Great Scientists

Pythagoras was an Ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher who lived more than 500 years before Christ. He spent most of his life in the Greek colonies in Sicily and southern Italy. He was also a philosopher, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras had a group of disciples who followed him around, and taught other people what he had taught them. He made crucial contributions to modern philosophy, as well as mathematics, science, and religious mysticism. It is also believed that he had a significant influence on medicine, music, astronomy, and divination. Pythagoras is best known for the mathematical theory named after him. He is without doubt, one of the greatest scientists not only of the ancient world, but of all time.

Paracelsus was a renowned German physicist, and botanist of Swiss origin. His path breaking findings in botany and medicine made him a pioneer in his field. Paracelsus became a notable physician in the early 16th century. He rejected most of the prevalent and widely accepted worlo views, and magic theories of medicine. While working on medicines, Paracelsus brought together the use of chemicals in medicines. In 1526, he coined the term 'zincum' for the chemical element zinc. He is also known for discovering laudanum' which is an alcoholic herbal preparation. Paracelsus was a strict follower, and a firm believer of the classical Greek concept of elements. However, he added his own findings to this concept. Paracelsus' real name was Philippus von Hohenheim. The name 'Paracelsus' was actually a nickname. It means 'equal to or greater than Celsus' and refers to his medical skill.

He was famous as a mathematician and geographer. Eratosthenes produced a reliable, logical method to discover prime numbers. It's known as the sieve of Eratosthenes, and is still important in modern number theory in an updated form. Assuming that the Earth was a sphere, Eratosthenes calculated its size with good accuracy. He also calculated the tilt of Earth's axis fairly accurately. Eratosthenes produced the first map of the world which used meridian lines and parallel lines. These were similar to our modern lines of latitude and longitude. This great scientist can be said to have invented geography. In fact, today we still use the word he invented for this new discipline. Geo' was Greek for Earth' and 'graphy' meant 'field of study." Eratosthenes also wrote books on philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, history, comedy, and poetry. His all-round knowledge made him the ideal choice for the most prestigious job an academic could en

Andreas Vesalius was the founder of modern anatomy. This 16th century physician and surgeon completely revolutionised the science of biology and medicine. By careful and painstaking dissections of cadavers, he learned a great deal about the structure of the human body and laid the foundation for modern physiology. In 1543, he published a remarkable book 'De humani corporis fabrica'. It was a fully illustrated anatomy of the human body, based on the observations Vesalius had made during his dissections. The book destroyed the misconcep tions in anatomy that had persisted for over a thousand years. Vesalius' anatomical studies corrected many religious beliefs and the finding of a previous physician Galen, who had dissected apes because religion forbade him to dissect real human cadavers. Vesalius was the first surgeon to actually cut open a cadaver or dead body of a human being, and his exceptionally detailed muscle drawings changed medical history for all time.

William Harvey was an English physician who lived in the 17th century. He was the first person to correctly describe blood's circulation in the body. He showed that arteries and veins form a complete circuit and that this 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.

Nicholas Copernicus was 15 century astronomer and mathematician, translator artist and physicist among other things He is best known as the first astronomer to put forward the idea of a system in which the planets and planetary objects orbit the Sun. By 1508, Copernicus had begun to create his model of the planetary system, suggesting that the Sun, and not our Earth, was the centre of the Universe. His model of the Universe was accepted, whereas earlier models had not been, because his was more detailed and accurate. He also had a better formula for the calculation of the positions of the planets at different times of the year. The Roman Catholic Church criticised Copernicus' theories. It went so far as to ban his book 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium,' after he died, and it remained a forbidden book for almost three hundred years. The ideas of Copernicus were instrumental in the evolution of the field of astronomy. In fact, almost every notable astronomer who came afte

Polemy was a Greek astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and geographer who lived and worked in Alexandria in Ancient Egypt, in the second century AD. His work 'Almagest,' is one of the most important works in ancient astronomy. It covers the motion of Sun, Moon, and the planets around the Earth. It also contains a catalogue of stars with their brightness on a logarithmic scale. Ptolemy's description of the Universe was accepted by the astronomical community for more than a thousand years. Ptolemy's second important work is calied 'Geography.' It is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the GrecoRoman world. Ptolemy's treatise on astrology was influential because of its practical treatment of astrology. Ptolemy discarded practices that did not have a logical basis, and also believed that astrology was not a completely reliable science.

Archimedes is best remembered as an ancient Greek scientist who made legendary contributions to mathematics, physics, engineering, and astronomy. Archimedes, who lived about 300 years before Christ, is also remembered for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere, and its circumscribing cylinder. He played a major role in developing calculus and analysis. This scientist explained how levers worked, andbuiltwar machines. But, Archimedes is most famous for the Archimedes Principle which explains how to measure the volume of an irregular object. Archimedes discovered his principle quite by accident. He noticed that the water level of the bathtub rose when he got in, and he realised that you could measure volume by putting it on water, and measuring how much the water level rose. Supposedly, the scientist got so excited by this discovery that he ran through the streets naked, yelling Eureka!' which is Greek for 'I figured it out!