Eminent scientists of the world!
1. Euclid (Ancient Mathematician of the World):
Euclid is known as the father of geometry. Whatever information was available on geometry before 300 BC, was collected by Euclid and presented in the form of 13 books systematically. These books are called Euclid’s Elements. It is said that there is no books except Bible which has been published more in number than the Euclid’s Elements. This fact shows how important Euclid’s work was.
Today, even after 2300 years, geometry taught in schools is based on Euclidian books. Though the elements of this great mathematician have been of great importance, we hardly know anything about him. We only know that he lived in Alexandria around 300 BC. During the reign of Ptolemy and taught in a school at Alexandria.
It is said that Euclid was educated-in Plato’s academy. In those days, this academy was very famous for mathematical education. Due to political reasons this great mathematician shifted to Alexandria. Ptolemy, the king of Alexandria, was a learned man who respected poets, artists, astrologers and mathematicians very much. He established a museum in Alexandria which was later on converted into a library. This library contained about 700,000 books. All these books were on papyrus because paper had not been invented by that time. With the passage of time this great library was also destroyed.
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Euclid was very famous all over Alexandria. In the 12th century, his original books written in Arabic were translated into Latin and were named as Elements. This is a set of 13 volumes. The first volume contains information about point, lines, circles, triangles, etc. along with some postulates. In the second volume are given the methods for making geometrical figures with the help of algebra. The third and fourth volumes deal with circles. The fifth and sixth volumes contain the theories of ratio and proportion and their application. The eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth volumes are on solid geometry.
These books contain invaluable information about solid figures like cube, pyramid, octahedron, sphere, etc. Euclid has not only included in them mathematical researches done prior to him, but also included all his own findings. The speciality of these books is that they contain the total knowledge of geometry upto Euclid’s period in the most logical manner.
Some experts believe that Euclid got the inspiration from Aristotle to compile these books. But it is now widely held that the work was the results of his own wisdom. These books have been translated in many languages all over the world, including in India.
These books have made great contribution during the last 2300 years in the popularization of geometry and have also shown new paths in the study of geometry in modern days. Euclidian geometry has become famous all over the world. On the basis of researches of Euclid, German mathematician Rieman invented Euclidian geometry; Great scientist Albert Einstein also took help from this geometry to develop his theory of relativity. Einstein has written a lot about the wisdom of Euclid. According to him, Euclid was a great mathematician who gave birth to logical thinking in geometry.
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Euclid not only contributed in geometry, but also in optics and division theory. He will always be remembered for his invaluable contributions to make geometry a logical subject.
2. Kekule Von Stradonitz Friedrich August (Whose Problem was Solved in a Dream):
Every student of chemistry is well acquainted with the name of Kekule. Originally, his name was Friedrich August Kekule. He added von Stradonitz to his name later in his life. He made important discoveries in organic chemistry.
Kekule drew diagrams to show the way atoms are arranged in a molecule. Using this method, he discovered that carbon atoms are tetravalent. He also discovered that carbon atoms can join on to each other in three different ways — the open chains, closed chains and ring chains. Because of this discovery a path was shown to other chemists how they could make new molecules. It was a very important discovery which has given more than 700,000 carbon compounds to the scientists of today.
There is a famous story about one of his discoveries – the structure of benzene. Benzene is a well-known carbon compound and is of great industrial importance. Kekule, in 1865, was researching about the structure of this compound. He knew that the benzene molecule has six carbon atoms, but diagrams or ordinary chains did not fit the way the molecule behaved. It was a puzzling problem to him.
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One night, in 1865, Kekule had a dream in which he saw a snake curled in a circular shape with its tail in its mouth. Kekule saw in the image a possible arrangement of atoms that might describe the benzene molecule. From this dream his concept of the six carbon benzene ring was born.
According to another story, one afternoon, Kekule dozed off in a chair before the fire-place in his laboratory. He demanded that he saw the six carbon atoms dancing around among the flames in his fireplace. Suddenly, the dancing atoms formed a ring. Taking cue from his dream, he solved the problem of the six-atom ring. This arrangement Kekule dreamed about is shown in the figure below. After this, he started solving the riddle of benzene structure. From his experiments he concluded that six carbon atoms are arranged in a ring structure in a benzene molecule. In this manner, he solved the problem of benzene structure which has become very aromatic compounds.
Intending to be architect, Kekule entered the University of Giessen, but came under the influence of Justus von Liebig and switched to chemistry. After receiving his doctorate in 1852, he studied at Paris where he met Charles-Frederic Gerhardt, from whose theory of organic structure, Kekule developed his own ideas. He became a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg in 1856 and the professor of chemistry at Ghent, Belgium, in 1858. He moved to Bonn in 1865.
His early training in architecture might have helped him conceive his structural theories. He gave structure of several compounds, and proved that carbon is tetravalent. He also carried out valuable work on mercury fulminate, unsaturated acids and Thio acids, and wrote a four volume textbook of organic chemistry. When he was ennobled he added ‘von Stradonitz’ to his name.
Kekule did many researches in the field of chemistry. This great scientist died on 13th July 1896. His contribution to scientific development cannot be forgotten.
3. Otto Von Guericke (Who Performed a Vacuum Experiment with 16 Horses):
Otto von Guericke was a famous physicist, engineer and natural philosopher who invented the first air pump and used it to study vacuum and the role of air in combustion and respiration. Born in a rich family, he was educated at the University of Leipzig. He studied Law at the University of Jena in 1621, and Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Leyden in 1623. In 1631, he became an engineer in the army of Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden.
From 1646 to 1681 he was Mayor of Magdeburg and Magistrate for Brandenburg. There is an interesting story about how he became the Mayor. In 1618, a great war broke out in Germany which lasted for 30 years. Guericke contributed a lot in the war and became an engineer due to his education in Mechanics and Mathematics. But his side was defeated badly and the enemy took over Magdeburg. The city was mined, and about thirty thousand people died in the war. Guericke, however, survived and later, he rebuilt the city and became its Mayor. He remained in this position for a period of 35 years.
As the Mayor of the city, he was always busily engaged but he used to spare some of his time for scientific research. He read a statement of Aristotle that a vacuum was impossible. Von Guericke saw this statement as a challenge. He knew that Galileo had proved that air has weight. He also had the knowledge about the Torricelli’s experiments in this connection. Based on these studies, in 1650 he invented an air-pump for creating a vacuum. It worked, and he used it for further experiments. He further went on to prove that whereas light travels through a vacuum, sound does not. He also demonstrated that neither candles could burn nor could life survive in a vacuum chamber.
Von Guericke built many vacuum machines. He made two hemispheres of copper called Magdeburg hemispheres. With these hemispheres, he demonstrated the power of vacuum before Emperor Ferdinand III at Regensburg.
Guericke placed the two copper hemispheres together to form a hollow sphere of about 14 inches in diameter. In order to make these hemispheres air tight, a leather ring dipped in wax solution was placed around the joint of hemispheres. The air was removed from inside by using the vacuum pump he had constructed.
After he removed the air from the hollow sphere, eight horses were tied to each hemisphere to pull them apart. But they could not pull them apart in the first attempt. At last when the horses pulled them apart with full force, a loud sound was produced due to the sudden entry of air into the vacuum space inside the hemispheres. In this way, the tremendous force that air pressure exerts was demonstrated by Guericke.
He also demonstrated before the Emperor an easier method of separating the copper hemispheres. The horses were removed by the vacuum pump. To separate them, Guericke rotated a stop-cork which was fitted on one of the hemispheres. This allowed air to rush into the vacuum and the two hemispheres were separated easily. This technique paved the way for harnessing and handling vacuum based apparatuses.
In 1663, Guericke invented the first electric generator which produced static electricity by applying friction against a revolving ball of sulphur. Several years later in 1672, he discovered that the electricity thus produced could cause the surface of the sulphur ball to glow; hence he became the first man to view electroluminescence.
Guericke also studied astronomy and predicted that comets would return regularly from outer space. When he was 80, he retired and went to live in Hamburg where he passed away in 1686.
4. Salim Ali (Godfather of Birds):
A 10 years old boy saw a flying bird and shot it down. He ran and picked it up. The bird looked like a house sparrow, but it had a yellow patch on the throat. Such spots had not been seen by the child before. The puzzled boy took the sparrow to his uncle Amiruddin and asked him what kind of bird it was. His uncle was not able to satisfy his curiosity. He took the boy to the office of the Bombay Natural History Society, and introduced him to W.S. Millard, the Honorary Secretary of the Society.
Millard was surprised to find an Indian boy keen to know about the birds. He took him around the room and showed him many stuffed birds. The child became more curious about birds. In the end, Millard took out a bird from an almirah which was similar to the child’s bird. The boy was thrilled and said, “Uncle Millard, I did not know there were so many kinds of birds! I wish to learn about all of them.” Millard smiled. He had not seen so much enthusiasm about birds even in an adult.
Thereafter, the boy started coming to his office frequently, to learn about identifying and preserving birds. The boy was Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, later known as Salim Ali, the bird watcher. This world famous bird watcher did many researches on bird’s right until the end of his life.
Salim Ali was born on November 12, 1896. Although he did go to college, surprisingly he did not obtain any university degree. He left for Burma to help his brother in wolfram mining. In Burma, he proved a failure as he looked more for birds than for wolfram in the jungles of Burma. In 1920, Salim Ali returned to Bombay in disgust.
After his return, he did a course in zoology, and was appointed a guide at the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society. At that time, he was 20 years old. As a guide, he would show the visitors around and tell about the preserved birds. During the course of this work he became more and more eager to study the living conditions of birds. With this aim, he went to Germany and came in contact with Dr. Irwin Strassman. After one year, he returned to India and found himself on the streets again. In his absence, his post in the museum had been abolished for lack of funds.
Salim Ali was a married man and needed a job badly. At best he could hope for a clerk’s post which would leave him little time to pursue his interest in birds. Luckily, his wife had a small house at Kihim, so they moved there. She also had a small income which was enough to meet the daily expenses.
Their house was at a quiet place set in the midst of trees. He would sit under the trees throughout the day and write in his notebook about the activities of the weaver bird. In 1930, he published the nature and activities of the weaver bird in the form of a research paper. This published paper brought him fame and recognition in the field of ornithology. From this study, Salim Ali learnt the importance of making first hand observations — not accepting blindly the notions of others famous persons. After this, he started travelling to different places to study about the birds. On the basis of the information which he had collected, he published The Book of Indian Birds in 1941. In this book, new information about Indian birds was given. Till now, about 60,000 copies of this book have been sold.
In 1948, he began an ambitious project in collaboration with S. Dillon Ripley, an ornithologist of international repute to bring out the ‘Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan’, in 10 volumes. This book contains information about all that is known of birds of the subcontinent, their appearance, where they are generally found, their breeding habits, migration etc. Apart from this, he wrote many other books on birds. In his book entitled ‘The Fall of Sparrow’, he has given many incidents from his life.
Salim Ali travelled for more than 65 years all over the country on his bird watching surveys. Because of his deep knowledge about the birds, people started calling him the moving encyclopaedia of birds.
He not only studied birds, but also worked in the field of protection of nature. He was given an international award of Rs.5,00,000/- which he donated to Bombay Natural History Society. In 1983, he was awarded Padma Vibushan by the Government of India. When this 90 years old ornithologist died on June 20, 1987, the birds lost their godfather and friend.
5. Sir Humphry Davy (Inventor of Safety Lamp for Miners):
In the early nineteenth century, mine disasters caused by accidental ignition of methane gas were quite common. The fire lamps used for lighting the mines were responsible for such accidents which caused death of many miners. The invention of safety lamp by Sir Humphry Davy in 1815 did much to cut down these risks.
Davy, well known at that time as one of Britain’s leading chemists, realised that problems of designing a safety lamp centered on the intake of oxygen and the dispersal of heat. A flame must have oxygen in order to burn, but the heat generated by the flame will normally ignite any combustible gases around it. With characteristic ingenuity Davy decided to enclose the flame of an oil lamp with a ‘wall’ of wire gauze.
The result was that whereas air could reach the flame, the heat produced by burning was largely dissipated before the spent air came into contact with gases outside the lamp. The light of the flame, though slightly dimmed by the gauze, was still adequate for the miners.
Safety lamps devised by Davy are still in use, though without doubt the advent of the electric bulb has reduced their importance as a means of lighting Today, Davy lamps are used more as means of detecting the presence of dangerous gases since the lamp flame is affected by them.
The achievements of Sir Humphry Davy were by no means confined to the invention of the safety lamp; important though this was Davy’s scientific career began in 1797. He carried out investigations on the anaesthetic effects of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) at consider able risk to himself. He prepared some quantity of this gas and inhaled it for half a minute. Soon, he became unconscious. After inhaling for some more time, he felt a laughing sensation. It was a pleasant experience for him that is why it was named as the laughing gas.
The news regarding the pleasant experience of inhaling the laughing gas spread all over. A lady volunteered to inhale this gas. After inhaling the gas for some time, she rushed out of the house and started running on the road. She even jumped over a dog which came in her way. Fortunately, she was caught by a gentleman and saved.
The invention of this gas by Davy spread his fame even up to London. For this achievement, he was appointed a lecturer in the Royal Institution in 1800. He gave an impressive lecture regarding the properties of this gas. Some people from the audience had the experience of inhaling the gas and enjoying its pleasant impact on their nerves.
For several years, this gas became a means of recreation in social parties. It was also used to control quarrel-some wives. In one get-together, a dentist named Hauros Walse saw a man who after inhaling the gas collided with a bench and was hurt, but did not have any feeling of pain caused by the injury.
Walse realized from this incident that this gas could be used on patients and their teeth could be removed without pain. Soon, the gas was being used by dentists for painless removal of teeth. Later, surgeons also started using it on their patients for anaesthetic purposes. Even today, this gas is widely used as anaesthesia during surgical operations.
Davy became a widely respected researcher at the Royal Institution of London. His popular lecture and researches on tanning, chemistry and voltaic cells won him farther recognition.
Davy applied electrolysis to the decomposition of chemical compounds and, in this way, isolated sodium and potassium in 1807, and alkaline earth metals in 1809. By heating borax with potassium, he obtained boron. He also explained the bleaching action of chlorine and proved it to be an element.
In 1813, Faraday became his assistant and accompanied Davy on a European tour during which they studied iodine and proved that diamond is a form of carbon. Together with Faraday, Davy published the first part of his research papers on “Elements of Chemical Philosophy”. He also conducted useful work on volcanic action and corrosion of copper in salt water.
Davy received many honours and awards during his life time. He was made a Knight in 1812, and later became Baronet. The crowning scientific honour came to him in 1820, when he was elected the President of the Royal Society of London.
6. Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose (Who Established Similarities between Plants and Animals):
Sir J.C. Bose was the first Indian scientist who proved experimentally that both animals and plants have a great deal in common. He proved that plants are also sensitive to heat, cold, light, noise and other external stimuli. He designed a very sensitive instrument called Cresco graph which was capable of recording and detecting the minute responses due to external stimulants. It could magnify the movement of plant tissues to about 10,000 times of their original size. This instrument helped him to establish many similarities between plants and other living beings.
On May 10, 1901, the hall of the Royal Society in London was packed with eminent scientists. All were curious to see J.C. Bose’s experiment to prove that plants have feelings like humans. Bose took a plant whose roots were carefully dipped up to its stem in a vessel containing the bromide solution. Bromide is a poison. He connected his instrument to the plant and looked at the lighted spot on a screen indicating the movements of the plant. The plant’s pulse beat, and the spot started moving to and fro like a pendulum. Soon, the spot vibrated violently and then came to a sudden stop. Its condition was almost like a poisoned rat struggling against death. The plant had died because of the poison.
The experiment was greeted with thunderous claps, but some physiologists were not happy, because Bose being a physicist was an intruder into their field. They criticized his experiment, but he was a person not to accept defeat easily because he was sure about his own conviction.
With his Cresco graph, Bose studied the response of the plants to fertilizers, light rays and wireless waves. His instrument was much praised in the Paris Congress of Science in 1900. Later, many physiologists corroborated his findings with the help of more sophisticated instruments.
This great scientist was born on 30 November, 1858 at Mymen singh, now in Bangladesh. He was brought up in a home devoted to Indian traditions and culture. He used to read Mahabharata and Ramayana regularly. He was very much inspired by the character of Kama, who struggled throughout his life to achieve success. He strongly believed that true success is born out of defeat.
When he was studying in St. Xavier School in Calcutta, he found himself to be the only student from a village among European and Anglo-Indian boys. They used to make fun of him. One of them, a champion boxer, tried to bully young Jagdish. One day, when Bose was unable to tolerate the bullying, he fought with that boy and gave him a thorough beating. Thereafter, no one dared to tease him.
After studying physics at Calcutta University, he went to Cambridge. In 1884, he came back to India with the B.Sc. degree from Cambridge University. He was offered a lectureship at Presidency College in Calcutta on a salary two thirds the salary of European lecturer. Bose being a man of high self-respect did not draw any salary for three years. He believed that Indians were in no way intellectually inferior to the Europeans. In the end, the victory was his. He was paid full salary from the date of joining.
Bose was the author of two world famous books entitled ‘Response in the Living and Non-living’ (1902) and ‘The Nervous Mechanism of Plants’ (1926).
He did a lot of work on radio-waves. Though he was more famous as a plant physiologist, he was basically a physicist. He developed another instrument called ‘coherer’, for the detection of radio-waves. Before his death in 1937, he founded the Bose Institute at Calcutta in which researches are conducted on several subjects. For his outstanding contributions, he was elected the Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920.