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People ideas for
your bio project. All have interesting
lives.
You may want to
do some preliminary searching to see
what library and web materials exist.
Got another one in mind? Let me hear
your suggestion. Some of the more
obvious - dare I say trite - subjects
(Einstein, Newton, etc), whom we've
already covered extensively in class
are not fair game.
- Robert
Boyle.
- An
interesting character with much
science and an interesting set of
opponents.
- Leonard
Euler
- One of
the most amazing mathematicians ever.
Struggled through personal
difficulties.
- Joseph
Lagrange
- An
unusual thinker, straddling a
revolutionary time.
- James Prescott
Joule
- developed the modern
theory of energy
- Augustin-Jean
Fresnel
- concluded correctly the
transverse nature of light
waves
- Hans Christian
Oersted
- found
the connection between electricity
and magnetism
- Andre-Marie
Ampere
- formalized much of the
early mathematics of magnetism,
"Newton of
electromagnetism"
- Count Alessandro
Volta
- pioneer
in early electricity, made first
battery
- Count
Rumford
- the
colonial traitor who realized the
mechanical natur eof
heat.
- Michael
Faraday
- Among
the most imaginative experimenters,
almost totally unschooled and
illiterate of
mathematics.
- James Clerk
Maxwell
- responsible for the
theory which unified light with
electricity and magnetism
- Lord Kelvin
(William
Thomson)
- formalized much of
thermodynamics, laid the basis for
the mathematics of fluids and heat
and therefore
electromagnetism
- Josiah
Gibbs
- developed theromdynamics
and statistical mechanics in its
current form...maybe first American
theorist
- Ludwig
Boltzmann
- formaized the kinetic
theory of gases...a tragic,
transitional figure
- Helmholtz
- A most
unusual man for the late 1800's.
Physiologist, mathematician,
physicist...enormously
respected.
- Heinrich
Hertz
- discovered
electromagnetic waves, photoelectric
effect...student of Helmholtz, a
Maxwell competitor
- Max
Planck
- The man
responsible for the quantum
revolution...a reluctant
revolutionary who lived a terrible
personal life during the wars. Held
in almost superhuman
respect.
- Ernst
Rutherford
- A force
of nature. Probably had 3 full-sized
careers, just stumbling over one new
phenomenon after another.
- Wolfgang
Pauli
- Famous
for many things, including reviewing
a poor paper by noting that it was so
terrible that it wasn't even bad. A
theorist noted for the Pauli effect,
that even if a train he was riding on
went through a university town that
experimental equipment broked down
all over the
laboratories.
- Enrico
Fermi
- Quite
remarkable as a combination of
theorist and experimenter. Was the
leader of the Chicago part of the
Manhatten Project.
- Erwin
Schroedinger
- one of
the originators of quantum mechanics
and man about town
- Paul
Dirac
- another
one of the originators of quantum
mechanics and not a man about
town
- Werner
Heisenberg
- still
yet another of the originators of
quantum mechanics and the resident
philosopher of modern
physics
- Madame
Chien-Shiung Wu
- the
discoverer of parity violation in
beta decay and one of the very few
women experimentalists
- Maria
Goeppert-Mayer
- inventor
of the shell model of nuclear
structure and another rare woman
physicist
- Lev
Landau
- a 20th
century Russian theorist of amazing
breadth and an interesting
life
- Robert
Millikin
- an early
20th century experimentalist who
attacked a number of important
problems, hitting some, missing
some
-
- Jack
Lambert
- The
greatest middle linebacker
ever.
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