Science & Invention

Pythagoras

570 BCE–495 BCE · Pythagorean theorem, early mathematician

Hippocrates

460 BCE–370 BCE · Father of medicine, Hippocratic Oath

Euclid

325 BCE–265 BCE · Father of geometry, wrote Elements

Archimedes

287 BCE–212 BCE · Greatest mathematician of antiquity

Avicenna

980–1037 · Father of early modern medicine

Johannes Gutenberg

1400–1468 · Inventor of the printing press

Nicolaus Copernicus

1473–1543 · Heliocentric model of the solar system

Galileo Galilei

1564–1642 · Father of modern observational astronomy

Johannes Kepler

1571–1630 · Laws of planetary motion

Isaac Newton

1643–1727 · Laws of motion and gravity

Benjamin Franklin

1706–1790 · Founding Father, electricity experiments

Carl Linnaeus

1707–1778 · Father of modern taxonomy

James Watt

1736–1819 · Improved the steam engine

Edward Jenner

1749–1823 · Pioneer of the smallpox vaccine

Michael Faraday

1791–1867 · Electromagnetic induction

Charles Babbage

1791–1871 · Father of the computer, designed the Analytical Engine

Charles Darwin

1809–1882 · Theory of evolution by natural selection

Ada Lovelace

1815–1852 · First computer programmer

Louis Pasteur

1822–1895 · Germ theory, pasteurization

Gregor Mendel

1822–1884 · Father of genetics

Alfred Nobel

1833–1896 · Invented dynamite, founded Nobel Prizes

Dmitri Mendeleev

1834–1907 · Created the periodic table of elements

Thomas Edison

1847–1931 · Light bulb, phonograph, 1000+ patents

Alexander Graham Bell

1847–1922 · Invented the telephone

Nikola Tesla

1856–1943 · AC electricity, visionary inventor

Max Planck

1858–1947 · Father of quantum theory

Marie Curie

1867–1934 · Radioactivity, first woman Nobel laureate

Orville Wright

1871–1948 · Co-inventor of the airplane

Guglielmo Marconi

1874–1937 · Pioneer of long-distance radio

Lise Meitner

1878–1968 · Discovered nuclear fission, overlooked for Nobel

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · Theory of relativity, E=mc²

Alexander Fleming

1881–1955 · Discovered penicillin

Niels Bohr

1885–1962 · Atomic model, quantum mechanics pioneer

Erwin Schrödinger

1887–1961 · Schrödinger's cat, wave equation

Werner Heisenberg

1901–1976 · Uncertainty principle, quantum mechanics pioneer

Enrico Fermi

1901–1954 · Father of the nuclear age, first nuclear reactor

Robert Oppenheimer

1904–1967 · Father of the atomic bomb

Dorothy Hodgkin

1910–1994 · Nobel Prize for X-ray crystallography of biochemical substances

Alan Turing

1912–1954 · Father of computer science, codebreaker

Hedy Lamarr

1914–2000 · Hollywood star who co-invented frequency hopping

Richard Feynman

1918–1988 · Quantum electrodynamics, bongo-playing physicist

Rosalind Franklin

1920–1958 · Key to discovering DNA's structure

James Watson

1928–present · Co-discovered the structure of DNA

Vera Rubin

1928–2016 · Discovered evidence for dark matter

Tu Youyou

1930–present · Discovered artemisinin, Nobel Prize in Medicine

Carl Sagan

1934–1996 · Cosmos, pale blue dot, science communicator

Jane Goodall

1934–present · World's foremost expert on chimpanzees

Stephen Hawking

1942–2018 · Black holes, A Brief History of Time