Encyclopedia of World Scientists, Updated Edition

By Elizabeth Oakes

Encyclopedia of World Scientists, Updated Edition is a comprehensive reference tool for learning about scientists and their work. It includes 500 cross-referenced profiles of well-known scientific "greats" of history and contemporary scientists whose work is verging on prominence. More than 100 entries are devoted to women and minority scientists.

Each entry includes the subject's full name, dates of birth/death, nationality, and field(s) of specialization. A biographical essay focuses primarily on the subject's scientific work and achievements; it also highlights additional information, such as place of birth, parents' names and occupations, name(s) of spouse(s) and children, educational background, jobs held, and awards earned.

Profiles include:

• Archimedes (c. 287–212 BCE): Mathematician 
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543): Astronomer 
• Galileo Galilei (1564–1642): Astronomer 
• Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782): Mathematician 
• John James Audubon (1785–1851): Biologist 
• Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910): Medical scientist 
• Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–1896): Chemist 
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955): Physicist 
• Niels Bohr (1885–1962): Physicist 
• George Washington Carver (c. 1861–1943): Chemist
• Marie Curie (1867–1934): Physicist and chemist 
• Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882–1945): Aerospace engineer 
• Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953): Astronomer 
• Grace Murray Hooper (1906–1992): Computer scientist 
• Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994): Chemist 
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997): Earth scientist 
• Alan Turing (1912–1954): Computer scientist 
• Jonas Edward Salk (1914–1995): Medical scientist 
• Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958): Chemist 
• Jewel Plummer Cobb (1924–2017): Biologist 
• Stephen Hawking (1942–2018): Astronomer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Facts On File
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781438195452

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Encyclopedia of World Scientists, Updated Edition

Copyright © 2020 by Infobase

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:

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Contents

Entries

Abbe, Cleveland

Ackerman, Thomas P.

Adamson, Joy

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary

Agassiz, Louis

Agnesi, Maria Gaëtana

Agnodice

Agricola, Georgius

Aiken, Howard

Ajakaiye, Deborah Enilo

Alder, Kurt

Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth

Alfvén, Hannes Olof Gösta

Allen, Paul

Altman, Sidney

Alvarez, Luis Walter

Alvariño, Angeles

Ampère, André-Marie

Anastasi, Anne

Ancker-Johnson, Betsy

Andersen, Dorothy Hansine

Anderson, Carl David

Anderson, Elda Emma

Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett

Anderson, Gloria Long

Anfinsen, Christian Boehmer

Anning, Mary

Apgar, Virginia

Arber, Agnes Robertson

Archimedes of Syracuse

Aristarchus of Samos

Aristotle

Arnold, Frances H.

Arrhenius, Svante August

Aston, Francis William

Audubon, John James

Auerbach, Charlotte

Avery, Mary Ellen

Avery, Oswald

Avicenna

Avogadro, Amedeo

Ayrton, Hertha

Babbage, Charles

Baekeland, Leo Hendrik

Baeyer, Adolf von

Bailey, Florence Merriam

Baker, Sara Josephine

Baltimore, David

Banks, Harvey Washington

Banting, Sir Frederick Grant

Bárány, Robert

Bari, Nina Karlovna

Barney, Ida

Barton, Clara

Barton, Derek H. R.

Bascom, Florence

Bassi, Laura

Bateson, William

Bechtereva, Natalia Petrovna

Becquerel, Antoine-Henri

Bell Burnell, Susan Jocelyn

Bellow, Alexandra

Benedict, Ruth Fulton

Benerito, Ruth Mary Rogan

Bennett, Isobel Ida

Berg, Paul

Bergius, Friedrich

Berkowitz, Joan B.

Bernard, Claude

Berners-Lee, Tim

Bernoulli, Daniel

Bernstein, Dorothy Lewis

Bertozzi, Andrea

Berzelius, Jöns Jakob

Best, Charles Herbert

Bethe, Hans Albrecht

Bilger, Leonora Neuffer

Binet, Alfred

Binnig, Gerd

Birman, Joan S.

Bishop, Katharine Scott

Blackburn, Elizabeth Helen

Blackwell, Elizabeth

Blagg, Mary Adela

Bloch, Felix

Blodgett, Katharine Burr

Blum, Lenore Epstein

Boden, Margaret

Bodley, Rachel Littler

Bohr, Niels

Boivin, Marie-Anne-Victoire Gallain

Bok, Bartholomeus Jan

Boltzmann, Ludwig Eduard

Bondar, Roberta Lynn

Boole, George

Boole, Mary Everest

Bordet, Jules-Jean-Baptiste-Vincent

Borlaug, Norman Ernest

Born, Max

Bosch, Carl

Bose, Satyendranath

Bothe, Walther

Bovet, Daniel

Bowman, Sir William

Boyle, Robert

Bozeman, Sylvia

Brady, St. Elmo

Brahe, Tycho

Brandegee, Mary Katharine Layne

Branson, Herman Russell

Braun, Emma Lucy

Braun, Karl Ferdinand

Breckenridge, Mary

Brewster, Sir David

Brill, Yvonne Claeys

Britton, Elizabeth Gertrude Knight

Broca, Pierre-Paul

Broglie, Louis de

Brongniart, Alexandre

Brønsted, Johannes Nicolaus

Brooks, Harriet

Brown, Rachel Fuller

Browne, Barbara Moulton

Browne, Marjorie Lee

Buchner, Eduard

Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm

Burbank, Luther

Burbidge, Eleanor Margaret Peachey

Burnet, Sir Frank Macfarlane

Burton, Leone

Butenandt, Adolf

Buys Ballot, Christoph

Caldicott, Helen

Caldwell, Mary Letitia

Calvin, Melvin

Cambra, Jessie G.

Campbell-Swinton, Alan Archibald

Canady, Alexa I.

Cannizzaro, Stanislao

Cannon, Annie Jump

Cantor, Georg

Cardús, David

Carnot, Nicolas-Léonard-Sadi

Carothers, E. Eleanor

Carothers, Wallace Hume

Carr, Emma Perry

Carrel, Alexis

Carruthers, George R.

Carson, Benjamin S.

Carver, George Washington

Caserio, Marjorie Constance Beckett

Cassini, Giovanni Domenico

Cauchy, Augustin-Louis, Baron

Cavendish, Henry

Celsius, Anders

Chadwick, Sir James

Chain, Sir Ernst Boris

Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan

Chang, Min-Chueh

Chang, Sun-Yung Alice

Charpak, Georges

Charpentier, Emmanuelle

Chase, Mary Agnes Meara

Chasman, Renate Wiener

Châtelet, Gabrielle-Emilie du

Cherenkov, Pavel Alekseyevich

Chinn, May Edward

Cho, Alfred Y.

Chu, Paul Ching-Wu

Church, George

Clapp, Cornelia M.

Clark, Eugenie

Clark, Josiah Latimer

Clarke, Edith

Clay-Jolles, Tettje Clasina

Claypool, Edith Jane

Cleopatra the Alchemist

Cobb, Jewel Plummer

Cohen, Stanley H.

Cohn, Mildred

Colborn, Theodora

Colden, Jane

Cole, Rebecca J.

Colmenares, Margarita Hortensia

Colwell, Rita Rossi

Colwin, Laura North Hunter

Comstock, Anna Botsford

Conway, Lynn Ann

Conwell, Esther Marly

Conybeare, William Daniel

Cooper, Leon N

Copernicus, Nicolaus

Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz

Coriolis, Gaspard-Gustave de

Cornforth, Sir John Warcup

Cousteau, Jacques-Yves

Cowings, Patricia Suzanne

Cox, Geraldine Anne Vang

Cox, Gertrude Mary

Cremer, Erika

Crick, Francis

Crookes, William

Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline

Crutzen, Paul Josef

Curie, Marie

Curie, Pierre

Cuvier, Georges, Baron

Daily, Gretchen

Dalton, John

Daly, Marie Maynard

Dana, James Dwight

Daniell, John Frederic

Darden, Christine

Darwin, Charles

Darwin, Erasmus

Daubechies, Ingrid

Davis, Margaret B.

Davis, Marguerite

Davy, Sir Humphry

Dawkins, Richard

De Vries, Hugo

Debye, Peter

Delbrück, Max

Descartes, René

DeWitt, Lydia Maria Adams

DeWitt-Morette, Cécile-Andrée-Paule

Diacumakos, Elaine

Dicciani, Nance K.

Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry

Dicke, Robert Henry

Diels, Otto

Diesel, Rudolf

Diggs, Irene

Dirac, Paul

Dolan, Louise Ann

Domagk, Gerhard

Doppler, Christian

Doubleday, Neltje Blanchan De Graff

Doudna, Jennifer

Douglas, Allie Vibert

Dresselhaus, Mildred Spiewak

Dubos, René

Dunham, Katherine Mary

Duplaix, Nicole

Dyer, Helen M.

Earle, Sylvia Alice

Eastwood, Alice

Eccles, Sir John

Eckerson, Sophia Hennion

Eddy, Bernice

Edelman, Gerald M.

Edinger, Tilly

Edison, Thomas

Edwards, Cecile Hoover

Edwards, Helen T.

Egas Moniz, António

Ehrenfest-Afanaseva, Tatiana

Ehrlich, Paul

Eigen, Manfred

Eigenmann, Rosa Smith

Einstein, Albert

Einthoven, Willem

Elgood, Cornelia Bonté Sheldon Amos

Elion, Gertrude Belle

Emeagwali, Dale Brown

Emerson, Gladys Anderson

Enders, John Franklin

Erasistratus of Chios

Eratosthenes of Cyrene

Erlanger, Joseph

Esaki, Leo

Esau, Katherine

Estrin, Thelma

Euclid of Alexandria

Euler, Leonhard

Evans, Alice Catherine

Ewing, William Maurice

Faber, Sandra Moore

Fahrenheit, Daniel Gabriel

Falconer, Etta Zuber

Faraday, Michael

Farquhar, Marilyn Gist

Farr, Wanda K.

Fauci, Anthony

Fawcett, Stella Grace Maisie

Fedoroff, Nina V.

Fell, Honor Bridget

Fenselau, Catherine Clarke

Ferguson, Margaret Clay

Fermi, Enrico

Feynman, Richard P.

Fibonacci, Leonardo Pisano

Fieser, Mary Peters

Fischer, Emil Hermann

Fischer, Ernst Otto

Fischer, Hans

Fisher, Elizabeth F.

Fleming, Sir Alexander

Fleming, Williamina Paton Stevens

Florey, Howard Walter

Flory, Paul

Flourens, Pierre

Flügge-Lotz, Irmgard

Foot, Katharine

Forrester, Jay W.

Fossey, Dian

Foucault, Jean-Bernard-Léon

Fowler, William Alfred

Franck, James

Frank, Ilya Mikhailovich

Franklin, Benjamin

Franklin, Rosalind Elsie

Fraunhofer, Joseph von

Free, Helen Murray

Freedman, Wendy Laurel

Freud, Sigmund

Friedel, Charles

Friend, Charlotte

Frith, Uta Auernhammer

Fukui, Kenichi

Gabor, Dennis

Gadgil, Sulochana

Gage, Susanna Phelps

Gaillard, Mary Katharine

Galen

Galilei, Galileo

Gamow, George

Gardner, Julia Anna

Garmany, Catharine Doremus

Gasser, Herbert Spencer

Gauss, Carl Friedrich

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis

Geller, Margaret Joan

Germain, Marie-Sophie

Giblett, Eloise Rosalie

Gilbert, Grove K.

Gilbert, Walter

Gilbreth, Lillian Evelyn Moller

Giliani, Alessandra

Glashow, Sheldon Lee

Gleditsch, Ellen

Glusker, Jenny Pickworth

Goddard, Robert Hutchings

Goldberg, Adele

Goldhaber, Gertrude Scharff

Goldhaber, Sulamith

Goldwasser, Shafi

Golgi, Camillo

Good, Mary Lowe

Goodenough, Florence Laura

Gould, Stephen Jay

Gourdine, Meredith Charles

Graham, Thomas

Granville, Evelyn Boyd

Grasselli Brown, Jeanette G.

Green, Arda Alden

Grignard, François-Auguste-Victor

Grimaldi, Francesco Maria

Gross, Carol A.

Guillaume, Charles-Édouard

Gullstrand, Allvar

Gurdon, Sir John Bertrand

Guthrie, Mary Jane

Gutierrez, Orlando A.

Haber, Fritz

Hadley, George

Hahn, Dorothy Anna

Hahn, Otto

Hale, George Ellery

Hall, James

Hall, Lloyd Augustus

Halley, Edmond

Hamerstrom, Frances

Hamilton, Alice

Harden, Arthur

Hardy, Harriet

Harris, Mary Styles

Harrison, Anna Jane

Harvey, Ethel Browne

Harvey, William

Harwood, Margaret

Hassel, Odd

Hau, Lene

Hawes, Harriet Ann Boyd

Hawking, Stephen

Haworth, Walter

Hay, Elizabeth Dexter

Hay, Louise Schmir

Hazen, Elizabeth Lee

Hazlett, Olive Clio

Healy, Bernadine

Heezen, Bruce Charles

Heisenberg, Werner Karl

Heloise

Herophilus of Chalcedon

Herrad of Landsberg

Herschel, Caroline Lucretia

Herschel, Sir John Frederick William

Herschel, Sir William

Hershey, Alfred Day

Hertz, Gustav

Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf

Herzberg, Gerhard

Herzenberg, Caroline Stuart Little

Hess, Victor Francis

Hess, Walter Rudolf

Hewish, Antony

Hewitt, Jacqueline N.

Heyrovský, Jaroslav

Hibbard, Hope

Hildegard of Bingen

Hill, Dorothy

Hill, Henry Aaron

Hill, Sir Archibald Vivian

Hinshelwood, Sir Cyril

Hinton, Geoffrey E.

Hipparchus

Hippocrates

Hobby, Gladys Lounsbury

Hodgkin, Alan Lloyd

Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot

Hoffleit, Ellen Dorrit

Hoffmann, Roald

Hogg, Helen Battles Sawyer

Hollerith, Herman

Hollinshead, Ariel Cahill

Holmes, Arthur

Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy

Hopkins, Donald

Hopper, Grace Murray

Horney, Karen Danielsen

Horstmann, Dorothy Millicent

Hounsfield, Godfrey Newbold

Hoyle, Sir Fred

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer

Huang, Alice Shih-Hou

Hubbard, Ruth

Hubble, Edwin

Hubel, David Hunter

Hückel, Erich

Hudson, Mary K.

Humboldt, Alexander von

Hutton, James

Huxley, Sir Andrew Fielding

Huygens, Christiaan

Hyatt, Gilbert

Hyde, Ida Henrietta

Hyman, Libbie Henrietta

Hypatia of Alexandria

Ildstad, Suzanne T.

Imes, Elmer Samuel

Itakura, Keiichi

Jackson, Shirley Ann

Jacobi, Mary

Jacobs, Aletta Henriette

Jacquard, Joseph-Marie

Jansky, Karl Guthe

Jeans, Sir James Hopwood

Jemison, Mae Carol

Jenner, Edward

Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa

Jobs, Steve

Johnson, Katherine G.

Johnson, Virginia E.

Joliot-Curie, Frédéric

Joliot-Curie, Irène

Jones, Mary Ellen

Joshee, Anandibai

Joule, James Prescott

Joullié, Madeleine M.

Jung, Carl Gustav

Just, Ernest Everett

Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich

Karle, Isabella L.

Karrer, Paul

Kastler, Alfred

Kato, Tosio

Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson

Keller, Evelyn Fox

Kelsey, Frances Oldham

Kendrew, Sir John Cowdery

Kepler, Johannes

Kessel, Mona

Khayyám, Omar

Khorana, Har Gobind

Kil, Chung-Hee

King, Helen Dean

King, Louisa Boyd Yeomans

King, Reatha Clark

Kipping, Frederic Stanley

Kirch, Maria Winkelmann

Kistiakowsky, Vera E.

Kittrell, Flemmie Pansy

Kivelson, Margaret Galland

Klein, Christian Felix

Klein, Melanie Reizes

Klieneberger-Nobel, Emmy

Klug, Aaron

Knopf, Eleanora Bliss

Koehl, Mimi A. R.

Kolff, Willem J.

Koller, Noemie Benczer

Kornberg, Arthur

Kovalevskaya, Sofia

Krebs, Sir Hans Adolf

Krieger, Cecelia

Krim, Mathilde

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth

Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf, Doris

Kuhn, Richard

Kuiper, Gerard Peter

Kuperberg, Krystyna

Kwolek, Stephanie L.

Lachapelle, Marie-Louise

Ladd-Franklin, Christine

Laird, Elizabeth Rebecca

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste

Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill

Langmuir, Irving

Laplace, Pierre-Simon

Laveran, Charles-Louis-Alphonse

Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent

Lavoisier, Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze

Lawes, Sir John Bennet

Lawrence, Ernest Orlando

Le Beau, Désirée

Leakey, Louis S. B.

Leakey, Mary Douglas Nicol

Leakey, Richard E.

Leavitt, Henrietta Swan

Leblanc, Nicolas

Lebon, Philippe

LeCun, Yann

Lee, Tsung-Dao

Lee, Yuan Tseh

Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van

Lehmann, Inge

Lehn, Jean-Marie

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von

Leloir, Luis Federico

Lenard, Philipp E. A. von

Leopold, Aldo

Leopold, Estella Bergere

Lepeshinskaia, Olga Borisovna Protopova

L'Esperance, Elise Depew Strang

Lester, William Alexander, Jr.

Levy, Jerre

Levy, Julia

Lewis, Gilbert Newton

Lewis, Margaret Adaline Reed

Li, Ching Chun

Libby, Leonora Woods Marshall

Libby, Willard Frank

Lim, Robert Kho-seng

Lin, Ch'iao-chih

Linnaeus, Carolus

Lipmann, Fritz Albert

Lipscomb, William Nunn, Jr.

Lister, Joseph

Lloyd, Ruth Smith

Logan, Martha Daniell

Logan, Myra Adele

Long, Irene Duhart

Lonsdale, Kathleen Yardley

Lord Kelvin

Love, Susan

Lovelace, Augusta Ada Byron

Lovelock, James Ephraim

Lowell, Percival

Lubchenco, Jane

Lucid, Shannon W.

Luria, Salvador

Lyell, Sir Charles

Lyon, Mary Frances

Maathai, Wangari Muta

MacGill, Elsie Gregory

Mach, Ernst

Mack, Pauline Beery

Macklin, Madge Thurlow

Macleod, J. J. R.

Maiman, Theodore

Makhubu, Lydia Phindile

Maltby, Margaret Eliza

Mandl, Ines Hochmuth

Mangold, Hilde Proescholdt

Manton, Sidnie Milana

Manzolini, Anna Morandi

Marconi, Guglielmo

Marcy, Geoffrey

Margulis, Lynn Alexander

Marrack, Philippa

Martin, A. J. P.

Mary, Miriam

Massey, Walter Eugene

Massie, Samuel Proctor

Matzinger, Polly

Mauchly, John William

Maury, Antonia Caetana

Maury, Carlotta Joaquina

Maury, Matthew Fontaine

Maxwell, James Clerk

Maxwell, Martha Dartt

Mayer, Maria Gertrude Goeppert

McDuff, Margaret Dusa

McMillan, Edwin Mattison

McNally, Karen Cook

Mead, Margaret

Medawar, Peter Brian

Meitner, Lise

Mendel, Gregor

Mendeleyev, Dmitry Ivanovich

Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed

Mercator, Gerardus

Merian, Maria Sibylla

Mestral, George de

Metchnikoff, Élie

Mexia, Ynes

Meyerhof, Otto Fritz

Micheli-Tzanakou, Evangelia

Michelson, Albert Abraham

Miller, Elizabeth Calvert

Minkowski, Hermann

Minot, George Richards

Mintz, Beatrice

Mitchell, Maria

Möbius, August Ferdinand

Mohs, Friedrich

Moissan, Henri

Molina, Mario J.

Moore, Stanford

Morawetz, Cathleen Synge

Morgan, Agnes Fay

Morgan, Ann Haven

Morgan, Lilian Vaughan Sampson

Morgan, Thomas Hunt

Moss, Cynthia

Mössbauer, Rudolf Ludwig

Moufang, Ruth

Muir, John

Muller, Hermann Joseph

Müller, Paul Hermann

Mulliken, Robert S.

Murphy, William Parry

Nambu, Yoichiro

Napier, John

Natta, Giulio

Néel, Louis-Eugène-Félix

Nernst, Walther Hermann

Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal

Neumann, John von

Newlands, John Alexander Reina

Newton, Sir Isaac

Nice, Margaret Morse

Nichols, Roberta J.

Nicolle, Charles-Jules-Henri

Niepce, Joseph

Nightingale, Dorothy Virginia

Nightingale, Florence

Nipkow, Paul Gottlieb

Nirenberg, Marshall Warren

Nobel, Alfred

Noddack, Ida Tacke

Noether, Emmy

Noguchi, Constance Tom

Norrish, Ronald George Wreyford

Northrop, John Howard

Novello, Antonia Coello

Nüsslein-Volhard, Christiane

Nuttall, Zelia

Nyholm, Sir Ronald Sydney

Ocampo-Friedmann, Roseli

Ochoa, Ellen

Ochoa, Severo

Ogilvie, Ida H.

Ohm, Georg Simon

Ohsumi, Yoshinori

Olden, Kenneth

Onsager, Lars

Oort, Jan Hendrik

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

Ørsted, Hans Christian

Osborn, Mary J.

Ostwald, Wilhelm

Paabo, Svante

Panajiotatou, Angeliki

Pappus of Alexandria

Pardue, Mary Lou

Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon

Pascal, Blaise

Pasteur, Louis

Patterson, Francine

Pauli, Wolfgang

Pauling, Linus

Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich

Payne, Katharine Boynton

Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia Helena

Pearce, Louise

Peden, Irene Carswell

Pellier, Laurence Delisle

Pendleton, Yvonne

Pennington, Mary Engle

Penry, Deborah L.

Perey, Marguerite-Catherine

Perkin, William Henry

Perlmann, Gertrude E.

Perrin-Riou, Bernadette

Pert, Candace Beebe

Perutz, Max

Péter, Rózsa

Petermann, Mary Locke

Peterson, Edith R.

Phelps, Almira Hart Lincoln

Phillips, Melba Newell

Piaget, Jean

Piazzi, Giuseppe

Picotte, Susan La Flesche

Pierce, Naomi E.

Pimentel, David

Pinckney, Eliza Lucas

Planck, Max

Playfair, John

Pliny the Elder

Poincaré, Jules-Henri

Polanyi, Michael

Poncelet, Jean-Victor

Popov, Alexander Stepanovich

Porter, Sir George

Pregl, Fritz

Prelog, Vladimir

Pressman, Ada Irene

Prichard, Diana García

Priestley, Joseph

Prigogine, Ilya

Profet, Margie Jean

Proust, Joseph-Louis

Ptolemy, Claudius

Purcell, Edward Mills

Pythagoras of Samos

Pytheas of Massilia

Quimby, Edith H.

Quinland, William Samuel

Quinn, Helen Rhoda Arnold

Rabi, Isidor Isaac

Rajalakshmi, R.

Raman, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata

Ramanujan, Srinivasa Iyengar

Ramart-Lucas, Pauline

Ramey, Estelle

Ramón y Cajal, Santiago

Ramsay, Sir William

Randoin, Lucie

Ratner, Sarah

Ray, Dixy Lee

Rees, Mina Spiegel

Richards, Ellen Swallow

Richards, Theodore William

Richardson, Jane S.

Richter, Charles Francis

Ride, Sally K.

Rigas, Harriet B.

Robbins, Frederick Chapman

Roberts, Dorothea Klumpke

Robinson, Julia Bowman

Robinson, Sir Robert

Rockwell, Mabel MacFerran

Roemer, Elizabeth

Rohrer, Heinrich

Roman, Nancy Grace

Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad

Rothschild, Miriam

Rowland, F. Sherwood

Rowley, Janet D.

Rubin, Vera Cooper

Russell, Bertrand

Russell, Elizabeth Shull

Rutherford, Sir Ernest

Ružička, Leopold

Sabatier, Paul

Sabin, Albert Bruce

Sabin, Florence Rena

Sagan, Carl Edward

Sager, Ruth

Salk, Jonas

Sanchez, Pedro Antonio

Sanford, Katherine Koontz

Sanger, Frederick

Sarachik, Myriam

Saruhashi, Katsuko

Schafer, Alice Turner

Scharrer, Berta Vogel

Schiaparelli, Giovanni Virginio

Schrieffer, John Robert

Schrödinger, Erwin

Schwinger, Julian Seymour

Scott, Charlotte Angas

Seaborg, Glenn Theodore

Seager, Sara

Seibert, Florence Barbara

Semenov, Nikolay

Sessions, Kate Olivia

Shapley, Harlow

Shattuck, Lydia White

Shaw, Mary

Sherrill, Mary Lura

Sherrington, Charles Scott

Shiva, Vandana

Shockley, Dolores Cooper

Shockley, William Bradford

Shoemaker, Eugene Merle

Shreeve, Jean'ne Marie

Siegbahn, Karl Manne Georg

Sikorsky, Igor

Silbergeld, Ellen Kovner

Simmonds, Sofia

Simon, Dorothy Martin

Simpson, Joanne Malkus

Sinclair, Mary Emily

Singer, Maxine

Sinkford, Jeanne C.

Sithole-Niang, Idah

Sitterly, Charlotte Emma Moore

Skinner, B. F.

Slye, Maud Caroline

Snyder, Solomon Halbert

Soddy, Frederick

Solomon, Susan

Somerville, Mary Fairfax

Spaeth, Mary

Sparling, Rebecca Hall

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose

Sperry, Pauline

Sperry, Roger Wolcott

Sponer, Hertha

Spurlock, Jeanne

Srinivasan, Bhama

Stanley, Louise

Stanley, Wendell Meredith

Stark, Johannes

Staudinger, Hermann

Stein, William Howard

Steitz, Joan Argetsinger

Stephenson, Marjory

Stern, Frances

Stern, Otto

Stevens, Nettie Maria

Steward, Susan Smith McKinney

Stewart, Alice

Stewart, Sarah

Stokes, William

Stoll, Alice Mary

Stone, Isabelle

Strickland, Donna

Stubbe, JoAnne

Sudarkasa, Niara

Sullivan, Betty J.

Sumner, James Batcheller

Sutherland, Ivan Edward

Svedberg, Theodor

Swinburne, James

Swope, Henrietta Hill

Sydenham, Thomas

Synge, Richard

Szkody, Paula

Tamm, Igor Evgenievich

Tarski, Alfred

Tartaglia, Niccolò

Taussig, Helen Brooke

Taussky-Todd, Olga

Taylor, Lucy Hobbs

Taylor, Stuart Robert

Telkes, Maria

Teller, Edward

Tereshkova, Valentina

Tesla, Nikola

Tesoro, Giuliana Cavaglieri

Tharp, Marie

Theophrastus

Thomas, Martha Jane Bergin

Ting, Samuel C. C.

Tinsley, Beatrice Muriel Hill

Tiselius, Arne

Todd, Alexander Robertus, Baron

Tolbert, Margaret E. M.

Tombaugh, Clyde William

Tomonaga, Sin-Itiro

Tonegawa, Susumu

Trotter, Mildred

Trotula of Salerno

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Tsui, Lap-Chee

Tu, Youyou

Tull, Jethro

Turing, Alan Mathison

Turner, Charles Henry

Uhlenbeck, Karen Keskulla

Urey, Harold Clayton

Van der Meer, Simon

Van Dover, Cindy Lee

Vassy, Arlette

Vennesland, Birgit

Venter, J. Craig

Virtanen, Artturi Ilmari

Vivian, Roxana Hayward

Vold, Marjorie Jean Young

Volta, Alessandro

Von Mises, Hilda Geiringer

Von Sachs, Julius

Vrba, Elisabeth

Vyssotsky, Emma T. R. Williams

Waelsch, Salome Gluecksohn Schoenheimer

Wagner-Jauregg, Julius

Waldeyer-Hartz, Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von

Walker, Mary Edwards

Wallace, Alfred Russel

Wallach, Otto

Washburn, Margaret Floy

Washington, Warren M.

Watson, James

Wattleton, Alyce Faye

Weertman, Julia

Wegener, Alfred Lothar

Weinberg, Steven

Weisburger, Elizabeth Amy Kreiser

Weller, Thomas Huckle

Werner, Abraham Gottlob

Werner, Alfred

Wethers, Doris L.

Wheatstone, Sir Charles

Wheeler, Anna Johnson Pell

Wheeler, Emma Rochelle

Whipple, Fred Lawrence

Whipple, George Hoyt

White, Gilbert

Whiting, Sarah Frances

Widnall, Sheila E.

Wiesel, Torsten Nils

Wiles, Andrew John

Wilkins, J. Ernest, Jr.

Wilkins, Maurice

Wilkinson, Sir Geoffrey

Williams, Anna Wessels

Williams, Cicely Delphin

Williams, Heather

Williams, Oswald S.

Willson, Lee Anne Mordy

Wilson, C. T. R.

Wilson, John Tuzo

Witkin, Evelyn Maisel

Wittig, Georg

Wöhler, Friedrich

Wong-Staal, Flossie

Wood, Elizabeth Armstrong

Woods, Geraldine Pittman

Woodward, Robert Burns

Wozniak, Steve

Wright, Jane Cooke

Wrinch, Dorothy Maud

Wu, Chien-Shiung

Wu, Sau Lan

Wyse, Rosemary

Xie, Xide

Yang, Chen Ning

Yener, Kutlu Aslihan

York, James Wesley, Jr.

Young, Grace Chisholm

Young, Judith Sharn

Young, Lai-Sang

Young, Roger Arliner

Young, Thomas

Yukawa, Hideki

Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth

Zhang, Feng

Ziegler, Karl

Zinder, Norton David

Zoback, Mary Lou

Zsigmondy, Richard Adolf

Zuber, Maria T.

Zworykin, Vladimir

Entries

Abbe, Cleveland

(b. 1838–d. 1916)

astronomer, meteorologist

Cleveland Abbe ushered in the modern era of meteorology by instituting a national system of daily weather reports and forecasts that served as the prototype for the U.S. Weather Bureau, which he also helped to organize. Abbe helped transform the reporting of weather from a highly localized phenomenon based on conjecture into a coordinated system based on observed facts and informed projections of potential weather developments. Abbe's probabilities, as he initially called them, acted as the precursor to the present-day weather forecast.

Abbe was born on December 3, 1838, in New York City, brother of Robert Abbe, the pioneer in plastic surgery who introduced radiation therapy to the United States. Growing up in the city, he became enthralled with weather by reading articles by Joseph Henry (among others) in the daily newspapers. In the summer of 1857, he read William Ferrel's classic article on the theories of storms and winds in the Mathematical Monthly, which guided him into the study of meteorology. That year, he graduated from the Free Academy (now the College of the City of New York) and proceeded to conduct graduate studies in astronomy under F. Brunow at Ann Arbor, Michigan, until 1860, and then under B. A. Gould at Cambridge, Massachusetts, until 1864. Abbe spent the next two years studying and working as an assistant under astronomer Otto Struve at the Observatory of Pulkova in Russia.

Upon his return to the United States, he worked briefly at the Naval Observatory before taking up the directorship of the Cincinnati Observatory. In his inaugural address on May 1, 1868, he outlined his intention of establishing a system of weather reports. John Gano, president of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, pledged his support for such a project, and the Western Union Telegraph Company donated transmissions over its telegraph lines of weather reports from the 40 volunteer meteorological correspondents enlisted by Abbe.

The first Cincinnati Weather Bulletin was dispatched on September 1, 1869. In October 1869, Abbe devised a code of cipher for abbreviating the weather reports. Abbe's Cincinnati Weather Bulletin served as the prototype for the nationalization of a weather-reporting system, which Smithsonian observer Increase Allen Lapham of Milwaukee urged Congress to establish under the auspices of the Signal Corps of the Army. The U.S. Congress announced a joint resolution supporting the measure on February 2, 1870, and on February 9, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the initiative into law, charging the secretary of war with establishing it under the Army Signal Service.

Abbe married on May 10, 1870, in the midst of preparations for the institution of the weather report, which went into effect in November 1870. On January 3, 1871, Abbe was appointed civilian assistant to the chief signal officer, General Albert J. Myer. Together they organized the Weather Bureau of the Army Signal Service, which oversaw the national weather reports. The reports consisted of daily synopses of current weather conditions, along with probabilities, or forecasts of possible atmospheric developments. Abbe devised a system to reduce traffic on the electromagnetic telegraph wires by having all of the reporters at the major stations opening up their lines at specific appointed times, each to give a report and then listen to others' reports, thereby disseminating all the necessary information in a mere 20- to 30-minute interchange. Despite the efficiency of such a system, Western Union refused to dispatch all weather reports on March 4, 1871, forcing the Weather Bureau to use competing telegraph companies for their transmissions. Abbe continued to impose order on the system he innovated, determining the altitude above sea level of all Signal Service barometers in 1872. The next year, he launched the Monthly Weather Review, a slim bulletin of weather statistics that expanded in some 20 years into one of the most respected meteorological journals in the world under Abbe's editorship. Also in 1873, the International Meteorological Congress established the Daily Bulletin of Simultaneous International Meteorological Observations, based on Abbe's national system.

Abbe published prolifically. His most important papers included Treatise on Meteorological Apparatus and Methods, published in 1887, and Preparatory Studies for Deductive Methods in Storm and Weather Prediction, published in 1889. Other important titles included Solar Spots and Terrestrial Temperature; A Plea for Terrestrial Physics; Atmospheric Radiation; and Treatise on Meteorological Apparatus. Abbe was duly recognized for his contributions to science. For example, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1879. Perhaps the most distinguished honor was his receipt of the Marcellus Hartley medal for Eminence in the Application of Science to the Public Welfare on April 17, 1916. He was unable to attend the ceremony, however, due to ill health. Half a year later, Abbe died at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on October 28, 1916. In his honor, flags in front of the Department of Agriculture and the Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C., were flown at half-mast on the day of his funeral. In his memory, the American Meteorological Society named the Cleveland Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to Atmospheric Sciences by an Individual after him.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Ackerman, Thomas P.

(b. 1947– )

meteorologist, physicist

The theory of nuclear winter, or the catastrophic atmospheric consequences wrought by nuclear war, elicited a sea change in the public perception of the viability of actually employing nuclear weapons tactically. Thomas Ackerman participated on the team that proposed a scientific model for a nuclear winter scenario in the early 1980s. The theory's reception varied along political lines: antinuclear activists embraced it as evidence of the insanity of maintaining nuclear arsenals, while the conservative contingent attacked its scientific limitations.

Thomas P. Ackerman was born in 1947. He graduated with a degree in physics from Calvin College, then went on to attend the University of Washington, earning his master of science degree in physics in 1971 and his Ph.D. in atmospheric science in 1976. After receiving his doctorate, he went to work as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center.

In 1982, the Swedish environmental journal Ambio published an article in which Paul Crutzen and John W. Birks coined the term nuclear winter to describe the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Interestingly, they theorized that the resulting environmental effects would eclipse the destructiveness of the actual explosions, as carbon soot from the resulting fires would blanket the atmosphere, preventing sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface. When Carl Sagan read this account, he grasped the political implications of such a theory, and he realized that the scientific community could offer the antinuclear movement the ultimate deterrent: a description of mutually assured destruction, or global suicide.

Sagan set out to create a scientific model of nuclear winter, using computer software to extrapolate the effects of a nuclear holocaust. He enlisted Ackerman, along with Richard P. Turco, Owen B. Toon, and James B. Pollack, to form the team later known by the acronym TTAPS. The group developed a one-dimensional model projecting the likely outcomes of significant nuclear events. In their report, Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions, published in the December 23, 1983, issue of Science, they proposed that nuclear weapons exploding over 100 cities, releasing an explosive power totaling as little as 100 megatons, would send so much dust and smoke into the atmosphere that the temperature would drop anywhere from five to 15 degrees, an outcome that could have catastrophic environmental consequences.

The nuclear winter theory galvanized the political community: the antinuclear movement used it as an apocalyptic rallying cry to discontinue the stockpiling of nuclear arms and, indeed, to reach disarmament treaties. However, the conservative faction seized upon the theory's limitations, pointing out that it did not take into account the division of the Earth's surface into water and land (which would create heat transfer), the difference between daytime and nighttime sunlight (TTAPS postulated 24-hour sunlight at one-third strength), and the limitations of existing computers to take into account the multiple variables factoring into a realistic scenario. Conservatives further accused the TTAPS team of sacrificing scientific integrity in order to advance a political agenda, a position confirmed by the opinions of leading scientists (including Nobel laureate Richard Feynman) who criticized the study's methodologies.

The TTAPS team, along with Crutzen and Birks, received the 1985 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society, reaffirming their scientific integrity. In 1988, Ackerman joined the faculty of Pennsylvania State University as a professor of meteorology and associate director of the Earth System Science Center and then held a concurrent position on NASA's MISR (Multi-Angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer) science team and as a site scientist for the Tropical Western Pacific site in the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program. In 1995, he became a full professor at Penn State.

Ackerman also continued to collaborate with the TTAPS team, conducting further research on the nuclear winter question. In 1990, the group published a follow-up article in Science, in which they defended their original theory by offering more sophisticated modeling (available due to more sophisticated computer programs) and taking into account more realistic variables. 

Since then, with the demise of the Soviet Union and the melting of the cold war, little research has been applied to the nuclear winter theory. However, the theory lodged itself in the collective consciousness, exerting a significant influence on public policy as well as personal angst. The reception of the theory demonstrated the necessity of maintaining impeccable scientific integrity, especially when scientific findings carry political implications. Ultimately, the theory's influence eclipsed the question of its scientific validity, as it forced a more considered approach to the question of the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons and the wisdom of maintaining vast nuclear arsenals in a state of readiness.

Professor Ackerman is currently Director of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington and continues to lecture on topics related to climate engineering and cloud properties.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Adamson, Joy

(b. 1910–d. 1980)

naturalist

Best known for her book Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds, which detailed her experiences raising a lion cub in Africa, Joy Adamson was an artist and naturalist who did much to further the cause of wildlife preservation. Adamson raised a number of wild animals on game reserves in Kenya, where she spent the better part of her life. A film version of the highly popular Born Free was produced in 1964 and eventually led to a television series.

Born Friederike Viktoria Gessner on January 20, 1910, Adamson grew up in Troppau, Silesia, an area of Austria that later became part of Slovakia. Adamson's father, Viktor Gessner, was an architect and urban planner, and her mother, the former Traute Greipel, came from a wealthy family of paper manufacturers. Adamson demonstrated an interest in animals and creative pursuits from a young age; after shooting and killing a deer on the family's estate—hunting was a popular pastime on the estate—a teenaged Adamson swore she would never again kill for sport.

Adamson had varied interests and studied such subjects as psychoanalysis, painting, metalwork, music, dressmaking, and archaeology at schools in Vienna. Though Adamson planned to pursue a career in medicine, she did not take her final exam. Instead, in 1935, Adamson married Victor von Klarwill, an Austrian businessman. Because Adamson's new husband was Jewish, the couple decided to move to Kenya to escape the growing Nazi movement. Adamson went ahead of von Klarwill, and during her journey she met botanist Peter Bally. After divorcing von Klarwill, Adamson married Bally in 1938. Bally traveled through Kenya to study plant specimens, and Adamson accompanied him. She began to paint the plants Bally collected, eventually completing about 700 paintings.

Adamson's second marriage ended in divorce in 1942, and a year later she married George Adamson, a game warden. During the following years, Adamson continued her paintings of flowers and plants and also began to paint portraits of tribal members. Then, in 1956, George Adamson killed a lioness that attacked him. After discovering that the lioness was protecting three cubs, George Adamson brought home the cubs. Two were sent to the Rotterdam Zoo, but Adamson kept the third cub and named her Elsa. Adamson and her husband raised Elsa and trained her to live in the wild. Adamson chronicled these experiences in the book, Born Free, which was published in 1960. Elsa eventually had three cubs of her own and began to visit the Adamsons. When Elsa died at the age of five, the Adamsons trained her three cubs and set them free in Serengeti National Park. Adamson wrote about the cubs in Living Free and Forever Free, sequels to Born Free.

During the 1960s, Adamson worked to increase awareness of wildlife endangerment and the need for preservation, capitalizing on the popularity of her books. In 1961, Adamson established the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal Fund in the United Kingdom. Chapters in the United States and Canada followed. Adamson was also a founder of the World Wildlife Fund and among the first to boycott apparel made from animal fur. In 1962, she traveled around the world to speak about wildlife preservation. The proceeds from her activities funded the establishment of wildlife reserves and conservation efforts.

Though little was known about the behavior of cheetahs, Adamson raised and trained a cheetah, named Pippa, in the late 1960s. She detailed her experiences with Pippa in two books, The Spotted Sphinx, published in 1969, and Pippa's Challenge, published in 1972. Adamson moved to an estate outside of Nairobi in 1971, and in 1976 she focused on raising a leopard cub named Penny. This experience, too, led to a book, Queen of Sheba: The Story of an African Leopard, which was published in 1980.

Adamson was the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her efforts to advance the wildlife preservation movement. She was presented the Award of Merit from Czechoslovakia in 1970, the Joseph Wood Krutch Medal of the U.S. Humane Society in 1971, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for science and art in 1976. Adamson also received the 1947 Gold Grenfell Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society for her illustrations of East African plant life. Adamson was murdered by a former servant on January 3, 1980, in the Shaba Game Reserve in northern Kenya.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary

(b. 1822–d. 1907)

naturalist, educator

Although Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz received no formal education, she collaborated with her husband—the famed naturalist Louis Agassiz—to publish important works on natural history. In addition to participating together in several of his expeditions, the couple cofounded the Anderson School of Natural History. After her husband's death, Agassiz established the Harvard Annex, later named Radcliffe College, which she served as its first president. As one of the nation's elite colleges, Radcliffe served as a testament to Agassiz's commitment to women's higher education.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1822, Elizabeth Cabot Cary was the second of the seven children of Thomas and Mary Cushing Perkins Cary. Although she never attended school because of her frail health, Elizabeth Cary was tutored by a governess at home. She showed no early interest in science, but she was exposed to languages, music, and art. In 1846, she met Louis Agassiz, then a professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Agassiz emigrated to the United States shortly thereafter, accepting a position at Harvard University as the chair of natural history at the Lawrence Scientific School. Cary married Agassiz in 1850. While the couple had no children together, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz became mother to her husband's three children from a prior marriage.

To help support her new family, Elizabeth Agassiz launched a girls' school in her Cambridge home in 1856. Although she did not teach any classes herself, she sat in on the natural history lectures her husband delivered to the school's pupils. Her interest in the subject was sparked by this experience. After closing the school in 1863, she devoted herself to collaborating with Louis Agassiz on a number of scientific endeavors.

In 1859, Elizabeth Agassiz published her first book, A First Lesson in Natural History, which incorporated a number of her husband's theories. Seaside Studies, cowritten with her stepson Alexander Agassiz, appeared in 1865. A well-regarded textbook and field guide on marine zoology, Seaside Studies discussed a range of topics, such as the distribution of sea life and the embryology of various marine species. Together with Louis, Elizabeth Agassiz embarked on the Thayer expedition in 1865 to study the fauna of Brazil. Her copious notes about the voyage provided the basis for A Journey in Brazil, a book authored jointly by Louis and Elizabeth in 1868.

The couple's collaboration continued during the Hassler expedition (1871–72), a deep-sea dredging effort along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. In 1873, the duo founded the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts. A summer school and a marine laboratory, Anderson accepted both male and female students (which was rather uncommon for the time). In 1873, Louis Agassiz died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Although his untimely death ended the couple's fruitful joint ventures, Elizabeth Agassiz turned to new projects of her own. In 1885, she published Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, a two-volume biography of her husband, which provided essential information about his theories.

Long interested in women's education, Elizabeth Agassiz devoted the remainder of her life to championing higher education for women. Although she did not believe in the coeducation of men and women, she was an ardent proponent of women's rights to equal educational opportunities. After traveling to Oxford and Cambridge to gather information, Agassiz founded the all-women's Harvard Annex in 1879, which shared the resources and faculty of Harvard. Agassiz served as its first president. The institution was rechristened Radcliffe College in 1893 and was formally linked to Harvard at that time. Agassiz remained president until 1899 when she retired. A scholarship and student hall were named in her honor. After suffering an initial cerebral hemorrhage in 1904, Elizabeth Agassiz died of a second one in 1907.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Agassiz, Louis

(b. 1807–d. 1873)

ichthyologist, geologist, paleontologist

Through meticulous observation of the natural world and exhaustive research, writing, and lecturing, Louis Agassiz established himself as the major opponent to Charles Robert Darwin in the debate over the origins of natural history in the mid-1800s. Agassiz's belief in the Platonic notion that behind visible reality resides an unseen reality that controls the world challenged Darwin's evolutionary model for the origin of the universe. Agassiz first proved himself in Europe as one of the foremost ichthyologists of his time, before focusing his attention on glaciers and introducing the idea of the Ice Age, a period when ice sheets covered most of the Northern Hemisphere. In 1846 he accepted an invitation to lecture in the United States, and he remained in the country for the rest of his life, contributing to science education by introducing new pedagogical practices and instituting new learning facilities.

Agassiz was born on May 28, 1807, in Moutier-en-Vuly, Switzerland, a village on Lake Morat. His resistance to evolutionary theories probably traced back to the influence of his mother, Rose Mayor Agassiz, and his father, Rodolphe, a Protestant pastor. Agassiz married twice: first, in 1832 to Cécile Braun, who had three children before her death in 1847; second, to Elizabeth Cabot Cary, the first president of Radcliffe College, Harvard University's extension devoted to women's education.

Agassiz studied at the Universities of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich; he earned his Ph.D. from the Universities of Munich and Erlangen in 1829 and his M.D. from the University of Munich in 1830. He then migrated to Paris, where he studied under Baron Georges Cuvier and Baron Alexander von Humboldt between 1830 and 1832. Cuvier secured his pupil a position under C. F. P. von Martius and J. B. von Spix, cataloging the fish they had taken back to Paris from Brazil, a project that Agassiz took over in 1826. He published the results in the 1829 text Selecta Genera et Species Piscium.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Agnesi, Maria Gaëtana

(b. 1718–d. 1799)

mathematician specializing in calculus

Maria Gaëtana Agnesi is best remembered for her pioneering two-volume work, Analytical Institutions, in which she synthesized and clarified existing information about algebra as well as integral and differential calculus. Analytical Institutions was translated into several languages, and it became the standard calculus textbook in Europe for over a century after Agnesi's death. In her most famous work, she discussed the formulation of a cubic curve, now known as the witch of Agnesi.

Born in Milan, Italy, on May 16, 1718, Maria Gaëtana Agnesi was the eldest child of Pietro and Anna Fortunato Brivio Agnesi. A professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna, Agnesi's father would remarry twice after her mother's death in 1732. The family would eventually grow to include 21 children.

Because he came from a wealthy merchant family, Pietro Agnesi could hire the finest tutors for his children. Although most women of this era received at best a strict convent education, Maria Agnesi was schooled in Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and other languages. At the age of nine, she recited from memory Horace's defense of higher education for women. Her father held regular intellectual gatherings at his home, and Maria Agnesi was called upon to debate topics of philosophy and science with some of the leading thinkers of the day. Despite her unconventional education, Maria Agnesi's first ambition was to become a nun. However, her father forbade her from joining a convent, so Agnesi devoted herself to the study of mathematics and to supervising the household. With her tutor, Ramiro Rampinelli, Agnesi delved into calculus texts. In 1738, she published Propositiones Philosophicae, which included almost 200 theses on science and philosophy that she had defended at her father's soirees.

That same year, at the age of 20, Agnesi began writing Analytical Institutions as a calculus textbook for her younger brothers. It would take her nearly 10 years to complete and would eventually consist of two massive volumes—the first on algebra and geometry, the second on differential and integral calculus. She oversaw the work's publication in her home, soliciting feedback from fellow mathematicians. Upon its publication in 1748, the book revolutionized the study of calculus. In addition to integrating much of the contemporary information about calculus that had previously existed only in scattered fragments, Analytical Institutions introduced new ideas and methods. Of most significance was the cubic curve she discussed which now bears her name—the witch of Agnesi. This moniker derives from the fact that Agnesi actually misnamed her insight—referring to it as the versiera (which translates from colloquial Italian as witch) rather than the proper versoria.

Agnesi's work brought her immediate recognition. After being elected a member of the Accademia delle Scienze, an honorary society of intellectuals, she was nominated to become a professor at the University of Bologna by Pope Benedict XIV in 1752. However, she never served on the faculty. That same year, Agnesi's father died, and she abandoned mathematics to pursue her religious calling. For the rest of her life, Agnesi cared for the sick and the poor. In 1771, she was named the director of a home for the elderly by Cardinal Pozzobonelli. Although several mathematicians would occasionally send her work to review, she always responded that she was no longer concerned with such topics. After suffering for years from dropsy, also known as edema, Maria Gaëtana Agnesi died on January 9, 1799. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried with the poor in a common grave. Analytical Institutions remained the standard calculus textbook in Europe for nearly 100 years after her death.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Agnodice

(b. ca. 400 BCE)

physician

Agnodice is recognized as the first female gynecologist. There is, however, little concrete information about her life. Hyginus, a Latin author of the first century CE, provides the only existing account of Agnodice's life and work. Subsequent scholarship has suggested, though, that she may be a mythical figure rather than a flesh-and-blood physician. In any event, the story of her courageous decision to practice medicine in ancient Athens has earned her a respected place in the history of medicine.

No details about Agnodice's family are extant, though general facts about women's role in ancient medicine are known. While Greek women had few privileges, they were allowed to practice midwifery and healing. The famed medical pioneer Hippocrates (ca. 460 BCE) did not accept women at his primary medical school located on the island of Cos. However, he did allow women to attend another of his schools in Asia Minor, where they could study gynecology and obstetrics. After Hippocrates' death, women were barred from the practice of medicine, possibly because Athenian rulers discovered that women gynecologists were performing abortions. To deter those who might violate this ban, the death penalty was instituted as punishment. As many Athenian women were reluctant to visit male doctors, given the social codes of the period, women's access to medical care decreased after the imposition of the ban, and female mortality rates rose.

Agnodice came of age in this political and social climate. Determined to become a doctor, Agnodice flouted the laws barring her entrance into the profession. She disguised herself as a man, cutting her hair and dressing in male garments. After attending classes taught by the renowned Herophilos at the University of Alexandria, Agnodice began to practice as a gynecologist. According to Hyginus's account, Agnodice went to assist a woman in labor. Thinking Agnodice was a male doctor, the woman refused her help. But Agnodice lifted up her clothes and revealed herself to be a woman and was thus able to treat her patient, wrote Hyginus.

When news of her skills and gender spread, Greek women flocked to Agnodice, at last able to confide in a female doctor. Unaware of Agnodice's gender, male doctors grew jealous of her popularity and accused her of seducing women (and of the women feigning illness to visit Agnodice). Agnodice was dragged before an Athenian court. She was forced to reveal her gender to avoid the death penalty for corrupting women. Despite her confession, the male physicians became more outraged and accused her more forcefully for breaking the law forbidding women from studying medicine. Agnodice was rescued from her plight when the wives of leading men arrived in the court. According to Hyginus, they declared that you men are not spouses but enemies, since you are condemning her who discovered health for us.

The truth of Hyginus's tale of Agnodice cannot be confirmed. Nonetheless, later women seeking entrance into the medical profession employed Agnodice as a symbol for the precedent of women in medicine. Agnodice also underscores the powerful impulse of women to be treated by female physicians—an argument Victorian women raised to justify the need for women gynecologists more than 2,000 years after Agnodice's time.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Agricola, Georgius

(b. 1494–d. 1555)

mineralogist, geologist, metallurgist

Though his exhaustive knowledge of diverse subjects earned him the title the Saxon Pliny, Georgius Agricola was best known as the author of De re metallica libri XII (On the Subject of Metals), a seminal text in the understanding of metallurgy and the mining and smelting processes of the time. Living in the mining capitals of St. Joachimsthal in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) and Chemnitz, Germany, Agricola had extensive exposure to every aspect of mining, including the management of the mines and the machinery used, such as pumps, windmills, and waterwheels, which he incorporated into his books.

Born on March 24, 1494, in Glauchau, Saxony, to Gregor Bauer, a dyer and wool draper, Georg Bauer latinized his name to Georgius Agricola, as was the custom at the time. His youngest and favorite brother followed his footsteps to Chemnitz in 1540 to become a metallurgist, and his oldest brother entered the priesthood in Zwickau. In 1526 Agricola married the widow of Thomas Meiner, the director of the Schneeberg mining district; she died in 1541. In 1542 Agricola remarried, this time to Anna Schûtz, the daughter of the guild master and smelter owner Ulrich Schûtz, who entrusted his wife and children to Agricola's care upon his death in 1534.

In 1514 at the late age of 20 Agricola entered Leipzig University, where he earned his B.A. in 1515. The university retained him as a lecturer in elementary Greek for the next year, after which Agricola went to Zwickau, where he organized a new Schola Graeca in 1519. In 1520, he wrote his first book, De prima ac simplici institutione grammatica, which described new humanistic methods of teaching. Agricola then fled from the radicalism of the Reformation back to Leipzig, where he studied medicine between 1523 and 1526. During this time he served on the editorial board in Bologna and Venice for the Aldina editions of texts by Galen and Hippocrates of Cos, interests he maintained later in life. After earning his M.D., he left Italy via the mining districts of Carinthia, Styria, and the Tyrol bound for Germany, where he stayed briefly until the mining city of St. Joachimsthal elected him town physician and apothecary in 1527.

In 1534 Agricola departed for Chemnitz, yet another city renowned for its mining, which elected him mayor in 1545. The combination of chronically sick miners and heavy metals allowed Agricola to investigate the pharmaceutical uses of minerals. Agricola published on a wide range of topics, including politics and economics. In 1554 he published De peste libri III, based on his experiences administering care to sufferers of the black plague that swept through Saxony between 1552 and 1553.

De re metallica libri XII (On the Subject of Metals), his crowning achievement, did not appear until 1556, four months after his death. The text surveyed all aspects of mining at the time, from working conditions to metallurgy to smelting processes. Agricola had finished writing it during his return visit to St. Joachimsthal, where he had started drafting it 20 years earlier. While there he met the designer Blasius Weffring, who spent the next three years creating 292 woodcuts to illustrate the text. A year later Phillipus Bech translated the work into Old German but retained the woodcuts, creating an edition so fine that it survived 101 years in seven editions.

Agricola died on November 21, 1555, in Chemnitz. The mining engineer and future United States president Herbert Hoover revived Agricola's legacy in 1912 by preparing an English edition of his masterwork, On the Subject of Metals, a testament to the primacy of Agricola's work.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Aiken, Howard

(b. 1900–d. 1973)

inventor, computer engineer

Howard Hathaway Aiken helped usher in the computer age by inventing the Harvard Mark I and Mark II, the precursors to modern digital computers. The New York Times hailed the significance of his invention: At the dictation of a mathematician, it will solve in a matter of hours equations never before solved because of their intricacy and the enormous time and personnel which would be required to work them out on ordinary office calculators. Aiken himself did not fully comprehend the potential of his invention, estimating in 1947 that only six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States.

Howard Hathaway Aiken was born on March 9, 1900, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended Arsenal Technical High School. While studying electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, he worked for the Madison Gas and Electric Company. After he earned his bachelor's degree in 1923, the company promoted him to chief engineer.

In 1927, Aiken moved to Chicago to work for Westinghouse Electric Manufacturing Company. Four years later, he took up a research position in the physics department at the University of Chicago. He pursued doctoral study there and at Harvard University, focusing his dissertation on a theory of space-charge conduction in vacuum tubes. This topic required calculations that would have taken him a lifetime to complete, so in 1937 he proposed the design and construction of a calculating machine. The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself, he wrote, jovially adding that the computer was only a lazy man's idea.

Harvard physics department chair Frederick Saunders pointed out that lab technician Carmelo Lanza had already worked on such a machine, stored in the Science Center attic: a set of brass wheels from Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. The prospect of completing Babbage's unfinished task (the existing 19th-century technology could not actualize his design) inspired Aiken, who kept the wheels in his office thereafter: There's my education in computers, right there, he would say of them.

Aiken sought to build a machine that answered the multiple demands of scientists and mathematicians: … whereas accounting machines handle only positive numbers, scientific machines must be able to handle negative ones as well; … scientific machines must be able to handle such functions as logarithms, sines, cosines and a whole lot of other functions; the computer would be most useful for scientists if, once it was set in motion, it would work through the problem frequently for numerous numerical values without intervention until the calculation was finished; and that the machine should compute lines instead of columns, which is more in keeping with the sequence of mathematical events.

Harvard granted Aiken his Ph.D. in 1939, appointing him an instructor in physics and communication engineering. That year, the Navy Board of Ordnance contracted Harvard to conduct research in preparation for World War II. At the same time, Aiken was searching for financial support from the private sector—he first appealed to the Monroe Calculating Machine Company, which declined but referred him to International Business Machines (IBM) president Thomas J. Watson, who promised support of $200,000.

IBM engineer Robert V. D. Campbell supervised construction of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), as the computer was first called, at the Endicott, New York, IBM plant. Measuring 51 feet long, two feet wide, and eight feet high, it weighed more than 30 tons, with its 530 miles of wires and 760,000 moving parts—including 2,200 counter wheels and 3,300 relay components. Operators fed information in by tape or punch card, with output returning on punch cards or by electronic typewriter. It sounded like a roomful of ladies knitting when running.

The computer could manipulate positive and negative numbers to 23 decimal places, adding them in three-10ths of a second, and multiplying in four seconds; it could also subtract, divide, and store tabulations in its 72 storage registers. Grace Hopper, who collaborated with Aiken to develop these library functions and later invented the COBOL computer language, discovered the first computer bug—a moth squished by a relay switch.

The computer went into operation in May 1944. In accordance with the original agreement, IBM donated the computer to Harvard, which dedicated it on August 14, 1944, earning it its lasting name—the Harvard Mark I, which remained functional for the next 14 years and now resides (in sections) in the Harvard Science Center lobby, at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and in the IBM historical collection. After finishing the Mark I, Aiken continued to advance his design; the navy posted him at the Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren, Virginia, where he finished the Mark II in 1947. Whereas the Mark I combined electronic with mechanical workings, the Mark II was fully electronic. Run by 13,000 electronic relays, the Mark II could add in two-10ths of a second and multiply in seven-10ths of a second, storing up to 100 10-digit figures and signs.

By 1952, Aiken had designed and built Marks III and IV. In recognition of his work, the U.S. Navy promoted him to the rank of commander in its Research Department, and Harvard promoted him to a full professorship in applied mathematics. He also founded Harvard's Computer Science program, one of the first of its kind. He retired from Harvard in 1961, moving to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to take up a professorship in information technology at the University of Miami.

In 1964, Aiken received the Harry M. Goode Memorial Award from the Computer Society. He died on March 14, 1973, in St. Louis, Missouri, before the personal computer revolution brought the digital computers that he invented into households worldwide.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Ajakaiye, Deborah Enilo

(b. ca. 1940– )

geologist

Deborah Ajakaiye has studied the geophysics of Nigeria, where she was born around 1940. Unlike many traditional Africans, Ajakaiye's parents believed in education for girls as well as for boys and encouraged her schoolwork as well as her career pursuits. Raised in the tin-mining city of Jos in the Oyo province of Nigeria, Ajakaiye has said that it was a primary school teacher who first awakened her interest in science. She received her bachelor's degree from University College in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1962. She then went on to graduate training at the University of Birmingham in Britain, from which she received her master's degree, and Adhadu Bello University in Nigeria, from which she received her Ph.D. in 1970. I chose … geophysics because I felt that this field could make possible significant contributions to the development of my country, she wrote in a 1993 paper for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ajakaiye points out that geophysics can help a country identify valuable natural resources. For instance, she says, Africa is rich in several minerals needed by high-technology industries, and some parts of the continent, including Nigeria, possess large deposits of uranium, oil, natural gas, and coal. Selling these resources can give a country the money it needs to feed, house, and educate its people. Geophysics can also identify sources of precious groundwater and help to predict natural disasters.

Ajakaiye has looked for all these resources in Nigeria. In some studies she used a new technique called geovisualization, in which computers produce three-dimensional images of materials below the Earth's surface. Ajakaiye and her students, who included several women, also carried out a survey for a geophysical map of northern Nigeria. By the end of the survey quite a few Nigerian men had changed their attitudes toward their female counterparts, she noted.

In addition to conducting research, Ajakaiye has taught at Adhadu Bello University and the University of Jos, both in Nigeria. In recent years she has been professor of physics at the University of Jos and the dean of the university's natural science faculty. She was the first woman professor of physics in West Africa, the first woman dean of science in Nigeria, the first female fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science, and the first female president of the Nigeria Mining and Geo-Sciences Society (NMGS). She has worked most recently with other scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston on what is called the structural style project in the Niger Delta.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Alder, Kurt

(b. 1902–d. 1958)

organic chemist

Kurt Alder's name is inextricably linked with that of Otto Diels, his mentor, collaborator, and codiscoverer of one of the most ubiquitous reactions in the natural world, the Diels-Alder reaction. During his career, he applied this reaction to different combinations, yielding practical results (he invented a synthetic rubber), and other scientists utilized the Diels-Alder reaction in subsequent discoveries, such as the synthesis of morphine. Alder shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his compatriot, Otto Diels.

Kurt Alder was born on July 10, 1902, in Königshütte, Germany. His father, Joseph, was a schoolteacher in Kattowitz, in the Upper Silesia region. Poland acquired the region they lived in after World War I, prompting the family to move to Berlin to retain their German citizenship. Alder attended the Oberrealschule in Berlin, graduating to the University of Berlin in 1922 to study chemistry. He transferred to the Christian Albrecht University (now the University of Kiel), where he conducted his doctoral research on azocarboxylic ester under Otto Diels. He submitted his dissertation, On the Causes of the Azoester Reaction, in 1926 to earn his doctorate in chemistry.

Alder remained at the university, working as an assistant in Diels's laboratory. Alder collaborated with his mentor on the famous experiments that discovered the reaction that bears their joint name, the Diels-Alder reaction. The process conjoins a dienophile, or a double-bonded molecule, with a conjugated diene, or a molecule containing two adjacent double bonds. Alder and Diels reported on the reaction between the dienophile of acrolein and the diene of butadiene in the 1928 publication of their results.

In 1930, the University of Kiel promoted Alder to a lectureship in organic chemistry and, in 1934, promoted him again, to the title of extraordinary professor. Alder left academia for the industry in 1936, when he took up the directorship of scientific research at the Bayer Werke laboratory at I. G. Farbenindustrie in Leverkusen. The next year, he elucidated the Alder-Stein rules (in collaboration with G. Stein) predicting the stereochemical sensitivity of diene reactions.

During his industry tenure, Alder reversed the diene reaction to investigate the dissociation of components (as opposed to the adduction that he had been examining); he discovered in the process that five-carbon cyclic dienes are much less stable than six-carbon dienes. In the late 1930s, he elicited the Diels-Alder reaction between butadiene and styrene (a dienophile) in the presence of peroxides to form a synthetic rubber called Buna S (from the German Perbunan), which became an important substitute for natural rubber during World War II when resources became scarce.

In 1940, Alder left the industry and returned to the academy when Cologne University appointed him to its chair for experimental chemistry and chemical technology. While there, Alder discovered yet another form of diene synthesis, what he called a substituting addition, to identify a new type of reaction—a concerted or ene reaction. Alder remained at Cologne throughout the 1940s, serving as dean of its Faculty of Philosophy from 1949 through 1950.

Alder and Diels shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their joint role in identifying the chemical reaction named after them. The award recognized the significance of their discovery of a process that has been the basis of ongoing scientific advancement in the understanding of the natural world. For example, M. Gates utilized the reaction in his synthesis of morphine, the pharmacological foundation of poppy-based narcotics such as opium and heroin.

Besides the Nobel Prize, Alder also received the Emil Fischer Memorial Medal from the Association of German Chemists in 1938, and was inducted into the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina in Halle. In 1950, the University of Cologne conferred on him the status of honorary doctor of medicine, and four years later, the University of Salamanca in Spain awarded him with an honorary doctorate. In 1955, Alder joined with 17 other Nobel Laureates to use their collective moral leverage to effect world peace by urging nations to denounce war. He died in Cologne on June 20, 1958, at the age of 55, after suffering from declining health.

Entry Author: Oakes, Elizabeth H.

Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth

(b. 1901–d. 1968)

physician

Hattie Elizabeth Alexander's greatest contribution to medical science was her discovery of a treatment for influenzal meningitis, a common and often fatal disease that afflicted infants and children. Her work in this area led her to investigate bacterial resistance to antibiotics and to conclude that such resistance was caused by genetic mutation. She was also a