Europeans have been superior militarily since the 16-17th century. But only in that aspect.
04,by
Robert Wilde
Updated September 2017
You can study both the history of science (such as how the scientific method evolved) and the impact of science upon history, but perhaps the most human aspect of the subject is in the study of scientists themselves. This list of notable scientists is in chronological order of birth.
Pythagoras
We know relatively little about Pythagoras. He was born on Samos in the Aegean in the sixth century, possibly c
. 572 BCE. After traveling he founded a school of natural philosophy at Croton in Southern Italy, but he left no writings and students of the school probably attributed some of their discoveries to him, making it difficult for us to know what he developed. We believe he originated number theory and helped prove earlier mathematical theories, as well as arguing that the earth was the center of a spherical universe.
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Aristotle
After Lysippos/Wikimedia Commons
Born in 384 BCE in Greece, Aristotle grew up to be one of the most important figures in Western intellectual, philosophical and scientific thought, imparting a framework which underpins much of our thinking even now. He ranged across most subjects, providing theories which lasted for centuries and advancing the idea that experiments should be a driving force for science. Only a fifth of his surviving works survives, around a million words. He died in 322 BCE.
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Archimedes
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Born c. 287 BCE in Syracuse, Sicily, Archimedes’ discoveries in mathematics have led him to be labeled the greatest mathematician of the ancient world. He is most famous for his discovery that when an object floats in a fluid it displaces a weight of the fluid equal to its own weight, a discovery he, according to legend, made in a bath, at which point he jumped out shouting “Eureka”. He was active in invention, including military devices to defend Syracuse, but died in 212 BCE when the city was sacked.
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Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt
Little is known of Peter, including his dates of birth and death. We know he acted as tutor to Roger B
acon in Paris c. 1250, and that he was an engineer in the army of Charles of Anjou at the siege of Lucera in 1269. What we do have is the
Epistola de magnete, the first serious work on magnetics, one which used the term pole for the first time in that context. He is considered a precursor to modern scientific methodology and author of one of the medieval era’s great pieces of science.
Roger Bacon
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The early details of Bacon’s life are sketchy
. He was born c. 1214 to a wealthy family, went to university in Oxford and Paris and joined the Franciscan order. He pursued knowledge in all its forms, ranging across the sciences, leaving a legacy which stressed experimentation to test and discover. He had a prodigious imagination, predicting mechanized flight and transport, but was on several occasions confined to his monastery by unhappy superiors. He died in 1292.
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Nicolaus Copernicus
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Born to a wealthy merchant family in Poland in 1473, Copernicus studied at university before becoming a canon of Frauenburg cathedral, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Alongside his ecclesiastical duties he pursued an interest in astronomy, reintroducing the heliocentric view of the solar system, namely that the planets revolve around the sun. He died shortly after the first publication of his key work
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI, in 1543.
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Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
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Theophrastus adopted the name Paracelsus to show he was better than Celsus, a Roman medical writer.
He was born in 1493 to the son of a medic and chemist, studied medicine before traveling very widely for the era, picking up information wherever he could. Famed for his knowledge, a teaching post in Basle turned sour after he repeatedly upset superiors. His reputation was restored by his work
Der grossen Wundartznel. As well as medical advances, he redirected the study of alchemy towards medicinal answers and fused chemistry with medicine. He died in 1541.
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