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Period: 216 BCE to 194
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. -
6 BCE
Early Hominids apear
The first early hominid from Africa, the Taung child, as it was known, was a juvenile member of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived one million to two million years ago, though at the time skeptical scientists said the chimpanzee-size braincase was too small for a hominid. -
Period: 85 to 165
Ptolemy
His first major astronomical work, the Almagest, was completed about 150 ce and contains reports of astronomical observations that Ptolemy had made over the preceding quarter of a century. The size and content of his subsequent literary production suggests that he lived until about 170 ce. Works written: Almagest, Tetrabiblos
Profession: Astronomer, Mathematician -
Period: 1473 to 1543
Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who proposed a heliocentric system, that the planets orbit around the Sun; that Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes. -
Period: Dec 14, 1546 to
Brahe
A Danish nobleman, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), made important contributions by devising the most precise instruments available before the invention of the telescope for observing the heavens. Brahe made his observations from Uraniborg, on an island in the sound between Denmark and Sweden called Hveen. -
Period: Jan 22, 1561 to
Bacon
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution. -
Period: 1564 to
Galileo
Of all of his telescope discoveries, he is perhaps most known for his discovery of the four most massive moons of Jupiter, now known as the Galilean moons. When NASA sent a mission to Jupiter in the 1990s, it was called Galileo in honor of the famed astronomer. -
Period: Dec 27, 1571 to
Kepler
Johannes Kepler is best known for his three laws of planetary motion. These laws are: Planets move in orbits shaped like an ellipse. -
Period: to
Descartes
Descartes has been heralded as the first modern philosopher. He is famous for having made an important connection between geometry and algebra, which allowed for the solving of geometrical problems by way of algebraic equations. Also created Cartesian skeptism. -
Period: to
Locke
John Locke FRS was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". -
Period: to
Newton
Gravity - Newton is probably most famous for discovering gravity. Outlined in the Principia, his theory about gravity helped to explain the movements of the planets and the Sun. This theory is known today as Newton's law of universal gravitation. Originally known as “fluxions,” and now calculus, it charted the constantly changing and variable state of nature (like force and acceleration), in a way that existing algebra and geometry could not. -
Period: to
Mendleev
Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who lived from 1834 to 1907. He is considered to be the most important contributor to the development of the periodic table. His version of the periodic table organized elements into rows according to their atomic mass and into columns based on chemical and physical properties. -
Period: to
Marie Curie
Marie Curie discovered two new chemical elements – radium and polonium. She carried out the first research into the treatment of tumors with radiation, and she founded of the Curie Institutes, which are important medical research centers. -
Period: to
Leavitt
Curie was a pioneer in researching radioactivity, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. Curie never worked on the Manhattan Project, but her contributions to the study of radium and radiation were instrumental to the future development of the atomic bomb. -
Period: to
Wegner
Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research. Theorized pangea. -
Period: to
Hubble
Often called a "pioneer of the distant stars," astronomer Edwin Hubble played a pivotal role in deciphering the vast and complex nature of the universe. His meticulous studies of spiral nebulae proved the existence of galaxies other than our own Milky Way. -
Period: to
Hess
History of Ocean Basins was published in 1962 and explained the mechanism behind Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory. In the paper Hess described how hot magma would rise from under the crust at the Great Global Rift. When the magma cooled, it would expand and push the tectonic plates apart. Theorized plate tectonics