Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta is unique. He is the only scientist we have to thank for discovering precisely zero…

Brahmagupta was an Ancient Indian astronomer and mathematician, who lived from 597 AD to 668 AD. He was born in the city of Bhinmal in Northwest India. His father, whose name was Jisnugupta, was an astrologer.

Although Brahmagupta thought of himself as an astronomer who did some mathematics, he is now mainly remembered for his contributions to mathematics.

Many of his important discoveries were written as poetry rather than as mathematical equations! Nevertheless, truth is truth, regardless of how it may be written.

Quick Guide to Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta:

• was the director of the astronomical observatory of Ujjain, the center of Ancient Indian mathematical astronomy.

• wrote four books about astronomy and mathematics, the most famous of which is Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta ( Brahma’s Correct System of Astronomy, or The Opening of the Universe.)

• wrote that solving mathematical problems was something he did for pleasure.

• was the first person in history to see zero as a number with its own properties.

• defined zero as the number you get when you subtract a number from itself. Identifying zero as a number whose properties needed to be defined was vital for the future of mathematics and science.

• said that zero divided by any other number is zero.

• said that dividing zero by zero produces zero. (Although, this seems reasonable, Brahmagupta actually got this one wrong. Mathematicians have now shown that zero divided by zero is undefined – it has no meaning. There really is no answer to zero divided by zero.)

• was the first person to discover the formula for solving quadratic equations.

• wrote that pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, could usually be taken to be 3, but if accuracy were needed, then the square-root of 10 (this equals 3.162…) should be used. This is about 0.66 percent higher than the true value of pi.

• indicated that Earth was nearer the moon than the sun

• incorrectly said that Earth did not spin and that Earth did not orbit the sun. This, however, may have been for reasons of self-preservation. Opposing the Brahmins’ religious myths of the time would have been dangerous.

• produced a formula to find the area of any four-sided shape whose corners touch the inside of a circle. This actually simplifies to Heron’s formula for triangles.

• wrote that the length of a year was 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 9 seconds.

• calculated that Earth was a sphere of circumference around 36,000 km (22,500 miles).

Brahmagupta established rules for working with positive and negative numbers, such as:

• adding two negative numbers together always results in a negative number.

• subtracting a negative number from a positive number is the same as adding the two numbers.

• multiplying two negative numbers together is the same as multiplying two positive numbers.

• dividing a positive number by a negative, or a negative number by a positive results in a negative number.

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Why is Zero Important?

Although it may seem obvious to us now that zero is a number, and obvious that we can produce it by subtracting a number from itself, and that dividing zero by another non-zero number gives an answer of zero, these results are not actually obvious.

The brilliant mathematicians of Ancient Greece, so far ahead of their time in many ways, had not been able to make this breakthrough. Neither had anyone else, until Brahmagupta came along!

It was a huge conceptual leap to see that zero was a number in its own right. Once this leap had been made, mathematics and science could make progress that would have been impossible otherwise.

Brahmagupta might smile at the fact that, without his concept of zero, we would not have the science of thermodynamics; and without thermodynamics we could not even begin to understand the universe – the same universe that Brahmagupta, who viewed himself chiefly as an astronomer, tried so hard to understand over 1300 years ago.

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French philosopher and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential mathematical writers of all time. He was also an expert in many fields, including various languages, and a well-versed religious philosopher.

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Early Life and Contributions:

Born at Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, Pascal’s father was Étienne Pascal, a counselor of the king who later became the president of the Court of Aids at Clermont. His mother died in 1626. The Pascal family settled in Paris in 1631.

At a tender age of 12, Pascal began participating in the meetings of a mathematical academy. He learned different languages from his father, Latin and Greek in particular, but Pascal Sr. didn’t teach him mathematics. This increased the curiosity of young Pascal, who went on to experiment with geometrical figures, even formulating his own names for standard geometrical terms.

Pascal started working on a book, Essay on Conics. The book was published in 1640, and its highlight was the “mystic hexagram”, a theorem related to the collinearity of intersections of lines. It also had hundreds of propositions on conic sections, and influences from Apollonius and his successors. The book gained publicity not only because of the writer’s young age, 16, but also due to its unique accounts about tangency, and several other qualities.

Mathematical and Scientific Achievements:

Pascal’s contributions to hydrostatics, particularly his experimentations with the barometer and his theoretical work on the equilibrium of fluids, were made public one year after his death. The development of probability theory is often considered to be the most significant contributions in the history of mathematics. The Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids by Pascal is an extension to Simon Stevin’s research on the hydrostatic paradox and explains what may be termed as the final law of hydrostatics; the famous Pascal’s principle. Pascal is known for his theories of liquids and gases and their interrelation, and also his work regarding the relationship between the dynamics of hydrodynamics and rigid bodies.

Post-Port Royal, perhaps Pascal’s most important to mathematics dealt with the issuess related to the cycloid; a curve, with the area of which the best mathematicians of the day were occupied. Pascal introduced most of his theorems without proof, thus issuing a challenge to his contemporaries, for instance Christopher Wren, John Wallis and Christian Huygens, who happily accepted and figured them out. He also put forward his own solutions, “Amos Dettonville”, an assumed alias. Later, many mathematicians often referred to him by this alias.

The mathematical theory of probability became popular when a communication between Pascal and Pierre de Fermat disclosed that both had concluded to almost similar results. Pascal designed a treatise on the subject, which was also published after his death, though only a few parts of it have survived. Pascal was always concise and sharp when it came to mathematics.

Death:

Blaise Pascal died of tuberculosis on 19 August, 1662 at a young age of 39.

Bill Nye

“The Science Guy.” William Sanford Nye who goes by his more popular moniker Bill Nye is a science educator who began his career in science as one of Boeing’s mechanical engineers. He is most popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy where he hosts the Disney/PBS science show for children. Bill Nye is also a comedian, actor, scientist, and a writer. He has gained popularity for his many appearances in today’s media as a fun to watch science educator.

Early Life and Education

Bill Nye was born in November 27, 1955. His mother was a codebreaker named Jacqueline, and his World War II veteran father was named Edwin Darby. His father had experienced being a prisoner of Japanese war camps, and this made him an enthusiast of sundials. This later on had a significant influence on one of Bill’s scientific works.

For a year, Bill attended Lafayette Elementary as well as Alice Deal Junior High in Washington. He graduated in 1973 after being on partial scholarship at Sidwell Friends School. Four years later, he was one of the students of Carl Sagan, a science popularizer and communicator, when he took his mechanical engineering courses at Cornwell University.

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Bill Nye’s career began in Seattle when he worked for Boeing where he then began to be part of training films. Also, he was able to develop a resonance suppressor making use of hydraulic pressure which is still a part of today’s Boeing 747. A few years later, Bill worked in the aeronautics industry as a consultant. In an interview for the St. Petersburg Times in 1999, he once told that he applied to become one of the astronauts of NASA every once in a while but was never accepted.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

His name is always associated with “The Science Guy,” which is the character in a children’s science show. His professional career in entertainment began when he had to correct the pronunciation of “Almost Live’s” show host for the word “gigawatt” and said it as “jigowatt.” The host of the local sketch comedy program of Seattle then replied “Who do you think you are—Bill Nye the Science Guy?” which then earned him this moniker.

From 1991-1993, he appeared in the segments of Back to the Future: The Animated Series as Dr. Emmett Brown’s assistant who would demonstrate the science activities as Christopher Lloyd who played Dr. Emmet Brown was explaining. Because of the segment’s popularity, Bill Nye had a show of his very own called “Bill Nye the Science Guy” which was aired from 1993-1998. While the shows were aimed to catch the attention of younger audiences, it gained viewership from the adults as well and were even used as effective educational aids for science classes.

The Science Guy has written several books, and Bill himself wrote and produced his show which was filmed entirely in Seattle. His image as a jocose science educator made it possible for him to reach out to more audiences while conveying factual scientific principles and elements. Whenever he portrayed The Science Guy, he wore a lab coat in a light blue color with a bow tie. This image has been parodied by several sources, which gained The Science Guy even more recognition.

Edutainment Career and Scientific Work

Even after his work as The Science Guy, Bill still had an interest for science education by means of entertainment. In the 1998 Disney Movie called “The Principal Takes a Holiday,” Bill made a hovercraft while demonstrating scientific applications in a novel classroom setup. From 2000-2002, he was the technical expert of BattleBots, and in 2004-2005, he hosted the award winning series of The Science Channel called 100 Greatest Discoveries. Apart from those, he also hosted the 8-part series of Discovery Channel called Greatest Inventions with Bill Nye. For older audiences, he had the 13-episode series from PBS KCTS-TV which was called The Eyes of Nye.

In the more recent years, he appeared in an acting role portraying himself in Stargate Atlantis’ fifth episode called “Brain Storm” where fellow astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson also appeared. In 2012, he made appearances in “Here Comes the Summer” by Palmdale and in The Dr. Oz Show. In 2011, he had appearance on CNN to talk about the nuclear issues being observed in Japan caused by the tsunamis in the area.

His scientific works include the development of a kind of small sundial which was included in the missions of the Mars Exploration Rover. It was called the MarsDial and hit had small panels of different colors which made color calibration as well as timekeeping possible. For 5 years since 2005, Bill was The Planetary Society’s vice president, and they advocated space research especially on other planets—Mars in particular. In 2006, Bill was one of those who supported Pluto’s reclassification from being a planet to a dwarf planet.

In 2010, he became the face of Oakland, California’s Chabot Space & Science Center where his Climate Lab featured the Clean Energy Space Station where he was the commander. The exhibit aims to show people the impact of climate change, and opens the eyes of the viewers on what can be done regarding energy consumption and how smart innovations can change the state of the world.

Bill Nye holds several U.S. patents for some of his works which include ballet pointe shoes and a kind of educational magnifying glass which can be created by filling a plastic bag with some water among others. Apart from his career as a host and television personality, he served as a university professor at Cornell University.

While he is a member of several academic and scientific organizations, he is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry which is a non-profit educational and scientific organization which promotes scientific inquiry as well as investigation while using reason to examine various claims.

He has lived in Los Angeles since 2006, and married Blair Tindall on February of the same year. He has received an honorary doctorate award from the Johns Hopkins University, and an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Willamette University among other awards. He is a self-proclaimed lover of swing, and has been spotted having fun in dancing venues in the Los Angeles area.

Bernardo Houssay

A 1947 Nobel Prize winner, Bernardo Alberto Houssay is known for his research on the role that pituitary hormones play in sugar metabolism. He was the first Latin American and Argentine to receive the Nobel Prize.

Early Life and Childhood

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 10, 1887. He was the son of a lawyer by the name of Albert Houssay who also worked at the National College of Buenos Aires teaching literature. His other half was Clara Laffont. Houssay’s parents were both originally from France and migrated to Argentina just before he was born.

Houssay showed a lot of potential early on, gaining top marks and showing academic excellence at a very young age. He completed his secondary education in Colegio Britanico and was merely 14 years old when he attended the University of Buenos Aires. It took him only three years to graduate from Pharmacy School under the same university where he graduated with highest honors. He went on to attend medical school while working as a pharmacy assistant to somehow help cover some of the costs of his education. He eventually earned his degree in medicine at the age of 23.

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Houssay married a chemist named Maria Angelica Catan in 1920. They had three children together; the eldest was Alberto Bernardo, the second was Hector Emilio Jose, and the youngest was Raul Horacio. All three of them followed their parents’ footsteps and earned their own medical degrees.

Notable Contributions

It was in medical school that endocrinology sparked Houssay’s interest. He was especially fascinated with the different hormones that the endocrine glands secreted and specially paid great attention to how the pituitary gland worked. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Studies of the Physiological Action of the Pituitary Extracts”, which earned him a special award.

In 1921, three individuals discovered the importance of insulin for a body that suffers diabetes. They were Charles Best and Frederick Banting who were Canadians and John Macleod, a Scottish physiologist. Their research and the results they gained from it became part of the foundation of Houssay’s own studies.

Houssay started to concentrate on two things from 1923 to 1937: the interaction between insulin and the pancreas and the interaction between the pituitary gland and its secretions. At that time, the pituitary gland was still known as the hypophysis. A major breakthrough came when he discovered the role that the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland played in carbohydrate metabolism. He also discovered that insulin’s interaction with other hormones also has a great impact on the oxidation of sugar, and not just its absence or presence. Hormones that insulin interacts with include somatotropin and prolactin, both of which are produced within the pituitary gland. These discoveries led him to his Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine which he shared with Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori. The two discovered the role that glucose played in carbohydrate metabolism, a study that was greatly related to Houssay’s work.

Other Works and Achievements

Around 1910, Bernardo Houssay went back to the University of Buenos Aires as a professor, this time under the School of Veterinary Medicine. He left for some time when he became Alvear Hospital’s chief physician. He was also assigned as laboratory director of the experimental National Public Health Laboratories under the National Department of Hygiene. He went back to the university as a Professor of Physiology in 1919. During his stay, he founded a new research center for the university, the Institute of Physiology. While Houssay was in charge, he had around 135 graduate students from all over the world working on different projects for the institute, which further widened Houssay’s influence in his chosen field of specialization.

Juan Peron became President of Argentina in 1943. There were a lot of uprisings during that period and Houssay was among those who petitioned for the Argentine government to be changed into a democratic one. Because of this, Peron dismissed Houssay, along with around 150 other academics from the university. This was not a reason for Houssay to lose his resolve however, and continued with his research. Houssay’s dismissal was considered void shortly after and in 1944, he founded the Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine. He was then asked to retire in 1946.

Although endocrinology was his specialization, Houssay worked in several other fields as well. He took interest in the digestive, nervous, circulatory and respiratory systems and did his share in understanding these other processes.

Houssay received a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1947 for his research on the role that pituitary hormones play in sugar metabolism. He then travelled to the United States and became University of California’s Hitchcock Professor of Physiology.

In 1950, Houssay shared his insights and knowledge through a book entitled Physiologie Humaine. Because of its huge success, an English version was published and sold all over the world.

Looking at Houssay’s entire career, he was in part an important factor that held Argentina’s scientific growth together. He was responsible for founding and assisting in building almost all of the major scientific organizations all over the country and was assigned as a head in most of them at one point. He also earned honorary doctorates granted to him by over 25 universities all over the world, not to mention being invited and elected as a member of different prestigious scientific societies in France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and the United States. All these were ways by which the world’s scientific community honored the importance of Houssay’s discoveries and the impact that these discoveries had in the further growth and advancement of science.

Houssay also trained a lot of people who eventually made their mark on the sciences as well. One of them was Miguel Rolando Covian who later on became the Father of Brazilian Neurophysiology. He also mentored Eduardo Braun Menendez, a noted Argentine physiologist.

Houssay died on September 21, 1971 in Buenos Aires. He was 84 years old and was survived by his three sons. His wife, Maria Angelica Catan, died a decade ahead of him.

Benjamin Thompson

Sir Benjamin Thompson, count von Rumford was an American-born British physicist and inventor who was a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. One of the leading figures in the history of thermodynamics, his work rejected the popular belief that heat is a liquid form of matter and laid down the modern theory that heat is a form of motion. Benjamin Thompson also performed services for military and drew designs for warships.

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Personal Life:

Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, Benjamin Thompson never received formal education. Instead, he joined a store as an apprentice. At nineteen, he married a rich widow named Sarah Walker and lived in Rumford. When the Revolutionary War started, he sided with the British. He also spied for the British Army.

After the war, he went to England, and later to Germany in 1783. In recognition of his civilian and military services, he was given the title of a Count.

He returned to England in 1799. He was made a member of the Royal Society due to his extraordinary scientific accomplishments. Thompson died near Paris in 1814. He was 61 years old.

Contributions and Achievements:

While serving for the military in 1798, Thompson noted that during the process of boring cannons, the metal turned red hot and even boiled the water used to keep it cool. The old explanation was that, if the metal is broken to pieces, the caloric is liberated from the metal. This gives rise to heat.

Thompson rejected this because, even when filing is not made, heat is emitted by simple friction. Actually, he demonstrated that the amount of heat involved in boring was so much that if it were poured back, it could melt the metal. Otherwise stated, more caloric could be achieved from the metal than it could possibly bear.

Thompson’s view was that the heat was due to the mechanical motion of the borer. He showed that the quantity of heat was equal to the motional energy of the borer. He made it clear that heat is a form of energy. Thompson even assessed how much heat was produced by a given amount of motion. He was the first scientist to measure the mechanical equivalent of heat (MEH).

Thompson’s figure of 5.57 Joules was considered too high; only 50 years the first logical value of 4.16 Joules was measured. He also examined the insulating properties of several objects such as wool, fur and feathers.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin lived his life in the spirit of a renaissance man: he was deeply interested in the world around him, and he excelled in several widely differing fields of human endeavor.

He had a profound effect on our understanding of electricity and shaped the language we use when we talk about it, even today.

Here we shall concentrate on his life as a scientist and an inventor, only briefly touching on his other achievements.

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Benjamin Franklin’s Early Life and Education

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Josiah, was a tallow chandler, candle maker, and soap boiler who had moved to the American Colonies from England. His mother, Abiah Folger looked after the home and was the mother of ten children, including Benjamin, who was the eighth child in the family. She was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Benjamin only had two years of formal education, which finished when he was ten years old, because his family could not afford the fees. His informal education then accelerated, because his mind was too restless to stop learning.

He had to work in his father’s business, but in his spare time he read everything he could, about every subject under the sun.

When he was twelve, Benjamin began working as an apprentice in a printing shop owned by one of his elder brothers, James. When his brother started printing a newspaper, Benjamin wrote to it in the name of “Mrs. Dogood” in defense of freedom of speech.

Aged 17, Benjamin Franklin left for Philadelphia, escaping from his apprenticeship, which was against the law. He was, however, free. After a few months in Philadelphia he left for London, England, where he learned more about printing, before returning to Philadelphia at the age of 20 to continue his career in printing.

Benjamin Franklin – Publisher

By the age of just 23, Franklin had become the publisher of the Philadelphia Gazette.

Aged 27, in December 1732, the first editions of the publication that would make him a wealthy man rolled off his printing press: Poor Richard’s Almanac, which Franklin would publish annually for the next 25 years. It was a general interest pamphlet offering interest and amusement for its readers, including: ‘how to’ guides, practical tips, stories, astrological forecasts, and brain teasers.

With each year he published the Almanac, his financial position grew more secure, and Franklin’s fertile mind began looking for new outlets.

He continued reading as much as he could, increasing his knowledge of science and technology until he was in a position to begin innovating himself.

Benjamin Franklin’s Science, Innovation, and Inventions

Franklin was an original thinker, scientist and inventor. Dating his inventions is not always easy, because Franklin did not patent what he invented. He said that anyone who wanted to make money from his ideas was free to do so. This means the dates given to his inventions are approximate.

Bifocal Spectacles

Franklin wore spectacles for most of his life.

He felt limited by the spectacles of his day, because a lens that was good for reading blurred his vision when he looked up. Working as a printer, this could be infuriating.

He defeated this problem in about 1739, aged 33, with his invention of split-lens bifocal spectacles. Each lens now had two focusing distances. Looking through the bottom part of the lens was good for reading, while looking through the upper part offered good vision at a greater distance.

The Franklin Stove

As Franklin read more about science, he learned more about heat transfer. He looked at the design of a typical stove and concluded that it was inefficient. Much more heat was lost up the flue than necessary.

He decided to redesign the stove using the concept of heat-exchange/heat recovery.

The idea was that hot gases which would normally simply go up the flue would exchange their heat with cold air from the room, heating it up, and so heating the room up.

In 1741, the Franklin Stove came on to the market, allowing homeowners to get more heat into their homes for each unit of fuel they burned.

Cold air (blue) gains heat from contact with the hot stove. As this warming air continues on its path, it gains more heat through contact with metal, the other side of which is in contact with the hot smoke (red) going to the flue.

Franklin wrote:

The use of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the neighboring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.

American Philosophical Society

In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society. (In those days, scientists were called philosophers.) The Society offered a scientific forum for new ideas, including Franklin’s electrical theories.

The Size of the Units of Matter

Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants; on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface. He measured the volume required to cover all the pond. Knowing the area, he then knew the height of the film, something like three nanometers in our current units.

PIERRE-GILLES DE GENNES, 1932 TO 2007

 

Electricity

In summer 1743, Franklin visited his hometown of Boston. Always seeking new knowledge, he visited a science show. There he saw Dr. Archibald Spencer, who had arrived from Scotland, demonstrating a variety of scientific phenomena. The electrical part of the show intrigued Franklin most: it featured the effects of static electricity.

Franklin left the show determined to learn more about electricity. It seemed to him that Dr. Spencer didn’t really understand it. This, of course, was true: nobody understood it! It was more a source of entertainment than a science.

In 1747, Franklin got hold of a long glass tube for the efficient generation of static electricity from Peter Collinsion in London.

Soon, Franklin was spending much of his time studying electricity. He wrote:

“For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done.”

Shaping our understanding of electricity

Franklin’s observations soon began to shape the world’s understanding of electricity and shape the language we use even today when we talk about it.

He identified that there was an electrical fluid that could flow from A to B. To describe the process he coined the terms positive and negative to describe the difference between A and B after the electrical fluid had flowed. Of course, today we would call the electrical fluid electrons, but remember: this was 1747; J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron lay 150 years in the future!

Franklin found that an excess of fluid led to positive charge (okay, we’ll have to pretend that electrons are positively charged for this) and a deficit of fluid led to negative charge.

Franklin was the first to write that electric charge cannot be created; it can only be ‘collected.’ This is a fundamental law of physics – the Law of Conservation of Electric Charge. It means that you cannot create (or destroy) electric charge.

Franklin was also the first person to use the words electrical battery. His meaning was not the same as ours though. His battery was made of capacitors (known as Leyden jars) wired together in series to store more charge than one alone could. This enabled Franklin to produce a bigger discharge of static electricity in his experiments.

In 1751, Franklin published the fruits of his labors in a book called Experiments and Observations on Electricity, which was widely read in Britain and then Europe, shaping a new understanding of electricity.

In 1752 Franklin’s most famous scientific work was carried out – the proof that lightning is electricity.

Franklin had an idea for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity, making use of another of his own discoveries in electricity: that static electricity discharges to a sharp, pointed object more readily than to a blunt object.

And now here are Benjamin Franklin’s own words on the subject:

From Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity

Benjamin Franklin

“As electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills and high trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chimneys, etc, as so many prominences and points, draw the electrical fire, and the whole cloud discharges there…

“If these things are so, may not the power of points be of use to mankind, in preserving houses, churches,… from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle… and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground…?

Benjamin Franklin’s Proposed Sentry Box

“I would propose an experiment… On the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. From the middle of the stand, let an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet, pointed very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it when such clouds are passing low might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. If any danger to the man should be apprehended (although I think there would be none) let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod a loop of wire that has one end fastened to the leads he his holding by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire and not affect him.”

 

King Louis XV saw a translation of Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and he asked French scientists to test Franklin’s lightning rod concept.

Jean Francois Dalibard used Franklin’s idea to confirm by experiment that lightning was indeed electrical in Paris in May 1752. Franklin himself carried out similar work in 1752, using a kite with a metal key connected to a Leyden Jar to prove his own theory. He didn’t write about his own experiment, however, until 1772.

The significance of the experiment was that it established the study of electricity as a serious scientific discipline.

Franklin had shown how to prove that electrical phenomena were a fundamental force of nature. Electricity would never again be thought of as just an interesting plaything for scientists and showmen to conjure up using glass rods.

Very soon, in 1753, when he was aged 47, the transformation in science that Franklin had brought about was recognized. Britain’s Royal Society honored his electrical work with its highest award, the Copley Medal – the equivalent of a modern Nobel Prize.

The Lightning Rod

A building protected by a lightning rod. A cable carries electricity from lightning to ground.

Even today, we still use Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod.

Like his other ideas, he did not patent it: he profited from the lightning rod intellectually, not financially.

Since the time he invented it, it has saved societies all over the world great amounts of time and money by protecting buildings from damage. It has also, of course, saved countless lives.

Refrigeration

In 1758, working with John Hadley in Cambridge, England, Franklin investigated the principle of refrigeration by evaporation.

In a room at 18 °C (65 °F) , the scientists repeatedly wetted a thermometer with ether, then used bellows to quickly evaporate the ether.

They were finally able to achieve a temperature reading on the thermometer of -14 °C (7 °F).

We now know the reason for the refrigeration effect. We have learned that molecules in a liquid have a range of energies. Some have high energy, and some have low energy. Molecules carrying the most energy escape from the liquid most easily – they evaporate. This leaves the lower energy, colder molecules in the liquid. The result is that the temperature of the liquid falls.

Of his discovery, Franklin said:

“One may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day.”

In fact, the principle of cooling by evaporation had been publicly demonstrated by William Cullen in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1756. Cullen had used a pump to lower the pressure above ether in a container.

The reduced pressure caused the ether to evaporate rapidly through boiling, absorbing heat from the air around it, and causing some ice to form on the container sides.

Meteorology

By observation of storms and winds, Franklin discovered that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This was an important discovery in the development of the scientific discipline of meteorology.

More than a Scientist and Inventor

Franklin lived in turbulent times, which culminated in the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776: Franklin was one of the five men who drafted it. He had previously acted as British postmaster for the colonies; he was the American Ambassador in France from 1776 – 1785; and the governor of Pennsylvania from 1785 – 1788.

The End

Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84. He was killed by pleurisy – a lung inflammation.

His wife, Deborah, had died sixteen years earlier. Franklin was survived by his daughter, Sarah, who looked after him in his later years and his son, William. William left America to live in Britain in 1782.

Today, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, named in Franklin’s honor, is one of the most prestigious awards in science. Its winners include Alexander Graham Bell, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

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.