Scientists who changed history

320 Pages·2019·45.324 MB·English

by  DK Publishing, Inc.,, Woodford, Chris (ed.)

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SCIENTISTS
W H O C H A N G E D H I S T O R Y
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CONTENTS
DK LONDON
SENIOR EDITORS: Victoria Heyworth-Dunne, 06 Introduction
Kathryn Hennessy
SENIOR ART EDITORS: Stephen Bere, Mark Cavanagh 1 2 3
LEAD ILLUSTRATOR: Phil Gamble
EDITORS: Rose Blackett-Ord, Kim Bryan,
Andy Szudek, Debra Wolter
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Daniel Byrne
US EDITOR: Kayla Dugger
PICTURE RESEARCH: Sumedha Chopra
THE DAWN SCIENTIFIC REASON AND
JACKET DESIGNERS: Priyanka Bansal, Surabhi
Wadhwa-Gandhi OF SCIENCE REVOLUTION ENLIGHTENMENT
JACKET EDITOR: Emma Dawson
JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: Sophia MTT
650 bce–1450 1450–1650 1650–1800
SENIOR DTP DESIGNER: Harish Aggarwal
PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION: Andy Hilliard
10 Thales 42 Leonardo da Vinci 66 Robert Boyle
PRODUCER: Rachel Ng
MANAGING EDITOR: Gareth Jones 14 Aristotle 46 Nicolaus Copernicus 70 Robert Hooke
SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR: Lee Griffiths
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR: Liz Wheeler 18 Archimedes 50 Galileo Galilei 76 Isaac Newton
ART DIRECTOR: Karen Self
56 Johannes Kepler 82 Benjamin Franklin
DESIGN DIRECTOR: Philip Ormerod 22 Zhang Heng
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR: Jonathan Metcalf 60 William Harvey 86 Carl Linnaeus
24 Galen
CONSULTANT: Chris Woodford 62 Directory 92 James Hutton
CONTRIBUTORS: Alexandra Black, Alethea Doran, 30 Hypatia
Joanna Edwards, Richard Gilbert, Janet Mohun, 94 Henry Cavendish
Victoria Pyke, Penny Warren 34 Al-Khwarizmi
98 William Herschel
First American Edition, 2019 36 Alhazen
Published in the United States by DK Publishing 100 Antoine-Laurent
1450 Broadway, Suite 801, New York, NY 10018 37 Hildegard of Bingen de Lavoisier
Copyright © 2019 Dorling Kindersley Limited 38 Directory 104 Alessandro Volta
DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC
19 20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 106 Edward Jenner
001–312740–Sept/2019
110 John Dalton
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under the 114 Georges Cuvier
copyright reserved above, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in or 118 Directory
introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of the copyright owner.
Published in Great Britain by Dorling
Kindersley Limited
A catalog record for this book
is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4654-8248-8
CONSULTANT: Chris Woodford
Printed and bound in China
Chris Woodford graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Natural
A WORLD OF IDEAS: Sciences and has written and edited many books with Dorling Kindersley,
SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW including the best-selling Cool Stuff series. His most recent book, Atoms Under the
Floorboards, won the 2016 American Institute of Physics Science Writing award.
www.dk.com
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4 5 6 7
SCIENCE AND PARADIGM WAR AND THEORIES OF
INDUSTRY SHIFTS MODERNITY EVERYTHING
1800–1895 1895–1925 1925–1950 1950–present
122 Michael Faraday 164 Santiago Ramón 212 Alexander Fleming 264 Francis Crick and
y Cajal James Watson
126 Charles Babbage 216 Emmy Noether
168 Max Planck 270 Rosalind Franklin
131 Ada Lovelace 217 Inge Lehmann
174 Nettie Stevens 274 Frederick Sanger
132 Charles Darwin
218 C. V. Raman
176 George Washington 278 Richard Feynman
138 James Prescott
220 Edwin Hubble
Carver
Joule 282 Henry Stommel
178 Thomas Hunt 224 Frederick Banting
140 Gregor Mendel 284 Yang Chen-Ning
Morgan 225 Alice Ball
144 Louis Pasteur 285 BenoÎt Mandelbrot
182 Marie Curie 226 Wallace Carothers
148 James Clerk 286 Ernest McCulloch
186 Ernest Rutherford 228 Percy Julian
Maxwell and James Till
152 Dmitri Mendeleev 192 António Egas Moniz 229 Barbara McClintock 290 Tu Youyou
158 Alexander Graham 194 Lise Meitner 230 Konrad Lorenz 294 Jane Goodall
Bell 198 Albert Einstein 232 J. Robert 296 Valentina Tereshkova
160 Directory 204 Alfred Wegener Oppenheimer
297 Patricia Bath
208 Directory 236 Severo Ochoa
298 Stephen Hawking
238 Maria Goeppert
302 Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Mayer
303 Tak Wah Mak
242 Grace Hopper
304 Tim Berners-Lee
244 Hideki Yukawa
310 Directory
246 John Bardeen
250 Dorothy Hodgkin
312 Index and
251 Subrahmanyan
acknowledgments
Chandrasekhar
252 Luis Alvarez
253 Chien-Shiung Wu
254 Alan Turing
260 Directory
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I
Science is humanity’s ongoing attempt to understand
N how the Universe works. Whether in the form of
meticulous research, ingenious insight, or unexpected
T discoveries, the search for truth continues to challenge,
often leading to more questions than answers.
R
Throughout history, humans have the results—the early thinkers made
always been driven to understand vital findings. Halley’s comet was
O the workings of the world. In their observed in China in 240 bce, and some
quest for knowledge, philosophers in 300 years later, Zhang Heng explained
ancient Greece were the first to try to eclipses and drew up an extensive
explain what they observed. However, catalog of stars.
D
many of their ideas were inaccurate, as
their philosophical method lacked any Scientific dawn
experimental evidence. Thales of Miletus While European progress in science
U in the 6th century bce, for example, stalled during the Middle Ages, the shift
proposed that water is the primary of knowledge to the Islamic world
substance of the cosmos, as he had inspired rapid advances in scientific
realized that water is essential for life thinking. The move of most of the
C
and that it exists on land, sea, and in important writings from Greece and India
the air. Two centuries later, Aristotle to The House of Wisdom—the library of
wrote widely on scientific subjects, the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad—in
T from physics and biology to astronomy, the 8th century ce nurtured scholars. The
laying the foundations for much of the scholars included the mathematician
work that has followed. However, he al-Khwarizmi, whose works included
I also made fundamental errors, such as trigonometry, algebra, and astronomy,
arguing that heavier objects fall faster and Alhazen, an innovator in the field of
O than lighter ones, because he relied optics, whose studies of dissected bulls’
on thought and argument rather than eyes were the first scientific experiments.
empirical proof.
N Despite being some distance from a Progression of ideas
reliable scientific method—in which A mark of a true scientist is the ability
a hypothesis is proposed, systematically to evaluate and revise previously held
tested, and evaluated on the strength of truths. Today, scientists understand that
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science is never finished and that their “The important
work might be superseded. In 1590, a
major revision occurred when Galileo
thing is not to
Galilei disproved Aristotle’s theory of
falling bodies, instead asserting that
objects fall at the same finite speed stop questioning.”
regardless of mass. Galileo’s support for
Copernicus’s radical idea of a heliocentric
universe, where the Earth rotates around
the Sun, led to Galileo being declared a
Albert Einstein, 1955
heretic, but it also paved the way for the
modern understanding of the Universe.
during World War II, while Marie Curie’s
Science comes of age work in the field of radioactivity has had
During the 17th century, Isaac Newton a lasting impact on medical and scientific
precipitated the scientific revolution of research. Meanwhile, Albert Einstein’s
the early modern period with his laws theories of relativity rewrote the rules of
of motion and law of universal gravitation, classical physics and introduced entirely
which fundamentally changed the way new concepts to the study of the nature
that humans understood the world. and origins of the Universe.
Progress gathered pace during the 18th Advances, such as even more powerful
century in diverse fields, such as geology, computers, as conceived by Alan Turing,
with James Hutton’s theory of the ancient and better connected ones, realized by
age of the Earth, and chemistry, with John Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, have
Dalton’s discovery of the nature of atoms. enabled scientists to move faster and
Alessandro Volta’s electric battery further in the pursuit of knowledge.
immediately benefited society and Frederick Sanger unraveled the chemical
provided a new tool for scientists. Michael sequence of DNA, while Stephen Hawking
Faraday’s study of electromagnetism led used relativity and quantum theory to
to the invention of the electric motor, predict the physics of black holes.
a utilitarian and epoch-making device. From the makeup of our chromosomes
to the deepest reaches of space-time,
In search of truth scientists will always strive for truth.
Science increasingly changed the course Building on previous work and theories,
of everyday life through the 20th century. they will continue to shape history and
Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin seek to answer the most essential
in 1928 saved at least 200 million lives questions about the Universe.
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1
T H E D A W N
O F S C I E N C E
6 5 0 B C E –14 5 0
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THALES
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