Category Great Scientist

Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, founded homeopathy.

        Hahnemann believed that the medicine he had been taught to practice some-times did the patient more harm than good.

       He carried out experiments on the curative power of bark, which was the source of quinine. He was the first person to observe that a remedy that produces symptoms in a healthy person will cure those same symptoms when manifested by a person in a disease state.

     This principle that ‘likes are cured by likes’ is the very foundation of homeopathy. Hahnemann is called the ‘father of experimental pharmacology’ because he was the first physician to prepare medicines in a specialized way, by first trying them on healthy human beings, to determine how the medicines acted to cure diseases.

Pierre-Simon Laplace was a French physicist and astronomer of the 19th century. He had a phenomenal natural mathematical faculty, and predicted many things, using only maths.

           These predictions were later confirmed with powerful telescopes. He wrote a book explaining his theory of the origin of the solar system.

           Laplace presented a steady stream of remarkable mathematical papers that spread his fame. Pierre-Simon Laplace is highly regarded for his influential, five-volume treatise which developed a strong mathematical understanding of the motion of the heavenly bodies. This work interpreted the geometric study of classical mechanics, starting up a wider range of problems.

          Laplace’s work, and the results he produced, made him one of the most important and influential scientists that the world has seen. The Laplacian differential operator that is named after him is widely used in mathematics.

           Laplace won many awards for his studies, and he was made a marquis, but he remained modest, saying, “What we know is little. What we know not is immense.”

         His work regarding the theory of probability and statistics is considered pioneering.

Jean Babtiste Lamarck was one of the pioneers in the field of biology.

   In fact, the very name ‘biology’ was coined by this French naturalist. He is best remembered for his theory, the characteristics an organism develops during its lifetime in response to its environment are inherited by, or passed on to, its offspring.

       Lamarck was the first to use the term invertebrate to describe animals without backbones. He began collecting fossils and studying all sorts of simple species.

        As a result of these studies, he was able to revise the classification of lower animals that had been unfinished by the Swedish biologist Linnaeus.

        Lamarck’s study of invertebrates also led to the publication of his major work ‘The Natural History of Invertebrate Animals’ in 1815-22.

William Herschel was a German-born British scientist who became one of the most important astronomers of the 18th century. He built his own telescopes.

           From the garden of his house, William Herschel noted ‘every star in the heavens’ through a telescope that he had constructed himself.

         He also manufactured over 400 telescopes that were in great demand worldwide. His study of the heavens led him to the discovery of a planet that would eventually be called Uranus. William Herschel would also discover Titania and Oberon, which were the moons of Uranus as well as Enceladus and Mimas, the moons of Saturn.

          Herschel maintained that the solar system is moving through space, and found out the direction of that movement. He also suggested that the Milky Way was in the shape of a disc. Herschel is considered to be the founder of modern stellar astronomy.

       William Herschel, a great scientist was a gifted musician too. He played the oboe, violin, harpsichord and organ.

Antoine Lavoisier revolutionized chemistry. It was he who coined the name oxygen for the element released by mercury oxide.

            He found that oxygen made up 20 per cent of air, and was vital for combustion and respiration. He also concluded that when phosphorus or sulfur is burned in air, the products are formed by the reaction of these elements with oxygen.

                  The elements carbon and hydrogen were also named by him. Another milestone was when Lavoisier correctly identified sulfur as an element. A year later, he found that when mercury oxide is heated, its weight decreases. The oxygen it releases has exactly the same weight as the weight lost by the mercury oxide. After carrying out further experiments, Lavoisier announced a new fundamental law of nature- the law of conversation of mass. This law states that the total mass of a chemical reaction’s products is identical to the total mass of the starting materials.

William Harvey was an English physician who lived in the 17th century. He was the first person to correctly describe blood’s circulation in body.

       He showed that arteries and veins form a complete circuit starts at the heart, and leads back to the heart. He also established that the heart’s regular contractions drive the flow of blood around the whole body.

        Before his discoveries, blood was thought to ebb and flow through the body by the contraction of arteries. Harvey’s knowledge came from observations he made of blood flowing through the veins and arteries of living animals that he cut open. This may seem cruel, as there were no anaesthetics in Harvey’s time.

        Nevertheless, it is how we arrived at an understanding of blood and its circulation in the body.

       William Harvey’s work also laid down the foundations of physiology, which is the study of body functions.