History of Science

Question 1

Mileva Maric, a Serbian physicist, is best known for her marriage to what other scientist?

Answer 1

Albert Einstein

Question 2

Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg’s groundbreaking interpretation of quantum mechanics is usually referred to by the name of what European city?

Answer 2

Copenhagen (Interpretation)

Question 3

‘The Strangest Man’ by Graham Farmelo is a 2009 biography of which scientist, who applied Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to quantum mechanics in order to describe the spin of an electron? In 1933 he shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrödinger?

Answer 3

Paul Dirac

Question 4

It took Dorothy Hodgkin 35 years to work out the atomic structure of this pancreatic hormone.

Answer 4

Insulin

Question 5

What was the name of the Austrian physicist who, in 1842, explained the effect of variations in wave frequencies resulting from the relative motion of the source of the wave from the perspective of the observer?

Answer 5

Christian Doppler

Question 6

The temperature scale named after Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius was formally named thus by the Conference General des Poids et Measures in 1948, but before that point (and still today, decreasingly), the scale was commonly known by what other name?

Answer 6

Centigrade

Question 7

The organelle in eukaryotic cells that bundles proteins for specific functions and prepares them for transport to other parts of the cell is an apparatus named after what Italian cytologist?

Answer 7

Camillo Golgi

Question 8

“On the Motion of Bodies,” “The Motion of Bodies in Resisting Media,” and “On the System of the World” are common (though not official) titles of the three sections of a work by Sir Isaac Newton published in 1687. This work is best known by what shortened, one-word title?

Answer 8

Principia

Question 9

Though he was one of the last astronomers not to use a telescope, this “naked-eye” Dane was known for basing his work on empirical facts and shortly before his death in 1601 hired Johannes Kepler as an assistant.

Answer 9

Tycho Brahe

Question 10

This astronomer is best known for this laws of planetary motion that described the motion of planets around the sun. They were declared across works he released between 1609 - 1619.

Answer 10

Johannes Kepler

Question 11

What Austrian pediatrician first outlined the difference between “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” autism?

Answer 11

Hans Asperger

Question 12

Published around 150 A.D., this geographer’s “Cosmographia” showed an early map of Ireland.

Answer 12

Ptolemy

Question 13

To discredit the AC power system, Edison tried to make this tycoon’s name synonymous with electrocution

Answer 13

George Westinghouse

Question 14

She really took after mom Marie — married a guy from the lab, studied polonium and won a Nobel Prize.

Answer 14

Irene Curie

Question 15

Around 1806 this British commander drew up a “wind force scale and weather notation.”

Answer 15

Francis Beaufort

Question 16

A 2013 Laureate, this British man wrote a 1954 thesis on “Problems in the Theory of Molecular Vibrations.”

Answer 16

Peter Higgs

Question 17

Biochemist Melvin Calvin discovered the cycle that traces carbon through what process in nature?

Answer 17

Photosynthesis

Question 18

What Italian scientist described his namesake law in his 1811 “Essay on Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies and the Proportions by Which They Enter These Combinations”?

Answer 18

Amedeo Avogadro

Question 19

What famous threesome is sometimes paraphrased by scientists with the maxims “You can’t win,” “You can’t break even,” and “You can’t even quit the game”?

Answer 19

The laws of thermodynamics

Question 20

This Hungarian-born physicist later regretted the sexism in his telegram “it’s a boy” when an H-bomb test worked.

Answer 20

Edward Teller

Question 21

Malignant cell samples taken from a patient at Johns Hopkins led to the creation of the world’s first “immortal cell line,” used extensively in medical research over the years. However this has understandably raised privacy concerns due to the nature of the acquisition of the genetic material. What was the name of that patient, from whom the samples were taken without her knowledge or permission?

Answer 21

Henrietta Lacks

Question 22

This neurologist is known for discovering and being the namesake for an authentic smile. Such a smile involves contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle (which raises the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (which raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes)

Answer 22

Guillaume Duchenne

Question 23

What scientist, who discovered that electric currents affect magnets, was a close friend of author Hans Christian Andersen?

Answer 23

Hans Christian Ørsted

Question 24

Named after the British scientist who invented it, this device is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. It may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material or by a mesh of such materials.

Answer 24

Faraday Cage

Question 25

Created in 1812 by its namesake German geologist, this scale characterizes a mineral’s hardness.

Answer 25

(Friedrich) Mohs Scale

Question 26

This New Zealand-born British physicist has come to be know as the father of nuclear physics. Among his discoveries are the concept of radioactive half life, the element Radon and the differentiation of alpha and bet radiation.

Answer 26

Ernest Rutherford

Question 27

This European’s 1751 “Philosophia Botanica” gave rules of nomenclature and said don’t change generic names.

Answer 27

Carl Linnaeus

Question 28

In 1585 Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin’s work “The Tenth” introduced this numbering system to Europe.

Answer 28

The Decimal System

Question 29

What scientific field do we associate with Caroline Herschel, the greatest female scientist of her day?

Answer 29

Like her brother William, the discoverer of Uranus, Caroline Herschel was a well-known astronomer.

Question 30

The becquerel, which is the SI derived unit of radioactivity, replaced two non-SI units of radioactivity and radioactive decay in common usage for much of the 20th century. Identify either of these non-SI units, both of which were named after Nobel Prize winners.

Answer 30

Curie, Rutherford

Question 31

In 1887, what Austrian scientist photographed the shock waves produced by an object traveling faster than the speed of sound?

Answer 31

Ernst Mach, of “Mach speed” fame.

Question 32

What German physicist has numerous extreme measurement units named after him, including a length (equal to 1.616×10-35m), a mass (2.18×10-8kg), and a time (5.39×10-44 seconds), all of which are used principally in quantum theory?

Answer 32

Max Planck

Question 33

The Greek polymath Eratosthenes is remembered for various achievements, including his position as chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, his calculation of the earth’s circumference, and his mathematical “sieve” that is used to identify what?

Answer 33

Prime numbers

Question 34

An intensity scale known as the Mercalli Scale, and later the Modified Mercalli Scale, has been made obsolete by modern technology and primarily replaced by what other, logarithmic scale, developed in 1935?

Answer 34

Richter scale

Question 35

At the University of Chicago in 1942, a team led by Enrico Fermi created the 1st self-sustaining one of these sequences.

Answer 35

Nuclear chain reaction

Question 36

What European angular measurement for 1/40,000 of a circle was used until 1948 for a very different metric measurement scale?

Answer 36

Before it was a temperature unit, a centigrade was a very small arc of a circle.

Question 37

For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, what theoretical physicist received the Nobel Prize in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomonaga? He became known to the wide public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Answer 37

Richard Feynman

Question 38

“Jumping genes” (a.k.a. transposons), which move along a chromosome and can alter a cell’s genetic identity, were the discovery of what botanist and geneticist, who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983? She became the first woman to win that prize unshared and the first American woman to win any Nobel science Prize unshared.

Answer 38

Barbara McClintock

Question 39

In an effort to explain the coloration of stars, an Austrian physicist first suggested the effect that is now more closely associated with the apparent change in the observed frequency of a sound wave, resulting from relative motion between the sound’s source and observer. Who was this physicist?

Answer 39

Christian Doppler

Question 40

A scientific instrument named after James Webb, scheduled for implementation in October 2021, is intended to replace a similar instrument named after what other American?

(Card created: December 3, 2020)

Answer 40

Edwin Hubble

Question 41

The Earth is at the center of the universe and the Sun, Moon, and planets revolve around it at different levels in circular orbits, while the stars lie in fixed locations on a sphere that revolves beyond these orbits. Such was the astronomical system most associated with what second-century mathematician and author of the Almagest?

Answer 41

Ptolemy

Question 42

19th-century German anatomist Paul Langerhans spent the most significant period of his career conducting pioneering research into what organ?

Answer 42

Pancreas