Abdus Salam – Returning to Pakistan in 1951, taking up the post of head of the Mathematics Department at Punjab University, intending to found a school for research.
Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi – Thus, al-Zahrawi saw a variety of illnesses and injuries, could experiment with treatments, and could record in meticulous detail his observations.
Alan Turing – part of the team that developed the electromechanical device to decipher the German Enigma encryption.
Albert Einstein – photoelectric effect, on Brownian motion, on the matter-energy relationship (E=mc2), and on his own “special theory of relativity.”
Alfred Nobel – most of his considerable fortune going to establish a fund to award prizes in various human endeavors he felt important for civilization.
Aryabhata – It is also believed by historians that he became the head of an institution there… or perhaps of the university at Nalanda instead… or perhaps of the observatory at Taregana.
Carl Sagan – He assembled the physical messages sent into deep space: the Pioneer plaque and Voyager recording. Yet it was his effort to bring the cosmos to civilization which made him a celebrity.
Charles Darwin – Darwin began to evolve a theory. Upon his return, he wrote upon his musings in the Journal of Researches.
Emilie Du Chatelet – The marquise took up the serious study of Descartes’ analytical geometry, and began translating Newton’s new ‘Principia.’
Erwin Schrödinger – published a revolutionary paper – the first of several – explaining that an electron in an atom would move as a wave rather than a particle.
Euclid – The “father of Geometry,” Euclid is arguably the best known mathematician of history; his 13 books of ‘The Elements’ were the center of teaching geometry for two millennia.
Galileo Galilei – Born in 1564 in Pisa, the lad Galileo in 1583 embarked on the study of medicine at the University of Pisa, but left in 1585 due to financial difficulties.
Hildegard of Bingen – As she gained practical knowledge of diagnosis, prognosis, and healing, Hildegard blended physical treatment with holistic applications centered on “spiritual healing.”
Isaac Newton – found insights into the laws of planetary motion – eventually leading to his greatest hit, ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica,’ credited as the single most influential treatise on physics.
James Young – Young devised technique after observing how crude oil was affected by heated coal seams. Experimenting with artificial methods of reproducing this process would yield a variety of useful oils.
Janaki Ammal – completed chromosome studies on a wide variety of common plants, throwing new light on the evolution of a wide range of these, with special focus on medicinal ones.
Mary Leakey – While living in the Dordogne region of France riddled with prehistoric cave settlements, she became interested in Paleolithic archaeology.
Stephanie Kwolek – unexpectedly discovered that under certain conditions, molecules of rod-like polyamides would form liquid crystalline solutions.
