Inventions and Discoveries

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev ( 8 February 1834 to 2 February 1907 O.S. 27 January 1834 - 20 January 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor.Interesting Dmitrti Mendeleev Facts:He was born near Tobolsk in SiberiaHe was thought to have been the youngest child of a large familyHis father was a teacher of fine arts but lost his job when he became blindin 1849 his mother took him to St Petersburg to his father's alma mater to continue his educationHe became a professor at the St Petersburg Technological Institute in 1864He received his Doctor of Science for his dissertation " on the Combinations of Water with Alcohol" in 1865He studied the composition of petroleum and help found the first oil refinery in Russia.In 1868 her wrote the two volume textbook Principles of Chemistry which classified the known elements according to their chemical propertiesMarch 6, 1869 Mendeleev made a formal presentation to the Russian Chemical Society entitled The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the ElementsHis understanding of the properties of elements based on their atomic weight and valence allowed him to accurately predict that new elements would be foundSome scientists dismissed this idea but Mendeleev was vindicated by the discovery of gallium in 1875 and germanium in 1875 which perfectly fit into the two missing spacesMendeleev is credited with introducing the metric system to RussiaMany things bear his name including, Mendelevium, a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Md and the atomic number 101Mendeleev is the name of a large lunar impact crater on the far side of the moon

Faraday was a British chemist and physicist who contributed significantly to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791 in south London. His family was not well off and Faraday received only a basic formal education. When he was 14, he was apprenticed to a local bookbinder and during the next seven years, educated himself by reading books on a wide range of scientific subjects. In 1812, Faraday attended four lectures given by the chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. Faraday subsequently wrote to Davy asking for a job as his assistant. Davy turned him down but in 1813 appointed him to the job of chemical assistant at the Royal Institution.

A year later, Faraday was invited to accompany Davy and his wife on an 18 month European tour, taking in France, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium and meeting many influential scientists. On their return in 1815, Faraday continued to work at the Royal Institution, helping with experiments for Davy and other scientists. In 1821 he published his work on electromagnetic rotation (the principle behind the electric motor). He was able to carry out little further research in the 1820s, busy as he was with other projects. In 1826, he founded the Royal Institution's Friday Evening Discourses and in the same year the Christmas Lectures, both of which continue to this day. He himself gave many lectures, establishing his reputation as the outstanding scientific lecturer of his time.

In 1831, Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind the electric transformer and generator. This discovery was crucial in allowing electricity to be transformed from a curiosity into a powerful new technology. During the remainder of the decade he worked on developing his ideas about electricity. He was partly responsible for coining many familiar words including 'electrode', 'cathode' and 'ion'. Faraday's scientific knowledge was harnessed for practical use through various official appointments, including scientific adviser to Trinity House (1836-1865) and Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich (1830-1851).

However, in the early 1840s, Faraday's health began to deteriorate and he did less research. He died on 25 August 1867 at Hampton Court, where he had been given official lodgings in recognition of his contribution to science. He gave his name to the 'farad', originally describing a unit of electrical charge but later a unit of electrical capacitance.

HE NEVER HAD A FORMAL SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION. ...

HE WAS A SELF-STARTER. ...

HE INVENTED A MOTOR WITH MAGNETS AND MERCURY. ...

HE ALSO CREATED THE FIRST ELECTRIC GENERATOR. ...

HE SHOWED THE PULL OF MAGNETIC FORCE. ...

YOU CAN VISIT HIS MAGNETIC LABORATORY IN LONDON. ...

HE POPULARIZED NEW SCIENTIFIC TERMINOLOGY.

Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was an astronomer. People know Copernicus for his ideas about the sun and the earth. His main idea was that our world is heliocentric (helios = sun). His theory was that the sun is in the middle of the solar system, and the planets go around it. This was published in his book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres).

Birthplace of Copernicus in Toruń (Kopernika Road #15, left). Together with the house at #17 (right), it forms the Muzeum Mikołaja Kopernika.

Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Thorn (Toruń), in Royal Prussia, a mainly German-speaking region that a few years earlier had become a part of the Kingdom of Poland. He was taught first in Cracow and then in Italy, where he graduated as a lawyer of the church. He studied also medicine to serve his fellow clerics. Copernicus spent most of his life working and researching in Frauenburg (Frombork), Warmia, where he died in 1543.

Copernicus was one of the great polymaths of his age. He was a priest, mathematician, astronomer, doctor, jurist, physician, classical scholar, governor, administrator, diplomat, economist, and soldier. During all these jobs, he treated astronomy as a hobby. However, his formula of how the sun, rather than the earth, is at the center of the solar system, is still one of the most important scientific hypotheses in history. It was the beginning of modern astronomy.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (14 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist, psychologist and physician.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for research about the digestive system. Pavlov is widely known for first describing classical conditioning.

The son of a priest, and a theology student, Pavlov turned to science after being influenced by progressive ideas. He took natural sciences at the University of St Petersburg, and got a doctorate in 1878.

His work

In the 1890s, Pavlov was investigating the gastric function of dogs by externalizing a salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze the saliva and what response it had to food under different conditions. He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was actually delivered to their mouths, and set out to investigate this "psychic secretion", as he called it. Pavlov performed and directed experiments on digestion, eventually publishing The work of the digestive glands in 1897, after 12 years of research. His experiments earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Legacy

The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the "conditioned reflex" he developed with his assistant Ivan Tolochinov in 1901.

As Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson, the idea of "conditioning" as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology called behaviourism.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was an enthusiastic advocate of the importance of Pavlov's work for philosophy of mind.

Pavlov's research on conditional reflexes greatly influenced not only science, but also popular culture. The phrase "Pavlov's dog" is often used to describe someone who merely reacts to a situation rather than using critical thinking. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World, and also to a large degree in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

It is popularly believed that Pavlov always signalled the food by ringing a bell. However, his writings also record the use of many stimuli, including whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a range of visual stimuli.

1809, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England—died April 19, 1882, Downe, Kent), English naturalist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. An affable country gentleman, Darwin at first shocked religious Victorian society by suggesting that animals and humans shared a common ancestry. However, his nonreligious biology appealed to the rising class of professional scientists, and by the time of his death evolutionary imagery had spread through all of science, literature, and politics. Darwin, himself an agnostic, was accorded the ultimate British accolade of burial in Westminster Abbey, London.

Isaac Newton, in full Sir Isaac Newton, (born December 25, 1642 [January 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England—died March 20 [March 31], 1727, London), English physicist and mathematician, who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics. In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the basic principles of modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.