Famous Scientists

  • 384 BCE

    Aristotle

    • Only one third of his work still remains to this day
    • Some of his famous quotes include:
      “Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.”
    “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” “Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.” “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
  • 287 BCE

    Archimedes

    • He coined the term "eureka" when he successfully proved that silver was mixed in with he gold crown that was made for King Hiero II
    • The Archimedes screw was a great discovery made by him that is still used for irrigation in Egypt today
  • Apr 15, 1452

    Leonardo da Vinci

    • He used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free
    • Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time
  • Feb 15, 1564

    Galileo Galilei

    • After discovering four of Jupiter's moons, the king of France asked him to find some more moons so they could be named after him
    • His first name is so similar to his last name because when he was born, it was customary to give the first-born son a name based on the family name
  • Isaac Newton

    • He had two nervous breakdowns
    • His mother wanted him to become a farmer but he had no interest in it and failed his exams
  • Maria Sibylla Merian

    • Her father died when she was three years old so she was raised by her mother and stepfather.
    • Her daughter Dorothea Maria was the first woman to be employed by the Russian Academy of Sciences
  • Charles Darwin

    • He is most famous for his work on natural selection, the idea that all species of life have evolved over time from ancestors.
    • He wrote a book called 'On the Origin of Species’ which was about much of his research on natural selection
  • Ada Lovelace

    • Charles Babbage made a machine that could follow directions, now recognised as the world's earliest form of a computer. Ada's own writings became the first algorithm used to make the machine function
    • Ada excelled in maths and had a lifelong interest in numbers and number theory
  • Marie Curie

    • She was the first person to ever win 2 Nobel prizes and she is the only woman to ever win 2, so far
    • She was buried twice. When she died of leukaemia, she as buried alongside her husband Pierre. Then her body was moved to be buried at the Pantheon
  • Maria Goeppert Mayer

    • She was the second Nobel prize laureate in physics, after Marie Curie
    • Maria Goeppert Mayer was often asked why girls needed to study science. Sometimes she answered with a counter question: “Do girls only have to learn how to read just to study cook books?”
  • Gertrude Elion

    • Gertrude had some problems choosing one subject to major in since there was no scientific subject that she did not love
    • She invented the first major medicine to fight leukaemia
  • Rosalind Franklin

    • She helped discover the DNA double helix
    • She was never a feminist. She had always thought of herself simply as a scientist whose achievements should be judged on their own terms, not as a woman scientist striking a blow for the rights of women.
  • Stephen Hawking

    • He is well known for his bestselling book 'A Brief History of Time'
    • He suffers from ALS, a type of motor neurone disease which has left him almost completely paralysed