Inspirational Quotes From Famous Scientists

"God is Man's greatest invention." ? Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

[1] Sir Isaac Newton

Birth: Dec. 25, 1642 [Jan. 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England

Death: March 20 [March 31], 1727, London

Known for: the Newtonian Revolution

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion."

― Isaac Newton

[2] Albert Einstein

Birth: March 14, 1879, Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany

Death: April 18, 1955, Princeton, N.J., U.S.

Known for: Twentieth-Century Science

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

― Albert Einstein

[3] Niels Bohr

Birth: Oct. 7, 1885, Copenhagen, Denmark

Death: Nov. 18, 1962, Copenhagen

Known for: the Atom

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

― Niels Bohr

[4] Charles Darwin

Birth: Feb. 12, 1809, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England

Death: April 19, 1882, Downe, Kent

Known for: Evolution

"If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week."

― Charles Darwin

[5] Louis Pasteur

Birth: Dec. 27, 1822, Dole, France

Sept. 28, 1895, Saint-Cloud, near Paris

Known for: the Germ Theory of Disease

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world."

― Louis Pasteur

[6] Sigmund Freud

Birth: May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now P?ibor, Czech Republic]

Death: Sept. 23, 1939, London, England

Known for: Psychology of the Unconscious

"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."

― Sigmund Freud

[7] Galileo Galilei

Birth: Feb. 15, 1564, Pisa [Italy]

Death: Jan. 8, 1642, Arcetri, near Florence

Known for: the New Science

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

― Galileo Galilei

[8] Antoine-Lau rent Lavoisier

Birth: Aug. 26, 1743, Paris, France

Death: May 8, 1794, Paris

Known for: the Revolution in Chemistry

"In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes."

― Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

[9] Johannes Kepler

Birth: Dec. 27, 1571, Weil der Stadt, Wurttemberg [Germany]

Death: Nov. 15, 1630, Regensburg

Known for: Motion of the Planets

"Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel."

― Johannes Kepler

[10] Nicolaus Copernicus

Birth: Feb. 19, 1473, Toruń, Poland

Death: May 24, 1543, Frauenburg, East Prussia [now Frombork, Poland]

Known for: the Heliocentric Universe

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

― Nicolaus Copernicus

[11] Michael Faraday

Birth: Sept. 22, 1791, Newington, Surrey, England

Death: Aug. 25, 1867, Hampton Court

Known for: the Classical Field Theory

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature."

― Michael Faraday

[12] James Clerk Maxwell

Birth: June 13, 1831, Edinburgh, Scotland

Death: Nov. 5, 1879, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

Known for: the Electromagnetic Field

"Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science."

― James Clerk Maxwell

[13] Claude Bernard

Birth: July 12, 1813, Saint-Julien

Death: February. 10, 1878, Paris

Known for: the Founding of Modern Physiology

"Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown."

― Claude Bernard

[14] Franz Boas

Birth: July 9, 1858, Minden, Westphalia, Germany

Death: December 21, 1942, New York, U.S

Known for: Modern Anthropology

"The passion for seeking the truth for truth's sake...can be kept alive only if we continue to seek the truth for truth's sake."

― Franz Boas

[15] Werner Heisenberg

Birth: December, 1901, Würzburg, Bavaria, German Empire

Death: 1 February 1976, Munich, Bavaria, West Germany

Known for: Quantum Theory

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

― Werner Heisenberg

[16] Linus Pauling

Birth: Feb. 28, 1901, Portland, Ore., U.S.

Death: Aug. 19, 1994, Big Sur, California

Known for: Twentieth-Century Chemistry

"The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."

― Linus Pauling

[17] Erwin Schrodinger

Birth: Aug. 12, 1887, Vienna, Austria

Death: Jan. 4, 1961, Vienna

Known for: Wave Mechanics

"The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists."

― Erwin Schr?dinger

[18] John James Audubon

Birth: April 26, 1785, Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue, West Indies [now in Haiti]

Death: Jan. 27, 1851, New York, N.Y., U.S.

Known for: drawings and paintings of North American birds

"The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang the best."

― John James Audubon

[19] Ernest Rutherford

Birth: Aug. 30, 1871, Spring Grove, N.Z.

Death: Oct. 19, 1937, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

Known for: the Structure of the Atom

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

― Ernest Rutherford

[20] Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

Birth: Aug. 8, 1902, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England

Death: Oct. 20, 1984, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Known for: Quantum Electrodynamics

"A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data. God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe."

— Paul A. M. Dirac

[21] Andreas Vesalius

Birth: Dec. 1514, Brussels [now in Belgium]

Death: June 1564, island of Zacynthus, Republic of Venice [now in Greece]

Known for: the New Anatomy

"I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations."

― Andreas Vesalius

[22] Tycho Brahe

Birth: Dec. 14, 1546, Knudstrup, Scania, Denmark

Death: Oct. 24, 1601, Prague

Known for: the New Astronomy

"Let me not seem to have lived in vain."

― Tycho Brahe

[23] Comte de Buffon

Birth: September 07, 1707, Montbard, Burgundy, France

Death: April 16, 1788, Paris, France

Known for: l'Histoire Naturelle

"Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience."

— Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

[24] Ludwig Boltzmann

Birth: February 20, 1844, Vienna, Austrian Empire (present-day Austria)

Death: September 5, 1906, Tybein near Trieste, Austria-Hungary [present-day Duino, Italy]

Known for: Thermodynamics

"Available energy is the main object at stake in the struggle for existence and the evolution of the world."

― Ludwig Boltzmann

• Tragic deaths in science: Ludwig Boltzmann — a mind in disorder. Can a life be summed up by ??=???log??? The equation is the slightly geeky inscription on the tombstone of Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist and pioneer of statistical mechanics.

[25] Max Planck

Birth: April 23, 1858, Kiel, Schleswig [Germany]

Death: Oct. 4, 1947, G?ttingen, West Germany

Known for: the Quanta

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

― Max Planck

• Sadly Planck life was filled with tragedy in the years following his remarkable initiation of the study of quantum mechanics.

[26] Marie Curie

Birth: Nov. 7, 1867, Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire

Death: July 4, 1934, near Sallanches, France

Known for: Radioactivity

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas."

― Marie Curie

• Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in Physics, and with her later win, in Chemistry, she became the first person to claim Nobel honors twice.

[27] Sir William Herschel

Birth: Nov. 15, 1738, Hanover, Germany

Death: Aug. 25, 1822, Slough, Buckinghamshire, England

Known for: Sidereal astronomy

"An object is frequently not seen from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any deficit in the organ of vision. I will instruct you how to see them..."

― William Herschel

[28] Charles Lyell

Birth: Nov. 14, 1797, Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland

Death: Feb. 22, 1875, London, England

Known for: Modern Geology

"Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An"

― Charles Lyell

[29] Pierre Simon de Laplace

Birth: March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, Normandy, France

Death: March 5, 1827, Paris

Known for: Black hole, nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system

"Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis."

― Pierre Laplace

[30] Edwin Powell Hubble

Birth: Nov. 20, 1889, Marshfield, Mo., U.S.

Death: Sept. 28, 1953, San Marino, California

Known for: Extragalactic astronomy

"Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation."

― Edwin Powell Hubble

[31] Joseph J. Thomson

Birth: December 18, 1856, Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

Death: August 30, 1940, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Known for: the Discovery of the Electron

"His work was so great that it cannot be compassed in a few words. His death is one of the greatest losses ever to occur to British science.

{Describing Ernest Rutherford upon his death at age 66. Thomson, then 80 years old, was once his teacher.}"

― Joseph John Thomson

[32] Max Born

Birth: December 11, 1882, Breslau, German Empire

Death: January 5, 1970, G?ttingen, West Germany

Known for: Quantum Mechanics

"The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the root of all the evil that is in the world"

― Max Born

[33] Francis Harry Compton Crick

Birth: June 8, 1916, Northampton, Northamptonshire, England

Death: July 28, 2004, San Diego, Calif., U.S.

Known for: Molecular Biology

"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."

— Francis Crick

[34] Enrico Fermi

Birth: Sept. 29, 1901, Rome, Italy

Death: Nov. 28, 1954, Chicago, Ill., U.S.

Known for: Statistical mechanics

"Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge."

― Enrico Fermi

[35] Leonard Euler

Birth: April 15, 1707, Basel, Switzerland

Death: September 18, 1783, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire

Known for: Eighteenth-Century Mathematics

"Logic is the foundation of the certainty of all the knowledge we acquire."

― Leonhard Euler

[36] Justus Liebig

Birth: May 12, 1803, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse

Death: April 18, 1873, Munich, German Empire

Known for: Nineteenth-Century Chemistry

"From one sublime genius—NEWTON—more light has proceeded than the labour of a thousand years preceding had been able to produce."

― Justus Liebig

[37] Arthur Stanley Eddington

Birth: December 28, 1882, Kendal, Westmorland, England

Death: November 22, 1944, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

Known for: Modern astronomy

"An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water."

― Arthur S. Eddington

[38] William Harvey

Birth: April 1, 1578, Folkestone, Kent, England

Death: June 3, 1657, London

Known for: Circulation of the Blood

"Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men."

― William Harvey

[39] Marcello Malpighi

Birth: 1628

Death: 1694

Known for: Microscopic Anatomy

"For Nature is accustomed to rehearse with certain large, perhaps baser, and all classes of wild (animals), and to place in the imperfect the rudiments of the perfect animals."

― Marcello Malpighi

[40] Christiaan Huygens

Birth: 1629

Death: 1695

Known for: the Wave Theory of Light

"The world is my country, science is my religion."

― Christiaan Huygens

[41] Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Birth: April 30, 1777, Brunswick, Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Holy Roman Empire

Death: February 23, 1855, G?ttingen, Kingdom of Hanover

Known for: Number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, mechanics, electrostatics, astronomy, matrix theory and optics

"Astronomy and Pure Mathematics are the magnetic poles toward which the compass of my mind ever turns."

— Carl Friedrich Gauss

[42] Albrecht von Haller

Birth: October 16, 1708, Bern, Swiss Confederacy

Death: December 12, 1777, Bern, Swiss Confederacy

Known for: Eighteenth-Century Medicine

"Nature never jests."

― Albrecht von Haller

[43] Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz

Birth: September 7, 1829, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse

Death: July 13, 1896, Bonn, German Empire

Known for: Theory of chemical structure, tetravalence of carbon, structure of benzene

"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the truth."

― August Kekule

[44] Robert Koch

Birth: Dec. 11, 1843, Clausthal, Hannover [now Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany]

Death: May 27, 1910, Baden-Baden, Germany

Known for: Bacteriology

"The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague."

― Robert Koch

[45] Murray Gell-Mann

Birth: September 15, 1929, Manhattan, New York City, United States

Known for: Gell-Mann and Low theorem, Elementary particles, quarks, Gell-Mann matrices

"Think how hard physics would be if particles could think."

― Murray Gell-Mann

[46] Hermann Emil Louis Fischer

Birth: October 09, 1852, Euskirchen, Rhine Province

Death: July 15, 1919, Berlin, Germany

Known for: Organic Chemistry

"To use a picture, I will say that enzyme and glucoside must join one another as lock and key, in order to be able to exert a chemical effect."

― Hermann Emil Fischer

[47] Dmitri Mendeleev

Birth: Jan. 27 [Feb. 8, New Style], 1834, Tobolsk, Siberia, Russian Empire

Death: Jan. 20 [Feb. 2], 1907, St. Petersburg, Russia

Known for: the Periodic Table of Elements

"Work, look for peace and calm in work; you will find it nowhere else."

― Dmitri Mendeleev

[48] Sheldon Glashow

Birth: December 5, 1932, New York City, New York, USA

Known for: Electroweak theory & Georgi–Glashow model

"Some astrophysicists have convinced themselves that the fifth significant figure of the fine structure constant has changed over the past ten billion years."

― Sheldon L. Glashow

[49] James Dewey Watson

Birth: April 6, 1928, Chicago, Illinois, U.S

Known for: the Structure of DNA

"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles."

― James D. Watson

[50] John Bardeen

Birth: May 23, 1908, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S

Death: Jan. 30, 1991, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S

Known for: Superconductivity and BCS theory

"Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved.

Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone."

― John Bardeen

[51] John von Neumann

Birth: December 28, 1903, Budapest, Austria-Hungary

Death: February 8, 1957, Walter Reed General Hospital Washington, D.C.

Known for: the Modern Computer

"Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

― John von Neumann

[52] Richard P. Feynman

Birth: May 11, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.

Death: Feb. 15, 1988, Los Angeles, California

Known for: Quantum Electrodynamics

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible."

― Richard Feynmann

[53] Alfred Lothar Wegener

Birth: Nov. 1, 1880, Berlin, Germany

Death: Nov. 1930, Greenland

Known for: Continental Drift

"Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. ... It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw."

― Alfred Wegener

[54] Stephen W. Hawking

Birth: Jan. 8, 1942, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England

Known for: Quantum Cosmology

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

― Stephen Hawking

• Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th death anniversary of Galileo Galilei, and died on the 139th birth anniversary of Albert Einstein.

[55] Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Birth: Oct. 24, 1632, Delft, Neth.

Death: Aug. 26, 1723, Delft

Known for: the Simple Microscope

"My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas but I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reason which I can grasp. This is the more true since I have no other purpose than to place truth before my eyes so far as it is in my power to embrace it; and to use the little talent I have received to draw the world away from its old heathenish superstitions and to go over to the truth and to stick to it."

― Antony Van Leeuwenhoek

[56] Max von Laue

Birth: Oct. 09, 1879, Pfaffendorf, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire

Death: April 24, 1960, West Berlin

Known for: X-ray Crystallography

"For in 1900 all electromagnetic radiation of longer wavelengths was already known at least to the extent that one could not seek in it the more striking characteristics of X-rays such as, for example, the strong penetrating power."

―Max von Laue

[57] Gustav Kirchhoff

Birth: March 12, 1824, K?nigsberg, Kingdom of Prussia [present-day Russia]

Death: October 17, 1887, Berlin, Prussia, German Empire [present-day Germany]

Known for: Kirchhoff's circuit laws, Kirchhoff's laws of spectroscopy, Kirchhoff's law of thermochemistry and Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation

"Look here, I have succeeded at last in fetching some gold from the sun.

{After his banker questioned the value of investigating gold in the Fraunhofer lines of the sun and Kirchhoff handing him over a medal he was awarded for his investigations.}"

― Gustav Kirchhoff

[58] Hans Bethe

Birth: July 2, 1906, Strassburg, Ger. [now Strasbourg, France]

Death: March 6, 2005, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.

Known for: the Energy of the Sun

"We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life."

― Hans A. Bethe

[59] Euclid

Known for: the Foundations of Mathematics

"The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God."

― Euclid

[60] Gregor Mendel

Birth: July 22, 1822, Heinzendorf, Austria [now Hyn?ice, Czech Rep.]

Death: Jan. 6, 1884, Brünn, Austria-Hungary [now Brno, Czech Rep.]

Known for: the Laws of Inheritance

"I am convinced that it will not be long before the whole world acknowledges the results of my work."

― Gregor Mendel

[61] Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Birth: September 21, 1853, Groningen, Netherlands

Death: February 21, 1926, Leiden, Netherlands

Known for: Superconductivity, Onnes-effect and Virial Equation of State

"The experiment left no doubt that, as far as accuracy of measurement went, the resistance disappeared. At the same time, however, something unexpected occurred. The disappearance did not take place gradually but abruptly. From 1/500 the resistance at 4.2K, it could be established that the resistance had become less than a thousand-millionth part of that at normal temperature. Thus the mercury at 4.2K has entered a new state, which, owing to its particular electrical properties, can be called the state of superconductivity."

— Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

[62] Thomas Hunt Morgan

Birth: September 25, 1866, Lexington, Kentucky

Death: December 04, 1945, Pasadena, California

Known for: the Chromosomal Theory of Heredity

"Except for the rare cases of plastid inheritance, the inheritance of all known cofactors can be sufficiently accounted for by the presence of genes in the chromosomes. In a word the cytoplasm may be ignored genetically."

― Thomas Hunt Morgan

[63] Hermann von Helmholtz

Birth: August 31, 1821, Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia

Death: September 08, 1894, Charlottenburg, German Empire

Known for: the Rise of German Science

"What the recent physiology of the senses has shown by the way of experience is what Kant had tried to show for the representations of the human mind in general when he laid out the participation of the particular, built-in rules of the mind, the organization of the mind as it were, in our representations."

― Hermann von Helmholtz

[64] Paul Ehrlich

Birth: March 14, 1854, Strehlen, Lower Silesia, German Kingdom of Prussia

Death: August 20, 1915, Bad Homburg, Hesse, Germany

Known for: Chemotherapy

"Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched."

― Paul Ehrlich

[65] Ernst Walter Mayr

Birth: July 05, 1904, Kempten, Germany

Death: February 03, 2005, Bedford, Massachusetts, United States

Known for: Evolutionary Theory

"According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another."

― Ernst Mayr

[66] Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky

Birth: January 25, 1900, Nemyriv, Russian Empire

Death: December 18, 1975, San Jacinto, California, United States

Known for: the Modern Synthesis

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

― Theodosius Dobzhansky

[67] Max Delbruck

Birth: September 04, 1906, Berlin, German Empire

Death: March 9, 1981, Pasadena, California, United States

Known for: the Bacteriophage

"The scientist has in common with the artist only this: that he can find no better retreat from the world than his work and no stronger link with the world than his work."

― Max Delbruck

[68] Charles Scott Sherrington

Birth: November 27, 1857, Islington, Middlesex, England

Death: March 04, 1952, Eastbourne, Sussex, England

Known for: Neurophysiology

"Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one."

― Charles Sherrington

[69] Jean Baptiste Lamarck

Birth: August 01, 1744, Bazentin, Picardy, France

Death: December 18, 1829, Paris, France

Known for: the Foundations of Biology

"It is not enough to discover and prove a useful truth previously unknown, but that it is necessary also to be able to propagate it and get it recognized."

― Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

[70] William Bayliss

Birth: May 2, 1860, Wednesbury, Staffordshire, England

Death: August 27, 1924, London, England

Known for: Modern Physiology

"But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough."

― William Bayliss

[71] John Dalton

Birth: Sept. 5 or 6, 1766, Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England

Death: July 27, 1844, Manchester

Known for: the Theory of the Atom

It's the right idea, but not the right time.

― John Dalton

[72] Frederick Sanger

Birth: August 13, 1918, Rendcomb, Gloucestershire, England

Death: November 19, 2013, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

Known for: the Genetic Code

"A DNA sequence for the genome of bacteriophage ΦX174 of approximately 5,375 nucleotides has been determined using the rapid and simple 'plus and minus' method. The sequence identifies many of the features responsible for the production of the proteins of the nine known genes of the organism, including initiation and termination sites for the proteins and RNAs. Two pairs of genes are coded by the same region of DNA using different reading frames."

― Frederick Sanger

[73] Louis Victor de Broglie

Birth: August 15, 1892, Dieppe, France

Death: March 19, 1987, Louveciennes, France

Known for: Wave/Particle Duality

"After long reflection in solitude and meditation, I suddenly had the idea, during the year 1923, that the discovery made by Einstein in 1905 should be generalised by extending it to all material particles and notably to electrons."

― Louis de Broglie

[74] Carl Linnaeus

Birth: May 23, 1707, R?shult, Stenbrohult parish (now within ?lmhult Municipality), Sweden

Death: January 10, 1778, Hammarby (estate), Danmark parish (outside Uppsala), Sweden

Known for: the Binomial Nomenclature

"When all the thoughts are concerning one thing and the person loses interest in other things, the melancholy begins."

― Carl Linnaeus

[75] J. Robert Oppenheimer

Birth: April 22, 1904, New York, N.Y., U.S.

Death: Feb. 18, 1967, Princeton, N.J.

Known for: the Atomic Era

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true."

― J. Robert Oppenheimer

[76] Sir Alexander Fleming

Birth: Aug. 6, 1881, Lochfield Farm, Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland

Death: March 11, 1955, London, England

Known for: Penicillin

"One sometimes finds what one is not looking for."

― Alexander Fleming

[77] Jonas Edward Salk

Birth: October 28, 1914, New York

Death: June 23, 1995, La Jolla, California, United States

Known for: Vaccination

"There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality."

― Jonas Salk

[78] Robert Boyle

Birth: Jan. 25, 1627, Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland

Death: Dec. 31, 1691, London, England

Known for: Boyle's law

"Those distinct substances, which concretes generally either afford, or are made up of, may, without very much inconvenience, be called the elements or principles of them."

― Robert Boyle

[79] Francis Galton

Birth: Feb. 16, 1822, near Sparkbrook, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England

Death: Jan. 17, 1911, Grayshott House, Haslemere, Surrey

Known for: Eugenics

"Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity."

― Francis Galton

[80] Joseph Priestley

Birth: March 13, 1733, Birstall Fieldhead, near Leeds, Yorkshire [now West Yorkshire], England

Death: Feb. 6, 1804, Northumberland, Pa., U.S.

Known for: Discovery of oxygen

"We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types."

― Joseph Priestley

[81] Hippocrates

Known for: Medicine

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

― Hippocrates

[82] Pythagoras

Known for: Pythagorean Theorem

"Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men."

― Pythagoras

"There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres."

― Pythagoras

[83] Benjamin Franklin

Birth: January 17, 1706, Boston, Massachusetts Bay, British America

Death: April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Known for: Electricity

"In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria."

― Benjamin Franklin

[84] Leonardo da Vinci

Birth: April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [now in Italy]

Death: May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Luce], France

Known for: Mechanics and Cosmology

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."

― Leonardo da Vinci

[85] Ptolemy

Known for: Greco-Roman science

"I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia."

― Ptolemy

[86] Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac

Birth: Dec. 6, 1778, Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, France

Death: May 9, 1850, Paris

Known for: Behavior of gases

"In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it."

― Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac

[87] Archimedes

Known for: the Beginning of Science

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth."

― Archimedes

[88] Sir Fred Hoyle

Birth: June 24, 1915, Bingley, Yorkshire [now West Yorkshire], England

Death: Aug. 20, 2001, Bournemouth, Dorset

Known for: Stellar nucleosynthesis

"Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards."

― Fred Hoyle

[89] Norman Ernest Borlaug

Birth: March 25, 1914, Cresco, Iowa, U.S.

Known for: Green revolution

"You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery."

― Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug

[90] Amedeo Avogadro

Birth: Aug. 9, 1776, Turin, in the Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont

Death: July 9, 1856, Turin, Italy

Known for: Molecular Hypothesis of Combining Gases

"We suppose ... that the constituent molecules of any simple gas whatever (i.e., the molecules which are at such a distance from each other that they cannot exercise their mutual action) are not formed of a solitary elementary molecule, but are made up of a certain number of these molecules united by attraction to form a single one."

— Count of Quaregna Amedeo Avogadro

[91] Luis W. Alvarez

Birth: June 13, 1911, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.

Death: Sept. 1, 1988, Berkeley, California

Known for: discovery of many resonance particles (subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions)

"Around the lab I heard that publicity was measured in an absolute unit, the "kan". That unit was too large for ordinary application and a practical unit one one-thousandth of the size served in its place, the "millikan"."

― Luis W. Alvarez

[92] George Gamow

Birth: March 4, 1904, Odessa, Russian Empire [now in Ukraine]

Death: Aug. 19, 1968, Boulder, Colo., U.S.

Known for: Big Bang Hypothesis

"It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!"

― George Gamow

[93] Francis Collins

Birth: April 14, 1950, Staunton, Va., U.S.

Known for: Human Genome Project

"Yeah, it's true we're all dealt a set of cards. But it's also true that it's up to us to figure out how to play the hand."

― Francis S. Collins

[94] Albert Abraham Michelson

Birth: Dec. 19, 1852, Strelno, Prussia [now Strzelno, Pol.]

Death: May 9, 1931, Pasadena, Calif., U.S.

Known for: Establishment of the speed of light as a fundamental Constant

"The velocity of light is one of the most important of the fundamental constants of Nature. Its measurement by Foucault and Fizeau gave as the result a speed greater in air than in water, thus deciding in favor of the undulatory and against the corpuscular theory. Again, the comparison of the electrostatic and the electromagnetic units gives as an experimental result a value remarkably close to the velocity of light–a result which justified Maxwell in concluding that light is the propagation of an electromagnetic disturbance. Finally, the principle of relativity gives the velocity of light a still greater importance, since one of its fundamental postulates is the constancy of this velocity under all possible conditions."

― A.A. Michelson

[95] Rachel Carson

Birth: May 27, 1907, Springdale, Pa., U.S.

Death: April 14, 1964, Silver Spring, Md.

Known for: Environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea

"In nature nothing exists alone."

― Rachel Carson

[96] Joseph Lister

Birth: April 5, 1827, Upton, Essex, England

Death: Feb. 10, 1912, Walmer, Kent

Known for: antiseptic medicine

"But when it has been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle I have based a practice."

― Joseph Lister

[97] Louis Agassiz

Birth: May 28, 1807, Motier, Switz.

Death: Dec. 14, 1873, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.

Known for: Natural science

"Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it."

― Louis Agassiz

[98] André-Marie Ampère

Birth: Jan. 22, 1775, Lyon, France

Death: June 10, 1836, Marseille

Known for: Electrodynamics

"The future science of government should be called 'la cybernétique' (1843)

{Coining the French word to mean 'the art of governing,' from the Greek (Kybernetes = navigator or steersman), subsequently adopted as cybernetics by Norbert Wiener for the field of control and communication theory.}"

― André-Marie Ampère

[99] Paracelsus

Birth: Nov. 11 or Dec. 17, 1493, Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Death: Sept. 24, 1541, Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg [now in Austria]

Known for: Der grossen Wundartzney ("Great Surgery Book")

"All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison."

― Paracelsus

[100] Edward O. Wilson

Birth: April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [now in Italy]

Death: June 10, 1929, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.

Known for: Sociobiology

"Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal."

― E.O. Wilson