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Louis Agassiz

borndied
1807, May 281873, Dec 14
a Swiss biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland. He received doctor of philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After studying with Cuvier and Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuc...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Arthur Aikin

borndied
1773, May 191854, Apr 15
an English chemist, mineralogist and scientific writer. was a founding member of the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry). He first became its Treasurer in 1841, and later became the Society's second President.
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Charles Rochemont Aikin

borndied
17751847
an English doctor and chemist. He was born at Warrington, Lancashire into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians. From an early age he devoted himself to science, and aided his eldest brother Arthur in his first published works and public lectures. Subsequently he applied himself to medicine, became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons,...
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Cross-listed in GovernanceWriters

Lucas Alaman

aka: Alamán
borndied
1792, Oct 181853, Jun 2
a Mexican scientist, politician, historian and writer. He frequently traveled on his credentials as a scientist and diplomat, becoming one of the most educated men in Mexico. For most of the 1840s, he devoted himself primarily to writing the history of Mexico from the perspective of a conservative.
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Cross-listed in GovernanceWritersInventorsCommerceLegal

Zachariah Allen

bornactivedied
1795, Sep 151815-18791882, Mar 17
an American textile manufacturer, scientist, lawyer, writer, inventor and civil leader from Providence, Rhode Island. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Brown University where he graduated in 1813. Allen became a textile manufacturer and in 1822 constructed a woolen mill in which he incorporated innovative fire-safety features and his own mech...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersInventors

Giovanni Battista Amici

borndied
1786, Mar 251863, Apr 10
an Italian astronomer, microscopist, and botanist. Amici was born in Modena, in present-day Italy. After studying at Bologna, he became professor of mathematics at Modena, and in 1831 was appointed inspector-general of studies in the Duchy of Modena. A few years later he was chosen director of the observatory at Florence, where he also lectured at the museum...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersCartographers

Petrus Apianus

bornactivedied
1495, Apr 161524-15401552, Apr 21
a German humanist, known for his works in mathematics, astronomy and cartography. The lunar crater Apianus and minor planet 19139 Apian are named in his honour.
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Amie Argand

aka: Aimé
borndied
1750, Jul 51803, Oct 14
a Swiss physicist and chemist. He invented the Argand lamp, a great improvement on the traditional oil lamp. In 1780, he started to invent improvements on the conventional oil lamp. The basic idea was to have a cylindrical wick which air could flow through and around, increasing the intensity of the light produced. In 1783, Argand met brothers more
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Cross-listed in ArtistsWriters

Francisco de Artiga

bornactivedied
16501670s-17111711
an engraver, an architect, a mathematician, and an author of reputation. He painted several 'Sibyls,' 'Conceptions,' and perspective views, remarkable for their invention, design, and colouring.
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Cross-listed in Governance

Elias Ashmole

borndied
1617, May 231692, May 18
was an English antiquary, politician, officer of arms, astrologer and student of alchemy. Ashmole supported the royalist side during the English Civil War, and at the restoration of Charles II he was rewarded with several lucrative offices. Ashmole was an antiquary with a strong Baconian leaning towards the study of nature.[1] His library reflected his inte...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Louisa Atkinson

borndied
1834, Feb 251872, Apr 28
an early Australian writer, botanist and illustrator. While she was well known for her fiction during her lifetime, her long-term significance rests on her botanical work. She is regarded as a ground-breaker for Australian women in journalism and natural science, and is significant in her time for her sympathetic references to Australian Aborigines in her wr...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Napoleon Aubin

aka: Napoléon
bornactivedied
1812, Nov 91829-18901890, Jun 12
a Canadian journalist, publisher, playwright, and scientist. Born in Geneva, Aubin sailed to the United States in 1829. In 1835 he moved to Montreal and shortly thereafter to Quebec City. Aubin contributed to a number of newspapers as well as publishing his own periodicals. In addition to journalism, Aubin worked as a scientist and, from 1875, as the honorar...
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Cross-listed in Artists

John James Audubon

bornactivedied
1785, Apr 261803-18511851, Jan 27
an American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book entitled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works e...
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Cross-listed in GovernanceWritersLegal

Francis Bacon

aka: 1st Viscount St Alban
bornactivedied
1561, Jan 221579-16261626, Apr 9
an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, essayist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
Timeline (3)Links (20)


Cross-listed in ClergyWritersPhysicians

Charles David Badham

bornactivedied
1805, Aug 271833-18571857, Jul 14
an English writer, physician, entomologist, and mycologist. David Badham seems to have started his medical career in Scotland, where he achieved some notoriety for setting a patient's irregular heartbeat to music. In 1833, a Radcliffe travelling fellowship allowed Badham to practise medicine in France and Italy, for some of the time as personal physician to ...
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Cross-listed in WritersCartographers

Thomas Bailey

bornactivedied
1785, Jul 311820-18561856, Oct 23
an English topographer and miscellaneous writer. In 1845-6 he became proprietor and editor of the Nottingham Mercury, but his opinions were considered too temperate by his readers. The circulation of the paper declined, and in 1851 the mass of subscribers withdrew in protest at Bailey's views respecting the original error of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, a...
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Joseph Banks

bornactivedied
1743, Feb 131766-18201820, Jun 19
a British naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and, after 6 m...
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Cross-listed in Commerce

Georg Baresch

bornactivedied
15851602-16391662
a Czech antique collector and alchemist from Prague known for his connection to the Voynich manuscript. Baresch received his baccalaureate in 1602. He studied at the Jesuit College of Clementinum. Georg Baresch was the earliest confirmed owner of the Voynich manuscript. He was apparently just as puzzled as modern cryptologists about this "Sphinx" that had be...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Benjamin Smith Barton

bornactivedied
1766, Feb 101789-18151815, Dec 19
an American botanist, naturalist, and physician. Barton corresponded with naturalists throughout the United States and Europe, and made significant contributions to the scientific literature of his day. In 1803 Barton published Elements of botany, or Outlines of the natural history of vegetables, the first American textbook on botany. Barton's work in...
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Cross-listed in Artists

William Bartram

bornactivedied
1739, Apr 201773-1810s1823, Jul 22
an American naturalist. He was born in Kingsessing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, New England, and Florida. From his mid-teens, Bartram was noted for the quality of his botanic and ornithological drawings. He also had an increasing role in the mai...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysiciansEducators

William Batt

bornactivedied
1744, Jun 181770-18091812, Feb 9
an English physician, chemist, and botanist. On completing his studies he returned to England, but on account of his health he subsequently removed to Genoa, where he obtained an extensive medical practice, and in 1774 was appointed professor of chemistry in the university. Previous to this the study of chemistry in the university of Genoa had been much negl...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersNavalCartographers

Nicolas Baudin

bornactivedied
1754, Feb 171769-18031803, Sep 16
a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer. At the age of 15 he joined the merchant navy, and at 20 joined the French East India Company. He then joined the French navy and served in the Caribbean as an officer bleu during the American War of Independence. He subsequently traveled to (and explored) China and Australia,
Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersCartographersLegal

Johann Bayer

bornactivedied
15721612-16251625, Mar 7
a German lawyer and uranographer (celestial cartographer). He is primarily known for his work in astronomy; particularly for his work on determining the positions of objects on the celestial sphere.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Johann Joachim Becher

borndied
1635, May 61682, Oct
a German physician, alchemist, precursor of chemistry, scholar and adventurer, best known for his development of the phlogiston theory of combustion, and his advancement of Austrian cameralism. At the beginning of 1680, he presented a paper to the Royal Society in which he attempted to deprive Huygens of the honour of applying the pendulum to the measurement...
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Cross-listed in InventorsEducators

Edmond Becquerel

aka: Alexandre-Edmond
borndied
1820, Mar 241891, May 11
a French physicist who studied the solar spectrum, magnetism, electricity and optics. He is credited with the discovery of the photovoltaic effect, the operating principle of the solar cell, in 1839. He is also known for his work in luminescence and phosphorescence. He was the son of Antoine César Becquerel and the father of Henri Becquerel, one of the disc...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersWriters

Pierre Belon

aka: Pierre Belon du Mans, Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus
borndied
15171564
a French explorer, naturalist, writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architecture and Egyptology. Belon was typical of the renaissance scholar and took an interest in "all kinds of good disciplines" in his lifetime. He was int...
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Cross-listed in MilitaryWriters

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

aka: Bernardin de St. Pierre
borndied
1737, Jan 191814, Jan 21
a French writer and botanist. He is best known for his 1788 novel Paul et Virginie, now largely forgotten, but in the 19th century a very popular children's book. He was educated as an engineer at the École des Ponts ParisTech. Then he joined the French Army and was involved in the Seven Years' War against Prussia and England. In 1768 he traveled to Mauriti...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Daniel Bernoulli

bornactivedied
1700, Jan 291724-17531782, Mar 17
a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics. His name is commemorated in the Bernoulli's principle, a particular example of the ...
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Johann Bernoulli

aka: Jean, John
borndied
1667, Jul 271748, Jan 1
a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educating Leonhard Euler in the pupil's youth.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Marcellin Berthelot

borndied
18271907
a French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counterevidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. He is considered as one of the greatest chemists of all ...
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Charles Lucien Bonaparte

aka: 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano
borndied
1803 May 241857, Jul 29
a French biologist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte. Before leaving Italy, Carlo had already discovered a warbler new to science, the moustached warbler, and on the voyage he collected specimens of a new storm-petrel. On arrival in the United States, he presented a paper on this new bird, which w...
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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli

borndied
1608, Jan 281679, Dec 31
a Renaissance Italian physiologist, physicist, and mathematician. He contributed to the modern principle of scientific investigation by continuing Galileo Galilei's practice of testing hypotheses against observation. Trained in mathematics, Borelli also made e...
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Cross-listed in Physicians

Paul-Emile Botta

aka: Paul-Émile
borndied
1802, Dec 61870, Mar 29
a French scientist who served as Consul in Mosul (then in the Ottoman Empire, now in Iraq) from 1842, and who discovered the ruins of the ancient Assyrian capital of Dur-Sharrukin. Botta was selected to be naturalist on a voyage around the world. Although he had no formal medical training, he also served as the ship surgeon. The French Government appointed B...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Robert Boyle

borndied
1627, Jan 251691, Dec 31
an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist and inventor born in Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. He is best known for Boyle's law. Among his works, The Sceptical C...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersWritersInventors

David Brewster

borndied
1781, Dec 111868, Feb 10
a Scottish physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, writer, historian of science and university principal. Most noted for his contributions to the field of optics, he studied the double refraction by compression and discovered the photoelastic effect, which gave birth to the field of optical mineralogy. For his work, William Whewell dubbed him the "Fa...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersEducators

Henry Briggs

borndied
1561, Feb1630, Jan 26
an English mathematician notable for changing the original logarithms invented by John Napier into common (base 10) logarithms, which are sometimes known as Briggsian logarithms in his honour. Briggs was a committed puritan and an influential professor in his tim...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Johan van Brosterhuysen

aka: Jan, Brosterhuisen
borndied
1596 ca1650, Sep
a Dutch botanist, engraver, writer, and translator. At age 14 he was registered as a gownsman on 3 June 1610 at Leiden University, his native city. His interest was botany, but he was unable to acquire a teaching position in that field and took a position as secretary at Heusden Castle. A member of the Muiderkring, the arts and sciences coterie whose central...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Thomas Browne

bornactivedied
1605, Oct 191637-16821682, Oct 19
an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical s...
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Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

Giordano Bruno

bornactivedied
1548, Jan 11572-16001600, Feb 17
an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist. He is remembered for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Robert Bunsen

borndied
1811, Mar 301899, Aug 16
a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he develo...
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Cross-listed in MilitaryGovernanceCommerce

Ambrose Burnside

aka: Ambrose Everett
bornactivedied
1824, May 231843-18811881, Sep 13
an American soldier, railroad-executive, inventor, industrialist, and politician from Rhode Island. He served as Governor of Rhode Island and as a United States Senator. In October 1853, Burnside resigned his commission in the United States Army, and was appointed commander of the Rhode Island state militia with the rank of major general. He held this positi...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersWritersPhysiciansInventors

Gerolamo Cardano

borndied
1501, Sep 241576, Sep 21
an Italian polymath, whose interests and proficiencies ranged from being a mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance, and was one of the key figures in the foundation of probability and the earliest introducer of the b...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Thomas Carlyle

bornactivedied
1795, Dec 41821-18781881, Feb 5
a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he expla...
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Cross-listed in ClergyWritersInventors

Giovanni Caselli

borndied
18151891
an Italian physicist and priest. He is the inventor of the pantelegraph (a.k.a. Universal Telegraph or "all-purpose telegraph"), the predecessor of the modern fax machine. The world's first practical operating facsimile machine ("fax") system put into use was by Caselli. In Florence he studied physics under Leopoldo Nobili. These studies involved electrochem...
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Augustin-Louis Cauchy

borndied
1789, Aug 211857, May 23
a French mathematician and physicist who made pioneering contributions to analysis. He was one of the first to state and prove theorems of calculus rigorously, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He almost singlehandedly founded complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra. A profound...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersInventors

Anders Celsius

bornactivedied
1701, Nov 271730-17441744, Apr 25
a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician, professor of astronomy at Uppsala University, founder of the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory and proposed the Celsius temperature scale which bears his name.
Timeline (1)Links (21)


Federico Cesi

borndied
1585, Feb 261630, Aug 1
an Italian scientist, naturalist, and founder of the Accademia dei Lincei. On his father's death in 1630, he became briefly lord of Acquasparta. In 1603, at the age of eighteen, Cesi invited three slightly older friends, the Dutch physician Johannes Van Heeck (in Italy Giovanni Ecchio), and two fellow Umbrians, mathematician Francesco Stelluti of Fabriano an...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

William Francis Channing

borndied
1820, Feb 221901, Mar 20
an American activist, electrical researcher, scientist, physician, and inventor. He invented the first citywide electric fire alarm system. Channing worked with Alexander Graham Bell in developing the telephone. Channing was an assistant on the first geological survey of New Hampshire during 1841–42. He was associated with Henry Ingersoll Bowditch in the e...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Jacques Charles

aka: Charles the Geometer
borndied
1746, Nov 121823, Apr 7
a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist. Charles wrote almost nothing about mathematics, and most of what has been credited to him was due to mistaking him with another Jacques Charles, also a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, entering on May 12, 1785. Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first (unmanned) hydrogen-f...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Samuel Hunter Christie

borndied
1784, Mar 221865, Jan 24
a British scientist and mathematician. He was particularly interested in magnetism, studying the earth's magnetic field and designing improvements to the magnetic compass. Some of his magnetic research was done in collaboration with Peter Barlow. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826, delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1833 and served as their Se...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventorsCartographers

Michiel Coignet

aka: Quignet, Cognet, Connette
borndied
15491623, Dec 24
a Flemish polymath who made significant contributions to various disciplines including cosmography, mathematics, navigation and cartography. He also built new and improved scientific instruments and made military engineering designs. Coignet was a scientist at the court of the governors of the Spanish Netherlands Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Isabella ...
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Sir William Congreve [2]

aka: 2nd Baronet
borndied
1772, May 201828, May 16
an English inventor and rocket artillery pioneer distinguished for his development and deployment of Congreve rockets, and a Tory Member of Parliament (MP). In 1803 he was a volunteer in the London and Westminster Light Horse, and was a London businessman who published a polemical newspaper, the Royal Standard and Political Register, which was Tory, pro-gove...
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Timeline (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Valerius Cordus

borndied
1515, Feb 181544, Sep 25
a German physician, botanist and pharmacologist who authored the first pharmacopoeia North of the Alps and one of the most celebrated herbals in history. He is also widely credited with developing a method for synthesizing ether (which he called by the Latin name oleum dulci vitrioli, or "sweet oil of vitriol").
Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Jacques-Philippe Cornut

aka: Jacobi Cornuti
borndied
1606, Oct 191651, Aug 23
a French physician and botanist. He was the author of Enchiridion botanicum parisiense, a study of the flora local to Paris, and Canadensium plantarum, aliarúmque nondum editarum historia nondum editarum historia cui adiectum est ad calcem enchiridion botanicum parisiense (Paris: Simon le Moyne, 1635), Canada at that time considered as stretching from the S...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersPhysicians

Thomas Coulter

borndied
17931843
an Irish physician, botanist, and explorer. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where he founded the college's herbarium. He served as physician with the Real del Monte Company in Mexico, during which period he collected plants in the region. He is best remembered for exploration and botanical research in Mexi...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Edward Cradock

bornactivedied
unknown1570sunknown
an English theologian and alchemist. In 1571 he published The Shippe of assured Safetie, wherein we may sayle without Danger towards the Land of the Living, promised to the true Israelites, 2nd edition 1572. Some Latin sapphics by Cradock are prefixed to Robert Peterson's translation of Giovanni della Casa's Il Galateo, 1576. He was a friend of more
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Cross-listed in Inventors

William Crookes

borndied
1832, Jun 171919, Apr 4
an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube and the Crookes radiometer, which today is made and sold as a novelty item. From 1850 to 1854 he filled the position of assistant in the college, and soon embarked upon original work. H...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysiciansInventors

William Cullen

borndied
1710, Apr 151790, Feb 5
a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist, and one of the most important professors at the Edinburgh Medical School, during its heyday as the leading center of medical education in the English-speaking world. In 1748 while in Glasgow, Cullen invented the basis for modern refrigeration, although is not credited with a usable application. In 1751 he wa...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Georges Cuvier

borndied
1769, Aug 231832, May 13
a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. His most famous work is Le Règne Animal (...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

borndied
1717, Nov 161783, Oct 29
a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's formula for obtaining solutions to the wave equation is named after him. The wave equat...
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Cross-listed in Educators

John Dalton

bornactivedied
1766, Sep 61781-18441844, July 27
an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist. He is best known for proposing the modern atomic theory, and for his research into colour blindness, sometimes referred to as Daltonism in his honour. Dalton's family too poor to support him for long and he began to earn his living at the age of ten in the service of a wealthy local Quaker, Elihu Robinson. It...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

John Frederic Daniell

bornactivedied
1790, Mar 121831-18451845, Mar 13
an English chemist and physicist. His name is best known for his invention of the Daniell cell, an element of an electric battery much better than voltaic cells. He also invented the dew-point hygrometer known by his name (Quar. Journ. Sci., 1820), and a register pyrometer (Phil. Trans., 1830); and in 1830 he erected in the hall of the Royal Society a water-...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersWriters

Charles Darwin

bornactivedied
1809, Feb 121827-18721882, Apr 19
an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced h...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Sir Humphry Davy

bornactivedied
1778, Dec 171795-18291829, May 29
a Cornish chemist and inventor, who is best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. In 1799 Davy experimented with nitrous ...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansEducators

David de Gorter

borndied
1717, Apr 301783, Apr 8
a Dutch physician and botanist. He was professor at the University of Harderwijk and royal physician to Empress Elizabeth of Russia. He was a member of Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and other academies and learned societies.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in InventorsCommerce

John Deere

bornactivedied
1804, Feb 71821-18861886, May 17
an American blacksmith and manufacturer who founded Deere & Company, one of the largest and leading agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. Born in Rutland, Vermont, Deere moved to Illinois and invented the first commercially successful steel plow in 1837.
Timeline (2)Links (15)


Cross-listed in Writers

Giambattista della Porta

aka: Giovanni Battista Della Porta
borndied
15351615, Feb 4
an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Reformation. He spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, is entitled Magia Naturalis ...
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Giovanni Demisiani

borndied
unknown1614
a Greek from Zakynthos, was a theologian, chemist, mathematician to Cardinal Gonzaga, and member of the Accademia dei Lincei. Demisiani is noted for coining the name telescope (from the Greek, tele "far" and skopein "to look or see") for a version of the instrument presented by more
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

William Derham

borndied
1657, Nov 261735, Apr 5
an English clergyman, natural theologian and natural philosopher. He produced the earliest, reasonably accurate estimate of the speed of sound. In 1696, he published his Artificial Clockmaker, which went through several editions. The best known of his subsequent works are Physico-Theology, published in 1713; Astro-Theology, 1714; and Christo-Theology, 1730. ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Rene Descartes

aka: René , Renatus Cartesius
bornactivedied
1596, Mar 311619-16501650, Feb 11
a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. He spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic. Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most uni...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner

aka: Döbereiner
borndied
1780, Dec 131849, Mar 24
a German chemist who is best known for work that foreshadowed the periodic law for the chemical elements. He become a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the university of Jena. Döbereiner also is known for his discovery of furfural, for his work on the use of platinum as a catalyst, and for a lighter, known as Döbereiner's lamp.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Rembert Dodoens

aka: Rembertus Dodonaeus
borndied
1517, Jun 291585, Mar 10
a Flemish physician and botanist. Dodoens was born in Mechelen. In 1530 he began his studies in medicine, cosmography and geography at the University of Leuven, where he graduated in 1535. He established himself as a physician in Mechelen in 1538. He married Kathelijne De Bruyn(e) in 1539. He had a short stay in Basel (1542–1546). He turned down a chair at...
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Cross-listed in Writers

John William Draper

bornactivedied
1811, May 51832-18811882, Jan 4
an English-American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the moon in 1840. He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersNavalCartographers

Jules Dumont d'Urville

borndied
1790, May 231842, May 8
a French explorer, naval officer and rear admiral, who explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. As a botanist and cartographer he left his mark, giving his name to several seaweeds, plants and shrubs, and places such as D'Urville Island.
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Cross-listed in Artists

Georg Dionysius Ehret

borndied
1708, Jan 301770, Sep 9
a botanist and entomologist, and is best known for his botanical illustrations. He had the income to attract the talents of botanists such as Carl Linnaeus and artists like Ehret. Together at the Clifford estate, Hartecamp, which is located south of Haarlem in H...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Emil Erlenmeyer

borndied
1825, Jun 281909, Jan 22
a German chemist known for contributing to the early development of the theory of structure, formulating the Erlenmeyer rule, and designing the Erlenmeyer flask, a type of chemical flask, which is named after him. His work mostly focused on theoretical chemistry, where he suggested the formula for naphthalene and formulated the Erlenmeyer rule: alcohols in w...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

Leonhard Euler

borndied
1707, Apr 151783, Sep 18
a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician and engineer who made important and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics like infinitesimal calculus and graph theory while also making pioneering contributions to several branches such as topology and analytic number theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminolo...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Jean-Baptiste Benoit Eyries

aka: Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès
borndied
1767, Jun 241846, Jun 13
a French geographer, author and translator, best remembered in the English speaking world for his translation of German ghost stories Fantasmagoriana, published anonymously in 1812, which inspired Mary Shelley and John William Polidori to write Frankenstein and The Vampyre respectively. He was one of the founding members of the Société de Géographie, a me...
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Links (2)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Michael Faraday

bornactivedied
1791, Sep 221813-18661867, Aug 25
an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language; his mathematical abilities, however, did not extend as far as...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Moses G. Farmer

bornactivedied
1820, Feb 91847-18931893, May 25
an electrical engineer and inventor. Farmer was a member to the AIEE, later known as the IEEE. In 1847, Farmer constructed and exhibited in public what he called “an electro-magnetic locomotive, and with forty-eight pint cup cells of Grove nitric acid battery drew a little car carrying two passengers on a track a foot and a half wide". Farmer later fabrica...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Fortunato Felice

aka: 2nd Comte de Panzutti
borndied
1723, Aug 241789, Feb 13
an Italian nobleman, a famed author, scientist, and said to have been one of the most important publishers of the 18th century. Through his studies at the monastery of San Francesco in Ripa, he discovered a love of Physics, becoming friends with Celestino Galiani. Later Galiani appointed De Felice chair of Ancient and Modern Geography as well as the chair of...
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Cross-listed in Governance

Jesse Fell

bornactivedied
unknown1800s-1810sunknown
an early political leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He was the first to successfully burn anthracite on an open air grate. His method and 'discovery' in 1808 led to the widespread use of coal as the fuel source that helped to foster America's industrial revolution. He lived in the Fell House and Tavern until his death. The House stood until the 1980s wh...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Pierre de Fermat

bornactivedied
16071626-16651665, Jan 12
a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that o...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Frederick Field

borndied
1826, Aug 21885, Apr 3
an English chemist. In 1848 he accepted the post of chemist to some copper smelting works at Coquimbo in Chile. Some account of his work there is contained in his papers in the ‘Journal of the Chemical Society’ for 1850, ‘On the Examination of some Slags from Copper-smelting Furnaces,’ and ‘On the Ashes of the Cactus-plant,’ from which large quan...
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Cross-listed in Writers

George Field

borndied
1777 ca1854
an English chemist. He was born in or about 1777 at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, of a family long settled in that town, and was educated at St. Peter's school there. Field then commenced the cultivation in his own garden, and from roots of his own growth produced beautiful specimens of colouring matter. A contrivance, both mechanical and chemical, was still...
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Cross-listed in InventorsCommerce

John Fitch

bornactivedied
1743, Jan 211780s-1790s1798, Jul 2
an American inventor, clockmaker, entrepreneur and engineer. He was most famous for operating the first steamboat service in the United States. The first successful trial run of his steamboat Perseverance was made on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. It was propelled by a bank of oars on e...
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Hippolyte Fizeau

borndied
1819, Sep 231896, Sep 18
a French physicist, best known for measuring the speed of light in the namesake Fizeau experiment. Following suggestions by François Arago, Léon Foucault and Fizeau collaborated in a series of investigations on the interference of light and heat. In 1848, he predicted the redshifting of electromagnetic waves. In 1849, Fizeau calculated a value for the spee...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Abraham Fletcher

borndied
17141793, Jan 1
an English mathematician. He married early. His wife, like his parents, discouraged the pursuit of learning as an unprofitable thing. Turning his attention to botany, Fletcher studied the properties rather than the classification of plants; increased his income by the sale of herbal decoctions, and was known to his neighbours as ‘Doctor Fletcher.’ He als...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Eunice Newton Foote

borndied
1819, Jul 171888, Sep 30
an American scientist, physicist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner from Seneca Falls, New York. She was the first scientist known to have experimented on the warming effect of sunlight on different gases, and went on to theorize that changing the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would change its temperature, in her paper Circumstances af...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Benjamin Meggot Forster

borndied
1764, Jan 161829, Mar 8
an English botanist and mycologist who wrote An Introduction to the Knowledge of Fungusses in 1820. He was attached to the study of science, especially botany and electricity. He executed many drawings of fungi, communicated various species to James Sowerby, and in 1820 published, with initials only, An Introduction to the Knowledge of Fungusses, pp. 20, wit...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

John Fothergill

borndied
1712, Mar 81780, Dec 26
an English physician, plant collector, philanthropist and Quaker. His medical writings were influential, and he built up a sizeable botanic garden in what is now West Ham Park in London. He is credited with first identifying and naming trigeminal neuralgia in his work Of a Painful Affection of the Face in 1765.
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Joseph Fourier

aka: Jean-Baptiste
bornactivedied
1768, Mar 211795-18301830, May 16
a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and Fourier's law of conduction are also named in his honour. Fourier is also ...
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Cross-listed in GovernanceWritersInventorsCommerce

Benjamin Franklin

aka: Richard Saunders
bornactivedied
1705, Jan 61718-17891790, Apr 17
one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories rega...
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Cross-listed in Military

James Franklin [2]

borndied
1783 ca1834, Aug 31
a British soldier. He was the brother of Sir John Franklin. James Franklin entered the service of the British East India Company as a cadet in 1805. He served with distinction on various Indian surveys and was elected a member of the Royal Society. He was in the 1st Bengal Cavalry and was an authority on geology. He undertook surveys of the Central Provinces...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Jakob Gadolin

bornactivedied
1719, Oct 241753-18021802, Sep 26
a Finnish Lutheran bishop, professor of physics and theology, politician and statesman. In 1736, he studied at The Royal Academy of Turku. He became accomplished in numerous fields such as philosophy and mathematics and from 1753 was a Professor of Physics and in 1762 a Professor of Theology. In politics, he was a member of the Hats (party) in the Swedish Ri...
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Johan Gadolin

borndied
1760, Jun 51852, Aug 15
a Swedish/Finnish chemist, physicist and mineralogist. Gadolin discovered a "new earth" containing the first rare-earth compound yttrium, which was later determined to be a chemical element. He is also considered the founder of Finnish chemistry research, as the second holder of the Chair of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Turku (or Abo Kungliga Akademi). ...
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Evariste Galois

aka: Évariste
bornactivedied
1811, Oct 251829-18321832, May 31
a French mathematician born in Bourg-la-Reine. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a problem standing for 350 years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra, and the subfield of Galo...
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Cross-listed in Physicians

Luigi Galvani

borndied
1737, Sep 91798, Dec 4
an Italian physician, physicist, biologist and philosopher, who discovered animal electricity. He is recognized as the pioneer of bioelectromagnetics. In 1780, he discovered that the muscles of dead frogs' legs twitched when struck by an electrical spark.[5]:67–71 This was one of the first forays into the study of bioelectricity, a field that still studies...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersAstronomersWritersCartographers

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

borndied
15321592
a Spanish explorer, author, historian, astronomer, and scientist. His birthplace is not certain and may have been Pontevedra, in Galicia. In Lima he was accused by the Inquisition of possessing two magic rings and some magic ink and of following the precepts of Moses. In 1572 he was commissioned by Francisco de Toledo, the fifth Viceroy of Peru, to write a h...
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Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

Thomas Garnier

borndied
17761873
an English churchman and botanist, Dean of Winchester from 1840 to 1872. He was educated at Hyde Abbey School and Worcester College, Oxford. He was appointed Rector of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, in 1807. Whilst Dean, he was a founding member of the Hampshire Horticultural Society in 1818 (Dean Garnier's Garden in Winchester's cathedral close is named after him)...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyWriters

Pierre Gassendi

bornactivedied
1592, Jan 221617-16531655, Oct 24
a French philosopher, priest, scientist, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631. The lunar crater Gassendi i...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Christopher Glaser

borndied
16151670-1678
a pharmaceutical chemist of the 17th century. He was born in Basel. He became demonstrator of chemistry, as successor of Lefebvre, at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, and apothecary to Louis XIV and to the Duke of Orléans. He is best known through his Traité de la chy...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Explorers

Johann Georg Gmelin

borndied
1709, Aug 81755, May 20
a German naturalist, botanist and geographer. Gmelin was elected one out of three professors to join Vitus Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43). During the early part of the expedition - leaving St Petersburg in August 1733 - he was accompanied by the young student Stepan Krasheninnikov. They travelled together through the Urals and western Sib...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Charles Goodyear

borndied
1800, Dec 291860, Jul 1
an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. Though Goodyear is often credited with the invention of vulcanized rubber, modern evidence has proven that the Mesoamericans used stabilized rubber for balls and other obje...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

John Gorrie

borndied
1803, Oct 31855, Jun 29
a physician, scientist, inventor, and humanitarian. Dr. Gorrie's medical research involved the study of tropical diseases. At the time the theory that bad air caused diseases was a prevalent hypothesis and based on this theory, he urged draining the swamps and the cooling of sickrooms. Since it was necessary to transport ice by boat from the northern lakes, ...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Elizabeth Gooking Greenleaf

borndied
1681, Nov 111762, Nov 11
the first female apothecary in the Thirteen Colonies. She is considered to be the first female pharmacist in the United States. In 1727, Elizabeth moved to Boston to open an apothecary shop. Though this was a role which had been exclusively performed by men, Massachusetts did not have any laws in place to prevent women from practicing. This made her the only...
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Cross-listed in Writers

James Grigor

borndied
1811?1848
a botanist. Grigor was the author of the ‘Eastern Arboretum, or Register of Remarkable Trees, Seats, Gardens, &c., in the County of Norfolk,’ London 1840-41, with fifty etched plates, issued in fifteen numbers. In the preface (dated Norwich, 1 Sept. 1841) he states that he had devoted ‘twenty years to practical botanical pursuits,’ and his work was h...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Otto von Guericke

aka: Gericke
borndied
1602, Nov 201686, May 11
a German scientist, inventor, and politician. His major scientific achievements were the establishment of the physics of vacuums, the discovery of an experimental method for clearly demonstrating electrostatic repulsion, and his advocacy of the reality of "action at a distance" and of "absolute space". All of von Guericke's work on the vacuum and air pressur...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyEducators

Edmund Gunter

bornactivedied
15811614-16261626, Dec 10
an English clergyman, mathematician, geometer and astronomer of Welsh descent. He is best remembered for his mathematical contributions which include the invention of the Gunter's chain, the Gunter's quadrant, and the Gunter's scale. In 1620, he invented the first successful analog device which he developed to calculate logarithmic tangents. He was mentored ...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Goldsworthy Gurney

borndied
17931875
a surgeon, chemist, lecturer, consultant, architect, builder and prototypical British gentleman scientist and inventor, of the Victorian era. Amongst many accomplishments, he developed the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and later applied its principles to a novel form of illumination, the Bude light; developed a series of early steam-powered road vehicles; and laid ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyInventors

Bartolomeu de Gusmao

aka: Gusmão
bornactivedied
1685, Dec1709-17241724, Nov 18
a Portuguese priest and naturalist, noted for his early work on lighter-than-air airship design. He completed his course of study at the University of Coimbra, devoting his attention principally to philology and mathematics, but received the title of Doctor of Canon Law (related to Theology). He is said to have had a remarkable memory and a great command of ...
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Cross-listed in Astronomers

William Rowan Hamilton

borndied
1805, Aug 31865, Sep 2
an Irish mathematician, Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. He worked in both pure mathematics and mathematics for physics. He made important contributions to optics, classical mechanics and algebra. Although Hamilton was not a physicist–he regarded himself as a pure mathematician–his work was of maj...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersWriters

Thomas Harriot

aka: Harriott, Hariot, Heriot
bornactivedied
1560 ca1580-16211621, Jul 2
an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer, and translator. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 26 July 1609, over four months before more
Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

Joseph Harris [2]

borndied
1703, Feb1764, Sep 26
a British blacksmith, astronomer, navigator, economist, natural philosopher, government adviser and King's Assay Master at the Royal Mint. As far as biographies of Joseph Harris are concerned, things remain much the same now as they had been in 1805, when Theophilus Jones was writing. The Harris family history of three brothers, all highly successful in enti...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Hermann von Helmholtz

borndied
1821, Aug 311894, Sep 8
a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions in several scientific fields. The largest German association of research institutions, the Helmholtz Association, is named after him. In physiology and psychology, he is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research,...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersInventors

John Herschel

bornactivedied
1792, Mar 71816-18671871, May 11
an English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer, and botanist. Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He also invented the photographic fixer hypo actinometer.
Timeline (3)Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Urban Hjarne

aka: Hjärne
borndied
1641, Dec 201724, Mar 10
a Swedish chemist, geologist, physician and writer. He was also the author of Stratonice, sometimes claimed to be the first Swedish novel, a partly autobiographical romance of seduction begun in 1665 and published in several parts, completed in 1668.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Eben Norton Horsford

borndied
1818, Jul 271893, Jan 1
an American scientist who is best known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson. He studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating as a civil engineer at age 19. He then worked for two years in the Geological Survey of New York, and shortly after he had reached...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

Pierre Daniel Huet

bornactivedied
1630, Feb 81651-17211721, Jan 26
a French churchman and scholar, editor of the Delphin Classics, founder of the Academie du Physique in Caen (1662-1672) and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches. He translated the pastorals of Longus, wrote a tale called Diane de Castro, and gave with his Traitté de l'origine des romans (1670), his Treatise on the Origin of Roman...
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Cross-listed in MilitaryCartographers

Thomas Hutchins

bornactivedied
17301746-17891789, Apr 18
an American military engineer, cartographer, geographer and surveyor. In 1781, Hutchins was named Geographer of the United States. He is the only person to hold that post. He joined the militia during the French and Indian War and later took a regular commission with British forces. In 1766, he started working for the British army as an engineer. That year, ...
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Timeline (1)Links (5)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersInventors

Christiaan Huygens

bornactivedied
1629, Apr 141649-16931695, Jul 8
a prominent Dutch mathematician, scientist, astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and other investigations in timekeeping.
Timeline (3)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Janos Irinyi

aka: János, Irínyi
borndied
1817, May 181895, Dec 17
a Hungarian chemist and inventor of the noiseless and non-explosive match. He achieved this by mixing the phosphorus with lead dioxide instead of the potassium chlorate used previously. Irinyi also took part in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Moritz von Jacobi

borndied
1801, Sep 211874, Mar 10
a German Jewish and Russian engineer and physicist born in Potsdam. Jacobi worked mainly in Russia. He furthered progress in galvanoplastics, electric motors, and wire telegraphy. While studying the transfer of power from a battery to an electric motor, he deduced the maximum power theorem. Jacobi tested motors output by determining the amount of zinc consum...
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Links (5)Notes (2)


Cross-listed in ClergyWritersInventors

Anyos Jedlik

aka: Ányos
bornactivedied
1800, Jan 111817-18731895, Dec 13
a Hungarian inventor, engineer, physicist, and Benedictine priest. He was also a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He is considered by Hungarians and Slovaks to be the unsung father of the dynamo and electric motor. Jedlik's best known invention is the principle of dynamo self-excitation. In 1827, Jedlik started experi...
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Links (11)


Cross-listed in Physicians

John Jeffries

bornactivedied
1745, Feb 51760s-18191819, Sep 16
a Boston physician, scientist, and a military surgeon with the British Army in Nova Scotia and New York during the American Revolution. Born in Boston, Jeffries graduated from Harvard College and obtained his medical degree at the University of Aberdeen. He is best known for accompanying Jean-Pierre Blanchard on his 1785 balloon flight across the English Cha...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Edward Jenner

bornactivedied
1749, May 171770-18231823, Jan 26
an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms "vaccine" and "vaccination" are derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the long title of his Inquiry into the...Variolae vaccinae...known...[as]...the Cow Pox...
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Timeline (2)Links (17)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Philipp von Jolly

borndied
18091884
a German physicist and mathematician. e studied science in Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. After his studies, he was appointed professor of mathematics in Heidelberg in 1839 and in physics in 1846. He moved to Munich in 1854 where he took the position once held by Georg Simon Ohm. In 1854 he was knighted (and henceforth referred to as von Jolly). Jolly was fi...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersLegal

Markos Antonios Katsaitis

borndied
17171787
an 18th-century Greek scholar, geographer and lawyer. In his early adolescence he moved to Constantinople where he lived for several years. During his travel through the Balkans, Katsaitis documented his travels in a detailed diary.
Links (1)


Edward Kelley

aka: Kelly, Edward Talbot
borndied
1555, Aug 11597 ca
an English Renaissance occultist and self-declared spirit medium. He is best known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to summon spirits or angels in a "shew-stone" or mirror, which John Dee so valued,[3] Kelley also claimed to possess the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Thomas Kensett

borndied
17861829, Jun 16
an early American engraver who published a key map of the area of conflict during the opening stages of the War of 1812. He later entered into a partnership with his father-in-law to patent and produce the first tin cans in America.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersWriters

Johannes Kepler

bornactivedied
1571, Dec 271594-16301630, Nov 15
a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These works also provided one of the foundations for more
Timeline (8)Links (23)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Petrus Jacobus Kipp

borndied
1808, Mar 51864, Feb 3
a Dutch apothecary, chemist and instrument maker. He became known as the inventor of the Kipp apparatus, chemistry equipment for the development of gases. Between 1844 and 1850, Kipp earned extra money by translation of German chemistry books to Dutch for use at the university. In 1842, Kipp published the results of research into the presence of arsenic in ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Athanasius Kircher

aka: Kirchner
borndied
1602, May 21680, Nov 28
a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Rudjer Boscovich and to more
Links (1)


Gustav Kirchhoff

borndied
1824, Mar 121887, Oct 17
a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two different sets of concepts (one in circuit theory, and one in spectroscopy) are named "Kirchhoff's laws" after him; there is also a Kir...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Richard Kirwan

borndied
1733, Aug 11812, Jun 22
an Irish scientist. He was one of the last supporters of the theory of phlogiston. Kirwan was active in the fields of chemistry, meteorology, and geology. He was widely known in his day, corresponding and meeting with Lavoisier, Black, Priestley, and Cavendish.
Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

John Leonard Knapp

borndied
1767, May 91845, Apr 29
an English botanist best known for his Journal of a Naturalist and his work on British grasses. In 1818 Knapp published anonymously a poem entitled "Arthur, or the Pastor of the Village," and between 1820 and 1830 a series of articles, under the title of ‘The Naturalist's Diary,’ in the almanac series ‘Time's Telescope.’
Links (1)


Cross-listed in MilitaryInventors

Konstantin Konstantinov

borndied
1817/191871, Jan 12
a Russian artillery officer and scientist in the fields of artillery, rocketry and instrument making. He completed his military career at the rank of Lieutenant General. Konstantinov is known to have created structurally perfect missiles (for the 19th century) with a range of 4 to 5 km, launch pads, and rocket-making machines. He authored a number of works o...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersWriters

Jean-Baptiste Labat

borndied
16631738, Jan 6
a French clergyman, botanist, writer, explorer, ethnographer, soldier, engineer, and landowner. Labat was born and died in Paris. In 1693, determined to devote himself to foreign missionary work, he received permission from the general of his order to travel to the West Indies, then under French domination. In 1696 he travelled to Guadeloupe, and was appoint...
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Cross-listed in Astronomers

Joseph-Louis Lagrange

aka: Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier, Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange, Lagrangia
borndied
1736, Jan 251813, Apr 10
an Italian Enlightenment Era mathematician and astronomer. He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.
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Cross-listed in MilitaryWriters

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

borndied
1744, Aug 11829, Dec 18
a French naturalist. He was a soldier, biologist, academic, and an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. He gave the term biology a broader meaning by coining the term for special sciences, chemistry, meteorology, geology, and botany-zoology. In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vert...
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Cross-listed in Astronomers

Johann Heinrich Lambert

borndied
1728, Aug 261777, Sep 25
a Swiss polymath who made important contributions to the subjects of mathematics, physics (particularly optics), philosophy, astronomy and map projections.
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Cross-listed in AstronomersGovernanceWriters

Pierre-Simon Laplace

aka: Marquis de Laplace
bornactivedied
1749, Mar 231771-18271827, Mar 5
an influential French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statistics, physics, and astronomy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799–1825).
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Cross-listed in Writers

Antoine Lavoisier

borndied
1743, Aug 261794, May 8
a French nobleman and chemist central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology. He is widely considered in popular literature as the "father of modern chemistry". This label, however, is more a product of Lavoisier's eminent skill as a self-promoter and underplays his depend...
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Cross-listed in Astronomers

Urbain Le Verrier

borndied
1811, Mar 111877, Sep 23
a French mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics.
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Cross-listed in Writers

Georges-Louis Leclerc

aka: Comte de Buffon
borndied
1707, Sep 71788, Apr 16
a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime; with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

aka: von Leibniz
borndied
1646, Jun 211716, Nov 14
a German polymath and philosopher who occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy, having developed differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. Leibniz's notation has been widely used ever since it ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Nicolas Lemery

borndied
1645, Nov 171715, Jun 19
a French chemist, was born at Rouen. He was one of the first to develop theories on acid-base chemistry. Lemery did not concern himself much with theoretical speculations, but holding chemistry to be a demonstrative science, confined himself to the straightforward exposition of facts and experiments. In consequence, his lecture-room was thronged with people ...
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Cross-listed in ArtistsAstronomersSculptorsArchitectsInventorsCartographers

Leonardo da Vinci

bornactivedied
1452, Apr 151466-15191519, May 2
an Italian polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of paleontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest pain...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Justus von Liebig

borndied
1803, May 121873, Apr 18
a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and was considered the founder of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. He has been described ...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Carl Linnaeus

aka: Carolus Linnæus, Carolus a Linné, Carl von Linné
borndied
1707, May 231778, Jan 10
a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the epithet "father of modern taxonomy". One of the first scientists Linnaeus met in the Netherlands was Johan Frederik Gronovius to whom Linnaeus showed one of the several manuscripts he had brought with him from Sw...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersWritersInventors

Mikhail Lomonosov

bornactivedied
1711, Nov 81742-17641765, Apr 4
a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus and the Law of Mass Conservation in chemical reactions. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art, philology, optical devices and others. Lomonosov ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

John Claudius Loudon

borndied
1783, Apr 81843, Dec 14
a Scottish botanist, garden designer and cemetery designer, author and garden magazine editor. He was the first to use the term arboretum in writing to refer to a garden of plants, especially trees, collected for the purpose of scientific study. Loudon was a prolific horticultural and landscape design writer. Through his publications, he hoped to spread his ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Johann von Lowenstern-Kunckel

aka: Löwenstern-Kunckel
borndied
1630/381703, Mar 20
a German chemist. He became chemist and apothecary to the dukes of Lauenburg, and then to the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II, who put him in charge of the royal laboratory at Dresden. Intrigues engineered against him caused him to resign this position in 1677, and for a time he lectured on chemistry at Annaberg and Wittenberg. Invited to Berlin by Freder...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersCommerceLegal

John William Lubbock

aka: 3rd Baronet
borndied
1803, Mar 261865, Jun 21
an English banker, barrister, mathematician and astronomer. In 1828 he became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1829 he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and has been described as "foremost among English mathematicians in adopting Pierre-Simo...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Henry Lyte

borndied
1529 ca1607, Oct 16
an English botanist and antiquary. He is best known for two works, A niewe Herball (1578), which was a translation of the Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens (Antwerp, 1564), and an antiquarian volume, The Light of Britayne (1588), both of which are dedicated to Queen Eliz...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersWritersInventors

Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

borndied
15261585
a Muslim polymath active in the Ottoman Empire. He was the author of more than ninety books on a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, clocks, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, optics and natural philosophy. In 1574 the Ottoman Sultan Murad III invited Taqi ad-Din to build the Istanbul observatory. Using his exceptional knowledge in the mechanica...
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John MacCulloch

bornactivedied
1773, Oct 61793-18341835, Aug 21
a Scottish geologist. He was the first geologist to be employed by the government in Britain and is best known for his pioneering texts on geology and for producing the first geological maps of Scotland. He introduced the word "malaria" into the English language. MacCulloch, descended from the MacCullochs of Nether Ardwell in Galloway, was born in Guernsey, ...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Charles Macintosh

borndied
1766, Dec 291843, Jul 25
a Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics. The Mackintosh raincoat (the variant spelling is now standard) is named for him. He devoted all his spare time to science, particularly chemistry, and before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. In this he was highly successful, inventing various new processes. Hi...
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Cross-listed in WritersCartographersCommerce

William Maclure

bornactivedied
1763, Oct 271782-18271840, Mar 23
an Americanized Scottish geologist, cartographer and philanthropist. He is known as the 'father of American geology' and as a social experimenter on new types of community life, collaborating with British social reformer Robert Owen, (1771–1854), in Indiana, Un...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Charles Blachford Mansfield

borndied
1819, May 81855, Feb 26
a British chemist and author. Benzol, its Nature and Utility (1849) was a pamphlet. Mansfield's major work in chemistry was the Theory of Salts, completed in 1855. In September 1850 a balloon machine constructed at Paris led to his Aerial Navigation. Mansfield wrote several papers in Politics for the People, edited by Maurice and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, ...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Jean-Paul Marat

borndied
1743, May 241793, Jul 13
a French political theorist, physician, and scientist who was a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising stance towards the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, and advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society, yet calling for prisoners o...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Jan Marek Marci

aka: Johannes Marcus
borndied
1595, Jun 131667, Apr 10
a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, and official physician to the Holy Roman Emperors. The crater Marci on the far side of the Moon is named after him. Marci's studies covered the mechanics of colliding bodies, epilepsy, and the refraction of light, as well as other topics. Marci at some time came into possession of the Voyni...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Luigi Ferdinando Marsili

aka: Marsigli
borndied
1658, Jul 101730, Nov 1
an Italian scholar and eminent natural scientist, who also served as an emissary and soldier. A list of his works, over twenty in number, is given in Niceron's Mémoirs. His principal works are the following: Osservazioni interne al Bosforo Tracio (Rome, 1681); Histoire physique de la mer, translated by Leclerc (Amsterdam, 1725); Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus, ...
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Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

Cotton Mather

bornactivedied
1663, Feb 121685-17261728, Feb 13
a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. Known for his vigorous support for the Salem witch trials, he also left a scientific legacy due to his hybridization experiments and his promotion of inoculation for disease prevention. He was subsequently denied the Presidency of Harvard College which his ...
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied

aka: Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied
borndied
1782, Sep 231867, Feb 3
a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. He led a pioneering expedition to southeast Brazil between 1815–1817, from which the album Reise nach Brasilien, which first revealed to Europe real images of Brazilian Indians, was the ultimate result. It was translated into several languages and recognized as one of the greatest contributions to the knowledg...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersPhysicians

Archibald Menzies

borndied
1754, Mar 151842, Feb 15
a Scottish surgeon, botanist and naturalist. In 1790, Menzies was appointed as naturalist to accompany Captain George Vancouver on his voyage around the world on HMS Discovery. In 1794, while Discovery spent one of three winters in Hawaii, Menzies, with Lieute...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

John Mercer

borndied
1791, Feb 211866, Nov 30
an English dye and fabric chemist and fabric printer born in Great Harwood, Lancashire. In 1844 he developed a process for treating cotton, mercerisation, that improves many of its qualities for use in fabrics. John Mercer never went to school, he learned basic reading and writing from his neighbour. He was very fond of dyeing. With the help of a chemistry t...
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Cross-listed in Artists

Maria Sibylla Merian

borndied
1647, Apr 21717, Jan 13
a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family, founders of one of Europe's largest publishing houses in the 17th century. Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrelmore
Links (2)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Marin Mersenne

aka: Mersennus
borndied
1588, Sep 81648, Sep 1
a French theologian, philosopher, mathematician and music theorist, often referred to as the "father of acoustics". Mersenne, an ordained priest, had many contacts in the scientific world and has been called "the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s."
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

John Mitchell [2]

borndied
1711, Apr 131768, Feb 29
a colonial American physician and botanist. Mitchell wrote a paper in 1744 called An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates, submitted to the Royal Society in London by his correspondent Peter Collinson. In the paper, Mitchell claimed that the first race on earth had been a brown and reddish colour. He created the most...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersScientistsEducators

August Ferdinand Mobius

aka: Möbius
bornactivedied
1790, Nov 171816-18581868, Sep 26
a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the Möbius strip, a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Many mathematical concepts are named after him, including the Möbius plane, the Möbius transformations, important in projective geometry, ...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Gerrit Moll

aka: Gerard
borndied
17851838
a Dutch scientist and mathematician. A polymath in his interests, he published in four languages. From a family background in Amsterdam of commerce, Moll was drawn towards science. His teacher at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam was Jean Henri van Swinden. He took up astronomy with Jan Frederik Keijser in 1801. In 1809 he was awarded a Candidaat degree by...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersInventors

John Napier

aka: Neper, Nepair, Joannes Neper, Marvellous Merchiston, 8th Laird of Merchiston
borndied
1550, Feb 11617, Apr 4
a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented the so-called "Napier's bones" and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Napier made further contributions. He improved more
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Cross-listed in ArtistsWritersInventorsCartographersEducators

Matrakci Nasuh

aka: Matrakçi
borndied
14801564 ca
a 16th-century Bosniak statesman of the Ottoman Empire, polymath, mathematician, teacher, historian, geographer, cartographer, swordmaster, navigator, inventor, painter, farmer, and miniaturist. He was brought to Istanbul after being recruited by the Ottoman scouts in Rumelia, educated, served several Ottoman sultans, and became a teacher at Enderun School.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Louis Necker

aka: de Germany
borndied
1730, Aug 311804, Jul 31
an 18th-century Swiss mathematician. The elder brother of the statesman Jacques Necker, Louis Necker studied mathematics at the Academy of Geneva. He finished his studies in philosophy with a thesis on electricity (1747), then graduated in law (1751). He later was appointed governor of the princes of Nassau and de Lippe-Detmold during their stay in Geneva an...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Caspar Neumann

aka: Neuman
borndied
1683, Jul 111737, Oct 20
a German/Polish chemist and apothecary. In 2009, Alexander Kraft established that it was Caspar Neumann who conveyed the secret formula for preparing the first synthetic pigment, Prussian blue, to the Royal Society in England in 1723.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ExplorersCartographers

Joseph Nicollet

bornactivedied
1786, Jul 241830s-18431843, Sep 11
a French geographer, astronomer, and mathematician known for mapping the Upper Mississippi River basin during the 1830s. Nicollet led three expeditions in the region between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, primarily in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
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Cross-listed in ClergyInventors

Jean-Antoine Nollet

aka: Abbé Nollet
bornactivedied
1700, Nov 191728-17701770, Apr 25
a French clergyman and physicist. He joined the Royal Society of London in 1734 and later became the first professor of experimental physics at the University of Paris. He is reputed to have given the name to the Leyden jar after it was invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek. In 1748 he discovered the phenomenon of osmosis in natural membranes. In 1750 Nollet ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Lorenz Oken

bornactivedied
1779, Aug 11802-18511851, Aug 11
a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss (German: Okenfuß) in Bohlsbach (now part of Offenburg), Ortenau, Baden, and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Würzburg. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer), and...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Hans Christian Orsted

aka: Ørsted
borndied
1777, Aug 141851, Mar 9
a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, which was the first connection found between electricity and magnetism. He is still known today for Oersted's Law. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late 19th century. In 1825, Ørsted made a significant contribution to chemistr...
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Cross-listed in Cartographers

Abraham Ortelius

borndied
1527, Apr 141598, Jun 28
a Flemish/Netherlandish cartographer and geographer, conventionally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). One of the founders and the notable representatives of the Netherlandish school of cartography in its golden age (the 16th and 17th centuries), he is also believed to be the first person ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Peter Simon Pallas

aka: Pall
borndied
1741, Sep 221811, Sep 8
a Prussian zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia between 1767 and 1810. Peter Simon Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. In 1760, he moved to the University of Leiden and p...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Luigi Palmieri

borndied
1807, Apr 221896, Sep 9
an Italian physicist and meteorologist. He was famous for his scientific studies of the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, for his researches on earthquakes and meteorological phenomena and for improving the seismograph of the time. Using an electromagnetic seismometer for the detection and measurement of ground tremors, Palmieri was able to detect very slight mov...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Denis Papin

borndied
1647, Aug 221713 ca
a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker and of the steam engine. Born in Chitenay (Loir-et-Cher, Centre-Val de Loire Région), Papin attended a Jesuit school there, and from 1661 attended University at Angers, from which he graduated with a medical de...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Paracelsus

aka: Theophrastus von Hohenheim, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim
borndied
1493 ca1541, Sep 24
a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He was a pioneer in several aspects of the "medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom. He is credited as the "father of toxicology". Paracelsus also had a substantial impact as a prophet or diviner, h...
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Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Blaise Pascal

bornactivedied
1623, Jun 191642-16591662, Aug 19
a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work ...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Gustaf Erik Pasch

borndied
1788, Sep 31862, Sep 6
a Swedish inventor and professor of chemistry at Karolinska institute in Stockholm and inventor of the safety match. He was born in Norrköping, the son of a carpenter. He enrolled at Uppsala University in 1806 and graduated with a master's degree in 1821. Pasch is mostly known for the safety match, but he was also involved with making waterproof concrete fo...
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Cross-listed in ArtistsMilitaryGovernanceInventors

Charles Willson Peale

aka: Wilson
bornactivedied
1741, Apr 151770-18101827, Feb 22
an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as for establishing one of the first museums. Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under more
Links (16)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Bertrand Pelletier

borndied
1761, Jul 311797, Jul 21
an 18th-century French pharmacist and chemist. On the recommendation of Darcet, Hilaire Rouelle's widow appointed him managing director of the pharmacy rue Jacob in 1783. The following year, Pelletier was master apothecary, married Marguerite Sedillot and bought Rouelle's pharmacy. From 1783, Pelletier was a student at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, where he...
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Cross-listed in InventorsCommerce

William Henry Perrins

borndied
17931867
an English drug-store chemist who formed a business partnership with fellow pharmacist John Wheeley Lea, in 1823. They went on to create the Lea & Perrins brand of Worcestershire sauce. He lived in Lansdowne Crescent in the parish of Claines, and is buried in St John, Baptist Churchyard, Claines.
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Cross-listed in InventorsEducators

Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier

aka: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier
bornactivedied
1754, Mar 301772-17851785, Jun 15
a French chemistry and physics teacher, and one of the first pioneers of aviation. He and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first manned free balloon flight on 21 November 1783, in a Montgolfier balloon. He later died when his balloon crashed near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais during an attempt to fly across the English Channel. He and his companion, Pierre Ro...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersNavalCartographers

Piri Reis

aka: Ahmed Muhiddin Piri
bornactivedied
1467 ca1481-15531553
an Ottoman admiral, geographer, and cartographer. Piri began engaging in government-supported privateering (a common practice in the Mediterranean Sea among both the Muslim and Christian states of the 15th and 16th centuries) when he was young, He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-i Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book t...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov

borndied
1810, Nov 131881, Nov 23
a prominent Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1847). He is considered to be the founder of field surgery, and was one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847), invented various ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Joseph Plateau

bornactivedied
1801, Oct 141827-18721883, Sep 15
a Belgian physicist. He was one of the first persons to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistoscope. Plateau also studied the phenomena of capillary action and su...
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Simeon Denis Poisson

aka: Siméon
borndied
1781, Jun 211840, Apr 25
a French mathematician, geometer, and physicist. He obtained many important results, but within the elite Académie des Sciences he also was the final leading opponent of the wave theory of light and was proven wrong on that matter by Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Naval

Home Riggs Popham

borndied
1762, Oct 121820, Sep 2
a Royal Navy commander who saw service against the French during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He is remembered for his scientific accomplishments, particularly the development of a signal code that was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1803. Popham was one of the most scientific seamen of his time. He did much useful survey work, and was the author of t...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyWriters

John Henry Pratt

borndied
1809, Jun 41871, Dec 28
a British clergyman, astronomer and mathematician. A Cambridge Apostle, he joined the British East India Company in 1838 as a chaplain and later became Archdeacon at Calcutta. A gifted mathematician who applied his mind to problems of geodesy and earth science, he was approached by the Surveyor General of India to examine the errors in surveys resulting from...
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Links (1)


Pierre Prevost

aka: Prévost
borndied
1751, Mar 31839, Apr 8
a Genevan philosopher and physicist. In 1791 he explained Pictet's experiment by arguing that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are. Son of a Protestant clergyman in Geneva in the Republic of Geneva, he was born in that city and was educated for a clerical career. However, he abandoned it for law, and this too he quickly deserted to dev...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Stephen Reed

bornactivedied
1801, Sep 261824-1870s1877, Jul 12
an American physician, newspaper publisher, and geologist. He graduated from Yale College in 1824. After two or three years spent in school-teaching and in studying medicine, he established himself as a physician in Goshen, Conn. A year later he removed to Roxbury, Conn., and in 1831 to Richmond, Mass. Finding the exposure to the severity of the weather too ...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Carl Reichenbach

aka: Karl von Reichenbach
borndied
1788, Feb 121869, Jan
a notable chemist, geologist, metallurgist, naturalist, industrialist and philosopher, and a member of the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his discoveries of several chemical products of economic importance, extracted from tar, such as eupione, waxy paraffin, pittacal (the first synthetic dye) and phenol (an antiseptic). He als...
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Bernhard Riemann

borndied
1826, Sep 171866, Jul 20
a German mathematician who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series. His contributions to complex analysis include most notably the introduction of Riemann surfaces, breaki...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Gilles de Roberval

aka: Gilles Personne, Gilles Personier
borndied
1602, Aug 101675, Oct 27
a French mathematician, was born at Roberval near Beauvais, France. He worked on the quadrature of surfaces and the cubature of solids, which he accomplished, in some of the simpler cases, by an original method which he called the "Method of Indivisibles"; but he lost much of the credit of the discovery as he kept his method for his own use, while Bonaventur...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Pierre Romain

borndied
1751, Oct 301785, Jun 15
a French lawyer , physicist, chemist and aeronaut. He met Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier in August 1784 and began studying a balloon capable of crossing the English Channel. A simple balloon does not allow a trip so long (it would be impossib...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Jean Ruel

aka: Jean Ruelle, Ioannes Ruellius
borndied
14741537, Sep 24
a French physician and botanist noted for the 1536 publication in Paris of De Natura Stirpium, a Renaissance treatise on botany. Ruel was born in Soissons. He was self-taught in Greek and Latin, and studied medicine, graduating in 1508, or, according to other sources in 1502. In 1509 he became physician to Francis I, devoted himself at the same time to a st...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersAstronomersMilitary

Sir Edward Sabine

bornactivedied
1788, Oct 141818-18711883, Jun 26
an Irish astronomer, geophysicist, ornithologist, explorer, soldier and the 30th President of the Royal Society. Two branches of Sabine's work are notable: Determination of the length of the seconds pendulum, a simple pendulum whose time period on the surface of the Earth is two seconds, that is, one second in each direction; and his research on the Earth's ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Explorers

Horace Benedict de Saussure

aka: Bénédict
borndied
1740, Feb 171799, Jan 22
a Swiss geologist, meteorologist, physicist, mountaineer and Alpine explorer, often called the founder of alpinism and modern meteorology, and considered to be the first person to build a successful solar oven. In 1767, he completed his first tour of Mont-Blanc, a trip that did much to reveal the topography of the snowy portions of the Alps of Savoy. He also...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Carl Wilhelm Scheele

aka: Karl
bornactivedied
1742, Dec 91757-17861786, May 21
a Swedish Pomeranian and pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit. For example, Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen, and chlorine be...
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Links (13)


Cross-listed in WritersCartographers

Adolf Schmidl

borndied
1802, May 181863, Nov 20
an Austrian topographer , geographer , speleologist and writer , and a professor at the Joseph Polytechnic in oven . He developed the speleology as an independent scientific discipline. The extensive geographic written work Schmidl dealt especially with Vienna and Vienna region, for 40 years of center of his life, although he described numerous other, even r...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Christian Friedrich Schonbein

aka: Schönbein
borndied
1799, Oct 181868, Aug 29
a German-Swiss chemist who is best known for inventing the fuel cell (1838) at the same time as William Robert Grove, Robert Cumming and his discoveries of guncotton and ozone. It was while doing experiments on the electrolysis of water that Schönbein first began to notice a distinctive odor in his laboratory. This smell gave Schönbein the clue to the pres...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersWriters

Henry R. Schoolcraft

borndied
1793, Mar 281864, Dec 10
an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans in the 1850s. He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyEducators

Angelo Secchi

aka: Pietro Angelo
borndied
1818, Jun 291878, Feb 26
an Italian astronomer. He was Director of the Observatory at the Pontifical Gregorian University (then called the Roman College) for 28 years. He was a pioneer in astronomical spectroscopy, and was one of the first scientists to state authoritatively that the Sun is a star.
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Cross-listed in ExplorersCartographersCommerce

John Senex

borndied
16781740
an English cartographer, engraver and explorer. He was also an astrologer, geologist, and geographer to Queen Anne of Great Britain, editor and seller of antique maps and most importantly creator of the pocket-size map of the world.[citation needed] He owned a business on Fleet Street, where he sold maps. Senex is famous for his maps of the world, some of wh...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansEducators

William Shippen Jr.

borndied
1736, Oct 211808, Jul 11
the first systematic teacher of anatomy, surgery and obstetrics in Colonial America and founded the first maternity hospital in America. He was the 3rd Director General of Hospitals of the Continental Army. Shippen followed his father William Shippen Sr. into a medical career. At his father's encouragement, William Jr. commenced America's first series of ana...
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Cross-listed in WritersPhysiciansInventorsLegal

Fathullah Shirazi

borndied
unknown1582
a Persian-Indian polymath—a scholar, Islamic jurist, finance minister, mechanical engineer, inventor, mathematician, astronomer, physician, philosopher and artist—who worked for Akbar, ruler of the Mughal Empire. Among the inventions credited to him was an early anti-infantry volley gun with multiple gun barrels similar to a hand cannon's. Another cannon...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

John Sibthorp

borndied
1758, Oct 281796, Feb 8
an English botanist. In 1784 he succeeded his father to the Sherardian chair. Leaving his professional duties to a deputy, he left England for Göttingen and Vienna, in preparation for a botanical tour of Greece (1786) and Cyprus (1787). Returning to England at the end of the following year, he took part in the foundation of the Linnean Society in 1788, and ...
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Cross-listed in Writers

George Sinclair

borndied
unknown1696
a Scottish mathematician, engineer and demonologist. The first Professor of Mathematics, Glasgow, he is known for Satan's Invisible Works Discovered, (c. 1685), a work on witchcraft. He wrote in all three areas of his interests, including an account of the “Glenluce Devil”, a poltergeist case from c. 1654, in a 1680 book mainly on hydrostatics and dealin...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ArtistsMilitaryWriters

Charles Hamilton Smith

aka: C. H., C.H.
bornactivedied
1776, Dec 261787-18591859, Sep 21
an English artist, naturalist, antiquary, illustrator, soldier, and spy. His military career began in 1787, when he studied at the Austrian academy for artillery and engineers at Mechelen and Leuven in Belgium. Although his military service, which ended in 1820 and included the Napoleonic Wars, saw him travel extensively (including the West Indies, Canada, a...
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Links (5)


Cross-listed in AstronomersWritersInventors

Hamilton Lanphere Smith

borndied
1819, Nov 51903
an American scientist, photographer, and astronomer. He was born in New London, Connecticut and graduated from Yale in 1839, where he constructed the largest telescope in the country at the time in 1838. In 1848 Smith wrote "The World", one of the first science textbooks written in America. Smith is best known for patenting the tintype photographic process, ...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Sir James Edward Smith

borndied
1759, Dec 21828, Mar 17
an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society. Between 1786 and 1788 Smith made the grand tour through the Netherlands, France, Italy and Switzerland visiting botanists, picture galleries and herbaria. He founded the Linnean Society of London in 1788, becoming its first President, a post he held until his death. Smith spent the remaining thirty year...
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Links (1)


James Smithson

borndied
1765 ca1829, Jun 27
an English chemist and mineralogist. He was the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithson was never married and had no children; therefore, when he wrote his will, he left his estate to his nephew, or his nephew's family if his nephew died before Smithson. If his nephew was to die without heirs, however, Smithson's will stipulated that his esta...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Ascanio Sobrero

borndied
1812, Oct 121888, May 26
an Italian chemist, born in Casale Monferrato. He was studying under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin, who had worked with the explosive material guncotton. During his research he discovered, in 1847, nitroglycerine. He initially called it "pyroglycerine", and warned vigorously against its use in his private letters and in a journal articl...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersWriters

Mary Fairfax Somerville

bornactivedied
1780, Dec 261811-18721872, Nov 29
a Scottish science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in science was discouraged. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline...
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Links (20)


Cross-listed in ClergyEducators

Lazzaro Spallanzani

borndied
1729, Jan 101799, Feb 12
an Italian Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation. His research of biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of preformationism theory (the idea that organisms develop from miniature versions of themselves), though the final death...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyPhysiciansCommerce

Archibald Spencer

borndied
1698, Jan 11760, Jan 13
a businessman, scientist, doctor, clergyman, and lecturer. He is noted for introducing the phenomenon of electricity to Benjamin Franklin. Spencer was a businessman in the British Colonies of America. From 1743 to 1751 he professionally conducted scientific lectures and demonstrations. These were popularized in the colonies after Professor Isaac Greenwood st...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ExplorersPhysicians

Jacob Spon

borndied
16471685, Dec 25
a French doctor and archaeologist, was a pioneer in the exploration of the monuments of Greece and a scholar of international reputation in the developing "Republic of Letters". Spon travelled to Italy, and then to Greece, to Constantinople and the Levant in 1675–1676 in the company of the English connoisseur and botanist Sir George Wheler (1650–1723), w...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Georg Ernst Stahl

borndied
1659, Oct 221734, May 24
a German chemist, physician and philosopher. He was a supporter of vitalism, and until the late 18th century his works on phlogiston were accepted as an explanation for chemical processes. Stahl's focus was on the distinction between the living and nonliving. Although he did not support the views of iatro-mechanists, he believed that all non-living creatures...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Richard Stanihurst

aka: Stanyhurst
bornactivedied
15471582-16021618
an Irish alchemist, translator, poet and historian, born in Dublin. Richard was sent to Peter White's Kilkenny College after which, in 1563, he continued to University College, Oxford, where he took his degree five years later. At Oxford he became intimate with Edmund Campion. After leaving the university he studied law at Furnival's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. H...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Dugald Stewart

aka: Dougal
borndied
1753, Nov 221828, Jun 11
a Scottish philosopher and mathematician. He is best known for popularizing the Scottish Enlightenment and his lectures at the University of Edinburgh were widely disseminated by his many influential students. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Stewart spent the summers of 1788 and 1789 in France, where he met Suard, Degérando...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Matthew Stewart [2]

borndied
1717, Jan 151785, Jan 23
a Scottish mathematician and minister of the Church of Scotland. His father persuaded him to enter the ministry (this was a normal father-son expectation in the ministry). He studied Divinity at Edinburgh University in the year 1742/43 also attending maths lectures under Colin Maclaurin. He was licensed by the Presbytery of the Church of Scotland of Dunoon i...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersInventors

Emanuel Swedenborg

borndied
1688, Jan 291772, Mar 29
a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and mystic. He is best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758). Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at age 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions. According to The Heavenly Doctrine t...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Henry Fox Talbot

aka: William Henry Fox
borndied
1800, Feb 111877, Sep 17
an English scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work, in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction, led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controv...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

Genevieve Thiroux d'Arconville

aka: Geneviève
borndied
1720, Oct 171805, Dec 23
a French author and chemist. Thiroux d'Arconville's interests included history, physics, chemistry, natural history and even medicine. She took classes in anatomy at the Jardin du Roi where a few women were admitted. She wrote and translated works on diverse subjects but they were invariably published anonymously in her lifetime.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ArtistsMilitaryInventors

Benjamin Thompson

aka: Count Rumford
bornactivedied
1753, Mar 261766-18141814, Aug 21
an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He served as lieutenant-colonel of the King's American Dragoons, part of the British Loyalist forces, during the American Revolutionary War. After the end of the war he moved to London, where his administ...
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Links (14)Notes (2)


Robert W. Thomson

aka: Thompson
borndied
1822, Jul1873, Mar 8
the original inventor of the pneumatic tyre. Born in Stonehaven in the north east of Scotland, Robert was the eleventh of twelve children of a local woollen mill owner. His family wished him to study for the ministry but Robert refused, one reason being his inability to master Latin. He left school at the age of 14 and went to live with an uncle in Charlesto...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Henry David Thoreau

bornactivedied
1817, Jul 121837-18621862, May 6
an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an ar...
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Cross-listed in ArtistsArchitectsPhysicians

William Thornton

bornactivedied
1759, May 201789-18281828, Mar 28
a British-American physician, inventor, painter and architect who designed the United States Capitol, an authentic polymath. He also served as the first Architect of the Capitol and first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office.
Links (10)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in ExplorersAstronomersMilitaryGovernanceWriters

Antonio de Ulloa

borndied
1716, Jan 121795, Jul 3
a Spanish general, explorer, author, astronomer, colonial administrator and the first Spanish governor of Louisiana. He became prominent as a scientist and was appointed to serve on various important scientific commissions. He is credited with the establishment of the first museum of natural history, the first metallurgical laboratory in Spain, and the obser...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Coenraad Johannes van Houten

borndied
1801, Mar 151887, May 27
a Dutch chemist and chocolate maker known for the treatment of cocoa mass with alkaline salts to remove the bitter taste and make cocoa solids more water-soluble; the resulting product is still called "Dutch process" chocolate. He is also credited with introducing a method for pressing the fat (cocoa butter) from roasted cocoa beans, though this was in fact ...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek

borndied
1632, Oct 241723, Aug 26
a Dutch tradesman and scientist. He is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist. He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Pieter van Musschenbroek

borndied
1692, Mar 141761, Sep 19
a Dutch scientist. He was a professor in Duisburg, Utrecht, and Leiden, where he held positions in mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and astronomy. He is credited with the invention of the first capacitor in 1746: the Leyden jar. He performed pioneering work on the buckling of compressed struts. Musschenbroek was also one of the first scientists (1729) to p...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Jean Henri van Swinden

borndied
1746, Jun 81823, Mar 9
a Dutch mathematician and physicist who taught in Franeker and Amsterdam. He was trained 1763-1766 at the University of Leiden, where he became doctor of philosophy on 12 June 1766 with the thesis "Natural power of attraction". He became professor at the University of Franeker the same year, where he continued to study and conduct research as well as teach. ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Lucien Vidi

aka: Vidie
bornactivedied
18051844-18581866
a French physicist. In 1844 he invented the barograph, that is, a device to monitor pressure, a recording aneroid barometer. Vidie's death was ascribed to his excessive use of hydrotherapy.
Links (2)


Cross-listed in GovernanceWritersPhysicians

Rudolf Virchow

borndied
1821, Oct 131902, Sep 5
a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician, known for his advancement of public health. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" because his work helped to discredit humourism, bringing more science to medicine. He is also known as the founder of social medicine and veterinary pathology, and t...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Alessandro Volta

bornactivedied
1745, Feb 181774-18191827, Mar 5
an Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity and power, who is credited as the inventor of the electrical battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the Voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the President of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity ...
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Alfred Russel Wallace

borndied
1823, Jan 81913, Nov 7
a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in ...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyWriters

Seth Ward

borndied
16171689, Jan 6
an English mathematician, astronomer, and bishop. King Charles II appointed him to the livings of St Lawrence Jewry in London, and Uplowman, Devonshire, in 1661. He also became dean of Exeter Cathedral (1661) and rector of St Breock, Cornwall in 1662. In the latter year he was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, and in 1667 he was translated to the see of Salisbur...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Charles Wheatstone

borndied
1802, Feb 61875, Oct 19
an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope (a device for displaying three-dimensional images), and the Playfair cipher (an encryption technique). However, Wheatstone is best known for his contributions in the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invent...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyWritersEducators

William Whewell

borndied
1794, May 241866, Mar 6
an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved distinction in both poetry and mathematics. What is most often remarked about Whewell is the breadth of his endeavours. In a time of increasing specialisation, Whewell app...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyWriters

Samuel Williams

borndied
17421817
A Vermont minister, scientist, and philosophy professor, Williams believed the social contract should take a new form in America, where government derived its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Williams expressed his ideas in two major works, The Natural and Civil History of the State of Vermont (1795) and Philosophical Lectures on the Constitution...
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Cross-listed in AstronomersEducators

John Winthrop [2]

borndied
1714, Dec 191779, May 3
a distinguished mathematician, physicist and astronomer, born in Boston, Mass. Professor Winthrop was one of the foremost men of science in America during the 18th century, and his impact on its early advance in New England was particularly significant. Both Ben...
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Timeline (3)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Writers

John Woodward

borndied
1665, May 11728, Apr 25
an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist, and founder by bequest of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at Cambridge University. Though a leading supporter of the importance of observation and experiment in what we now call science, few of his theories have survived. While still a student he became interested in botany and natural history, and d...
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Links (1)


John Worlidge

aka: Woolridge
borndied
16401700
a noted English agriculturalist, who lived in Petersfield, Hampshire, England. He was considered a great expert on rural affairs, and one of the first British agriculturalists to discuss the importance of farming as an industry. In his notable 1676 book, Vinetum britannicum, Worlidge advocated the production of cider over that of wine in Great Britain...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansEducators

Ole Worm

aka: Olaus Wormius
borndied
1588, May 131654, Aug 31
a Danish physician, natural historian and antiquary. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen where he taught Greek, Latin, Physics and Medicine. Worm was the son of Willum Worm, who served as the mayor of Aarhus, and was made a rich man by an inheritance from his father. Ole Worm's grandfather Johan Worm, a magistrate in Aarhus, was a Lutheran who...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in WritersPhysicians

Thomas Young [2]

borndied
1773, Jun 131829, May 10
an English polymath and physician. Young made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology.
Links (19)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyWriters

Abraham Zacuto

bornactivedied
1452, Aug 121480s-1500s1515 ca
a Sephardi Jewish astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, rabbi and historian who served as Royal Astronomer in the 15th century to King John II of Portugal. The crater Zagut on the Moon is named after him.
Links (13)Notes (2)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyWriters

Niccolo Zucchi

aka: Niccolò
borndied
1586, Dec 61670, May 21
an Italian Jesuit, astronomer, and physicist. As an astronomer he may have been the first to see the belts on the planet Jupiter (on May 17, 1630), and reported spots on Mars in 1640. His Optica philosophia experimentis et ratione a fundamentis constituta, published in 1652–56, described his 1616 experiments using a curved mirror instead of a lens a...
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