Scientists

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A test tube labelled as his last breath went to Henry Ford.Thomas EdisonHe spotted an atmosphere on Venus during its 1761 transit.Mikhail LomonosovHe kept a pet elk that died after falling down some stairs.Tycho BraheBorn an Ogawa, he took his wife's family name on marrying.Hideki YukawaHis great book of medicines was printed only after he died.Li ShizhenHer French version of Newton's Principia is still in use.Émilie du ChâteletHe said Edison reneged on a promised $50,000 bonus.Nikola TeslaHe treated a boy for rabies without a medical licence.Louis PasteurTradition says he learned surgery from Divodasa of Kashi.SushrutaShe wrote radio scripts about fish for the U.S. government.Rachel CarsonLegend says he built a brass head that could talk.Roger BaconHis family fled Córdoba when the Almohads took the city.MaimonidesSchoolmates called him "Dafty" for his odd homemade clothes.James Clerk MaxwellLegend says he saw his printed book on the day he died.Nicolaus CopernicusTranslated in Baghdad, his work carried Indian numerals west.BrahmaguptaA programming language and a pressure unit bear his name.Blaise PascalA test tube labelled as his last breath went to Henry Ford.Thomas EdisonHe spotted an atmosphere on Venus during its 1761 transit.Mikhail LomonosovHe kept a pet elk that died after falling down some stairs.Tycho BraheBorn an Ogawa, he took his wife's family name on marrying.Hideki YukawaHis great book of medicines was printed only after he died.Li ShizhenHer French version of Newton's Principia is still in use.Émilie du ChâteletHe said Edison reneged on a promised $50,000 bonus.Nikola TeslaHe treated a boy for rabies without a medical licence.Louis PasteurTradition says he learned surgery from Divodasa of Kashi.SushrutaShe wrote radio scripts about fish for the U.S. government.Rachel CarsonLegend says he built a brass head that could talk.Roger BaconHis family fled Córdoba when the Almohads took the city.MaimonidesSchoolmates called him "Dafty" for his odd homemade clothes.James Clerk MaxwellLegend says he saw his printed book on the day he died.Nicolaus CopernicusTranslated in Baghdad, his work carried Indian numerals west.BrahmaguptaA programming language and a pressure unit bear his name.Blaise Pascal

His books were burned and he was exiled, then called back.AverroesHe built a robot band that played music on a boat.Ismail al-JazariLegend says he got a fatal chill stuffing a hen with snow.Francis BaconDying at twenty-nine, she had her papers sent to a friend.Wang ZhenyiJohn Glenn asked her to personally recheck his orbit math.Katherine JohnsonA priest's son, he quit the seminary for a life in science.Ivan PavlovHe scribbled a famous theorem in a margin without a proof.Pierre de FermatAncient sources call her a pupil of Pythagoras in Croton.TheanoHis Canon of Medicine was still taught in Europe in 1650.AvicennaShe claimed to pull down the Moon, timing it to eclipses.AglaoniceAt seven she took apart seven alarm clocks to see inside.Grace HopperHe packed Sanskrit grammar into nearly four thousand rules.PaniniLegend says he faked madness to escape an angry caliph.Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham)He passed the imperial exams and later ran the observatory.Shen KuoHe served as a palace eunuch at the Han court from about 75.Cai LunDoctors gave him two years to live when he was twenty-one.Stephen HawkingHis books were burned and he was exiled, then called back.AverroesHe built a robot band that played music on a boat.Ismail al-JazariLegend says he got a fatal chill stuffing a hen with snow.Francis BaconDying at twenty-nine, she had her papers sent to a friend.Wang ZhenyiJohn Glenn asked her to personally recheck his orbit math.Katherine JohnsonA priest's son, he quit the seminary for a life in science.Ivan PavlovHe scribbled a famous theorem in a margin without a proof.Pierre de FermatAncient sources call her a pupil of Pythagoras in Croton.TheanoHis Canon of Medicine was still taught in Europe in 1650.AvicennaShe claimed to pull down the Moon, timing it to eclipses.AglaoniceAt seven she took apart seven alarm clocks to see inside.Grace HopperHe packed Sanskrit grammar into nearly four thousand rules.PaniniLegend says he faked madness to escape an angry caliph.Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham)He passed the imperial exams and later ran the observatory.Shen KuoHe served as a palace eunuch at the Han court from about 75.Cai LunDoctors gave him two years to live when he was twenty-one.Stephen Hawking

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Wheel and axle3500 BCLibrary of Alexandria290 BCAl-Jabr (algebra)Al-Khwarizmi · 820Movable-type printing pressJohannes Gutenberg · 1440Refracting telescopeGalileo Galilei · 1608Royal SocietyRobert Boyle · 1660Universal gravitationIsaac Newton · 1687Separate condenser steam engineJames Watt · 1769PhotosynthesisJoseph Priestley · 1779Atomic theoryJohn Dalton · 1803Evolution by natural selectionCharles Darwin · 1859Mendel's laws of inheritanceGregor Mendel · 1866X-raysWilhelm Röntgen · 1895Wright FlyerOrville Wright · 1903General relativityAlbert Einstein · 1915Quantum mechanicsWolfgang Pauli · 1925PlutoClyde Tombaugh · 1930Nuclear fissionLise Meitner · 1938TransistorJohn Bardeen · 1947Double helixRosalind Franklin · 1953Contraceptive pill1960Magnetic resonance imagingPaul Lauterbur · 1973Global Positioning SystemGladys West · 1978Fermat's Last TheoremPierre de Fermat · 1995