Legendary Scientists Two Flashcards
What are Newton’s three laws of motion
Who extended these laws for point particles to rigid body motion
First law: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.
Second law: The vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector a of the object: F = ma.
Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.
Leonard Euler 50 years after Newton
How was della Porta commonly referred to
With what security field was he associated
In what natural history field was he a pioneer (give an example why)
What other major thing did he claim to invent, but didn’t prove
‘professor of secrets’
cryptography
(he described the first known digraphic substitution cipher.)
In Phytognomonica the first observation of fungal spores is recorded, making him a pioneer of mycology.
Della Porta also claimed to have invented the first telescope, but died while preparing the treatise (De telescopiis) in support of his claim.
Giambattista della Porta
(1535-1615)
Italian polymath
Why is Issac Newtons death year either in 1726 or 1727
Because of the chance from Julian to Gregorian calendar
William Harvey (1578-1657)
English
Who coined the name ‘microscope’ and when
Giovanni Faber coined the name microscope for Galileo Galilei’s compound microscope in 1625
Who were the first two British scientists to be knighted
Sir Francis Bacon
Sir Isaac Newton
John Locke (1632-1704)
One of the most influential enlightenment thinkers
onsidered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon
He obtained a bachelor of medicine in 1674, having studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford and worked with such noted scientists and thinkers as Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Robert Hooke and Richard Lower.
Tangental question (hope you get the joke)
What does differential calculus concern
what does integral calculus concern
Leibniz give calculus its name and symbols, but what did Newton call it
differential calculus (concerning rates of change and slopes of curves) [Newton began with difs]
integral calculus (concerning accumulation of quantities and the areas under and between curves) [Leibniz began with integrals]
Newton called it the ‘science of fluxions’, and he published his work on calculus in a work called the ‘Method of fluxions’
What was William Harvey the first person to describe completely
What was his related great work
He was the first known to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and body by the heart, though earlier writers had provided precursors of the theory.
“De Motu Cordis” (otherwise known as “On the Motion of the Heart and Blood”)
-Published in 1628 in the city of Frankfurt (host to an annual book fair that Harvey knew would allow immediate dispersion of his work), this 72 page book contains the matured account of the circulation of the blood.
Antoine van Leeuwenhoek
(1632-1723) (same as Wren)
Can you name (and for kudos date), Leeuwenhoek’s five key discoveries.
Leeuwenhoek’s main discoveries are:
the infusoria (protists in modern zoological classification), in 1674
the bacteria, (e.g., large Selenomonads from the human mouth), in 1676
the vacuole of the cell.
the spermatozoa in 1677.
the banded pattern of muscular fibers, in 1682.
Isaac Newton in his older age (about 1712)
When was the Royal Society founded
Whose incomplete utopian novel inspired the founders of the Royal Society
Nov 1660
The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the “new science”, as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis (1627), from approximately 1645 onwards.
As Leeuwenhoek didn’t write any books, how did his discoveries come to light
With what paintings is he sometimes associated with
Through correspondence with the Royal Society, which published his letters (By his death , he had written 190 letters to the Society, detailing his findings in a wide variety of fields, centered around his work in microscopy. )
It has been suggested that he is the man portrayed in two of Vermeer’s paintings of the late 1660s, The Astronomer and The Geographer - however, others argue that there appears to be little physical similarity.
(It is known that Leeuwenhoek acted as the executor of the will when the painter died in 1675, so he did know him, presumably quite well.)
How is Leeuwenhoek commonly known and why
He is commonly known as “the Father of Microbiology”, and considered to be the first microbiologist.
He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope (he made about 200 of them) and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology.
Using his handcrafted microscopes, he was the first to observe and describe single-celled organisms, which he originally referred to as animalcules, and which are now referred to as microorganisms.
(even with his established reputation with the Royal Society as a reliable observer, his observations of microscopic life were initially met with both skepticism and open ridicule.)
Who?
Italian Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562) aka Fallopius
One of the most important anatomists of the 16th century
Aside from describing the Fallopian tube, what did most of Fallopius’s work mostly deal with
In what area did he correct Vesalius
The anatomy of the head.
He did a lot of work describing the internal ear
He corrected Vesalius in myology (the working/study of muscles)
Fallopio was the first to describe what useful device
Condom
(in his writings, a linen sheath wrapped around the penis), and he advocated the use of such sheaths to prevent syphilis.
Fallopio reported that he tested these condoms in 1,100 men, none of whom contracted syphilis
Who>
The Italian, Bartolomeo Eustachi (1500 or 1514 to 1574)
aka Eustachius
Eustachius was the first to accurately study the anatomy of what
What physically useful little thing did he also discover
Teeth
Adrenal glands (1563)
Which famous anatomist and surgeon performed the autopsy on the body of St Ignatius of Loyola
Matteo Realdo Colombo
Who by 1555 was a bitter rival of Vesalius and why?
Matteo Realdo Colombo
Although Vesalius has been much maligned for correcting Galen, Colombo was the first person to criticize him for his own mistakes. When Vesalius returned, he was outraged.
What was Vesalius’s most important work
De Fabrica Corporis Humani (aka De Fabrica)
Corrects Galen and revolutionised European medicine
Whose work famously concluded that earth was a giant magnet and that the centre of the earth is iron
How what erroneus conclusion did he come to
William Gilbert
That gravity was a magnetic force, and that the moon was held to the earth by magnetism
Famous work?
Which term is he also credited as one of the originators
William Gilbert (1544-1603) aka Gilberd - English physician and physicist
famous work was De Magnete (1600) its full name is
De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth) - you don’t need to know that.
“Electricity”
What is the origin of the English word “electricity” in broad terms
Who and when first used it?
The English word “electricity” was first used in 1646 by Sir Thomas Browne, derived from Gilbert’s 1600 New Latin electricus, meaning “like amber”. The term had been in use since the 13th century, but Gilbert was the first to use it to mean “like amber in its attractive properties”.
Amber is called elektron in Greek,
Gilbert argued that electricity and magnetism were not the same thing.
Who first identified the laws of refraction
Which was the first European to discover it - but didn’t publish?
But who gets the credit (e.g. in the laws name)
A few others had got close before, but the first to produce an accurate law was
Ibn Sahl of Baghdad, in 984
This was rediscovered by Thomas Harriot in 1602, but the idiot didn’t publish - although he did correspond with Kepler about them
Dutch astronomer, Willebrord Snellius (Snell) discovered it again in 1621
(Snellius was also a distinguished mathematician, producing a new method for calculating π—the first such improvement since ancient times.)
What work did Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov call the first work of Science fiction
What was it about?
Somnium (Latin for “The Dream”) was a science fiction novel written in 1608, in Latin, by Johannes Kepler.
Pub. by his son in 1634
Somnium presents a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered the first serious scientific treatise on lunar astronomy.
In what year, and book did Keplar publish his first two laws of motion
Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) 1609
Nickname?
John Napier of Merchiston (1550-1617)
aka Marvellous Merchiston
Who discovered logarithms,
What is a logarithm
What was the discover’s related famous invention
What else did he make common use of
John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms.
In mathematics, the logarithm of a number is the exponent to which another fixed value, the base, must be raised to produce that number. (For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 10 to the power 3 is 1000)
He also invented the so-called “Napier’s bones”
Napier’s bones is a manually-operated calculating device created by John Napier of Merchiston for calculation of products and quotients of numbers.
and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics.
How can logarithms be useful for doing multiplication
Rather than have a x b = c
it can be expressed as
log a + log b = log c
so if you have log tables this is easy
Which famous catalogue of astronomical measurements was completed by Keplar from work begun by Brahe, and includes data on the positions of 1500 stars, and all the planets known
The 1627 Rudolphine Tables (after HRE Rudolph II)
Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564)
Flemish
Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.
Which naturalist formalised the idea of a species, and was famous for his work on ‘The History of Plants’
Who was his colleague, and collaborator who was also the first to publish a treatise that represented the first scientific approach to the study of birds
John Ray - 1627 - 1705
Francis Willughby (1635 - 1672)
Who was known as the founder of Lunar Topography
and described ten new constellations, seven of which are still used today
Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687)
He is considered the last astronomer to do major work without the use of a telescope. (Halley had been instructed by Robert Hooke and John Flamsteed to persuade Hevelius to use telescopes for his measurements, yet Hevelius demonstrated that he could do well with only quadrant and alidade. )
(but he did also use them)
