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People You Should Know > Science & Technology > Flashcards

Science & Technology Flashcards

Learn about these select few innovators who discovered and/or invented some seriously important stuff!

1
Q

Who is:

Nicolaus Copernicus

A

15th and 16th-century Renaissance Polish astronomer who argued that the Earth moves about the Sun, displacing the Earth from the center of the universe

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2
Q

Who is:

Johannes Gutenberg

A
  • German printer who invented the printing press and movable type printing in the mid-15th century
  • The first book printed from movable type was the Gutenberg Bible, of which 48 copies survive
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3
Q

Who is:

Jacques Cousteau

A
  • French oceanographer and innovator of the 20th century who explored and studied the sea and all forms of marine wildlife
  • He pioneered marine conservation and, along with Émile Gagnan, invented the Aqua-Lung, the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA)
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4
Q

Who is:

Tim Berners-Lee

A

British computer scientist and the inventor of the World Wide Web

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5
Q

Who is:

Nikola Tesla

A

Serbian-American inventor and engineer of the 19th and 20th centuries noted for his contributions to the design of the modern AC electric power system

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6
Q

Who is:

Galileo Galilei

A
  • 16th and 17th-century Italian physicist and philosopher who was a central figure in the Scientific Revolution
  • He proved that objects with different masses fall at the same velocity and discovered the moons of Jupiter
  • He controversially supported heliocentrism, made improvements to the design of the telescope, and laid the groundwork for modern kinetics, dynamics, and astronomy
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7
Q

Who is:

Albert Einstein

A
  • German-born physicist of the 20th century often considered the father of modern physics thanks to his development of the general theory of relativity
  • Although he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work pertaining to the photoelectric effect (which helped develop quantum theory), he is best known for his mass-energy equivalence formula E=mc2 (which helped lead to the development of nuclear fission)
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8
Q

Who is:

Isaac Newton

A
  • English scientist of the 17th and 18th centuries, considered one of the greatest scientists in human history
  • He played an enormous role in developing modern understanding of calculus, light, motion, and gravity
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9
Q

Who is:

Guglielmo Marconi

A
  • Italian inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who developed radio transmission and wireless telegraphy
  • He won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics
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10
Q

Who is:

Louis Pasteur

A
  • French scientist of the 19th century who helped prove the germ theory of disease – the notion that diseases are caused by microorganisms
  • One of the founders of microbiology, he created vaccines for anthrax and rabies, and developed pasteurization, the process of heating fluids so as to kill harmful bacteria
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11
Q

Who is:

Charles Darwin

A
  • English naturalist of the 19th century who helped develop the theory of evolution
  • His most famous work, The Origin of Species, is considered to be the foundation of modern evolutionary biology
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12
Q

Who is:

Edward Jenner

A

English physician of the 18th and 19th centuries who pioneered the smallpox vaccine and who is now regarded as the father of immunology

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13
Q

Who is:

Florence Nightingale

A
  • English nurse of the 19th and 20th centuries who is regarded as the founder of modern nursing
  • She rose to fame during the Crimean War, where she tended wounded soldiers day and night, earning her the nickname “Lady with the Lamp”
  • In London, she later established the first secular nursing school in the world
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14
Q

Who is:

Joseph Lister

A

19th-century English surgeon who pioneered antiseptic surgery, promoting the idea of sterile surgery to reduce infections

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15
Q

Who is:

Louis Daguerre

A

19th-century French artist and physicist most known for inventing the daguerreotype process of photography, and as a result, as a father of photography

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16
Q

Who is:

Johannes Kepler

A
  • German mathematician of the 16th and 17th centuries and one of the major figures of the scientific revolution
  • While he invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion
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17
Q

Who is:

Marie Curie

A
  • Polish-born physicist of the 19th and 20th centuries who worked mainly in France and was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize
  • She is best known for her research on radioactivity and for her techniques of isolating radioactive isotopes
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18
Q

Who is:

Léon Foucault

A

19th-century French physicist best known for inventing a pendulum (named after him) that demonstrates the rotation of the Earth

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19
Q

Who is:

Michael Faraday

A
  • English scientist of the 19th century most famous for establishing the notion of the electromagnetic field in physics
  • He is credited with the discoveries of diamagnetism, electromagnetic induction, and the laws of electrolysis
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20
Q

Who is:

Niels Bohr

A
  • 20th-century Danish physicist best known for developing the model of the atom with a nucleus at the center and electrons orbiting around it
  • Also a contributor to both the Manhattan Project and the field of quantum mechanics, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922
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21
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

15th and 16th-century Renaissance Polish astronomer who argued that the Earth moves about the Sun, displacing the Earth from the center of the universe

A

Nicolaus Copernicus

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22
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • German printer who invented the printing press and movable type printing in the mid-15th century
  • The first book printed from movable type was the Gutenberg Bible, of which 48 copies survive
A

Johannes Gutenberg

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23
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • French oceanographer and innovator of the 20th century who explored and studied the sea and all forms of marine wildlife
  • He pioneered marine conservation and, along with Émile Gagnan, invented the Aqua-Lung, the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA)
A

Jacques Cousteau

How well did you know this?
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24
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

British computer scientist and the inventor of the World Wide Web

A

Tim Berners-Lee

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25
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

Serbian-American inventor and engineer of the 19th and 20th centuries noted for his contributions to the design of the modern AC electric power system

A

Nikola Tesla

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26
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • 16th and 17th-century Italian physicist and philosopher who was a central figure in the Scientific Revolution
  • He proved that objects with different masses fall at the same velocity and discovered the moons of Jupiter
  • He controversially supported heliocentrism, made improvements to the design of the telescope, and laid the groundwork for modern kinetics, dynamics, and astronomy
A

Galileo Galilei

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27
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • German-born physicist of the 20th century often considered the father of modern physics thanks to his development of the general theory of relativity
  • Although he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work pertaining to the photoelectric effect (which helped develop quantum theory), he is best known for his mass-energy equivalence formula E=mc2 (which helped lead to the development of nuclear fission)
A

Albert Einstein

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28
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • English scientist of the 17th and 18th centuries, considered one of the greatest scientists in human history
  • He played an enormous role in developing modern understanding of calculus, light, motion, and gravity
A

Isaac Newton

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29
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Italian inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who developed radio transmission and wireless telegraphy
  • He won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics
A

Guglielmo Marconi

How well did you know this?
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30
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • French scientist of the 19th century who helped prove the germ theory of disease – the notion that diseases are caused by microorganisms
  • One of the founders of microbiology, he created vaccines for anthrax and rabies, and developed pasteurization, the process of heating fluids so as to kill harmful bacteria
A

Louis Pasteur

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
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31
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • English naturalist of the 19th century who helped develop the theory of evolution
  • His most famous work, The Origin of Species, is considered to be the foundation of modern evolutionary biology
A

Charles Darwin

32
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

English physician of the 18th and 19th centuries who pioneered the smallpox vaccine and who is now regarded as the father of immunology

A

Edward Jenner

33
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • English nurse of the 19th and 20th centuries who is regarded as the founder of modern nursing
  • She rose to fame during the Crimean War, where she tended wounded soldiers day and night, earning her the nickname “Lady with the Lamp”
  • In London, she later established the first secular nursing school in the world
A

Florence Nightingale

34
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

19th-century English surgeon who pioneered antiseptic surgery, promoting the idea of sterile surgery to reduce infections

A

Joseph Lister

35
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

19th-century French artist and physicist most known for inventing the daguerreotype process of photography, and as a result, as a father of photography

A

Louis Daguerre

36
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • German mathematician of the 16th and 17th centuries and one of the major figures of the scientific revolution
  • While he invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion
A

Johannes Kepler

37
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Polish-born physicist of the 19th and 20th centuries who worked mainly in France and was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize
  • She is best known for her research on radioactivity and for her techniques of isolating radioactive isotopes
A

Marie Curie

38
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

19th-century French physicist best known for inventing a pendulum (named after him) that demonstrates the rotation of the Earth

A

Léon Foucault

39
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • English scientist of the 19th century most famous for establishing the notion of the electromagnetic field in physics
  • He is credited with the discoveries of diamagnetism, electromagnetic induction, and the laws of electrolysis
A

Michael Faraday

40
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • 20th-century Danish physicist best known for developing the model of the atom with a nucleus at the center and electrons orbiting around it
  • Also a contributor to both the Manhattan Project and the field of quantum mechanics, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922
A

Niels Bohr

41
Q

Who is:

Alfred Nobel

A
  • Wealthy Swedish scientist and arms manufacturer of the 19th century who invented dynamite
  • After his death, his fortune was used to establish the Nobel Prizes
42
Q

Who is:

Enrico Fermi

A
  • Italian-American physicist of the 20th century most known for building the first nuclear reactor
  • He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938
43
Q

Who is:

Euclid

A

Ancient Greek mathematician and the founder of the study of geometry

44
Q

Who is:

Ptolemy

A
  • Greek-Roman philosopher and citizen of Egypt of the first and second centuries A.D.
  • He authored several important and highly influential scientific treatises on astrology and mathematics
45
Q

Who is:

Louis Braille

A
  • 19th-century Frenchman who was blinded as a child and later developed a new system of reading and writing for the blind, later named in his honor as braille
  • The braille system remains enormously important to the blind as a way to communicate and learn, and has been adapted for many languages
46
Q

Who is:

Jonas Salk

A

20th-century American medical researcher who discovered and developed the first polio vaccine

47
Q

Who is:

J. Robert Oppenheimer

A
  • American physicist of the 20th century who, along with Enrico Fermi, is known as the “father of the atomic bomb”
  • Played a major role in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons
48
Q

Who is:

Eli Whitney

A

18th and 19th-century American inventor, famous for inventing the cotton gin, one of the major inventions of the Industrial Revolution

49
Q

Who is:

Thomas Edison

A

American inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who patented more than a thousand devices and aided in the development and design of numerous others, many of them instrumental to modern life, such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, power stations and generators, and the incandescent light bulb

50
Q

Who is:

Henry Ford

A
  • American industrialist of the 19th and 20th centuries who founded Ford Motor Company
  • He championed the assembly line technique of mass production, using it to build the Model T automobile, which, although not the first automobile, revolutionized transportation
51
Q

Who is:

Alexander Graham Bell

A
  • Scottish-born American inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who is credited with the invention of the telephone
  • He devoted much of his research and career to elocution, hearing, speech, and the education of the deaf
  • He helped found the National Geographic Society
52
Q

Who are:

the Wright Brothers

A
  • Orville and Wilbur, two American brothers and inventors of the 19th and 20th centuries who in 1903 built the first successful airplane and achieved the first sustained human flight
  • They subsequently developed their machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft and invented three-axis control, which remains the standard system of aircraft controls
53
Q

Who is:

Levi Strauss

A
  • Bavarian-born American businessman who founded the first company, Levi Strauss & Co., to manufacture blue jeans, which were invented by him and tailor Jacob Davis
  • Technically, what they actually invented was working pants with reinforcements from copper rivets at points of stress
54
Q

Who is:

Elias Howe

A

American inventor of the 19th century who perfected the design of the modern sewing machine, which incorporated a lockstitch design

55
Q

Who is:

Douglas Engelbart

A
  • American inventor who is best known for his innovations in human-computer interaction, most notably the invention of the computer mouse
  • He is also noted for his work on networked computers and hypertext
56
Q

Who is:

Samuel Morse

A

American inventor of the 19th century who invented the single-wire telegraph and co-invented Morse code

57
Q

Who is:

Leo Baekeland

A
  • Belgian-born American chemist of the 19th and 20th centuries best known for inventing Bakelite (in 1907), a nonflammable and inexpensive plastic
  • Recognized in 1993 as having been the world’s first synthetic plastic, Bakelite helped bring about the beginning of the modern plastics industry
58
Q

Who is:

Pythagoras

A

Greek mathematician and philosopher of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. who is widely credited with the discovery and proof of the Pythagorean theorem in geometry

59
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Wealthy Swedish scientist and arms manufacturer of the 19th century who invented dynamite
  • After his death, his fortune was used to establish the Nobel Prizes
A

Alfred Nobel

60
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Italian-American physicist of the 20th century most known for building the first nuclear reactor
  • He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938
A

Enrico Fermi

61
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

Ancient Greek mathematician and the founder of the study of geometry

A

Euclid

62
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Greek-Roman philosopher and citizen of Egypt of the first and second centuries A.D.
  • He authored several important and highly influential scientific treatises on astrology and mathematics
A

Ptolemy

63
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • 19th-century Frenchman who was blinded as a child and later developed a new system of reading and writing for the blind, later named in his honor as braille
  • The braille system remains enormously important to the blind as a way to communicate and learn, and has been adapted for many languages
A

Louis Braille

64
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

20th-century American medical researcher who discovered and developed the first polio vaccine

A

Jonas Salk

65
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • American physicist of the 20th century who, along with Enrico Fermi, is known as the “father of the atomic bomb”
  • Played a major role in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons
A

J. Robert Oppenheimer

66
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

18th and 19th-century American inventor, famous for inventing the cotton gin, one of the major inventions of the Industrial Revolution

A

Eli Whitney

67
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

American inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who patented more than a thousand devices and aided in the development and design of numerous others, many of them instrumental to modern life, such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, power stations and generators, and the incandescent light bulb

A

Thomas Edison

68
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • American industrialist of the 19th and 20th centuries who founded Ford Motor Company
  • He championed the assembly line technique of mass production, using it to build the Model T automobile, which, although not the first automobile, revolutionized transportation
A

Henry Ford

69
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Scottish-born American inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries who is credited with the invention of the telephone
  • He devoted much of his research and career to elocution, hearing, speech, and the education of the deaf
  • He helped found the National Geographic Society
A

Alexander Graham Bell

70
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Orville and Wilbur, two American brothers and inventors of the 19th and 20th centuries who in 1903 built the first successful airplane and achieved the first sustained human flight
  • They subsequently developed their machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft and invented three-axis control, which remains the standard system of aircraft controls
A

the Wright Brothers

71
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Bavarian-born American businessman who founded the first company, Levi Strauss & Co., to manufacture blue jeans, which were invented by him and tailor Jacob Davis
  • Technically, what they actually invented was working pants with reinforcements from copper rivets at points of stress
A

Levi Strauss

72
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

American inventor of the 19th century who perfected the design of the modern sewing machine, which incorporated a lockstitch design

A

Elias Howe

73
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • American inventor who is best known for his innovations in human-computer interaction, most notably the invention of the computer mouse
  • He is also noted for his work on networked computers and hypertext
A

Douglas Engelbart

74
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

American inventor of the 19th century who invented the single-wire telegraph and co-invented Morse code

A

Samuel Morse

75
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

  • Belgian-born American chemist of the 19th and 20th centuries best known for inventing Bakelite (in 1907), a nonflammable and inexpensive plastic
  • Recognized in 1993 as having been the world’s first synthetic plastic, Bakelite helped bring about the beginning of the modern plastics industry
A

Leo Baekeland

76
Q

Name the scientific or technological figure:

Greek mathematician and philosopher of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. who is widely credited with the discovery and proof of the Pythagorean theorem in geometry

A

Pythagoras

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