People And Biographies

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his work on the telephone.
Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the United States [...]

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Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish-born French chemist and physicist who twice won the Nobel Prize and is best known for her investigations of radioactivity with her husband Pierre Curie. Radioactivity is the spontaneous decay of certain elements into other elements and energy. The Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with a colleague, [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, considered one of the great minds in Western intellectual history.
Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, and his family settled in Paris in 1629. Under the tutelage of his father, Pascal soon proved himself a mathematical prodigy, and at the age of [...]

Edwin Hubble (1889–1953), American astronomer, who made important contributions to the study of galaxies, the expansion of the universe, and the size of the universe. Hubble was the first to discover that fuzzy patches of light in the sky called spiral nebula were actually galaxies like Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way. Hubble also found the [...]

Hippocrates (460?-377?bc), greatest physician of antiquity, regarded as the father of medicine. Born probably on the island of Kos, Greece, Hippocrates traveled widely before settling on Kos to practice and teach medicine. He died in Larissa, Greece; little else is known about him. His name is associated with the Hippocratic Oath, though he probably is [...]

I. INTRODUCTION
David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish missionary and physician, who spent half his life exploring southern and central Africa. In addition to adding greatly to Europe’s knowledge of the continent’s geography, he heightened Western awareness of Africa and stimulated Christian missionary activity there. His activities helped bring about the Scramble for Africa, in which European [...]

I. INTRODUCTION
Robert Boyle (1627-1691), English natural philosopher and one of the founders of modern chemistry. Boyle is best remembered for Boyle’s law, a physical law that explains how the pressure and volume of a gas are related. He was instrumental in the founding of the Royal Society, a British organization dedicated to the advancement of [...]

I. INTRODUCTION
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian American physicist, electrical engineer, and inventor. Tesla was one of the great pioneers of the use of alternating current electricity. Alternating current electricity changes in strength cyclically over time and is the type of electricity that power companies supply to homes today (see Electricity: Alternating Currents). Tesla invented the [...]