History of Science Flashcards

You may prefer our related Brainscape-certified flashcards:
1
Q

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

A

Albert Einstein

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

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

A

Copenhagen (Interpretation)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

‘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?

A

Paul Dirac

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

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

A

Insulin

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

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?

A

Christian Doppler

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

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?

A

Centigrade

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

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?

A

Camillo Golgi

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

“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?

A

Principia

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

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.

A

Tycho Brahe

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

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.

A

Johannes Kepler

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

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

A

Hans Asperger

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

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

A

Ptolemy

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

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

A

George Westinghouse

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

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

A

Irene Curie

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

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

A

Francis Beaufort

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

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

A

Peter Higgs

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

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

A

Photosynthesis

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

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”?

A

Amedeo Avogadro

19
Q

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”?

A

The laws of thermodynamics

20
Q

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

A

Edward Teller

21
Q

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?

A

Henrietta Lacks

22
Q

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)

A

Guillaume Duchenne

23
Q

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

A

Hans Christian Ørsted

24
Q

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.

A

Faraday Cage

25
Q

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

A

(Friedrich) Mohs Scale

26
Q

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.

A

Ernest Rutherford

27
Q

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

A

Carl Linnaeus

28
Q

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

A

The Decimal System

29
Q

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

A

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

30
Q

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.

A

Curie, Rutherford

31
Q

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

A

Ernst Mach, of “Mach speed” fame.

32
Q

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?

A

Max Planck

33
Q

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?

A

Prime numbers

34
Q

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?

A

Richter scale

35
Q

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

A

Nuclear chain reaction

36
Q

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

A

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

37
Q

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.

A

Richard Feynman

38
Q

“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.

A

Barbara McClintock

39
Q

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?

A

Christian Doppler

40
Q

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)

A

Edwin Hubble

41
Q

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?

A

Ptolemy

42
Q

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

A

Pancreas

43
Q

Much of the groundwork for human understanding of geometry and mathematical logic was laid in a book written by Euclid around 300 BCE. What is that book’s name (in English)?

A

Elements