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(Albert) Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein's career began as a teacher for mathematics and physics while he was expanding the idea of Max Planck's quantum theory by adding the hypothesis of the light quantum. Einstein's discoveries were revolutionary even for today's physics: it develops a new understanding of the ration between space and time, and also of the force of gravity. Of course, he won a Nobel prize for his discoveries.

 

Before he achieved this success it was a long journey for him.
Albert Einstein was born on the 14th March 1879 in Ulm, Germany. His family was his mother Pauline and his father Herrmann and his sister Maja. He attended elementary school in Munich. In his free time he loved to play the violin and listen to music. At the age of 5 he got in contact with a compass and at the age of 12 he had a geometry book which influenced him very much.
Moreover the medical student Max Talmund, who visited Einstein’s family, began to teach him mathematics and electricity. At the age of 16 he wrote his first exploration called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields". This paper was about the relative speed influenced him very much. Since 1894 Einsteins family lived in Milan, Italy because of his father’s work. Afterwards he went to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Switzerland and was really successful with mathematics and physics. During his studies he met his wife Mileva Maric. They had a daughter and two sons but they were divorced later. The year 1902 was the beginning of his career. He worked as an employee in the Swiss patent office. There he got in contact with electromagnetic devices and later on electrical signals. For more knowledge he studied James Maxwell's electromagnetic theories. In the year 1905 the journal “Annalen der Physik” published four papers of him where he wrote about the mathematic formula E=mc2. From 1913 to 1933 he was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and taught young students.
His enormous success came over night in 1919. Over 7 years he worked on the relativity and published his theory about relativity in 1916. People from all over the world honored and invited him and in 1921 he received the Nobel Price for Physics.
In December, 1932, he decided to leave Germany because of political reasons. He moved to the United States and got a position a the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study where he wanted to develop a new theory. Moreover he became political active and wanted world peace. On the 18th April 1955 he died at the age of 76.

What is his “Theory of Relativity” exactly?

This theory consist of two parts: special and general Relativity. It says that two objects that are moving to each other will need different time and space. Included are also the length, gravity, time and mass. Just imagine you sit in a car that drives 40 miles an hour and your best friend sits in a car that drives 10 miles an hour. Your real speed is 40 miles an hour but your relative speed, the speed difference between your car and the car of your friend, is 30 miles per hour. It is impossible to tell the difference between the gravity and the energy of a moving object.
The theory also says that you need an object in front of you to decide if you are moving or not. Imagine you are in space and around you is nothing. You can not decide if you move or not. If there is a star that you can fix with your eyes you can decide ( = special relativity ).



Berühmte Chemiker

Pierre Curie (1859 - 1906) You don't need to be a scientist to know who Maria Curie-Sklodowska was. You can also read about her on our website. As the only one woman in the world, she gained the Nobel Prize in two different fields of knowledge. She shared one of them with her no less famous husband, Pierre Curie. Her devotion to science made a huge impression on him.

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Jospeh John Thomson ( 1856 - 1940 ) A person who did many researches on cathode rays that, finally, led to the discovery of the electrons. Moreover, he was interested in the atomic structure and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906.

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André-Marie Ampère (1775 – 1836)

The flow of electric charge is named electric current. Maybe you heard something about electric current and in addition to this about the measure ampere (A) in your every day life, too. But do you know or asked yourself after what this measure is named? If not, here is the answer: after the founder of electrodynamics- after André-Marie Ampère.

 

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Johannes Gutenberg ( c. 1395 - 1468 ) How many newspapers, magazines and posters have you seen or read today? Many. But have you ever thought about the inventor who changed our life with the printing press? It was Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 with his printing press and movable blocks of letters and graphics that made materials available for the whole population.

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Marie Curie (1867-1934)

discovered the beta activity which was used in the Second World War to help injured soldiers. Because of this and some other cognition she won the Nobel price twice, in chemistry and physics; but that is only an extract of the achievements Marie Curie reached in her life.

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Isaac Newton ( 1643 – 1727 )

was an English Physicist and Mathematician. He is one of the most important characters of the 17th century because he developed principles of modern physics, as the law of motion. He is the person who has a great influence for our understanding of optics and motion today.

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Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein's career began as a teacher for mathematics and physics while he was expanding the idea of Max Planck's quantum theory by adding the hypothesis of the light quantum. Einstein's discoveries were revolutionary even for today's physics: it develops a new understanding of the ration between space and time, and also of the force of gravity. Of course, he won a Nobel prize for his discoveries.

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Max Planck (1858-1947)

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Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (1887- 1961)

After studying mathematics and physics in Vienna, Schrödinger became a professor for theoretical physics like Einstein and Max von Laue before him. Later he enunciates the "Schrödinger- equation" which builds the foundation of the quantum mechanics. In addition, he embosses the development of the molecular biology. With a lot of great chances to teach in different universities, Schrödinger also got awarded with a Nobel Prize in physics.

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Berühmte Biologen

Werner Arber (*1929)

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Francois Jacob ( 1920 - 2013 ) On 17 of June 1920, in Nancy, the city in the east of French, was born
François Jacob, the only child of Simon and Thérèse Jacob.
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Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958)

discovered the structure of the DNA and the Tobacco Mosaic Virus with X-ray crystallography.
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Robert Koch ( 1843 – 1910 )

is a very important character for our health today. He is the one who studied the bacteria that caused tuberculosis, anthax and cholrea, each of them an illness in the 18th century. Because of this extraordinary studies he won the nobel prize twice in 1905, in physiology and medicine and started to help people all over the world with his knowledge.

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Aristotle (384-322v.C.)

belongs to one of the most famous and influential philosopher in history. A lot of disciplines and (technical) terms has been significant embossed or even founded by Aristotle. Some examples for disciplines are biology, ethics, logic and physics. Terms that he has a great influence on are for example substance, potency, theory and practice. Out of his ideas, the "Aristotelism" was built up.

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Alexander Fleming ( 1881 - 1955 )
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Charles Darwin (1809-1822)

gives distinction to the theory of evolution. His idea was that the change of varieties and the origin gets realized by natural selection: only the fittest will survive because of struggling for life. His work influences biology and geology not only in the past. Even today the term "Darwinism" is used to explain how evolution works.

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Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
discovered in 1865 that there exists a certain numerical ratio which is called: Mendel's Laws of Heredity. This laws become the basic of genetics in science since today. With the help of Mendel's laws nearly everybody is able to anticipate the genetic recombination of allele pairs in sexual reproduction. The three laws are Laws of Inheritance, the law of the uniformity of hybrids, the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment.

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Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

he was a french chemist and microbiologist. He is classified as a founder of the modern bacteriology. He has examined the germ of hydrophobia and anthrax. After this discovery, he invented active immunisations against hydrophobia, anthrax, red murrain and chicken cholera. The term "pasteurization" is caused by Louis Pasteur. This means the method of carefully heating liquids up to 60 or 80 degrees with the effect that they become longer lasting.

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Theodor Schwann (1810-1822) and Matthias Schleiden (1804-1881)

both of them have made their own discoveries and achievements but together they have made one very important discovery (1839): "The Theory of Cells". This theory badges the cell as a basically particle of plants and animals. Schwann and Schleiden were able to recognize that some organism are unicellular, while others are multicellular. Additionally, they found out that the cell nucleus and the membrane belong to the properties of the cell, occupied by comparisons of different plant and animal tissues.

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Berühmte Chemiker

Gertrude B. Elion (1918-1999)

Gertrude B. Elion was born to immigrant parents in New York city. Her father came from Lithuania and her mother from Russia. She spent her early years in Manhattan where her father had a dental practice. When her brother was born they moved to Bronx.

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Louis Lumière (1864-1948)

Nobody of us can imagine the world without movies, cinemas and actors. It is unbelievable especially for people who are living in XX century. But you have to know that it was not always like this. The possibility to go to the cinema and watch a new movie gave us Louis Lumière and his brother Auguste.

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Carl Bosch ( 1874 - 1940)

 

Carl Bosch, born in Cologne, Germany, was a prominent German industrial chemist and entrepreneur.

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John Dalton (1766- 1844)

He is a famous English naturalist and teacher. He is considered as an innovator of chemistry because of his fundamental researches. Here are some examples of his successful research: the studies about thermal expansion, formulates the "Dalton- law", preparatory work of the periodic system of elements and he discovered the "Daltonism" which means acritochromacy.

Antoine Laurant de Lavoisier (1743-1794)
In 1772 he discovered the three conditions of matters: solid, liquid and gassy which he published in "Opuscule physique et chemique" (franc., small discourse of chemistry and physics). Additionally, he gave oxygen (acid-creator) his name because he discovered while some experiments that water and air are compound substances. Meanwhile the French Revolution, Lavoisier helped in introducing the "metric system" which unifies all of units.

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Dimitri Mendelejew (1834- 1907)

has succeeded to tabulate the periodic system (short: PSE= periodic system of elements) which contains every chemical element. He started the system to impose beginning with the smallest to the biggest element. When there were any properties in common, he put them into groups and in the periodic system he arranged them among themselves. In the end, Mendelejew illustrated a context between atomic weight and chemical characteristics. The element 101 "Mendelevium" was called by Mendelejew.

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Alfred Nobel (1833- 1896)

affected by his father and his engineering works, Nobel's career begins with some smaller inventions (gas -and liquid measuring instrument, barometer or manometer) which he also patented. In May 1862, Nobel ran the first successful underwater demolition with nitroglycerin. Two years later, he invented the detonation which he has called "Nobel's patent detonator". His idea of quality manufacturing was not safe to operate because a dynamite factory exploded -and even Nobel's little brother died. But Nobel did not surrender, he went on in improving the detonations.

Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)

since 1931 was an atomic physicist. Until he was awarded with the Nobel price in 1908, Rutherford made some discoveries of highest priority for chemists. One example could be the half life before he has been honored because of his studies about the decay of elements and the chemical composition of radioactive elements. In the year 1911, Rutherford refutes the atomic model of Joseph J. Thomson and originates the "Rutherfordium atomic model". Additionally, the first artificial nuclear reaction was also succeeded by Rutherford.