Famous Scientists & Engineers Topics
- Abbe Ernst
- German mathematician, physicist and inventor of much optical apparatus at the Zeiss works.
- Alfven, Hannes
- Swedish plasma physicist who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work developing the theory of magnetohydrodynamics.
- Alfven, Hannes Olof Gosta
- Won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with applications in different parts of plasma physics.
- Alvarez, Luis Walter
- American physicist who produced free protons with a particle accelerator.
- Ammann, Othmar Herrmann
- Engineer and designer of numerous long suspension bridges, including the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge over New York harbour.
- Ampere Andre Marie
- Permanent place in the history of science because it was his name that was given to the unit by which we measure electrical current.
- Apgar, Virginia
- Professor of anesthesiology at the New York Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, devised the Apgar Scale in 1953.
- Archimedes
- Forever to be known for the Archimedean principle: "a body plunged in a fluid loses as much weight as... "
- Aristotle
- A Greek philosopher who stressed the importance of direct observations in securing facts and data.
- Armstrong, Edwin Howard
- American electrical engineer and inventor of the modern frequency modulation radio.
- Arrhenius, Svante August
- Swedish physicist and chemist who originated the modern theory of ionization of electrolytes. Received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1903.
- Arrol, Sir William
- Scottish engineer who most notably built the Tay Rail Bridge in 1887, Forth Rail Bridge in 1890 and Tower Bridge in 1894.
- Averroes, Ibn Roshd
- Arabian philosopher and physician who helped to advance the science of his time.
- Avogadro, Armedeo
- His work provided a simple way to determine atomic weights and molecular weights of gases.
- Babbage, Charles
- The British inventor known to some as the Father of Computing.
- Bacon, Francis
- English natural philosopher.
- Bacon, Francis Thomas
- English engineer who developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell.
- Baekeland, Leo Hendrik
- Belgian-born American chemist who invented Velox photographic paper and Bakelite.
- Baer, Karl Ernst von
- German embryologist who developed the science of comparative embryology.
- Baird, John Logie
- Scottish engineer most notable for his invention of the television.
- Baker, Sir Benjamin
- The chief designer of the railway bridge over the Firth of Forth.
- Balfour, Francis M
- An English embryologist who wrote a comprehensive book. Comparative Embryology, thus ushering in this phase of the science.
- Barnard, Christiaan Neethling
- South African heart surgeon who developed surgical procedures for organ transplants, invented new heart valves, and performed the first human heart transplant.
- Becquerel, Antoine-Henri
- Discovered natural radioactivity and shared the Nobel Prize for physics for this discovery.
- Behaim, Martin
- Mapmaker, navigator, and merchant who made the earliest globe, called the "Nürnberg Terrestrial Globe".
- Bell, Alexander Graham
- Invented the telephone with Thomas Watson in 1876. Bell also improved Thomas Edison′s phonograph.
- Bell, Henry
- Scottish engineer and inventor who built a steam-powered boat.
- Beneden, Eduard van
- Cytologist who demonstrated the constance of chromosome numbers for the species, the reduction of their number during maturation of germ cells, and the restoration of the double number at fertilization.
- Bernoulli, Daniel
- Showed that the total energy in a steadily flowing fluid system is a constant along the flow path.
- Berzelius, Jons Jakobs
- Swedish physician and chemist. Discovered cerium, selenium, lithium, silicon, titanium and thorium; coined the terms "isomer" and "isomerism".
- Bessemer, Henry
- English engineer and inventor who developed an inexpensive steel-making process.
- Bichat, Marie
- French surgeon and anatomist who recognized that the organs of animals were composed of masses of substance to which the term tissue was applied.
- Black, Joseph
- Scottish chemist who laid the foundations for thermodynamics.
- Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart
- English chemist who developed the cloud chamber.
- Blakeslee, Albert F
- American botanist who applied the drug colchicine to dividing cells of plants, causing a doubling of the number of chromosomes with altered traits in the treated organisms.
- Bloch, Felix
- Won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics with Edward Mills Purcell for their "development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements."
- Blume, John A
- The father of earthquake engineering.
- Blumlein, Alan Dower
- Most famously responsible for inventing and patenting a stereo recording system.
- Bohr, Niels
- While at Copenhagen University, Bohr, in 1922, won the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."
- Bollman, Wendel
- Bridge Design Engineer who patented his unique suspension truss form and became the pioneer builder of iron railroad bridges in America.
- Boltzmann, Ludwig Eduard
- Austrian physicist famous for his contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics.
- Bondi, Sir Hermann
- Astrophysicist who helped formulate the steady-state theory of the universe - which said it has always existed.
- Boole, George
- British mathematician who devised a new form of algebra that represented logical expressions in a mathematical form now known as Boolean Algebra.
- Borelli, Giovanni
- Italian physiologist, philosopher, mathematician, and disciple of Galileo who applied the latter’s principles of physics to biology, thus suggesting an experimental approach to the science.
- Born, Max
- Won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics.
- Bouch, Sir Thomas
- Railway Engineer who invented caissons and train ferries.
- Boyle, Robert
- Known for that scientific law named after him.
- Bragg, Sir William Henry
- British physicist, chemist, mathematician and active sporstman who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son.
- Bragg, Sir William Lawrence
- English physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 with his father Sir William Henry Bragg.
- Brahe, Tycho
- Danish astronomer who made precise observations of the sky.
- Brassey, Thomas
- One of the most important civil engineering contractors in the world in the nineteenth century, building railways in Britain, Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America.
- Braun, Werner von
- German rocket engineer.
- Brindley, James
- Leading canal builder in the UK.
- Broglie, Louis-Victor de
- He demonstrated mathematically that electrons and other subatomic particles exhibit wavelike properties.
- Brown, Robert
- Discovered the brownian movement of minute particles.
- Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
- Creator of the Great Western Railway, bridge builder and revolutionary naval architect.
- Bruno, Giordano
- Scientist, which, for his beliefs, the church burnt at the stake.
- Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm
- Introduced the bunsen burner.
- Cardoso, Edgar
- Bridge engineer.
- Carothers, Wallace Hume
- Carried out the key early experiments that led to commercial polyesters, nylons, and neoprene while working for the DuPont corporation.
- Carrier, Willis
- American engineer and inventor, and is known as the man who invented modern air conditioning.
- Casagrande, Arthur
- Geotechnical Engineer, major contributor of the developments of Soil Mechanics.
- Cavendish, Henry
- English physicist and chemist, discovered hydrogen.
- Caxton, William
- First English printer. Produced nearly 100 publications, including The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde by the English poet Goeffrey Chaucer and Confessio Amantis by the English poet John Gower.
- Celsius, Anders
- Swedish professor of astronomy who devised the Celsius thermometer.
- Chadwick, James
- English physicist who discovered the neutron.
- Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan
- Indian astrophysicist reknowned for creating theoretical models of white dwarf stars, among other achievements.
- Charles, Jacques Alexander César
- The French scientist after which is named the Charles′s Law which made the connection that a rise in temperature expanded the volume of gas.
- Child, Charles
- American biologist who proposed the axial gradient theory to explain the differences in rates of metabolism along the axes of living organisms.
- Church, Alonzo
- Mathematician and logician, and one of the founders of computer science.
- Clausius, Rudolph Julius Emmanuel
- German mathematical physicist; restated the second law of thermodynamics; coined the term "entropy".
- Clerk-Maxwell, James
- Clerk-Maxwell′s greatest work was his initial contribution to electromagnetic radiation.
- Coolidge, William D
- American physicist, who made major contributions to X-ray machines.
- Copernicus, Nicolaus
- Polish astronomer who advanced the theory that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun.
- Coulomb, Charles Augustin de
- Physicist, best known for the formulation of Coulomb′s law.
- Cousteau, Jacques
- French marine biologist, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, photographer and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.
- Cray, Seymour
- American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research which would build many of these machines.
- Crick, Francis
- Noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953.
- Crookes, William
- English chemist and physicist who discovered thallium.
- Curie, Pierre & Marie
- French physicists, researched radioactivity.
- Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mande
- French artist and inventor; developed the daguerreotype photochemical process.
- Dalton, John
- He developed atomic theory that accounts for the law of conservation of mass, law of definite proportions and law of multiple proportions.
- Darcy, Henry
- Hydraulic Engineer, best known for Darcy′s law.
- Darwin, Charles
- Darwin struck upon the theory of evolution.
- Davenport, Thomas
- Blacksmith and inventor who established the first commercially successful electric streetcar.
- Davy, Sir Humphry
- English scientist who invented the first electric light in 1800.
- Debye, Peter
- Dutch physicist and physical chemist famous for his research on polar molecules. Nobel laureate in Chemistry.
- Descartes, Rene
- Considered the father of analytic geometry, he formulated the Cartesian system of coordinates.
- Diesel, Rudolf
- Inventor of the diesel engine.
- Dirac, Paul
- English physicist; published Principles of Quantum Mechanics in 1930.
- Dolby, Ray
- Audio system innovator and founder of Dolby Laboratories.
- Drew, Charles Richard
- American medical doctor and surgeon who started the idea of a blood bank and a system for the long-term preservation of blood plasma.
- Duckworth, Keith
- English mechanical engineer most famous for designing the Cosworth DFV engine that revolutionised the sport of Formula One.
- Edison, Thomas
- American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
- Ehrlich, Paul
- German chemist and bacteriologist; proposed a chemical explanation of immunity.
- Eiffel, Gustave
- Structural Engineer and designer of the Eiffel Tower.
- Einstein, Albert
- We may of heard of his Theory of Relativity and his Electromagnetic Theory of Light; but few of us will ever understand them.
- Eratosthenes
- Around 230BC developed a method for finding all prime numbers.
- Euclid
- Greek mathematician.
- Fahrenheit Gabriel Daniel
- German-born physicist who invented the mercury thermometer and devised the Fahrenheit temperature scale.
- Famous Scientists & Engineers Books
- Lists all Famous Scientists & Engineers Books in the Encyclopaedia
- Famous Scientists & Engineers Weblinks
- Lists all Famous Scientists & Engineers Weblinks in the Encyclopaedia
- Faraday, Michael
- English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
- Ferranti, Sebastian de
- High voltage ac generation and transmission.
- Fibonacci
- His book "Liber Abaci" he introduced Arabic notation for numerals and their algorithms for arithmetic.
- Fischer, Emil Hermann
- Organic chemist who analyzed structures of carbohydrates, proteins, enzymes and amino acids.
- Fleming, Alexander
- Bacteriologist who isolated lysozyme from tears and observed a mould that he named penicillin.
- Fleming, Sir John Ambrose
- British electrical engineer and inventor known for his work on electric lighting, wireless telegraphy, and the telephone.
- Fleming, Sir Sandford
- Scottish-born Canadian engineer and inventor, known for proposing worldwide standard time zones, Canada′s postage stamp, a huge body of surveying and map making, engineering much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway.
- Forbes, Prof George
- Invented carbon brush used in electric motors and designed the electrification system for London Underground.
- Forrester, Jay W
- Pioneer in early digital computer development and invented random-access, coincident-current magnetic storage, which became the standard memory device for digital computers.
- Fourier, Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph
- French mathematician and physicist who formulated a method for analyzing periodic functions and studied the conduction of heat.
- Frisch, Otto
- Advanced the theory that uranium, when bombarded by neutrons, breaks into smaller atoms.
- Fung Yuan-Cheng
- Widely recognized as the father of biomechanics, having established the fundamentals of biomechanical properties in many of the human body′s organs and tissues.
- Galileo Galilei
- Astronomer, mathematician and physicist he dwelt, not on the useless question, why do things happen? but, how do things happen?
- Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis
- Developed the law of volumes concerning the combination of gases and discovered boron.
- Geiger, Johannes
- Helped to develop first successful counter of alpha particles.
- Goddard, Robert Hutchings
- Pioneered modern rocketry and space flight and founded a whole field of science and engineering.
- Gresley, Sir Nigel
- One of Britain′s most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway - LNER.
- Halley, Edmund
- Mathematician and astronomer.
- Hann Otto
- Discovered protactinium with Lise Meitner, first to recognize nuclear fission and shared Nobel Prize for chemistry with Fritz Strassmann for this development.
- Havilland, Sir Geoffrey de
- One of the most successful of all British aviation pioneers.
- Hawking, Stephen
- Known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes.
- Hertz Heinrich
- A German physics professor who did the first experiments with generating and receiving electromagnetic waves, in particular radio waves.
- Hopper, Grace Murray
- Developed the first computer compiler in 1952 and the computer program language COBOL. Upon discovering that a moth had jammed the works of an early computer, Hopper popularized the term "bug."
- Hubble, Edwin
- American astronomer who profoundly changed understanding of the universe by confirming the existence of galaxies other than our own, the Milky Way.
- Jenner, Edward
- Credited as the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, and is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Immunology"; his works have been said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other man".
- Joule, James Prescott
- English physicist; determined the mechanical equivalent of heat; proposed Joule′s Law which describes the rate at which heat is produced by an electric current.
- Kelvin, William Thomson
- British physicist known for his pioneering work in thermodynamics and electricity.
- Kepler, Johannes
- German astronomer and mathematics teacher who formulated laws that formed the groundwork of Newton′s discoveries, and are the starting point of modern astronomy.
- Khan, Fazlur
- Bangladeshi American architect and structural engineer who was a central figure behind the "Second Chicago School" of architecture and is regarded as the Father of tubular design for high-rises.
- Kirchoff, Gustav
- German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.
- Laplace Marquis Pierre Simon de
- French mathematician and astronomer who formulated the theory of probability.
- Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent
- Often referred to as the father of modern chemistry he was the first to grasp the true explanation of combustion. He contended that fire was the result of rapid union of the burned material with oxygen.
- Leeuwenhoek, Antonie van
- Commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist.
- Leonardo of Pisa
- Fibonacci was also known as Leonardo of Pisa.
- Lickey, Sir Robert
- Scottish engineer who designed the WW2 fighter Hawker Hurricane and the first Harrier vertical take-off jet.
- Lovelace, Ada
- The daughter of Lord Byron, who became the world′s first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s.
- Malpighi, Marcello
- An Italian scientist and physician who studied tissues and organs microscopically and is considered the founder of microanatomy.
- Marconi, Guglielmo
- Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radiotransmission and for his development of Marconi′s law and a radio telegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide.
- Markov, Andrei
- Russian mathematician, after who Markov chains were named.
- Maudslay, Henry
- Perhaps the greatest machine tool engineer of the early nineteenth century.
- Maudslay, Joseph
- Son of the famous inventor and engineer Henry Maudslay. Joseph worked in the family firm, Maudslay, Sons & Field and specialised in marine engineering, patenting the Oscillating engine.
- Maxwell, James Clerk
- Physicist who developed the field theory of electricity and magnetism, developed electromagnetic wave theory of light and a theory on viscosity of gases based on the statistical behaviour of gas molecules.
- Mayer, Julius Robert von
- German physician and physicist. He and James Joule shared the credit for the discovery of the universal law of conservation of energy, or the first law of thermodynamics.
- Meitner, Lise
- Physicist who collaborated with Otto Hahn to discover protactinium and with Hahn and Fritz Strassmann to accomplish the fission of uranium.
- Mendel, Gregor Johann
- An Austrian scientist and monk who described the inheritance of garden peas in a paper entitled Experiments in plant hybridization.
- Mendeleev, Dmitri Ivanovich
- Russian chemist; developed the periodic table by placing the elements in order of increasing atomic weight.
- Messier, Charles
- 18th century French astronomer who compiled a list of approximately 100 fuzzy, diffuse looking objects which appeared at fixed positions in the sky.
- Mestral, George de
- Swiss engineer who invented Velcro.
- Michelson, Albert Abraham
- Invented the interferometer and was the first American to win a Nobel Prize.
- Mill, John Stuart
- An English philosopher who elaborated on the philosophy of induction, propounding as its basis the law of the uniformity of nature.
- Mitchell, Reginald Joseph
- Chief designer at the aircraft company Supermarine and famous for designing the Spitfire.
- Mohl, Hugo von
- Botanist who found that plant cells were composed of a living substance and used the term protoplasm much as we do today.
- Montgolfier, Jacques Etienne
- Jacques and brother Joseph made the first successful hot-air balloon flight in 1782.
- Montgolfier, Joseph
- Joseph and brother Jacques made the first successful hot-air balloon flight in 1782.
- Morgan, Thomas Hunt
- Biologist and Nobel Prize winner who contributed to the knowledge of the mechanism of heredity.
- Moseley, Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys
- English physicist who demonstrated that the number of electrons in an element is the same as the atomic number, establishing the significance of the atomic number.
- Murdock, William
- Built first steam powered lorry in 1784 and invented gas lighting.
- Newcomen, Thomas
- Created the first practical steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen steam engine.
- Newton, Isaac
- Newton was a mathematician and natural philosopher (physicist).
- Ohm, Georg Simon
- German physicist noted for his contributions to mathematics, acoustics, and the measurement of electrical resistance.
- Parsons, Charles Algernon
- English engineer, best known for his invention of the steam turbine.
- Pascal, Blaise
- French philosopher and mathematician whose many achievements include the invention of an adding machine and the development of the modern theory of probability.
- Pasteur, Louis
- Remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax.
- Pauling, Linus
- American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author and educator. Among the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology.
- Pitot, Henri
- French astronomer, engineer and mathematician who invented the Pitot Tube in 1732.
- Planck, Max
- German physicist who is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
- Ptolemy
- He believed that Earth was the centre of the universe and that everything orbited it.
- Pythagoras
- Greek philosopher and mathematician; held that numbers were basic to matter.
- Ramsay, William
- Discovered Argon, Krypton and Xenon and independently discovered Helium on earth.
- Rutan, Burt
- American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft.
- Rutherford, Ernest
- The pioneers of subatomic physics.
- Sabine, Wallace Clement
- The Harvard professor honoured as the father of architectural acoustics for his investigations into concert hall sound at the turn of the century.
- Salk, Jonas
- American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine.
- Savery, Thomas
- English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine, based on Denis Papin′s Digester or pressure cooker of 1679.
- Seaborg, Glenn
- American nuclear chemist.
- Shannon, Claude
- American mathematician and physicist who is credited as the father of information theory.
- Stephenson, George
- The Father of Railways, an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives.
- Stephenson, Robert
- English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.
- Telford, Thomas
- Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder.
- Thomson, Sir Joseph John
- British physicist and Nobel laureate, credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer.
- Trevithick, Richard
- British inventor and mining engineer. His most significant success was the high pressure steam engine and he was also the builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive.
- Turing, Alan
- A British mathematician, inventor of the Turing Machine and proposed the Turing test, whose work was fundamental in the theoretical foundations of computer science.
- Volta, Alessandro, Count (1745-1827)
- He invented the first practical battery using cells made from two kinds of metals; this verified his theory of differing electrical potentials for unlike metals.
- Wallis, Barnes
- British engineer and inventor famous for the R100, Wellington bomber and the bouncing bombs.
- Wankel, Felix Heinrich
- Inventor and developer of the wankel engine, a rotary engine.
- Warburg, Otto H
- German biochemist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1931 for his contributions to cellular metabolism.
- Watt, James
- He made fundamental improvements in the steam engine, resulting in the modern, high-pressure steam engine, patented in 1769.
- Whittle, Frank
- Inventor of the turbojet and turbofans.
- Whitworth, Joseph Sir
- 19th century engineer with a world-wide reputation of producing machines of unrivaled quality and precision.
- Wollaston, William Hyde
- English physician and chemist who discovered palladium and rhodium through his work with platinum metals.
- Yalow, Rosalyn
- Co-inventer of radioimmunoassay for which she won the 1977 Nobel Proze in Medicine.
- Young, James
- Pioneered process of refining oil into Paraffin.
- Yukawa, Hideki
- Received the 1949 Nobel proze in physics for his work in postulating the existence of Mesons.
- Zeppelin, Ferdinand von
- German general and later airship manufacturer. Most famously the founder of the Zeppelin Airship company.
- Ziegler Karl
- Nobel prize winning chemist who did a vast quantity of work on the catalysts for producing high density polyethene and polypropene.
- Zworykin, Vladimir Kosma
- Played a role in the practical development of television from the early thirties, including charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope.
Subjects: Chemistry Mathematics Mechanical Engineering Physics
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