992.

B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner, more commonly known as B. F. Skinner, was an American psychologist, philosopher, scientist and poet. An important advocate of behaviourism, Skinner is known for inventing the operant conditioning chamber, and for his own experimental analysis of behavior. He is widely considered as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.

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Early Life and Education:

Born in 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, Skinner’s father was a lawyer. Skinner went to Hamilton College, New York, as he wanted to become a writer. After getting his B.A. in English literature in 1926, Skinner attended Harvard University, where he later received a PhD in 1931. After becoming disenchanted with his literary skills, and inspired by John B. Watson’s Behaviorism, he acquired a degree in psychology, which led to the development of his influential operant behaviorism.

Contributions and Achievements:

B. F. Skinner was a prominent researcher in Harvard University until 1936. He accepted teaching positions at the University of Minnesota and Indiana University. In 1948, he returned to Hardvard as a tenured professor.

Skinner devised the operant conditioning chamber. He introduced his own philosophy of science known as “radical behaviorism”. His brand of experimental research psychology is highly regarded, and deals with the experimental analysis of behavior. Skinner’s analysis of human behavior enhanced his work “Verbal Behavior”, which has lately seen a boost in interest experimentally and in applied settings. Skinner’s science also made other advances in education through the work of his students and colleagues, particulary in special education. He was a prolific author who wrote about 21 books and 180 articles.

Skinner worked out the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He also figured out the cumulative recorder to assess the rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement. Although Skinner’s work reach back toward the founding of educational psychology, and forward into its modern era, they arguably never attained their true potential.

Later Life and Death:

B. F. Skinner died of leukemia on August 18, 1990. He was 86 years old.

Avicenna

Also popularly known as ‘Avicenna’, Ibn Sina was indeed a true polymath with his contributions ranging from medicine, psychology and pharmacology to geology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and philosophy. He was also a poet and an Islamic scholar and theologian. His most important contribution to medical science was his famous book al-Qanun, known as the “Canon” in the West. This book is an immense encyclopedia of medicine including over a million words and like most Arabic books is richly divided and subdivided. It comprises of the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources.

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Early Life:

This great scientist was born in around 980 A.D in the village of Afshana, near Bukhara which is also his mother’s hometown. His father, Abdullah an advocate of the Ismaili sect, was from Balkh which is now a part of Afghanistan. Ibn Sina received his early eduction in his home town and by the age of ten he became a Quran Hafiz. He had exceptional intellectual skills which enabled him to overtake his teachers at the age of fourteen. During the next few years he devoted himself to Muslim Jurisprudence, Philosophy and Natural Science and studied Logic, Euclid, and the Almeagest.

Ibn Sina was an extremely religious man. When he was still young, Ibn Sina was highly baffled by the work of Aristotle on Metaphysics so much so that he used to leave all the work and pray to God to guide him. Finally after reading a manual by a famous philosopher al-Farabi, he found the solutions to his difficulties.

Contributions and Achievements:

At the age of sixteen he dedicated all his efforts to learn medicine and by the time he was eighteen gained the status of a reputed physician. During this time he was also lucky in curing Nooh Ibn Mansoor, the King of Bukhhara, of an illness in which all the renowned physicians had given up hope. On this great effort, the King wished to reward him, but the young physician only acquired consent to use his exclusively stocked library of the Samanids.

On his father’s death, when Ibn Sina was twenty-two years old, he left Bukhara and moved to Jurjan near Caspian Sea where he lectured on logic and astronomy. Here he also met his famous contemporary Abu Raihan al-Biruni. Later he travelled to Rai and then to Hamadan, where he wrote his famous book Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb. Here he also cured Shams al-Daulah, the King of Hamadan, for severe colic.

From Hamadan, he moved to Isfahn, where he finished many of his epic writings. Nevertheless, he continued to travel and the too much mental exertion as well as political chaos spoilt his health. The last ten or twelve years of his life, he spent in the service of Abu Ja’far ‘Ala Addaula, whom he accompanied as physician and general literary and scientific consultant. He died during June 1037 A.D and was buried in Hamedan, Iran.

Besides his monumental writings, Ibn Sina also contributed to mathematics, physics, music and other fields. He explained the concept and application of the “casting out of nines”. He made several astronomical observations, and devised a means similar to the venire, to enhance the accuracy of instrumental readings. In physics, his contribution comprised the study of different forms of energy, heat, light and mechanical, and such concepts as force, vacuum and infinity.

Artturi Virtanen

A Nobel Prize Laureate, Artturi Virtanen was recognized in 1945 for his inventions and research in agricultural as well as nutrition chemistry. He is more particularly known for the AIV fodder which is important for the prolonged storage of grain especially during long winter months.

Early Life and Educational Background

Artturi Virtanen was born Artturi Ilmari Virtanen to his parents Serafiina Isotalo and Kaarlo Virtanen on the 15th of January in 1895. His hometown was in Helsinki, Finland, and he received his education from the Classical Lyceum located at Viipuri, Finland.

Upon finishing his basic education, he furthered his knowledge by taking biology, physics, and chemistry courses at the University of Helsinki. There, he was able to obtain his M. Sc. in 1916 and three years later, his D. Sc for organic chemistry. He then had the opportunity to work as a chemist in the Laboratory of Valio under the Finnish Cooperative Dairies’ Association which was a major manufacturer of dairy products. In 1920, he became the director of this laboratory.

Artturi didn’t stop at these academic achievements, and felt that he wasn’t fully qualified yet. He left Valio the same year he became its director and pursued his interests in zoology and botany. He studied physical chemistry in the University of Münster and soil chemistry at the ETH in Zurich. A year later, he went to Stockholm to study bacteriology.

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From 1923-1924, he studied more about enzymology, and this was also when his interest focused on biochemistry. During this time, he was under the tutelage of Hans von Euler-Chelpin, a 1929 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Career

Having undertaken several academic supplementation to his knowledge, he became one of the lecturers at University of Helsinki in 1924. He was popular for his lectures which revolved around the chemistry of life. At the same time, he was also working in the Butter Export Association’s laboratory which later on became the university’s laboratory as well. Virtanen founded the Institute for Biochemistry in 1930 and a year later he became Helsinki University of Technology’s professor of biochemistry. In 1939, he also held a professorship at the University of Helsinki.

It was in 1924 when Virtanen was able to establish how cozymase was indispensable for propionic and lactic acid fermentation processes along with sugar phosphorylation. Because of his work and observations, it was made clear how different fermentation processes had similar initial stages especially where sugar decomposition was concerned. Along with his research partners, Virtanen pushed through with fermentation experiments with special attention given on how bacterial fermentation occurred.

An important note in their study was dioxyaceton’s fermentation to glycerol as well as glyceric acid while exposed to phosphates by the effect that Coli bacteria has was the very first sugar fermentation process they were able to process from beginning up to the end, and this was done in 1929. While working on this, they also paid attention to how enzymes formed adaptively.

Because of his studies, Virtanen was able to identify how phosphorylation is the very first step in different fermentation processes and reactions, and this is also the foundation of what is known as the Embden-Meyerhof pathway which is the most common kind of glycolysis or conversion of glucose into pyruvate.

After this successful phase in his research work, Virtanen’s interest shifted to the nitrogen fixation that occurs in leguminous nodules. Several further investigations on nitrogen fixation were done in the laboratory and soon enough, he was able to prove the importance of leghaemoglobin or the red pigment abundant in some leguminous plants. He was able to note that it was responsible for the nitrogen fixation observed in these plants. He continued to study vitamin formation in plants along with how plants utilized organic nitrogen compounds to become their main nitrogen source.

By the end of the 1940’s, he had been able to isolate a large number of amino acids from plant sources. Along with these amino acids, Virtanen was also able to identify and isolate a number of organic sulphur compounds from fodder plants as well as different vegetables. These compounds were thought to have an important role in the nutrition of both man and animals.

Because of the discoveries that Virtanen had, he was also able to improve butter preservation methods. He was able to achieve this by adding some disodium phosphate in order to prevent the occurrence of acidic hydrolysis. This method of preserving butter was used in Finland for many decades. During 1925 up to 1932, Virtanen’s research work led to the successful invention of a method for preserving fodder which is now known as the AIV Fodder. This method was patented in 1932, and the idea behind it was that it acted as a kind of silage which improved how green fodder was stored—this was especially important especially during long winter months.

The process of using the AIV Fodder made use of diluting sulfuric or hydrochloric acid on grain which had just been stored. The increased acidity is what stops harmful fermentation from happening, and it has no adverse side effects on the nutritional value that the fodder has as well as to the animals who will be consuming it. It was because of this invention that Virtanen received his Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent his latter years studying how to develop partially synthetic feed for cattle.

Personal Life and Latter Years

He was married in 1920 to the botanist Lilja Moisio and they had two sons. Virtanen bought a farm somewhere near Helsinki and this was where he tested some of the results he was able to come up with in the laboratory. He was a man who enjoyed the simple life and he never even had a car of his own despite his many achievements.

Virtanen remained in the Institute for Biochemistry which he founded until his death came in 1973 caused by a hip fracture and ensuing complications. As an honor to his legacy, the Virtanen lunar crater and asteroid 1449 Virtanen were both named after him.

Arthur Eddington

Sir Arthur Eddington was an eminent English astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He is noted for his grounbreaking research work in astrophysics. Being the first person to investigate the motion, internal structure and evolution of stars, Eddington is widely considered to be one of the greatest astronomers of all time.

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Early Life and Education:

Born on December 28, 1882 in Kendal, Cumbria, Arthur Eddington’s father was the head of a local school. Eddington was a bright student and he won an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating three years later, he accepted a teaching position, and after a few months, Eddington became the Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

Contributions and Achievements:

Eddington visited Malta in 1909 to find out the longitude of the geodetic station of the place. He also visited Brazil as the head of the eclipse expedition. He became the Plumian Professor of Astronomy in Cambridge in 1913, where he taught for about 31 years.

He published his first book, “Stellar Movements and the structure of the Universe”, in 1914. It laid the groundwork for scientific exposition. “The Internal Construction of the Stars”, another work by Eddington was published in 1926, which still remains one of the best-selling books about astronomy. His “Mathematical Theory of Relativity” was the earliest work in English language that explained the mathematical details of Einstein’s theory of gravitation.

Eddington discovered in 1926 that the inward gravitational pressure of a star must maintain the outward radiation and gas pressure to remain in equilibrium. He also demonstrated that there was an upper limit on the mass of a star. Eddington discovered mass-luminosity relationship, which implies that the the size of a star is directly proportional to its luminosity, making the mass of a star to be decided upon its intrinsic brightness.

In “Fundamental Theory”, which was published after his death, Eddington introduced his calculations of many of the constant of nature, particularly the recession velocity constant of the external galaxies, the ratio of the gravitational force to the electrical force between a proton and an electron, and the number of particles in the universe.

Later Life and Death:

Arthur Eddington became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1906, and eight years later, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914. He was knighted in 1938.

Eddington died in Cambridge, England on November 22, 1944 after an unsuccessful surgical operation. Eddington Memorial Scholarship and Eddington Medal were established after his death, in his honor.