All names in this Index are by birth-certificate, which may not be the name by which you know them
At the top left-hand corner of every screen there is a flat rectangular box with an icon of a magnifying-glass: your search bar. You may well find it easier to find the person you are seeking there
Girolamo Fabricio di Acquapendente
(Hieronymus Fabricius): (born
May 20 1537; died May 21 1619): discovers vascular valves on March 29; bio and achievements here and here
Archilochus: “(flourished c. 650 bce, Paros
[Cyclades, Greece]) was a poet and soldier, the earliest Greek writer of
iambic, elegiac, and personal lyric poetry” according to Britannica;
and thus his presence among The
Poets as well as here; but he was also the first to make a written account
of an eclipse (on April 6); there are others on June 4 and Oct 13, while June 4 disputes his “firstness”. April 6 also records eclipses on January
9th 2001, in August 1978 in Botswana, and on August 21 2017, plus the Transit
of Venus on June 8 2004 is mentioned, but not blogged on that date
Archimedes of Syracuse (circa
287 BCE- 212 BCE): mathematically
challenged by Omar Khayyam on March 6; for more on him try here, or here
Aloysius (Alois) Alzheimer: (born June 14 1864;
died Dec 19 1915) - but his key date is yet to be blogged: Nov 3 1906, on
which he reported “a peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex”:
click here for a prelude
Nicolas-François Appert: the man who invented tin cans, born Oct 23 1752 (though other sources insist it was November
17 1749; but click here); died June 1 1841
Edwin Howard Armstrong (born Dec
18 1890;
died February 1 1954): inventor of FM radio; bio and inventions here
Charles Babbage (born Dec
26 1791;
died October 18 1871): dinner with Ada Lovelace
on June 5; Science Museum view
here
John Logie Baird: (born August 13 1888; died June 14 1946): switched
on his colour telly on July 3; in Bexhill here; in Seven Dials here; his personal
TV channel here
Gaspard Bauhin (born
January 17 1560; died December 5 1624): published "Theatrum
anatomicum", an encyclopaedia of anatomy, on March 29, though he was also an important botanist; bio here
Antoine Henri Becquerel (born December 15 1852; died August 25
1908): became radioactive on March
1;
Nobel Prize here; Atomic Heritage Ftn
here
John Beers: crowned on Nov
4,
though clearly he stole the idea from William N Morris – click here for the full tale;
more on Beers … nope, can’t find so much as a root canal
Jean Beguin
(1550-1620): creating "Tyrocinium chymicum", the first chemistry
textbook, on March 29; try here
Alexander Graham Bell (born March 3 1847; died August 2
1922): escorting James Smithson’s remains on Aug 10; his website here; his Association here; his papers here
George Amandine Van Biesbroeck (born
January 21 1880; died February 23 1974): stars on Dec 10; Smithsonian bio here; his prize here
Marie-Marguerite Biheron (anatomist and inventor): (born November 17 1719; died June 18 1795): with Madeleine Basseporte on
April 28, and on the
Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness"; but does she go there with the painters, or here
with the pursuers of E,M&C2? both is the
answer, because sometimes it is very hard to tell Art from Science
Niels Henrik David Bohr (born Oct
7 1885;
died November 18 1962): Nobel Prize here; library and
archives here and here; Copenhagen
Institute here
Thomas Bopp: one half of Hale-Bopp on Sept 14 (the other half was Alan Hale, for whom see below), but totally eclipsed on April 6. This from the NASA website: “Comet C/1995 O1
(Hale-Bopp) was discovered on July 23, 1995, independently, by both Alan
Hale and Thomas
Bopp. Hale-Bopp was
discovered at the amazing distance of 7.15 AU. One AU is equal to about 150
million km (93 million miles).” Which is exactly the same distance as the sun
from the Earth. More on Bopp here
Giovanni Branca (born April 22 1571; died January 24 1645): described a steam turbine, in
"Le Machine", on March
29; a drawing of it at the Science Museum here; a model of it at
the Smithsonian here; his bio here
Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil,
Marquise du Châtelet (born December 17
1706; died September 10 1749): see my Voltaire
essay in “Travels In Familiar
Lands”,
and the French Blue-Stockings page:
quite possibly the most extraordinarily brilliant human being before Einstein on June
12 (with
mentions on April 27 and May 30);
Stanford encyclopedia here
David Brewster (born 11 December 11 1781; died February 10
1868): kaleidoscoped on Dec 11; with Ada Lovelace on June 5; his website here; visit him in Jedburgh
here; his archive here
Guy de la Brosse (1586–1641): merely mentioned in
relation to Mother Goose on March 15, but he was actually a very
important botanist, the man who created the Jardin des Plantes in Paris for Louis XIII, while simultanously
serving as his personal physician; the scientific importance and a full bio here
Thomas Browne: (born Oct
19
1605; died October 19 1682): Tenzinged with William
Gilbert on July 24; his website here
Filippo (changed to Giordano in honour of his metaphysics teacher
Giordano Crispo) Bruno (published in Latin
as Lordanus Brunus Nolanus): (born 1548; burned
to death on Feb 16 (some archives insist
on Feb 17); among the
victims on March 29, May 4, July
24 and Oct
13 (but see also Jan 8 and Dec 6); Hebdoed
on Jan 14 [technically he belongs among the reverend writers, but sadly they kicked him out]
Augusta Ada Byron (Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace) (born December 10
1815; died November 27 1852): the full tale of her brilliance on June 5; her home in London is on Dec 4; her partner in computing, Charles Babbage, reappears on Dec 26; and unable to avoid her dad on Jan 22; lots of websites with different takes on
her brilliance, pure Maths here; the relationship
with Babbage here; computers here; her Blue Plaque here, and see Dec 4
Chester F. Carlson: (born February 8 1906; died September 19
1968): Xeroxed on Oct 22; a copy of the Xeroxed bio of him here
Anders Celsius: bloomered on Feb 22; born Nov
27
(that would be May 14 in Fahrenheit) 1701; died April 25 1744: home in
Uppsala here
Erasistratus of Ceos (born circa 304 BCE; died circa 250 BCE): understood
blood circulation but couldn’t prove it, on Nov 14, which is why he is on
this E,M&C2 page, but not on the scientific
achievements/Jan 1 page; what we think he thought he knew here; paintings depicting him here
J (James) Walter "Jim" Christ[y]: discovered Charon
(Pluto's moon) with his partner Robert
Harrington on June 22; the NASA page with
downloads here; the Lowell
Observatory here
Carolus Clusius, a sixteenth-century botanist from the Southern Netherlands who the
French knew as Charles de l’Ecluse: gave the
Pope Europe’s first potato on July 28 (click here); he was
also, apparently, responsible for bringing the tulip to Europe (click here)
Denton Arthur Cooley: rather more artificial than Christian Barnard on April 4; his own
heart failed here; appraisal of the scientist here
William David Coolidge (born Oct
23 1873; died February 3 1975): an X-ray of his life here
Francis Harry Compton Crick (born June 8 1916; died July 28
2004): (Rosie Franklin does at least
get a mention): Nobel Prize here; his DNA here
William Dampier (born 1651; died March 1715):
variously described as “pirate”, “buccaneer” and “hydrographer”, which makes
him a classic exemplar of the Pulchrasaurus (see my novel “The
House On Shaftesbury Hill”),
he is mostly remembered as the first European to undertake a seriously
scientific exploration of the coast of Australia: Feb 1; the Australian view here (that’s “Australian” as in "Europeans like
Dampier"; I am unable to find an Aboriginal view anywhere online, but see
my piece on Man Friday in “The
Captive Bride”)
Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus, but remembered by her married
name as Marie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux
d'Arconville: studying chemistry on Dec 23, and on the
Ancien Régime
page of "Woman-Blindness"
Humphry Davy (born December 17 1778; died May
29 1829): Dec 11 has “Anaesthesia first used in dentistry, by Horace Wells, today in 1844”, but my note on the Scientific
Achievements list, and
on Jan 1, insists
that actually the pioneering work on N2O (nitrous oxide or laughing gas) was
done fifty years previously by Humphry
Davy, so you'll
find him on the Sherpa Tenzings list as well: start here or here
Richard Dawkins: my
cartoon provides the illustration on July 26 though I failed to include the
suggestion that belief in the actual, physical existence of the psyche might be
termed a “deitic delusion”; his website here; his Foundation for Reason
and Science here, and no I am not able to explain why or even how he makes this distinction between these two synonyms for cognitive engagement
Michael Ellis DeBakey (born September 7 1908; died of
heart failure on July 11 2008): the Sherpa Tenzing of this
tale of the first artificial heart transplant on April 4, carried out by Denton Cooley in Houston, Texas, the recipient Haskell
Karp (but click
here); bio here
Christian Andreas Doppler (born Nov
29 1803; became ineffective and lost all colour on March 17 1853): his website
here; the theory here
Thomas Alva Edison: (born February 11 1847; died October 18
1931): “Mary had a little lamb” on March
15
and Nov 20; stealing ideas for Oct 21 on July
24;
the electric chair on Aug 6; turned into a verb
on Nov 6 ; his “Innovation
Foundation” here, his personal
website here; his papers here
Albert Einstein: (became E on March 14 1879; ceased to be M
or C on April 18 1955): his annus
mirabilis mentioned on Feb 24 and July 6; still Jewish on April 1; relativity on May 11; university drop-out on Aug 18; not clever
enough to make his own website so someone had to do it for him, here; but someone else thought they could do a better job, here; and then a third, here; and then a fourth, here; I leave you to determine for yourself the relative merits of each; his
papers here; his college of medicine here; his Nobel
Prize here
Thomas Henry Elkins: (1818-August 10 1900): refrigerated on Nov 4; bio here
Hans Jürgen Eysenck (born March 4 1916; died September
4 1997): referenced, rather than actually theorising personality, on Nov 22 – bio here; his
website here
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit: pre-empted by Sanctorius
on Feb 22; born May
14 (though
some say May 24) 1686;
converts to Celsius on Nov 27; died September 16 1736 (Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451“ expurgated on Dec 6); his university here; the thermometer here
Mary Fairfax (Somerville) (born December
26 1780; died November 29 1872): and I have included her here, but am having
second thoughts: should she not be among the Educators rather than the students? Somerville Hall at Oxford website here;
her bio here; entertaining Ada Lovelace on June 5
Michael Faraday (born Sept
22
1791; died August 25 1867): with Ada Lovelace
on June 5; the Royal
Institution here; his London
lighthouse here; his Blue Plaque in
Marylebone here; his Institute here; the school that
bears his name here
Enrico Fernando Fermi (born Sept
29 1901; died November 28 1954): his website here; his Lab here; the Chicago papers here; Nobel Prize here; the science here; his museum here; his “effect” here
Élisabeth Ferrand (1700-1752): the end of her life of remarkable achievement is on Feb 17 and the Ancien Régime page
of "Woman-Blindness"
Alexander Fleming (born Aug
6 1881;
died March 11 1955): his website here; Nobel
Prize here; his Blue Plaque in
Chelsea here, but much more
significant the one on the front door at Harefield
hospital (click here); his lab and museum at St Mary’s here and here; the research centre that bears his name here
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (born Sept 18 1819; died February 11 1868): this one’s the
scientist who made the pendulum (for which click here [for the eco-version click here)]; bio and other
achievements here
Rosalind Elsie (“Rosie”) Franklin: (born July 25 1920;
died April 16 1958): mentioned on June
8; Tenzinged on July
24; her Institute here; her contribution here
Jack Freitag (John Fry) (1922-1994): honoured at Guy’s Hospital on Feb 23; plaque here (apparently there’s another plaque
in Bromley, presumably by his surgery in Beckenham, though the link
doesn’t make that clear), obituary here; bio here
Leonhart Fuchs (came into flower on January 17 1501;
pollarded on May 10 1566): but planted on the blog on Oct 26; Fuchsia triphylla here; his bio here
Galenus: Aelius
Galenus to his Greek family, Claudius
Galenus to his
Roman bosses (born September 129; died somewhere in 199, or 210, or circa 216
CE, depending on which source you go to): bio here; reported the continuing eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24 (well, at least
he got that right!)
Galileo Galilei (born
February 15 1564; died Jan 8 1642): 3 satelites of Jupiter on Jan 7; Hebdoed
on Jan 14; enhanced
by Sanctorius on Feb 22; numerous discoveries on March
29; William Gilbert on July 24; the model for Foucault’s
pendulum on Sept 18; outlawed
on Dec 14; disoutlawed
on Sept 24;
named it “aurora borealis” on Dec 11;
mentioned on May 4 and Oct 13; his Science Museum collection here; his museum in Firenze (that’s Florence in
English) here; his Institute for Theoretical Phyiscs here; and see my note to Thomas Harriot, below
Johann Gottfried Galle (born June 9 1812; died July 10 1910): discovered
Neptune on Sept 23 1846;
bio here
William Henry (“Bill”) Gates: born Oct 28,
unveiled the Apple Computer on Jan 24; his website here; his Foundation here
Johannes Wilhelm (“Hans”) Geiger (born Sept 30 1882; died September 24 1945); and on the Sherpa Tenzing page with Walther Mueller; his university
report here; his counter here
William Gilbert (or sometimes Gilberd):
rubbed pieces of cloth together on July 24; Lancaster Uni’s page here
Albert Girard (born 9+2 October 1596minus1; died 4x2 December 16 = a [and then double
it]): introducing brackets and abbreviations into mathematics on March 29 – (it’s ‘ere, 100% of
it) - which is to say: it can be found at that link, albeit with neither
brackets nor abbreviations, and almost entirely incomprehensible to ordinary
folk like me (I thought “the sum of the cube of the roots” was vegetable soup,
and that “the coefficients of power” were the methodologies used by people like
Donald Trump to get re-elected; but apparently I was wrong, x2 times
at least)
Johann Goldsmid, though the world remembers him as Johannes Fabricius (1587-1616), from Friesland not Denmark - that was me, on the Jan 8 page which is his birthdate, confusing him with Johan Christian Fabricius, a Danish zoologist of the 18th century. This one, with his his dad, saw their first sunspot through that recent invention the telescope on February 27, 1611 (and no, Jules Verne, they didn’t see living creatures on the moon as well). And actually they may not have been the first either: Thomas Harriot (Hariot, Heriot) is now thought to have beaten them (see March 29); Goldsmid died on March 19 1616; for his bio click here
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", brother of historical novelist Naomi Mitchison: he wrote an article on abiogenesis in 1929, which introduced the "primordial soup theory" that would become the incipit for the concept of the chemical origin of life; more here and here; merely mentioned on May 2; I should also point out that Haldane was probably wrong in his theory, and that Louis Pasteur “proved it to be so” (click here, but also here)
Alan Hale: the first half of Hale-Bopp on Sept 14 and April 6 (see my note to the second half, Thomas Bopp, above); their shared website here; more on him here
Asaph Hall: (born October 15 1829; died November 22 1907) discovered two moons of Mars on Aug 11; US Naval Observatory here
Edmund Halley, he of the comet, born Nov 8 1656; died January 14 1742): where the comet was buried when it died, having scoured the heavens but failed to find a grave, here; rather more science than fantasy here
Robert Harrington: discovered Charon (Pluto's moon) with his partner Jim Christy on June 22; click here for him, here for it
Thomas Harriot (born 1560; died July 2 1621): painting sunspots on March 29; mashed and fried on July 28; he also invented binary notation and arithmetic several decades before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but this remained unknown until the 1920s. He was also the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 5 August 1609, about four months before Galileo Galilei (and he did that from the roof of Syon House, which can be found in P’s London); bio here
Stephen William Hawking: speaking through a speech synthesiser on Jan 4
William Harvey (born April 1 1578; died June 3 1657): mentioned on March 6 and March 29; rejected in favour of ibn al-Nafis on Nov 14; revision notes here (feel free to understand my deliberate use of the word “revision”, and with it my choice of this web-link: I am presuming he learned the Arab medica while studying in Padua and felt safe to proclaim it as his own when he got back to England)
Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan (721-815), known in the West as Abu Geber: founder of Moslem chemistry on Aug 26; bio here (for the founding of Greek chemistry, somewhat earlier in human time, see Hippocrates of Cos, below, and on the same blog-page). Not to be confused with “al-Jabr”, usually pronounced in the West as “Algebra”, because that was the subject-matter of the book of that name, by the man who invented it, Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi
Frederick William Herschel (born Nov 15 1738; died August 25 1822): discovered Uranus on March 31; Isaac Newton’s telescoped view of him here; Science Museum collection here
Victor Franz Hess: (born June 24 1883; died December 17 1964): had issues with his electroscope on Nov 11; Nobel Prize here; cosmic rays here; his website here
Hippocrates of Cos: the Greek founder of modern chemistry on Aug 26 (for the founder of Moslem chemistry see Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, above, and on the same blog-page); the somewhat hippocratical view from Kos here
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus): (born 1493; died September 24 1541): sitting on a tuffet on March 15; bio and achievements here
Elias Howe (born July 9 1819; died Oct 3 1867): the full bolt here (I wonder if they sowed him a shroud)
Fred Hoyle: a big bang’s worth of allusion on Aug 5: his website here
Milton LaSalle Humason: born Aug 18 1891; died June 18 1972): bio here; papers here
(Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich) Alexander von Humboldt: born Sept 14 1769; died May 6 1859): his Foundation here
Christiaan Huygens: (born April 14 1629; died July 8 1695): listed on March 29; discovered Titan, the moon of Saturn, on March 25; observed Saturn’s rings on April 14; bio here
Edward Jenner (born May 17 1749; died January 26 1823): developed the smallpox vaccine here
Johannes Kepler (born Dec 27 1571; died November 15 1630): announced the 3rd law of planetary motion on March 8, and a great many more discoveries on March 29; with William Gilbert on July 24; completed the "Tabulae Rudolphinae” on Sept 2; his website here; his university here; his discoveries here; his letters here; mere snowflakes here; Jesus’s birthday here
Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi: inventing al-Jabr (algebra), but then turning into an algorithm, on March 6; also see Abu Geber above; bio here
Robert Heinrich Hermann Koch: the German bacteriologist who discovered the anthrax disease cycle in 1876, the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis in 1882, and that of cholera in 1883, can be found celebrating his own birthday in good health on Dec 11 1843; died May 27 1910; his Institute for Bacteriology here
Mikolaj Kopernik in Polish, but generally rendered as Nicolaus Koppernigk, then Latinised as Nicolas Copernicus (born Feb 19 1473; died May 24 1543): a full essay about him can be found on March 21; plus an illustration on March 29; and a passing mention on Jan 2; if that isn’t enough, try here and here
Charles Labelye (1705–1781): the reason why London Bridge fell down, on March 15; but also the inventor of caissons as a method of bridge-building, for which click here
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck : born Aug 1 1744; died December 18 1829): ahead of Darwin on evolution here; but arguing with Darwin here; the first environmentalist here; his “Zoological Philosophy” here
William Lassell: (born June 18 1799; died October 5 1880): discovered two moons of Ouranos on Oct 24; bio and papers here
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: came out of the test tube on Aug 26 1743; died May 8 1794): bio here; website here; the lab here
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (born July 1 1646; died November 14 1716): optimistic about Pierre Bayle (and probably pessimistic about Voltaire but that isn’t on the page) on Nov 18, but this needs to be understood in the context of Nihilism v The Zero Positive, and why he is right about “optimism” (sadly, given human nature and the 3rd-rateness of God if there even is one, ours almost certainly is “the best of all possible worlds” - he wrote that in “Théodicée”, in 1710); bio here, philosophy here; he also invented Calculus and Binary numbers, came up with the first calculating machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide [but see my note to Thomas Harriot, above), and formulated the theory of monads, inter alia (here)
Nicole-Reine Étable de la Brière (Nicole-Reine Lepaute): predicting the future mathematically on April 1; and mentioned on April 6 (Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness" and a listing here because Time is definitely a function of Space in the language of E,M&C2)
Willard Frank Libby: emerged from the elements on Dec 17 1908; reduced to carbon on Sept 8 1980; Nobel Prize here; Geological Society of America here
Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell: born Aug 31 1913; Jodrell Bank here; his home-town’s memorial here
Percival Lowell (born March 13 1855; died November 12 1916), the man who calculated the existence of Pluto and predicted canals on Mars (click here)
Richard Lower (born circa 1631; died January 17 1691): performed the first (recorded) successful blood transfusion in England on Nov 14, but this doesn't really count among the scientific achievements, as his patients were dogs, not people. The first on a human being took place in France the following year, the surgeon then Jean Baptiste Denis – click here for both their stories
Gugliemo Giovanni Maria Marconi: (born April 25 1874; died July 20 1937): on air as of July 13; his collection here; his Foundation here
Donald McCarthy Jr: led the team of astronomers that found Arthur Dent hitch-hiking in star system 42 on Dec 10; bio here; the Steward Observatory in Arizona here
Luigi Federico Menabrea (born September 4 1809: died May 24 1896): taking detailed notes at a Babbage seminar on June 5; bio here
Gregor Johann Mendel: baptised on July 22 (born July 20 1822; died January 6 1884): his DNA here; the Mendelweb here
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (born Feb 7 1834; died February 2 1907): his book here; the history of the Periodic Table here; "Das Ding an Sich" here
Friedrich (Franz) Anton Mesmer (born May 23 1734; died March 5 1815): there are many ways to be remembered, or usually misremembered (and mostly forgotten) by posterity, but only a small few get to be eponymised, which is a word you can look up for yourself if you don’t know it; as to the man, he cannot accurately be described as captivating or fascinating, let alone transfixing or spellbinding, though he is all four of these when you read about his work both in medicine and in astronomy; bio here; aphorisms here
Gautier de Metz, or probably Gossuin de Metz (13th century): his "The Mirrour of the World" (completed January 1245), quite possibly the world’s oldest encyclopaedia, albeit written in rhymed octosyllables, can be found, commissioned by Hugh Bryce [see the serious scribes page] translated and published by William Caxton, on March 8; background here, Project Gutenberg text here; as much as is known about him here
Robert Andrews Millikan (born March 22 1868; died December 19 1953): gave a name to Cosmic Rays on Nov 11 (but see Victor Hess, who got the Nobel for discovering them); Millikan’s Nobel speech here; Franklin Institute here
August Ferdinand Möbius: (born Nov 17 1790; died Sept 26 1868): turned into cartoons on Sept 26; a non-orientable two-dimensional bio here; a rather fuller and three-dimensional version here; something mathematically computeroid that I don’t understand here; the Strip stripped down to its essentials here; his contest here
Dr Thomas Muffet: (born 1553; died June 5 1604): had his tuffet squashed by his step-daughter on March 15 ; his Arachnophilia here; her full name here (it was Patience, but the site is brilliant, so bear with me and look it up anyway)
John Napier of Merchiston (born February 1 1550; died April 4 1617): inventing logarithms on March 29; bio here
Isaac Newton: “Principia Mathematica” quoted on May 11, published on July 6, born on Dec 25, but you will need to verify all of those those dates for yourself; his home now a library on Sept 27
Ghiyāth
al-Dīn Abū al-Fateh ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (Omar Khayyám): bio here; referenced on April 23; born May 18 1048; died December 4
1131; but given that the al-Jalali calendar was completed by him on March 6, it seems to me insulting to him not
to give his dates by that calendar: but I can’t, because those dates are now
disputed, for either calendar: click here; the Jalali calendar explained here, and a converter here (it’s only used in Iran and Afghanistan); his “Rubaiyat”
here, and see under Edward Fitzgerald on the page of The
Poets [non-British purple cloaks]
Benjamin Franklin Palmer: with his artificial leg on Nov 4; click here for
the full tale
James Parkinson (born April 11 1755; died December 21 1824), “who described the shaking palsy known in Latin as paralysis
agitans” on Jan 17; bio and book here
Louis Jean Pasteur: (born Dec 27 1822; died September 28 1895); milked by Nathan Straus on June 12; bio here; the Institute here; and see
my note to Jack Haldane, above
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov: (born… September 26 1849 according to
Wikipedia, but the Nobel Prize website has him on Sept 14, so either one is using the Gregorian
and the other the Old Style Russian calendar, or this is simply yet another
Wikipedia error; died February 27 1936): barking up the right tree on Sept 13; merely woofing on March 30, June
25 and Nov 14; and on this list, not the psycho-quacks,
because he was a neurologist: pure, physically verifiable, science; play the
Pavlov’s Dog game here
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc: (born December 1 1580; died June 24 1637): discovered
the Orion Nebula on Nov 25; bio here; his institute in
what is now written down as Peyresq here
Gioacchino Giuseppe Maria Ubaldo Nicolò Piazzi, remembered as Giuseppe Piazzi (born July 16 1746; died July 22
1826): observed the dwarf planet Ceres orbiting
between Mars and Jupiter on Jan 1; Royal Society collection here; the NASA view of Ceres here
Gaius Plinius Secundus (Secundus is the Latin way of naming him “Pliny the Elder”, though you would have thought Primus would have been more accurate) (23/24-79 CE): author, naturalist, natural philosopher, naval and army commander. Died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Aug 24; bio here
Charles Plumier: (born April 20 1646; died November 20 1704): with that name he has to be a botanist; on Oct 26; bio here
Giovanni Battista (Giambattista for short) Della Porta (born November 1 1535; died February 4 1615): describes a machine that uses steam pressure on March 29; bio and works here
Claudius Ptolemy (circa 85-165 CE): the “other Ptolemy” on Oct 1; bio here, but he got so much wrong we really do need to apply Bachelard on this occasion
Charles Francis Richter: started out on April 26 1900; reached point zero on Sept 30 (yet another Wikipedia error: click here) 1985: the working of the scale explained here; the personal details along it here; the award in his name here
Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (born May 14 1897; died May 11 1948): hanging out with Joseph Campbell and John Steinbeck on March 26; bio here; his major contributions to marine biology here
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (Roentgen) (born March 27 1845; died 10 February 1923): discovered x-rays on Nov 8 (listed among the Scientific
Achievements on Jan 1); connected to the Curies on March 1; his
website here
Ernő Rubik: born July 13 1944; mentioned on July 12; the cube’s own website here
Albert Bruce Sabin: the man who found an oral vaccine for polio
(born Aug 26 1906; died March 3
1993): see Jonas Edward Salk below, and here for the full
story
Carl Edward Sagan (born November 9 1934; died December 20
1996): two entries sourced in his splendid "Cosmos”, one on Aug 18, the other on Aug 23; his NASA page here; his own
website here
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov: born May 21 1921; died December 14 1989: translated by Anatoly Shcharansky on Jan 20; atom bombs versus peace prizes on Oct 9; referenced on July 10; his
website here; the scientist here; the human rights activist here and here; the prize in his name here
Jonas Edward Salk: vaccinated against polio on Oct 28; chronologically he should come
before Albert Sabin; you can read why
here
Santorio Santori (Sanctorius) (born March 29 1561; died Feb 22 1636; this page gets mentioned on Sept 13, and the March
29 page gets
mentioned on March 30, but Feb 22 is the one
that matters; quantified by some other self here; his weighing chair here
Christian Friedrich Schönbein, or Schoenbein: (born October 18 1799; died
August 29 1868): obtained the patent for cellulose nitrate explosive on Dec 5, though I gather he is better known
for inventing the fuel cell, and for coining the word “ozone” (click here and here), as well as being the first to describe guncotton
(nitrocellulose); bio and works here
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(“the Younger”) (4 BCE-65 CE): Roman philosopher
who picked up Aristotle’s musings about rainbows and their
colours from back in 350 BCE, and elaborated upon them in Book 1 of
"Naturales Quaestiones", on March 29; bio and
thoughts here
Christopher Latham Sholes: (born February 14 1819; died February 17
1890): needs Tippex on June 23; bio in lower case here, in upper case here; QWERTY here
Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn
ibn-ʿAbdallāh Ibn-Sīnā (Avicenna) (born in Uzbekistan on a date unknown; died in Persia on June 22 1037,
and is buried in the tomb that bears his name as Abu
Ali Sina: way ahead of European medicine on Nov 14; bio and works here
Clive Marles Sinclair: born July 30 1940; the
family website here
Isaac Merritt Singer, the sewing machine man; or was he? see Elias Howe on Oct
3: born Oct 27 1811; died
July 23 1875; the company website here
Maria (Marie) Salomea Skłodowska-Curie: (born November 7 1867; died July 4 1934): isolated
radium on April 20;
mentioned on March 1
with her husband Pierre; Nobel Prize here; fellowships in her name here; her end-of-life charity here
Vesto Melvin Slipher of Lowell Observatory: “He was responsible for hiring Clyde Tombaugh and
supervised the work that led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. By 1917,
Slipher had measured the radial velocities of 25 'spiral nebulae', and found
that all but three of those galaxies were moving away from us, at substantial
speeds.” Aug 18; the full
Lowell page here
Willebrord van Roijen Snellius (born June 13 1580; died October 30 1626): proved
the laws of refraction (Snell’s Law) and
established the technique of trigonometrical triangulation for cartography
(which is presumably why he has a lunar crater and a valley named after him:
click here
for that) on March 29; bio and achievements here
Ptolemy 1 Soter (367 BCE-283 BCE): only a footnote on Oct 1, and a couple of
mentions on the Africa page, but too important not to be included here,
even though he did no actual science himself, simply established Alexandria as the place where it would happen for the next two hundred years, and be revivable because of his library a thousand years afterwards (for which see my novel "The Persian Fire"; his bio here; the wilful and
barbaric destruction of his entire achievement by Julius
Caesar… nowhere, because every site you look at tells you that it
was all a terrible accident… and no doubt Hiroshima only happened because
someone pressed the wrong button by mistake… [purple
cloaks]
Percy L. Spencer: patented the microwave oven on Dec 7
Aristotle Stagiritis: rainbowed with Seneca on March 29;
in disagreement with Pyrrho on May 11,
and Plato on April 5, June 25
and Sept 13;
wrong about gravity on Sept 18;
mentioned Jan 3, Feb 28, Aug 26,
and somewhat obscurely on Oct 8;
died on Oct 2; and yes, I have
placed him on this page, despite his being completely wrong on almost every aspect of science
that he broached, rather than among the philosophers, where most of his wisdom
would make the human world a rather better place, only none of the clerics,
politicians or commerçants can see any advantage in making it a reality, and so
it never has been, and probably never will be; his bio here; his home-town here
George Stephenson: (born June 9
1781; died August 12 1848): travelled on
his own steam train on Sept 27 (click
here); bio of him and son
Robert here
Lina Solomonovna Stern (or Shtern) (born August 26 1878; survived
until March 7 1968): and the only one of the “Yiddish writers plot” on Aug 12 who did survive; quite an extraordinary woman she
was too, equally a neurophysiologist and a biochemist: read her bio here; her
major achievement, the “barrière hémato–encéphalique” ("blood-brain barrier"), here
William Joseph Still (born in Reigate, England in 1869; lived much
of his life in Canada - click here - but died in Ealing
in 1959; building electric cars on Dec 5;
demonstrating them here
Daniel Chapman Stillson (birthdate unknown; died
August 1899): not doing what you might expect on a Scientific Achievements
list, but nevertheless blogged, wrenching pipes, on Dec 5; bio here
Almon Brown Strowger (born February 11 1839; died May 26 1902): patented automatic telephone switching on Dec 5; click here for more
Joseph Wilson Swan: (born Oct 31
1828; died May 27 1914): in partnership with Edison
on July 24; Science Museum here
Maria de Telkes, but she dropped the “de”, and the accent on
the “á” of Mária, when she moved to America on Dec 24; her website solar heated here
Joseph John Thompson (electrons activated on Dec 18 1856; went static on August 30 1940):
approved by God despite being a scientist who disproved God here; the Nobel Prize for
doing so here; the Cavendish Lab
doesn’t seem to know the difference between bio and autobio here; memorial at Trinity
Cambridge here
Clyde William Tombaugh (born February 4 1906; died January 17
1997): “discovered” Planet Pluto on Feb 18; bio here; and see Vesto Melvin Slipher, above
Horace Wells (born January 21 1815; died January 24
1848): used N2O as an anaesthetic on Dec 11:
used, but didn’t invent it: see Humphry Davy for that;
bio here; papers here
Gilbert White (born July 18 1720; died, entirely naturally, on June 26 1793): his website here; his house here
Henry Woodward: patently another of Edison’s appropriations on July 24; the full tale here
The Argaman Press
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