ANCIENT SCIENTISTS
Ptolemy (born A.D. 90), was an astronomer whose model of the universe
became the standard geocentric theory, until Copernicus. Ptolemy’s writings
proved influential in early astronomy, and he was revered throughout the Middle
Ages in Europe and Arabia. He also provided the most authoritative compilation
of constellations in antiquity. Although he helped to discredit Aristarchos’
heliocentric universe (more on that later), and ensured the geocentric model
would be universally accepted for the next 1,000 years, Ptolemy did much to
raise the standard of astronomy.
Ptolemy
did this by highlighting the disjunction between mathematical models and
actual, observed patterns in the stars. Because planets actually follow
ellipses (a fact not proven until Kepler), ancient astronomers relied on
epicycles (circles within circles within circles) to explain the motion of the
planets. Epicycles can be quite accurate, but they are never perfect. Ptolemy’s
work on astronomy did much to highlight the problems of epicycles, ensuring
that later astronomers continued to search for better explanations.
Euclid (born c. 330 B.C.), is most famous for his contributions to
geometry, but he also wrote treatises on astronomy and optics. Euclid’s treatment
of optics reflects his love of geometry. Euclid argued that vision occurs when
rays emit from the eye to form a cone. From there, Euclid proceeds
geometrically. Everything the rays touch is seen. If one reduces vision to a
geometric exercise, Euclid’s treatment of optics is profound. Issues such as
medium, light and whether there was a physical connection between the eye and
the viewed object were passed over. Nevertheless, Euclid’s treatment of the
subject would be influential until the age of Ptolemy.
Galen, born in A.D. 129 in Asia Minor, was the second most revered
physician in antiquity, after Hippocrates. He served as the court physician for
three Roman emperors and was one of the most prolific writers in the ancient
world. His contributions to medicine, anatomy and physiology are numerous and
profound. Not unlike the fictional Gregory House, Galen was known for being
more interested in understanding the cause of a disease than the comfort of his
patients, whom he tended to treat as specimens. The contribution to science
that puts Galen on this list is not for any particular discovery or theory, but
the absolute rigor and high standard he applied to developing medical
knowledge.
Human dissection was outlawed in Rome, so Galen used pigs and monkeys to
understand anatomy. His careful and meticulous dissections revealed many
anatomical features that had been missed by others, such as his discovery that
arteries contain blood. His theories of human physiology and disease were based
directly on this research, leading to conclusions difficult for critics to
dispute. Unfortunately, Galen’s careful research led him to conclude that
excess blood was frequently the cause of diseases and he helped to popularize
bloodletting, a traditional medical practice in the Eastern Mediterranean, that
had never gained popularity in Italy. Modern medicine has shown that, except in
a small number of situations, bloodletting is useless and actually harmful, but
Galen’s authority and defense of the practice ensured bloodletting would become
an accepted procedure until the 19th century. His careful work, while wrong in
its conclusions, raised the standard of medical theory immeasurably.
Herophilos was born in 335 B.C. — almost 500 years before Galen — in
Asia Minor. He founded a school in Alexandria, Egypt, where he entered the
service of the Ptolemaic dynasty. With Ptolemaic patronage, Herophilos and his
students were permitted to violate the sanctity of the dead and dissect humans.
Throughout antiquity, Mediterranean cultures maintained a strong taboo against
cutting or dissecting the dead. Herophilos and his students were the
first-known Greeks to violate this taboo in order to study anatomy. They may
have even dissected condemned prisoners while they were still alive (which is
known as vivisection).
Herophilos’ findings did much to advance knowledge of human anatomy.
Much of the terminology he coined is still used in modern medicine. His
student, Erasistratos, built on Herophilos’ findings and argued that “pneuma”
ran through arteries and nerves. Pneuma (“breath” in Greek) was a substance
imagined to be the life force that enables much of the body to run.
Erasistratos hypothesized that pneuma was pulled from the air via the lungs and
sent through the arteries. It finally arrived at the brain, which refined the
pneuma and sent it through nerves to control the body and feel sensations.
Empedocles (born c. 490 B.C.), was among the last of the Presocratics,
philosophers before Socrates who wrote in verse. It was Empedocles who first
hypothesized the classic four elements: fire, earth, water and air. Empedocles
argued that all material is a mix of these four elements. Wood, for example, is
made primarily of fire and earth. Burning wood separates the fire, leaving only
earth (ash) behind. His notion that all physical material can be broken down
into just mixtures of earth, water, air and fire seems hopelessly naive, but
the idea had a profound impact on the physical sciences.
Empedocles’ true contribution to science, however, was not what he was
arguing for, but, rather,what he was arguing against. Empedocles was attacking
the philosophies of Heraclitos and Parmenides. Heraclitus argued that reality
is perpetually changing, and that material must come into and out of existence
for change to exist. Parmenides argued that all change is an illusion,
including time and movement (his student, Zeno, illustrated this with several
famous paradoxes). Empedocles’ theory of four elements was his attempt to show
that material, in its elemental form, cannot be destroyed or created. Change is
a result of things being mixed together or separated. Empedocles’ ideas anticipated
the first law of thermodynamics by more than 2,000 years, and his notion that
material is comprised of indivisible elements has proven invaluable to the
physical sciences.
Hippocrates (born c. 460 B.C.), is perhaps most famous for the oath that
bears his name. It is difficult to separate what Hippocrates believed versus
what his students believed. Since many of the texts that he supposedly wrote
differ greatly in style and date of composition, none can be definitively
identified as coming from him directly. Hippocrates developed the theory of
four humors, which was the mainstream theory of human physiology, until it was
disproved and displaced by modern medicine in the 19th century. The theory of
four humors states that the body’s principle fluids are blood, phlegm, black
bile and yellow bile. Disease arises from a disproportion of these four fluids,
or humors. Treatment required restoring the balance, usually through a change
in diet or exercise.
Hippocrates’
theory of humors has been thoroughly debunked, but Hippocrates contributed to
science by convincing other physicians that disease has a natural cause and is
not a punishment from the Gods. By arguing for disease as an imbalance in
bodily fluids, Hippocrates helped separate medicine from folk remedies. He did
not change the practice of medicine universally. Folk medicine and sacrifices
to Asclepius and Apollo never died out. However, he and his followers helped
elevate the practice to a legitimate science.
Aristotle (born 384 B.C.), was a Macedonian student in Plato’s school in
Athens. Aristotle is, of course, famous as one of the most important
philosophers in history. What is often forgotten, is that Aristotle had a
passion for marine biology. He wrote several treatises on the biological
sciences, and many observations he made while dissecting marine animals were
not confirmed until the 19th century. While his observations on anatomy were
mostly accurate, his conclusions on physiology and theory could be quite wrong.
An example is that he argued that all animals are in a hierarchy of complexity
based on the degree of body heat. Humans were at the top and insects and worms
were at the bottom. Aristotle also argued that the function of lungs and gills
were to cool down the bodies of animals.
Before
Aristotle, philosophers regarded the study of physics and astronomy as their
highest calling. Aristotle argued that the biological sciences were worth
studying because of the amount of information in them. This information was much
more readily available than in astronomy or physics. Aristotle’s prestige
helped to elevate the biological sciences within philosophy and he paved the
way for further developments.
Aristarchos (born 310 B.C.), was a Greek astronomer from the island of
Samos. He is known for being the first astronomer to suggest a heliocentric
view of the universe. Aristarchos made careful measurements of the relative
angles of the Moon and Sun. Given the level of technology available to him, it
is not surprising that his measurements were off. Based on his measurements, he
concluded that the diameter of the Sun is seven times the diameter of the
Earth, and is 18-20 times farther from the Earth than the Moon. In fact, it is
more than 400 times farther away, and 109 times the diameter of the Earth.
Aristarchos’ suggestion that the Earth orbits the Sun was immediately rejected
in antiquity.
Among his detractors was Cleanthes of Assos, one of the great luminaries
of early Stoic philosophy. Cleanthes stated that Aristarchos should be charged
with impiety for putting the Earth in motion. The greatest reason for the
rejection of Aristarchos’ model was stellar parallax. If the Earth orbited the
Sun, rather than remain still, then the angle of stars should change in
relation to the Earth throughout the year, since the Earth’s vantage point is
constantly changing. Aristarchos responded that stars are too far away for
parallax to be measurable (which is true), but without proof to back this claim,
it sounded more like a rationalization than a theory. Aristarchos’ theory was
ultimately correct, but Aristarchos was not able to meet the burden of proof.
So his theory was reasonably rejected, thus anticipating Marcello Truzzi’s
famous quote, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Pythagoras (born c. 570 B.C.), is most famous for the theorem he
reputedly discovered. Pythagoras was among the earliest of the Presocratic
philosophers, and his influence was widely felt in later philosophy. Pythagoras
was fascinated by the patterns numbers make, and he built his philosophy around
numbers, though he left no writings behind. He also founded one of the earliest
secret societies, which endeared him to conspiracy theorists the world over. He
was the first to argue that mathematics can be found in nature, but he did not
stop there. Later philosophers say he did not merely believe that nature is
mathematical, but that reality itself is math. He famously stated that “all is
number,” perhaps believing that reality is something akin to the Matrix.
Pythagoras’ belief that numbers are reality doesn’t really add up, but
he did contribute to science by showing that the universe can be captured
through mathematics. Without the addition of mathematics, the study of science
would never have escaped the purely theoretical. Philosophy seeks to answer
questions through the application of logic, and there is nothing more logical
than numbers. Later philosophers, building on Pythagoras, relied more and more
heavily on mathematics to explain the world.
It should not be surprising that Thales (born c. 624 B.C.) is listed as
number one. He is universally recognized as beginning Western philosophy by
arguing that nature can be explained without invoking the Gods, and one’s
explanation of how nature works must be defensible. His writings, if he wrote
at all, have not survived, and we must rely on the questionable assertions of
later philosophers to deduce what he believed.
Thales appears to have argued that the ultimate element is water, from
which everything else is made. He may also have believed that the earth was
flat and floated on water. Regardless of the specifics, he and his followers
emphasized explanations of the universe that did not involve appeals to the
supernatural. Each new theory his school developed was subjected to critical
analysis and refined, creating a tradition of critical thinking and debate that
led directly to Western philosophy.
FOREIGN
SCIENTISTS
Due to the fact that Archimedes was a person with
multiple interests, including math, physics, astronomy and engineering, he
managed to become a successful inventor. He became famous for his innovative
thinking and was the one to come up with a lot of innovative machines,
including the Archimedes screw that is still used today to pump liquids, coal,
grain and more. But probably his most famous discovery is the way of finding
the volume of objects that have an irregular shape. It is worth mentioning that
most of his works were meant to help his home city.
Leonardo Da Vinci was a great inventor, being fond of
engineering, astronomy, aeronautics, mathematics and more. His drawings include
a number of various inventions, the basics of which more or less can be found
in different technologies today. Da Vinci is considered to be the father of
modern science. Some of his most important inventions include the hydraulic
machine, the boat and design of a flying machine.
The famous Italian physicist and mathematician is the
author of the barometer (scientific tool used in the field of meteorology to
estimate atmospheric pressure), built in 1643. It would be interesting to note
that a number of Italian Navy submarines were named after the inventor.
The German inventor is the author of the Laufmaschine
(German for "running machine"), which was later called the velocipede
and is believed to be the forerunner of the bicycle and motorcycle. His
invention represented the first means of transport to use the two-wheeler
principle and the starting point of the mechanized personal transport.
The famous French chemist and microbiologist was the
one who has come up with the process of pasteurization, a process that involves
heating a food, usually liquid, to a certain temperature for a specific length
of time, and then cooling it instantly. Pasteurization is used today to slow
the development of microorganisms in food.
Everyone knows that jeans were invented in the United
States, some know that Levi Strauss was the author of this invention but few
know that Strauss was an immigrant from Germany managed to found in San
Francisco, California the world's first firm to manufacture blue jeans. The
company called Levi Strauss & Co., started its operation back in 1853.
The
famous German physicist Röntgen is the one who discovered the X-rays (also
known as Röntgen rays). This
invention allowed the German scientist to win the first Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1901.
FILIPINO SCIENTISTS
Karaoke: Invented in 1975 by Roberto del
Rosario. I really thought this was a Japanese invention, despite its’
popularity here, and I was completely wrong. A brilliant guy, he invented many
other musical devices, but Karaoke will always be remembered as his greatest
triumph (or bane to humankind, depending on your point of view.)
Medical Incubator: Invented in 1941 by Fe del
Mundo. She was the first Asian student in Harvard’s School of medicine.
Countless young lives were saved by her invention and genius.
Moon Buggy: Invented in 1968 by Eduardo San
Juan. He was the project leader for NASA in the buggy development: An
underfunded and underappreciated engineering success. This one has special
significance to me, due to my Grandfather working at the Cape in the early
space program. The moon buggy allowed greater exploration of the Moon, yet
Eduardo San Juan’s contribution has been relegated largely to status as a
footnote.
Erythromycin: Invented (Discovered) by Dr. Abelardo Aguilar in
1949. He sent a sample to Eli Lilly, who promptly stole the idea and patented
it, and later marketed it successfully. Remember kids, this is why the great
inventors always go to attorneys first… He never received a single peso from
his product, that saved millions of lives (Thank him if you are allergic to penicillin!).
Video Phone: Invented by Gregorio Zara, in 1955
no less! When James Bond was using one in Dr. No, it had already been in
existence a number of years. This is the predecessor of the camera in your
mobile!
Yoyo: Invented as a hunting weapon by the
ancient Filipinos, probably in the Visayas. “Discovered” when Magellan landed.
Prepared by: Jhez Cabaluna