John Dee (1527-1608)
mathematician, astronomer, geographer and mystic. Dee was born in London in 1527 and studied at Cambridge. He proved to be not only a navigation expert and precise scientist who coined terms such as “British Empire”, but also an alchemist and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. His field of research and activity was in the middle between science and so-called magic. Dee, who had the largest library in his country, died in Mortlake-Surrey in 1608.
James Alfred Ewing (1855-1935)
physicist and engineer. Sir James Alfred Ewing was born in Dundee in 1855 and studied in Edinburgh. He is considered to be the inventor of the term hysteresis, which is mainly used in cybernetics and has to do with constant states of substances. He also developed seismographs and the Parsons turbine. Ewing also worked as a professor of technical mechanics in Tokyo before he died in 1935.
William Grove (1811-1896)
natural scientist, lawyer. Sir William Robert Grove was born in Swansea in 1811 and studied at Oxford. He became one of the two great discoverers of the fuel cell (together with CF Schönbein), which is an energy converter and was popular as a battery with telegraphs. In London he worked as a professor of experimental philosophy and later as a judge. Grove was a member of the Royal Society (from 1864) and has received several awards. He died in London in 1896.
Peter Higgs (born 1929)
physicist. Peter Ware Higgs was born in Wallsend in 1929. He studied and researched at various universities in London and Edinburgh. The Higgs mechanism was named after him. In the mid-1960s, he predicted the existence of elementary particles, which was only confirmed in 2012 at CERN in Geneva. One also speaks of the “god particle”. The award-winning scientist is one of the most famous physicists in the world.
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
biochemist. Rosalind Franklin was born in London in 1920 to a respected Jewish family and studied natural sciences in Cambridge. Due to their research it was possible to decipher the structure of the DNA. But their analyzes of the nature of viruses, coal and coke are also internationally recognized. Rosalind Franklin died in London in 1958.
Dame Jane Goodall (born 1934)
behavioral scientist. Goodall was born in London in 1934. She began observing behavior at an early age and was then given a doctorate at Cambridge University – without any studies. Your long-term studies on the behavior of great apes (chimpanzees) contribute fundamentally to a better understanding of our species. Goodall has received several awards for her services, including the Kyoto Prize, Bambi and various honorary doctorates. She was the cover girl for science magazines.
William Harvey (1578-1657)
physician, anatomist, and physiologist. Harvey was born in 1578 in Folkestone, the first of nine children of the merchant Thomas Harvey and his wife Joan. He studied in Cambridge and Padua. In 1602 he had his doctorate in his pocket and established himself as a doctor in the London area. Between 1642 and 1645 he operated in Oxford. Harvey discovered the bloodstream and was considered one of the best doctors in England at the time. Harvey died in 1675.
Stephen Hawking (born 1942)
astrophysicist. Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford in 1942, the son of a tropical medicin and an economist. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge. The scientist is best known in Germany since his book “A Brief History of Time” (published in German in 1991). Hawking also deals with black holes. He has ALS – a motor nervous system disease.
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925)
physicist, mathematician. Oliver Heaviside was born in London in 1850. The Heaviside layer was named after him – a conductive layer in the atmosphere that is essential for the propagation of waves (especially radio waves) around the earth. Electromagnetism plays a major role in this. He was also considered a pioneer in the introduction of vectors. Heaviside died in Homefield in 1925.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703)
polymath. Robert Hooke was born in Freshwater in 1635. He attended Westminster School in London and University in Oxford. Hooke was a curator of the Royal Society. The law of elasticity is named after him. The polymath also served his country as an architect after the great fire in London in 1666. Hooke died in London in 1703.
William Huggins (1824-1910)
astronomer and physicist. William Huggins was born in London in 1824 and is considered the founder of spectroscopy. He and his wife did research in his private London observatory and were the first to be able to distinguish between nebulae and galaxies. He achieved this through spectral analysis. Sir William Huggins, who was also a member of the Royal Society, died in 1910 in the city of his birth.
James Prescott Joule (1818-1889)
experimental physicist. James Prescott Joule was born in Salford in 1818 and studied mathematics, among other things. Even today every student learns terms such as Joule heat or Joule’s law. As the core of his research, the scientist had carried out electromagnetic experiments, carried out experiments with electricity and thermodynamics, and gained groundbreaking insights from them. So he could prove the conservation of energy. Joule, after whom a physical unit was named, died in Sale in 1889 as a result of a long illness.
