Here it may be useful to quote from the introduction.
“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”
Prior to this publication mankind had only myth or religion to rely upon for explaining the origin of his existence. While Darwin alluded to human evolution, it was only with this understatement; “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”. His was the “first alternative to religious creation dogma” known to exist. Today, Darwin’s theory of evolution remains a bedrock of science even while castigated by many of the Christian faith.
Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) and Frederick Engels (November 28, 1820 - August 5, 1895) The “fathers of communism” the two were revolutionary German political/economist theorists. Their book, The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The opening states, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Marx, the more famous of the two, went on to write Das Kapital. Marx believed that communism would replace capitalism just as capitalism had replaced feudalism. The socio-economic change he championed resulted from his view that the inherent internal tensions of capitalism would lead to it’s destruction. These tensions he claimed would lead the social class that owned the means of the production of wealth, the bourgeoisie, to “produce, above all, --- (their) own grave-diggers”.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel (October 21, 1883 - December 10, 1896) While the invention of gunpowder is lost in the prehistory of China, Nobel “fathered modern explosive technology” when he learned to stabilize nitrocellulose with diatoms; the invention of dynamite. Extraordinarily useful in peace and in war, Nobel was torn by its destructive use in war. Consequently he “fathered the Nobel Prize”. He willed the most of his vast wealth to be used to honor men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature. Since 1901, Nobel Prize honorees have been so honored in these four fields. A fifth, a Peace Prize was added later.
Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 – January 6, 1884) The “father of classic genetics” Mendel was born in the Austrian Empire in what is now the Czech Republic. He began his monastic life as an Augustinian Priest in 1843. Mendel was the son of a farmer and enjoyed gardening as a youth. This interest was carried into his monastery garden where he undertook the study of variation in plants. Eventually, he concluded over 29,000 tests using pea plants. Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance, as they would later be known, were presented in his Experiments on Plant Hybridization paper in 1865. It was published in 1866. The genius of his work was, however, not recognized. In the final 35 years of the 19th Century his work was cited a grand total of 3 times. Mendel died without knowing the importance of his seminal work. It was the dawn of the 20th Century before his work was rediscovered and its importance recognized.
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (January 27, 1834 – February 2, 1907) Born in Siberia, the Russian was a Professor of Chemistry at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute as well as the University of St. Petersburg he “fathered the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements”. His Principles of Chemistry was published in 1869. At that time 63 of the 92 naturally occurring elements were known to exist. These he arraigned in a Periodic Table (“the epitome of patterning”) by means of an ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties. In doing so, he left space for new elements not yet discovered and pointed out atomic weights that were in error. The noble gases were as yet undiscovered but easily accommodated by the addition of Group 18, a new table column on the left. Some have said he was inspired by the game of Solitaire in his development of the Periodic Table. In that others before him had unsuccessfully sought tabular arrangements, this is unlikely. As Director of the Bureau of Weight and Measures his new standard for 80 proof vodka was incorporated into Russian Law, an accomplishment that may be valued more highly by some than his development of the Periodic Table, the more famous and useful of the two accomplishments.
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) A Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist, Maxwell’s equations on electromagnetic theory “fathered the second great unification in physics”, the first having been Isaac Newton’s classical mechanics. Maxwell proved that electricity, magnetism, and light were all manifestations of the electromagnetic field.
Sir Joseph John “J.J.” Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940)
A British physicist, he discovered the electron and became “father to the atomic model” then refereed to as “plum pudding”. Thompson’ atomic model would be sequentially improved by Thompson, then Bohr. The classic Bohr atomic model continues, because of it’s simplicity, to be the more widely taught even though a later orbital model better describes its quantum nature. Thomson would later invent the electron microscope.
Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) An Austrian psychiatrist, the “father of psychoanalysis” no one had been so interested in the unconscious mind as the source of desires and mechanism of repression as was he. Freud constructed the id, ego, and super-ego as mechanisms of the mind in seeking to understand unconscious consequence. Free association, dream interpretation, and transfer theory may be the best known of his psychoanalytical methodology. There is both adulation and disdain for his work. But no one argues against the consideration that he was responsible for establishing his field of study more than any.
Mohandas Farmhand “Mohatma” Gandhi (October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) Honored in India as the “father of the nation” Gandhi is recognized as the world-wide “father of non-violent revolution”.
Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx “ Max” Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) A German physicist , “father of quantum theory, the original basis for development of quantum mechanics”, the physics of the invisible world of the atom and its components. Planck’s constant, h, in the equation E=hv would be later proven by Einstein.
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) The “worlds most famous individual and arguably the most contributive scientist and physicist of all time”, his four Annus Mirabilis Papers (Wunderjahr in German and Miracle Year in English) of 1905 which he developed while employed as a patent examiner in Switzerland, would propel him to world fame. The first, related to “Photoelectric effect”, proved the duality of light consisting of both waves and particles. The second, about “Brownian motion”, was credited by Perrin as essential in determining the famous Avogadro number, that being 6.022 x 1023, the number of particles of a gram mole of any chemical substance. The third, about “Special relativity”, provides for the space-time dimension with the speed of light being fixed and not to be exceeded. Finally the paper, about “Matter and energy equivalence”, gives us the “worlds most famous equation”, E = mc2 . A German Jew, Einstein fled Nazi Germany to Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study. He influenced President Roosevelt to build the atom bomb.
Ernest Rutherford (August 30, 1871 – October 19, 1937) The “father of nuclear physics and discover of the proton” Rutherford, a New Zealander, did his graduate work in England where he returned from Canada’s McGill University. There he conducted his famous gold foil experiment (1909) which demonstrated the nuclear nature of the atom. He described his reaction to the experiment thusly, “It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you”. Later he determined the half life associated with
radio activity and was the first to transmute one element to another; from nitrogen to oxygen.
Sir James Chadwick (October 20, 1891 – July24, 1974) An English physicist and “discoverer of the neutron” and phenomenon related to them, preparing the way towards nuclear fission. He later joined the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb.
Niels Henrik David Bohr (7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) A Danish physicist, his “conception of the principle of complementarity”, that items could be separately analyzed as having several contradictory properties, would lead to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the deep understanding of quantum mechanics known as the Copenhagen interpretation. While Einstein had made great contributions to quantum mechanics, he maintained grave doubts about it throughout his life. Einstein’s challenges were successfully answered by Bohr in what would be famously known as the Bohr-Einstein debates.
Thomas (Tommy) Harold Flowers, (December 22, 1905 – October 25, 1998) “father of the programmable electronic computer” Flowers was an English engineer and designer of Colossus, the essential machine used at Bletchley Park to break the WWII German Enigma code. The complexity of Colossus is evident from its use of 1,800 vacuum tubes assembled in various configurations. The previous most complicated computer was non-programmable and used 150 vacuum tubes.
William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) A British-born American physicist and inventor, he was the “father of the transistor”. Bell Labs placed Shockley in charge of a newly formed Solid State Physics Group with the assignment to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Commercialization of the miniaturized transistor radio for Christmas sale in 1954 by Texas Instruments would lead to development of Silicon Valley as the hotbed of electronic innovation.
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