Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a largely self-taught pure mathematician. Hindered by poverty and ill-health, his highly original work has considerably enriched number theory and, more recently, physics.

Beginnings

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on December 8, 1820 in the town of Erode, in Tamil Nadu, in the south east of India. His father was K. Srinivasa Iyengar, an accounting clerk for a clothing merchant. His mother was Komalatammal, who earned a small amount of money each month as a singer at the local temple.

His family were Brahmins, the Hindu caste of priests and scholars. His mother ensured the boy was in tune with Brahmin traditions and culture. Although his family were high caste, they were very poor.

Ramanujan’s parents moved around a lot, and he attended a variety of different elementary schools. By the age of 10, he was the top student, not just in his school, but in his district.

The Discovery of Ramanujan as a Mathematician

The Hungry Years
At the beginning of 1907, at the age of 19, with minimal funds and a stomach all too often groaning with hunger, Ramanujan continued on the path he had chosen: total devotion to mathematics. The mathematics he was doing was highly original and very advanced.

Even though (or some might say because) he had very little formal mathematical education he was able to discover new theorems. He also independently discovered results originally discovered by some of the greatest mathematicians in history, such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Leonhard Euler.

Ill-health was Ramanujan’s constant companion – as it would be for much of his short life.

By 1910 he realized he must find work to stay alive. In the city of Madras he found some students who needed mathematics tutoring and he also walked around the city offering to do accounting work for businesses.

And then a piece of luck came his way. Ramanujan tried to find work at the government revenue department, and there he met an official whose name was Ramaswamy Aiyer. Ramanujan did not have a resume to show Ramaswamy Aiyer; all he had was his notebooks – the results of his mathematical work.

Ramanujan’s good fortune was that Ramaswamy Aiyer was a mathematician. He had only recently founded the Indian Mathematical Society, and his jaw dropped when he saw Ramanujan’s work.

Number Theory and String Theory
In 1918 Ramanujan became the first Indian Mathematician to be elected a Fellow of the British Royal Society:

“Distinguished as a pure mathematician particularly for his investigation in elliptic functions and the theory of numbers.”

In his short lifetime he produced almost 4000 proofs, identities, conjectures and equations in pure mathematics.

His theta function lies at the heart of string theory in physics.

Some Personal Details and the End

In July 1909 Ramanujan married S. Janaki Ammal, who was then just 10 years old. The marriage had been arranged by Ramanujan’s mother. The couple began sharing a home in 1912.

When Ramanujan left to study at the University of Cambridge, his wife moved in with Ramanujan’s parents. Ramanujan’s scholarship was sufficient for his needs in Cambridge and the family’s needs in Kumbakonam.

For his first three years in Cambridge, Ramanujan was very happy. His health, however, had always been rather poor. The winter weather in England, much colder than anything he had ever imagined, made him ill for a time.

In 1917 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and worryingly low vitamin levels. He spent months being cared for in sanitariums and nursing homes.

In February 1919 his health seemed to have recovered sufficiently for him to return to India, but sadly he would only live for about a year on his return.

Srinivasa Ramanujan died aged 32 in Madras on April 26, 1920. His death was most likely caused by hepatic amoebiasis caused by liver parasites common in Madras. His body was cremated.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was 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.

Benjamin Franklin’s Science, Innovation, and Inventions

Franklin was an original thinker, scientist and inventor. Dating his inventions is not always easy, because Franklin did not patent what he invented. He said that anyone who wanted to make money from his ideas was free to do so. This means the dates given to his inventions are approximate.

Bifocal Spectacles
The Franklin Stove

Franklin wore spectacles for most of his life.

He felt limited by the spectacles of his day, because a lens that was good for reading blurred his vision when he looked up. Working as a printer, this could be infuriating.

He defeated this problem in about 1739, aged 33, with his invention of split-lens bifocal spectacles. Each lens now had two focusing distances. Looking through the bottom part of the lens was good for reading, while looking through the upper part offered good vision at a greater distance.

As Franklin read more about science, he learned more about heat transfer. He looked at the design of a typical stove and concluded that it was inefficient. Much more heat was lost up the flue than necessary.

He decided to redesign the stove using the concept of heat-exchange/heat recovery.

The idea was that hot gases which would normally simply go up the flue would exchange their heat with cold air from the room, heating it up, and so heating the room up.

In 1741, the Franklin Stove came on to the market, allowing homeowners to get more heat into their homes for each unit of fuel they burned.

Electricity

In summer 1743, Franklin visited his hometown of Boston. Always seeking new knowledge, he visited a science show. There he saw Dr. Archibald Spencer, who had arrived from Scotland, demonstrating a variety of scientific phenomena. The electrical part of the show intrigued Franklin most: it featured the effects of static electricity.

Franklin left the show determined to learn more about electricity. It seemed to him that Dr. Spencer didn’t really understand it. This, of course, was true: nobody understood it! It was more a source of entertainment than a science.

In 1747, Franklin got hold of a long glass tube for the efficient generation of static electricity from Peter Collinsion in London.

Shaping our understanding of electricity

Franklin’s observations soon began to shape the world’s understanding of electricity and shape the language we use even today when we talk about it.

He identified that there was an electrical fluid that could flow from A to B. To describe the process he coined the terms positive and negative to describe the difference between A and B after the electrical fluid had flowed. Of course, today we would call the electrical fluid electrons, but remember: this was 1747; J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron lay 150 years in the future!

Franklin found that an excess of fluid led to positive charge (okay, we’ll have to pretend that electrons are positively charged for this) and a deficit of fluid led to negative charge.

Franklin was the first to write that electric charge cannot be created; it can only be ‘collected.’ This is a fundamental law of physics – the Law of Conservation of Electric Charge. It means that you cannot create (or destroy) electric charge.

Franklin was also the first person to use the words electrical battery. His meaning was not the same as ours though. His battery was made of capacitors (known as Leyden jars) wired together in series to store more charge than one alone could. This enabled Franklin to produce a bigger discharge of static electricity in his experiments.

In 1751, Franklin published the fruits of his labors in a book called Experiments and Observations on Electricity, which was widely read in Britain and then Europe, shaping a new understanding of electricity.

In 1752 Franklin’s most famous scientific work was carried out – the proof that lightning is electricity.

Franklin had an idea for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity, making use of another of his own discoveries in electricity: that static electricity discharges to a sharp, pointed object more readily than to a blunt object.

King Louis XV saw a translation of Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and he asked French scientists to test Franklin’s lightning rod concept.

Jean Francois Dalibard used Franklin’s idea to confirm by experiment that lightning was indeed electrical in Paris in May 1752. Franklin himself carried out similar work in 1752, using a kite with a metal key connected to a Leyden Jar to prove his own theory. He didn’t write about his own experiment, however, until 1772.

The significance of the experiment was that it established the study of electricity as a serious scientific discipline.

Franklin had shown how to prove that electrical phenomena were a fundamental force of nature. Electricity would never again be thought of as just an interesting plaything for scientists and showmen to conjure up using glass rods.

Very soon, in 1753, when he was aged 47, the transformation in science that Franklin had brought about was recognized. Britain’s Royal Society honored his electrical work with its highest award, the Copley Medal – the equivalent of a modern Nobel Prize.

Meteorology

By observation of storms and winds, Franklin discovered that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This was an important discovery in the development of the scientific discipline of meteorology.

More than a Scientist and Inventor

Franklin lived in turbulent times, which culminated in the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776: Franklin was one of the five men who drafted it. He had previously acted as British postmaster for the colonies; he was the American Ambassador in France from 1776 – 1785; and the governor of Pennsylvania from 1785 – 1788.

Benjamin Franklin’s Early Life and Education

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Josiah, was a tallow chandler, candle maker, and soap boiler who had moved to the American Colonies from England. His mother, Abiah Folger looked after the home and was the mother of ten children, including Benjamin, who was the eighth child in the family. She was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Benjamin only had two years of formal education, which finished when he was ten years old, because his family could not afford the fees. His informal education then accelerated, because his mind was too restless to stop learning.

He had to work in his father’s business, but in his spare time he read everything he could, about every subject under the sun.

When he was twelve, Benjamin began working as an apprentice in a printing shop owned by one of his elder brothers, James. When his brother started printing a newspaper, Benjamin wrote to it in the name of “Mrs. Dogood” in defense of freedom of speech.

Aged 17, Benjamin Franklin left for Philadelphia, escaping from his apprenticeship, which was against the law. He was, however, free. After a few months in Philadelphia he left for London, England, where he learned more about printing, before returning to Philadelphia at the age of 20 to continue his career in printing.

The End

Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84. He was killed by pleurisy – a lung inflammation.

His wife, Deborah, had died sixteen years earlier. Franklin was survived by his daughter, Sarah, who looked after him in his later years and his son, William. William left America to live in Britain in 1782.

Today, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, named in Franklin’s honor, is one of the most prestigious awards in science. Its winners include Alexander Graham Bell, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

India is the land of glorious history in the field of science and technology. It is the birth place of the great scientist Aryabhatta, who was the first to introduce the concept of numbers in the ancient times and this legacy has been carried forward by the modern scientists of the country, who have greatly contribution to the world with their awe inspiring inventions and discoveries.

C. V. Raman

One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It is immensely surprising that Raman used equipment worth merely Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.

Contributions and Achievements:

On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to discover the reason for the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.

There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan (who later became the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi), gave him the news that Professor Compton had won the Nobel Prize on scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his opinion.

Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds had been studied. Thanks to the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists.

Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision, the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.

Early Life:

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College, Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the subject was published in 1906.

Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907, after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much occupied due to his job, he spent his spare time in the evenings conducting scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent entire nights there. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.

Later Life and Death:

Sir C.V. Raman became the Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1924. A year later, he set up Raman Research Institute near Bangalore, where he continued scientific research until his death which was caused by a strong heart attack on November 21, 1970. His sincere advice to aspiring scientists was that “scientific research needed independent thinking and hard work, not equipment.”

Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London, but during the second world war, Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St. Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At the age of eleven, Stephen went to St. Albans School and then on to University College, Oxford; his father's old college. Stephen wanted to study Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he pursued Physics instead. After three years and not very much work, he was awarded a first  class honours degree in Natural Science. 

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973, Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1979, and held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979 until 2009. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.  Stephen is still an active part of Cambridge University. His title is now the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. 

His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Among the popular books Stephen Hawking has published are his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design and My Brief History. 

Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. 

Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, a form of Motor Neurone Disease, shortly after his 21st birthday. In spite of being wheelchair bound and dependent on a computerised voice system for communication Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three children and three grandchildren), and his research into theoretical physics together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. He still hopes to make it into space one day.

Galileo

OCCUPATION

Astronomer, Scientist

BIRTH DATE

February 15, 1564

DEATH DATE

January 8, 1642

PLACE OF BIRTH

Pisa, Italy

PLACE OF DEATH

Arcetri, Italy

AKA

Galileo

NICKNAME

"The Father of Modern Scibence"

FULL NAME

Galileo Galilei

Born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy, Galileo Galilei was a mathematics professor who made pioneering observations of nature with long-lasting implications for the study of physics. He also constructed a telescope and supported the Copernican theory, which supports a sun-centered solar system. Galileo was accused twice of heresy by the church for his beliefs, and wrote books on his ideas. He died in Arcetri, Italy, on January 8, 1642.

Controversial Findings

In 1604, Galileo published The Operations of the Geometrical and Military Compass, revealing his skills with experiments and practical technological applications. He also constructed a hydrostatic balance for measuring small objects. These developments brought him additional income and more recognition. That same year, Galileo refined his theories on motion and falling objects, and developed the universal law of acceleration, which all objects in the universe obeyed. Galileo began to express openly his support of the Copernican theory that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. This challenged the doctrine of Aristotle and the established order set by the Catholic Church.

In July 1609, Galileo learned about a simple telescope built by Dutch eyeglass makers, and he soon developed one of his own. In August, he demonstrated it to some Venetian merchants, who saw its value for spotting ships and gave Galileo salary to manufacture several of them. However, Galileo’s ambition pushed him to go further, and in the fall of 1609 he made the fateful decision to turn his telescope toward the heavens. In March 1610, he published a small booklet, The Starry Messenger, revealing his discoveries that the moon was not flat and smooth, but a sphere with mountains and craters. He found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun. He also discovered Jupiter had revolving moons, which didn’t revolve around the earth.

Aristotle

Aristotle (Physics)

Living in the same time period as Plato and Alexander. Aristotle helped lay the foundations for western civilisation through his wide range of intellectual and scientific studies.

Aristotle was one of the great polymaths of his time. He studied under Plato and therefore learnt much about the great philosophic traditions of Socrates. But, Aristotle was more than just a good student; he had an independent mind and was able to question many different things and sought to resolve difficult questions and previously unsolvable problems. He made studies in botany, physics, philosophy, logic, and was well known for being a powerful lecturer and debater. He was also regarded as a kindly man, compassionate to others.

In the field of physics, Aristotle’s ideas influenced much of the medieval period, and lasted into the European Renaissance. His ideas were later replaced by the physics of Isaac Newton.

Aristotle believed in the power of reason to illuminate the problems of man. He believed that man had the capacity for enlightenment through self inquiry and study. He believed that human goodness derived from rational thought. Aristotle was also a playwright and he described how the weakness of man – pride, anger, jealousy, could lead to his downfall.

Aristotle was also the teacher of the future Macedonian King – Alexander the Great. Aristotle taught the future king, political philosophy, history and ethics. Alexander the Great was to ignore much of Aristotle’s teachings such as the desirability of oligarchic leadership, but, his education by Aristotle must have left an abiding impression on the young prince.

Aristotle, was one of the few philosophers who strongly influenced later Christian writers such as Thomas Aquinas.

Otto Hahn

Otto Hahn

Otto Hahn (1879-1968) was a German Chemist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 – for his work in discovering Nuclear Fission. He was a distinguished Chemist who worked in the pioneering fields of radio chemistry. After the Second World War, he was a campaigner against the use of nuclear weapons and became an influential scientific figure in West Germany.

Otto Hahn was born in Frankfurt on 8th March, 1879. From an early age, he took an interest in Chemistry, and was supported by his prosperous parents. He studied chemistry at the University of Marburg and earned his doctorate in 1901. After a years military service, he worked as an assistant at the University of Marburg, before travelling to London, England.

He went to the University College, London and worked under Sir William Ramsay. Hahn hope to improve his knowledge of chemistry and English to help his professional career. In early 1906, he visited Montreal, where he spent a brief but fruitful time with Ernest Rutherford, where they investigated alpha-rays of radio actinium.

In 1906, he returned to Germany where he collaborated with Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin. With just a basic chemistry laboratory, Hahn discovered Meothorium, and the mother substance of radium, ionium. This discovery later had a great practical use for radiation treatment.

In 1907, he began a long working relationship with the Jewish Austrian physicist, Lise Meitner. They remained life-long friends though she later criticised him for not doing enough to oppose the Nazi regime and their persecution of Jews. Though Hahn did help a few Jewish scientists, and played a role in helping Meitner herself to escape to Sweden in 1938, after the Anschluss forced her to flee.

In 1910, he was appointed professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, where he became head of the radiochemistry department.

During the First World War, Hahn was conscripted into the German army and put to work on developing chemical warfare. He participated in developing and organising the use of poison gases, such as Chlorine and Mustard Gas on both the Western and Eastern fronts.

After the war, Hahn concentrated on the chemistry of radioactive elements. In 1921, with Lise Meitner, they made a very important discovery of Uranium Z – the first example of nuclear isomers. Although few paid much attention, this would prove very important in later nuclear physics.In 1936, he produced a book “Applied Radiochemistry” which became a very significant milestone in radiochemistry. 

During his time of internment, he was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry ‘for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei’ He was unable to attend because of his internment in England. Some scientists have argued his colleague Meitner should have been awarded the prize jointly.

Hahn was shocked to learn that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan in 1945, to devastating effect. He felt guilty that he, in some way, may have been responsible for this great loss of life.

After the Second World War, he campaigned against the use of Nuclear weapons, and in 1955 initiated the Mainau Declaration which warned of the dangers of atomic weapons. He became a leading figure within post war FDR, and was a high profile critic of rearming West Germany with atomic weapons. His opposition to the nuclear arms race caused him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.

In 1966, he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize – the only time it has been awarded to a non-American.

Between 1948 to 1960, Hahn was the founding President of the Max Planck society for the advancement of science. Otto Hahn died in West Germany on 28th July, 1968.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was an English Natural scientist who laid down a framework for the theory of evolution – showing how Man evolved from lower life forms. At the time, his research and publication led to bitter controversy, but his theory of evolution and natural selection became accepted within the scientific community.

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was born in to a wealthy and influential family. His grandfathers included – china manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, and Erasmus Darwin, one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England.

Darwin planned to study medicine at Edinburgh university, but later, at the instigation of his father, changed to studying Divinity at Christ’s College, Cambridge University. Darwin was not a great student, preferring to spend time in outdoor pursuits, he spent a lot of time examining natural science and beetle collecting. After gaining a passionate interest in natural science, Darwin was offered a place on the HMS Beagle to act as natural scientist on a voyage to the coast of South America.

At the time, religion was a powerful force in society, and most people took the Bible as the infallible, literal word of God. This included the belief that God created the world in seven days, and the world was only a few thousand years old. However, on the voyage, Darwin increasingly began to see evidence of life being much older. In particular Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ suggested that fossils were evidence of animals living hundreds of thousands of years ago.

On the voyage, Darwin made copious notes about specimens he found on his voyages. In particular, at the Galapagos Islands 500 miles west of South American, Darwin was struck by how the Finch was different on each individual island. He noticed that the Finch had somehow adapted to the different aspects of the particular island.

Over the next 20 years, Darwin worked on the dilemma of how species evolve and can end up being quite different on different islands. Influenced by the work of Malthus, Darwin came up with a theory of natural selection and gradual evolution over time.

Darwin continued to refine his theory, and would intensively breed plants to work on his theories. However, realising how controversial his ideas were, Darwin delayed publishing them. It was not until learning that another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, had developed similar ideas, that Darwin was galvanised into publishing his own book.

In 1859, the ground-breaking ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’ was published. It immediately gained widespread interest and attention, leading to intense debate about the contention that man – by implication was descended from animals like the Ape.

Marie Curie

Marie Curie Biography

Marie Curie was a Polish scientist who won a Nobel prize in both Chemistry and Physics. She was the first female professor of the University of Paris, and made ground-breaking work in the field of Radioactivity.

“Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”

– Marie Curie

Short Bio Marie Curie

Marya Sklodovska was the youngest of 5 children, born in 1867, Warsaw Poland. She was brought up in a poor but well educated family. Marya excelled in her studies and won many prizes. At an early age she became committed to the ideal of Polish independence from Russia which was currently ruling Poland with an iron fist, and in particular making life difficult for intellectuals. She yearned to be able to teach fellow Polish woman who were mostly condemned to zero education.

Unusually for women at that time, Marya took an interest in Chemistry and Biology. Since opportunities in Poland for further study was limited, Marya went to Paris, where after working as a governess she was able to study at the Sorbonne, Paris. Struggling to learn in French, Marya threw herself into her studies, leading an ascetic life dedicated to studying. She went on to get a degree in Physics finish top in her school. She later got a degree in Maths, finishing second in her school year.

It was in Paris, that she met Pierre Curie, who was then chief of the laboratory at the school of Physics and Chemistry. He was a renowned Chemist, who had conducted many experiments on crystals and electronics. Pierre was smitten with the young Marya and asked her to marry him. The unromantic Marya initially refused, but, after persistence from Pierre she relented. The two would later become inseparable, until Pierre’s untimely death.

Marie Curie work on Radioactivity

Marie pursued studies in radioactivity. In 1898, this led to the discovery of two new elements. One of which she named polonium after her home country.

There then followed 4 years of extensive study into the properties of radium. Using dumped uranium tailings from a nearby mine, they were very slowly, and painstakingly, able to extract a decigram of radium.

Radium was discovered to have remarkable impacts. Marie actually suffered burns from the rays. It was from this discovery of radium and its properties that the science of radiation was able to develop. Using the properties of radium to burn away diseased cells in the body. Initially radiotherapy was called ‘currietherapy’

The Curries agreed to give away their secret freely; they did not wish to patent such a valuable element. The element was soon in high demand and it began industrial scale production.

For their discovery they were awarded the Davy Medal (Britain) and the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903.

In 1905, Pierre was killed in a road accident, leaving Marie to look after the laboratory and her 2 children.

In 1911 she was awarded a second Nobel prize in Chemistry for the discovery of actinium and further studies on radium and polonium.

The success of Marie Curie also brought considerable hostility, criticism and suspicion from a male dominated science world. She suffered from the malicious rumours and accusations that flew around.

The onset of World War I in 1914, led to Marie Curie dedicating her time to the installation of X ray machines in hospitals. Marie understood that x ray machines would easily be able to located shrapnel, enabling better treatment for soldiers. By, the end of the first world war, over a million soldiers had been examined by her X ray units.

Marie Curie died in 1934 from Cancer. It was an unfortunate side effect of her own ground-breaking studies into radiation which were to help so many people.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton is perhaps the greatest physicist who has ever lived. He and Albert Einstein are almost equally matched contenders for this title.

Each of these great scientists produced dramatic and startling transformations in the physical laws we believe our universe obeys, changing the way we understand and relate to the world around us.

Early Life and Education

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643 in the tiny village of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England.

His father, whose name was also Isaac Newton, was a farmer who died before Isaac Junior was born. Although comfortable financially, his father could not read or write.

His mother, Hannah Ayscough, married a churchman when Newton was three years old.

Newton disliked his mother’s new husband and did not join their household, living instead with his mother’s mother, Margery Ayscough.

His resentment of his mother and stepfather’s new life did not subside with time; as a teenager he threatened to burn their house down!

Beginning at age 12, Newton attended The King’s School, Grantham, where he was taught the classics, but no science or mathematics. When he was 17, his mother stopped his schooling so that he could become a farmer. Fortunately for the future of science Newton found he had neither aptitude nor liking for farming; his mother allowed him to return to school, where he finished as top student.

Servant and Undergraduate

In June 1661, aged 18, Newton began studying for a law degree at Cambridge University’s Trinity College, earning money working as a personal servant to wealthier students.

By the time he was a third-year student he was spending a lot of his time studying mathematics and natural philosophy (today we call it physics). He was also very interested in alchemy, which we now categorize as a pseudoscience.

His natural philosophy lecturers based their courses on Aristotle’s incorrect ideas from Ancient Greece. This was despite the fact that 25 years earlier, in 1638, Galileo Galilei had published his physics masterpiece Two New Sciences establishing a new scientific basis for the physics of motion.

Newton began to disregard the material taught at his college, preferring to study the recent (and more scientifically correct) works of Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, and Kepler. He wrote:

“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.”

Isaac Newton

Mathematician and Physicist

Reading the works of these great scientists, Newton grew more ambitious about making discoveries himself. While still working part-time as a servant, he wrote a note to himself. In it he posed questions which had not yet been answered by science. These included questions about gravity, the nature of light, the nature of color and vision, and atoms.

After three years at Cambridge he won a four-year scholarship, allowing him to devote his time fully to academic studies.

A Mind on Fire

In 1665, at the age of 22, a year after beginning his four-year scholarship, he made his first major discovery: this was in mathematics, where he discovered the generalized binomial theorem. In 1665 he was also awarded his B.A. degree.

By now Newton’s mind was ablaze with new ideas. He began making significant progress in three distinct fields – fields in which he would make some of his most profound discoveries:

• calculus, the mathematics of change, which is vital to our understanding of the world around us
• gravity
• optics and the behavior of light

He did much of his work on these topics back home at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth after the Great Plague forced his college in Cambridge to close.

Fellow and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics

At the age of 24, in 1667, he returned to Cambridge, where events moved quickly.

First he was elected as a fellow of Trinity College.

A year later, in 1668, he was awarded an M.A. degree.

A year after that, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College, Isaac Barrow, resigned and Newton was appointed as his replacement; he was just 26 years old. Barrow, who had recommended that Newton should succeed him, said of Newton’s skills in mathematics:

“Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young, being but the second year master of arts; but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency.”

Isaac Barrow

Mathematician

Isaac Newton’s Scientific Achievements and Discoveries

Achievements in Brief

Isaac Newton, who was largely self-taught in mathematics and physics:

• generalized the binomial theorem
• showed that sunlight is made up of all of the colors of the rainbow. He used one glass prism to split a beam of sunlight into its separate colors, then another prism to recombine the rainbow colors to make a beam of white light again.
• built the world’s first working reflecting telescope.
• discovered/invented calculus, the mathematics of change, without which we could not understand the behavior of objects as tiny as electrons or as large as galaxies.
• wrote the Principia, one of the most important scientific books ever written; in it he used mathematics to explain gravity and motion. (Principia is pronounced with a hard c.)
• discovered the law of universal gravitation, proving that the force holding the moon in orbit around the earth is the same force that causes an apple to fall from a tree.
• formulated his three laws of motion – Newton’s Laws – which lie at the heart of the science of movement.
• showed that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are special cases of Newton’s universal gravitation.
• proved that all objects moving through space under the influence of gravity must follow a path shaped in the form of one of the conic sections, such as a circle, an ellipse, or a parabola, hence explaining the paths all planets and comets follow.
• showed that the tides are caused by gravitational interactions between the earth, the moon and the sun.
• predicted, correctly, that the earth is not perfectly spherical but is squashed into an oblate spheroid, larger around the equator than around the poles.
• Used mathematics to model the movement of fluids – from which the concept of a Newtonian fluid comes.
• devised Newton’s Method for finding the roots of mathematical functions.

Some Details about Newton’s Greatest Discoveries

Calculus

Newton was the first person to fully develop calculus. Calculus is the mathematics of change. Modern physics and physical chemistry would be impossible without it. Other academic disciplines such as biology and economics also rely heavily on calculus for analysis.

In his development of calculus Newton was influenced by Pierre de Fermat who had shown specific examples in which calculus-like methods could be used.

Universal Gravitation and the Apple

Newton’s famous apple, which he saw falling from a tree in the garden of his family home in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, is not a myth.

He told people that seeing the apple’s fall made him wonder why it fell in a straight line towards the center of our planet rather than moving upwards or sideways.

Ultimately, he realized and proved that the force behind the apple’s fall also causes the moon to orbit the earth; and comets, the earth and other planets to orbit the sun. The force is felt throughout the universe, so Newton called it Universal Gravitation. In a nutshell, it says that mass attracts mass.

Newton discovered the equation that allows us to calculate the force of gravity between two objects.

Most people don’t like equations much: E = mc² is as much as they can stand, but, for the record, here’s Newton’s equation:

Dividing by distance squared means Newton’s Law is an inverse-square law.

Newton proved mathematically that any object moving in space affected by an inverse-square law will follow a path in the shape of one of the conic sections, the shapes which fascinated Archimedes and other Ancient Greek mathematicians.

For example, planets follow elliptical paths; while comets follow elliptical, or parabolic or hyperbolic paths.

And that’s it!

Newton showed everyone how to calculate the force of gravity between things such as people, planets, stars and apples.

Newton’s Laws of Motion

Newton’s three laws of motion still lie at the heart of mechanics.

First law: Objects remain stationary or move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. This law was actually first stated by Galileo, whose influence Newton mentions several times in the Principia.

Second law: The force F on an object is equal to its mass m multiplied by its acceleration: F = ma.

Third law: When one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts a force equal in size and opposite in direction on the first object.

With Newton’s calculus, universal gravitation, and laws of motion, you have enough knowledge at your fingertips to plot a course for a spaceship to any planet in our solar system or even another solar system!

And Isaac Newton figured it all out about 300 years before we actually did send a spaceship to the planets.

A Word of Caution
Newton’s laws become increasingly inaccurate when speeds reach substantial fractions of the speed of light, or when the force of gravity is very large. Einstein’s equations are then required to produce reliable results.

Optics and Light

Newton was not just clever with his mind. He was also skilled in experimental methods and working with equipment.

He built the world’s first reflecting telescope. This telescope focuses light from a curved mirror. Reflecting telescopes have several advantages over earlier telescopes including:

• they are cheaper to make
• they are easier to make in large sizes, gathering more light, allowing higher magnification
• they do not suffer from a focusing issue associated with lenses called chromatic aberration.

Newton also used glass prisms to establish that white light is not a simple phenomenon. He proved that it is made up of all of the colors of the rainbow, which he could recombine to form white light again.

Newton published very little work until his later years, because in his early years as a scientist, Robert Hooke had disagreed strongly with a scientific paper Newton had published. Newton took criticism of his work in a very personal way and developed a lifelong loathing for Hooke.

His lack of published work also caused a huge issue when Gottfried Leibniz starting publishing his own version of calculus. Newton was already a master of this branch of mathematics, but had published very little of it. Again Newton’s insecurity got the better of him, and he angrily accused Leibniz of stealing his work. The pros and cons of each man’s case have long been debated by historians. Most mathematicians regard Newton and Leibniz as equally responsible for the development of calculus.

Newton was a very religious man with somewhat unorthodox Protestant Christian views. He spent a great deal of time and wrote a large body of private works concerned with theology and his interpretation of the Bible.

His scientific work had revealed a universe that obeyed logical mathematical laws. He had also discovered that starlight and sunlight are the same, and he speculated that stars could have their own systems of planets orbiting them. He believed such a system could only have been made by God.