Educational Forays
Brief Biographies of Famous Scientists, written
for the middle grades.
Nicolaus Copernicus
19 February 1473 - 24 May 1543
His Life and Education:
- Born in Toren, Poland. When Nicolaus was 11, his father died, and he
was then raised by his uncle, the Bishop of Ermeland. He entered the University
of Cracow when he was 18 years old; his interest in astronomy began there.
At age 23, he went on to the Universities of Bologna and Padua to study
law and medicine. He received his doctorate in canon (religious) law from
University of Ferrara when he was 30 years old. At age 33, Copernicus returned
home to his uncle to serve as a doctor and secretary, until his uncle died
in 1512, when Nicolaus became a canon of Frauenburg.
His Scientific Career:
- Began to rebel against the prevailing astronomical system between 1510
and 1514. It had stated that the Earth was the center of the universe;
that the Sun and all other heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth; and
that all of the planetary motions were perfectly circular. This is the
geocentric hypothesis.
- Copernicus wrote instead that the Sun was the center of the
universe ó the old system had failed to accurately predict planetary motions,
and was very complicated in its explanations of perceived motions ó but
kept the stance that the planets rotated with perfect circular motion.
This is the heliocentric hypothesis.
- The book in which this hypothesis was published was kept relatively
secret, passed around to be read privately, because the Church in that
day held it as orthodox (unchanging belief) that the Earth truly
was the center of the universe. Many theologians (literally: those who
study religion) thought that it conflicted with the Bible. It was placed
on the index of books banned by the Catholic church in 1616, where it remained
until 1835.
- Copernicus really had to be pushed to have the book published ó he
was presumably nervous about the way other people would react to the ideas
it presented.
- The book, called De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the
Revolution of the Celestial Spheres), was not published until the month
of his death in 1543. It was actually published with a foreword by a theologian,
Osiander, who wrote that the heliocentric hypothesis was not intended as
a true description of the universe, but was instead was merely a "useful
supposition."
The Implications:
- Copernicus' ideas were revolutionary because:
- Space was not yet known to be a vacuum, and it seemed absurd that the
Earth could fly through space.
- A moving Earth implied that observers should also see motion in the
stars, because the universe was thought to be much smaller than we now
know it to be ó astronomers could not see as far into space, or as accurately,
as we can today.
- Perfect circular motion around the Sun instead of the Earth still did
not explain everything that people saw; it was still too complex to be
more acceptable than the geocentric hypothesis.
The Impact on Science and Society:
- A heliocentric theory made possible later innovations by Kepler and
Galileo, who worked out more clearly exactly how the planets orbitted the
sun.
- With the earth removed from the center of the universe, theological
changes occurred: some felt that mankind was less "special,"
but others realized that this just meant a new way of looking at their
place in the universe.
- These theories did mean a reworking of centuries-old ideas about the
structure of the universe, causing long-term debates amongst the clergy
and other learned people. How might this have impacted the "common"
person?
Marie Sklodowska Curie
7 November 1867 - 4 July 1934
Her Life and Education:
- Born in Warsaw, Poland. Her father was a physics teacher; her mother
was the principal of a girls' school. She acquired an interest in science
early on in life; though she was forced to take a position as a governess
(live-in babysitter, essentially) in 1885 to help her family's finances.
Marie was unable to get a higher scientific education in Poland; she moved
to Paris with her older sister in 1891, when she was 24. She worked hard,
and lived in poverty, while in Paris; but graduated first in her class
with a degree in Physics from the Sorbonne (a very prestigious school)
in 1893 (only two years!). She then received a scholarship from Poland;
she graduated second in her class after a year there, with a degree in
mathematics. She met Pierre Curie in 1894, and they married the following
year; unlike many men at that time, he was enthusiastic that she continue
her work in physics. She worked in his laboratory, studying pitchblende
(uranium ore), which she believed to contain a new element.
Her Scientific Career:
- The phenomenon of radioactivity was not yet understood, and her research
was really fundamental to its comprehension. She discovered, through months
of research, that the amount of radioactivity produced by the uranium ore
was not dependent upon its physical state (whether it was wet or dry; in
a powder or in solution; and the presence of other chemicals) ó only the
amount of uranium present was important. This meant that radioactivity
was an atomic property of the matter itself, and not a chemical reaction.
- During the year 1898, she worked with other uranium-containing minerals
and showed that two more new radioactive elements were present. Unfortunately,
no one knew about the dangers of radioactivity at the time, and so to this
day some of her lab notebooks are still too "hot" to handle!
- She spent the next three years producing a pure sample of radium, one
of the new elements she had discovered. The work was tiring and tedious,
and her lab was freezing in the winter and hot in the summer, but she persevered,
eventually producing one-tenth of one gram of the substance.
- Marie received her first Nobel prize for physics in 1903, along with
her husband and their co-worker Becquerel, for her work on radioactivity.
Her second would come in 1911, in chemistry, for her discoveries of radium
and polonium.
- On her first trip to America (as the chair of Sorbonne Univeristy),
she was asked what she would most like to have: she chose a gram of radium
(valued at $100,000), which she received, along with a $50,000 grant from
the Carnegie Institution. The Sorbonne also founded the Curie laboratory
for the study of radioactivity, which opened in 1914, and she spent much
of her time there training radiologists.
- The unit of measurement for radioactivity was named after her in 1910,
and she insisted upon defining the unit herself ó after all of her work,
she did deserve it.
The Implications:
- The discovery and eventual use of the power of radioactivity and its
related phenomena has led to many important events:
- Nuclear power ó which is based on chain reactions between radioactive
elements ó is a power source for millions of people.
- Nuclear weapons could not have been developed without an understanding
of radiation.
- The discovery that radioactivity is a property of matter has led to
increased understanding of the structure and makeup of atoms and sub-atomic
particles. This gives us a better understanding of nature and the universe
as a whole. Marie also increased the depth of the periodic table, which
is an important source of chemical information for scientists everywhere,
and in many fields.
- The use of "x-rays" has its foundation in Marie's work; that
and the use of radiation in cancer treatments have made significant differences
in the battle against life-threatening illnesses.
Charles Darwin
12 February 1809 - 1882
His Life and Education:
- Born in Shropshire, England. His father was a distinguished physician
(doctor); his mother was well- educated. He was very interested in the
natural sciences (then known as "natural history") when he was
a child ó did simple chemical experiments with his older brother; loved
making collections of rocks, flowers, plants, and insects. Charles disliked
his early formal education, at a boys' boarding school; the emphasis was
on "classical" studies, concerning ancient geography and history.
Still, he made the most of it, forming a natural history club of sorts,
which would go out to the countryside and collect insects or rocks, and
converse about science. He was sent to medical school in Edinbugh, Scotland,
when he was 16. Absolutely hated studying there: anesthesia had not yet
been invented, so all operations were done with patients wide awake and
usually screaming in terror. Anatomy was learned from cadavers (dead bodies),
some of which had been stolen from fresh graves! This terribly offended
Darwin's sensibilities, and finding medicine not to his liking, it was
decided that he would be sent to Cambridge, England, to study to be a clergyman
in the Anglican church. That didn't suit him very well either, although
he was a very religious man at that time.
His Scientific Career:
- Darwin began a serious study of life on earth with his journey on board
the HMS Beagle, a sailing ship that was sent on a scientific voyage
to South America. This journey lasted from 1831 to 1836, during which time
Darwin took volumes of notes about the plants, animals, and geology that
he encountered, as well as collecting many specimens to send home to England.
This study would later aid him in formulatin his theory of evolution by
natural selection.
- Darwin spent years and years collecting information about many different
species of plants and animals. He was particularly interested in the selection
of animals for breeding new varieties ó that is, humans could breed dogs,
birds, and other animals for desirable characteristics (longer ears, different
coat colors or feather types, milk production, etc.), and eventually ó
over time ó produce animals that looked and functioned very differently
from their great-great-great-grandparents.
- It was already debated that the variety of species on earth could have
come about by the process of evolution, or gradual change from one form
into another, but no one had yet come up with an explation of exactly how
the changes could occur. Other naturalists had proposed that organisms
might inherit changes from their parents (for example, a baby giraffe could
be born with a longer neck because its parents had stretched theirs), but
this hypothesis was not well-supported by evidence. Darwin, on the other
hand, proposed that changes would occur gradually, due to the "weeding
out" of organisms that were not as well-adapted to their environment
(e.g. the giraffes with longer necks would be better suited to find food,
so they would reproduce more often than giraffes with shorter necks, increasing
the number of long-necked giraffes); once enough changes had been added,
the organism might be considered a separate species.
The Implications:
- Darwin waited a long time before publishing his work; in fact, it wasn't
until another scientist named Alfred Russell wrote to him, saying that
he had found a way that evolution could proceed, that he was finally moved
to publish. His first book was the now-infamous "On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection."
- The fact that the theory was so well-supported (indeed, Darwin had
waited decades to publish his ideas while he gathered evidence) made it
very difficult to argue with. Existing ideas about the creation of life
and even humans' place in the universe were called into question, and some
of these questions are still hotly debated in the non-scientific community
today.
- A well-supported theory of evolution has really united the study of
biology, in the same way that the theory of plate techtonics united the
study of geology: it answers many questions about the relationships between
species and the origins of many of the organisms we know today.
Albert Einstein
14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955
His Life and Education:
- Albert was born in Ulm, Germany. His early educational career gives
no clue as to the genius Einstein would later develop into; in fact, he
didn't start talking until he was three years old, and wasn't fluent even
at age nine ó his parents feared that he was "backward." It is
often repeated that he had difficulties in language arts and even in math
ó his teachers all believed that he would amount to nothing. Still, Einstein
finished his primary and secondary education, and was eventually admitted
to the Swiss Federal Institue of Technology in 1896. Even there he was
unhappy, finding the process of working for examinations "repellent."
For the next six years, he worked as a private tutor, eventually finding
work as the "technical expert" at the Swiss Patent Office. By
all accounts, his early life and education were totally unremarkable ó
something for all of us to think about.
His Scientific Career:
- Einstein was working on his theories while he worked at the Patent
Office. His first three papers were published in 1905; they all concerned
problems that other scientists had tried to work out, but that the others
had been unable to solve. Einstein provided theories that were well-supported
mathematically, and which accounted for many observed phenomena. The third
and fourth papers, on the now-famous "Special Theory of Relativity"
(the one containing E=mc2) were remarkable because there were no references
ó that was then, and still is, somewhat frowned upon: references are used
to show that the author has read other peoples' work on the subject, and
has used it in formulating his/her own theories. Einstein's work, in contrast,
came completely from his own mind ó no one else was working on the same
problems, at least not in a way that he could use.
- Einstein, now recognized by the scientific community, was quickly hired
by the University of Bern, where he worked on other important problems
of physics. He published his paper on "general relativity" (the
first had been for special cases only; this second would apply in any situation,
and as such was FAR more complicated!) in 1916. At the time it was said
that only three people on the whole planet truly understood the theory,
though now it is a subject which graduate students in physics study (even
though they may not comprehend it).
The Implications:
- One of the more distressing consequences of Einstein's work is that
it allowed physicists to produce the equations that led to the building
of the first atomic bombs in the 1940's. Although he first supported the
American research that led to the bomb, fearing that the Nazis would come
up with it first and use it against the Allies in World War Two, he eventually
became a great pacifist, and he went so far as to say that he would not
have published his work had he known what would come of it.
- Einstein's theories have also led to the development of entire new
fields in physics, including quantum theory, which describes interactions
of the very small (sub-atomic particles and the like). At first, Einstein
was unhappy with this turn, especially with theories which state that on
fundamental levels, there are certain things that are unknowable (known
as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), but he was eventually forced
to accept it ó the mathematics and the observations were all there. This
part of physics has helped scientists to a greater understanding of the
universe, though at the same time it poses many more questions. His theories
are also in use on the grand scale, aiding astrophysicists in their descriptions
of the early universe, and the fate that the universe will eventually face.
- Einstein as a person has done a lot for the "human relations"
side of science: he is among the most easily identified scientists, and
who hasn't heard of the famous equation? The fact that he faced so much
trouble in his early education can serve as a model for all of us when
we get frustrated by schoolwork; indeed, my husband has a poster of Einstein
in his office that says in essence, "If you think you have troubles
with mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater." Einstein
was also a great humanitarian, and spent much of his later years campaigning
for peace; he was quite concerned with the ethical dilemmas that his theories
had produced.
Galileo Galilei
15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642
His Life and Education:
- Galileo was the son of a scholar and musician; he was born in Pisa,
Italy. He entered the University of Pisa at the age of 17 to study medicine,
but failed to complete that course, instead developing a passion for mathematics.
He would become the chair of mathematics in 1589 (eight years after he
entered the University ó this is a very short time!).
His Scientific Career:
- Galileo was responsible for many discoveries and inventions. In 1586,
he invented a hydrostatic balance to determine the relative densities of
different compounds. In 1610 he designed and constructed a simple refracting
telescope, one of the first to be built and used constructively. With his
telescope, he discovered that there were thousands more stars in the sky
than previous observers had been able to see ó the telescope essentially
amplifies light, so Galileo was able to see stars that were too faint for
the unaided eye.
- In looking at the surface of the Moon, he discovered that it was not
the perfect, smooth, unchanging object of the prevailing Aristotelian theory,
but was instead covered with rocky craters. The discovery of sunspots also
belonged to him. In January of 1610, he learned from his observations that
Jupiter had satellites ó four that he could count ó and this fact also
shook up the Aristotelian theory, since it predicted that planets and other
heavenly bodies should only revolve around the Earth. This observation
earned him a well-paid research chair in Pisa.
- Galileo was also interested in problems of motion, specifically in
the way that bodies acted under the influence of gravity. Although he did
not actually perform the legendary "leaning tower of Pisa" experiment
(where two balls of differing weight but the same size were dropped from
the tower, and landed at the same time), he did show that an object's acceleration
towards the earth is independent of its mass, by rolling balls down inclined
planes.
The Implications:
- Galileo was one of the first to recognize that bodies fall with the
same acceleration, regardless of their mass. This has been very important
in the development of virtually all airborne technologies, including ballistics
(the way the weapons fly). It also helps us to understant that it is the
shape and relative surface area of an object that influences its acceleration,
not the mass itself; such that, given enough surface area, even an elephant
could glide. (Remember "Dumbo"?)
- Galileo's work had clear implications for the theories of his time:
his data was in direct opposition to Aristotelian views on the structure
of the universe. Since the Church had at that time adopted that system
as its own, any attempts to counter it ó no matter how overwhelming the
evidence ó were seen as heresy. In order to stop arguments between the
clergy and those who believed that Copernicus and Galileo were correct,
the Pope placed Copernicus' work on a heliocentric system on the Church's
index of banned books, and it was understood that any who still supported
Copernicus could face death for their heretical beliefs (indeed, a man
named Giodano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 for proclaiming his
belief in the heliocentric system).
- Because of this situation, Galileo was forced to be more cautious in
his endorsement of his modified Copernican system. He wrote a "dialogue"
in 1632 between two fictional men, an Aristotelian named Simplicius, and
a Copernican named Salviati (which can be translated as "one who knows").
This form of writing is simply a conversation between its characters; and
in the course of Galileo's dialogue, the Aristotelian is eventually proven
wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt: the heliocentric system is correct, and
the geocentric Aristotelian system is flawed. Unfortunately, the Pope was
also aware of this work, and Galileo was summoned to Rome and threatened
with torture, forced to renounce his support of the Copernican (heliocentric)
system. Given Galileo's advanced age, and the reality that the threats
would be carried out if he did not comply, Galileo did renounce the heliocentric
hypothesis, although he was placed under house arrest anyway.
Sir Charles Lyell
14 November 1797 - 22 February 1875
His Life and Education:
- Lyell was born in Kinordy, Scotland, the son of a notable botanist.
He was educated at Oxford University (among the most prestigious of England),
where he developed his interest in geology, though he chose to study law.
However, his eyesight becan to fail, and so he turned to geological investigations
instead.
- Charles spent much of his time in the field on "the continent"
(as mainland Europe is known), examining geological formations and formulating
his hypotheses on how the area had been formed through time.
His Scientific Career:
- Other scientists, such as James Hutton and John Playfair, had already
proposed that the earth was much older than the 6000 years that many assumed
it to be. They observed that weathering and mountain building, and other
geological processes, take place very slowly in the world now; and they
saw no reason to believe that these processes should be any faster in the
past. This became known as the scientific doctrine (so-called because it
is based on many observations, but was difficult at the time to prove correct)
of uniformitarianism, which states that geologic events have occured
at a relatively steady rate throughout time.
- Lyell is known principally for his work in establishing uniformitarianism
as an acceptable alternative to traditional, theological view. Catastrophism,
as that hypothesis is know, states that most formations on earth were produced
in a very short time, and that since that time, weathering and other such
processes have been taking more time to occur. This theory does demand
that the Earth had existed for far longer than previous natural historians
(as scientists were called then) could allow; it also went against established
Church views that all of what we see now was laid down in a single, catastrophic
event (such as the "great flood" described in the Judeo-Christian
bible).
The Implications:
- Because it went against traditional religious views of the formation
of the earth, Lyell's theory was (and still is, for some denominations)
quite controversial. However, the assumption that the earth is as old as
it looks, and that events have occured over large amounts of time, is vital
to the study of evolution, and indeed, of geology itself. Darwin drew quite
heavily on Lyell's observations when writing "The Origin of Species,"
and many scientists since then have benefitted from his work.
- In recent years, the doctrine of uniformitarianism has been modified
to something of a "punctuated equilibrium," similar to that supported
by modern evolutionists. This is kind of a cross between the view that
things happen gradually, and the view that catastrophies (large-scale,
single events) have shaped the planet. Geologists and other scientists
now have evidence to support the theory that the Earth's history has been
one of long periods of relative quiet (the "equilibrium" part),
punctuated by episodes of extreme activity. An example of this is the way
that earthquakes occur in California: many years can go by without a quake,
and then there may suddenly be a year where four or five occur. This still
assumes that the Earth is very old, but also takes into consideration the
complexity of geologic events and cycles.
- Lyell was also responsible for the analysis of a series of formations
that would later characterize more recent geologic periods. His work has
been fundamental to our understanding of geology.
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