Scientists, Mathmaticians, and Explorers

Question 1

Wilhelm Röntgen

Answer 1

German physicist, 1845-1923 (78)
Nobel prize in physics, 1901
X-Rays, bitch!

Question 2

Alfred Nobel

Answer 2

Swiss chemist, 1833-1896 (63)
Invented dynamite, founder of Nobel prize

Question 3

Frederick Sanger

Answer 3

British biologist, 1918-2013 (85)
Nobel prizes in chemistry (1958, 1980)
Structure of proteins, esp. insulin

Question 4

Who is “The Father of Geology”?

Answer 4

James Hutton (Scottish, 1726-1797 [71])

Question 5

Who invented the laser, and when?

Answer 5

Charles Hard Townes (1915-2015), 1964

Question 6

Nicolaus Copernicus

Answer 6

Polish astronomer, 1473-1543
Heliocentricism, bitch

Question 7

Who invented the transistor, and when?

Answer 7

John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, at Bell Labs in 1947.

William Shockley, as it turns out, is a racist, eugenics-loving wacko.

Question 8

Edward Jenner

Answer 8

British physiscian, 1749-1823
Smallpox vaccine, “father of immunology”

Question 9

Georg Cantor

Answer 9

German mathematician, 1845-1918
Founder of set theory
Transfinite numbers
“No one shall expell us from the paradise that Cantor has created” - Hilbert
Opposed by Poincaré, Kronecker, and Wittgenstein

Question 10

Marie Curie

Answer 10

1867-1934 (67)
Polish born, French by marriage
Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physics (one of four people to be twice laureates)

Question 11

Tycho Brahe

Answer 11

Danish astronomer, 1546-1601

Question 12

James Hutton

Answer 12

“Father of Geology”
Scottish, 1726-1797 (71)

Question 13

John Venn

Answer 13

British mathematician, 1834-1923 (89)

Question 14

Charles Hard Townes

Answer 14

American physicist, 1915-2015
Won Nobel Prize in 1964 for work leading to the invention of the laser

Question 15

Donald Glaser

Answer 15

American physicist, 1926-2013 (87)
1960 Nobel prize in physics for invention of the bubble chamber (proving wrong one of Fermi’s conclusions)

Question 16

Maryam Mirzakhani

Answer 16

Iranian, 1977-2017 (40)
Stanford
Fields Medal, 2014

Question 17

Who led the first successful expidition to the geographic South Pole?

Answer 17

Roald Amundsen (Norwegan, 1872-1928), in 1911. Amundsen disappeared in the Barents Sea in 1928 at the age of 55.

Question 18

Amerigo Vespucci

Answer 18

Italian explorer, 1454-1512
Explored the coast of South America

Question 19

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Answer 19

German mathematician, 1646-1716

Question 20

Roald Amundsen

Answer 20

Norwegian explorer, 1872-1928
First to reach South Pole in 1911
Disappeared in Barents Sea in 1928

Question 21

Enrico Fermi

Answer 21

Italian physicist, 1901-1954
Discovered first nuclear chain reaction, Fermi paradox
Columbia, University of Chicago (many more in Europe)
From his deathbed, when asked what he would first ask his maker: “The cause and nature of turbulence”

Question 22

Augustin-Louis Cauchy

Answer 22

French mathematician, 1789-1857 (68)
Analysis (esp. complex), among the first to rigorously prove theorems of calculus

Question 23

Linus Pauling

Answer 23

American chemist, 1901-1994 (93)
born in Portland -> OSU -> Cal Tech -> UCSD -> Stanford
One of founders of quantum chemistry and molecular biology
Won Nobel prizes in chemistry and peace, the only person to win two unshared Nobel prizes

Question 24

Charles Darwin

Answer 24

British naturalist, 1809-1882

Question 25

Four people are twice Nobel laureates; who are they?

Answer 25

Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, Frederick Sanger

Question 26

Ferdinand Magellan

Answer 26

Portuguese explorer, 1480-1521
First circumnavigation of Earth
First expedition to Asia (from Europe
First expedition across Atlantic, through Straight of Magellan, to Pacific

Question 27

Who invented modern air conditioning?

Answer 27

Willis Carrier (American, 1876-1950, age 64)

Question 28

Sir Francis Galton

Answer 28

English polymath, 1822-1911 (89)
Created statistical correlation
Promoted regression to the mean
Into eugenics and racism 👎

Question 29

Who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Answer 29

Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless; “click chemistry”

Question 30

Who invented the transistor, and when?

Answer 30

John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, Bell Labs, 1947

Question 31

Thomas Bayes

Answer 31

English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister, 1701-1761 (60).

Question 32

Otto Warburg

Answer 32

German physiologist, 1883-1970
Nobel prize in 1931 for his “discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme”
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin (now located in Tübingen)

Question 33

John Goodenough

Answer 33

American physicist, 1922-2023 (100). Won Nobel prize in chemistry in 2019 for work on Li-ion batteries. MIT, UT Austin