PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: industrial development
American inventor
Thomas Edison, American inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world-record 1,093 patents. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial research laboratory. Edison was the quintessential American...
German astronomer
Johannes Kepler, German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the...
Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician
Galileo, Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific...
American industrialist
Henry Ford, American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. (Read Henry Ford’s 1926 Britannica essay on mass production.) Ford spent most of his life making...
French chemist and microbiologist
Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist who was one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. Pasteur’s contributions to science, technology, and medicine are nearly without precedent....
French philosopher and scientist
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle...
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz, German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement of the...
German physicist and philosopher
Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and philosopher who discovered (1925) a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932....
Greek mathematician
Archimedes, the most famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. Archimedes is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing...
Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist
William Thomson, Baron Kelvin, Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist who profoundly influenced the scientific thought of his generation. Thomson, who was knighted and raised to the peerage in...
English clergyman and scientist
Joseph Priestley, English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry. He is best remembered...
American inventor
Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph...
British-German astronomer
William Herschel, German-born British astronomer, the founder of sidereal astronomy for the systematic observation of the stars and nebulae beyond the solar system. He discovered the planet Uranus, hypothesized...
British mathematician and logician
Alan Turing, British mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer science,...
American engineer
Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian-born American research engineer best known for his pioneering work in the use of mathematics and the basic sciences in aeronautics and astronautics. His laboratory at the...
American inventor
Robert Fulton, American inventor, engineer, and artist who brought steamboating from the experimental stage to commercial success. He also designed a system of inland waterways, a submarine, and a steam...
American industrialist and inventor
George M. Pullman, American industrialist and inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, a luxurious railroad coach designed for overnight travel. In 1894 workers at his Pullman’s Palace Car Company initiated...
Polish-born French physicist
Marie Curie, Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel...
French military engineer
Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, French military engineer who revolutionized the art of siege craft and defensive fortifications. He fought in all of France’s wars of Louis XIV’s reign (1643–1715). Vauban...
American chemist
Irving Langmuir, American physical chemist who was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry.” He was the second American and the first industrial...
Italian physicist
Guglielmo Marconi, Italian physicist and inventor of a successful wireless telegraph, or radio (1896). In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with German physicist Ferdinand Braun....
Scottish inventor
James Watt, Scottish instrument maker and inventor whose steam engine contributed substantially to the Industrial Revolution. Watt was also known for patenting the double-acting engine and an early steam...
German-born American engineer
Wernher von Braun, German engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany and after World War II in the United States. Braun was born into a prosperous...
naturalized American engineer
Igor Sikorsky, pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. Sikorsky’s father was a physician and professor of psychology. His mother also was a physician...
German printer
Johannes Gutenberg, German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from movable type. Elements of his invention are thought to have included a metal alloy that could melt readily and...
American engineer, architect, and futurist
R. Buckminster Fuller, American engineer, architect, and futurist who developed the geodesic dome—the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure and the only practical...
American physicist
Edward Teller, Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen...
American engineer
James B. Eads, American engineer best known for his triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Mo. (1874). Another project provided a year-round navigation channel for New Orleans...
American engineer
Charles Stark Draper, American aeronautical engineer, educator, and science administrator. Draper’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was a centre for the design of navigational...
American professor and inventor
Robert Goddard, American professor and inventor generally acknowledged to be the father of modern rocketry. He published his classic treatise, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Goddard was...
American inventor
Lee de Forest, American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before...
French physician
René Laënnec, French physician who invented the stethoscope and perfected the art of auditory examination of the chest cavity. When Laënnec was five years old, his mother, Michelle Félicité Guesdon, died...
English astronomer
Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet, English astronomer and successor to his father, Sir William Herschel, in the field of stellar and nebular observation and discovery. An only child, John was educated briefly...
English radio astronomer
Sir Bernard Lovell, English radio astronomer, founder and director (1951–81) of England’s Jodrell Bank Experimental Station (now Jodrell Bank Observatory). Lovell attended the University of Bristol, from...
British scientist
William Hyde Wollaston, British scientist who enhanced the techniques of powder metallurgy to become the first to produce and market pure, malleable platinum. He also made fundamental discoveries in many...
American engineer
Charles Proteus Steinmetz, German-born American electrical engineer whose ideas on alternating current systems helped inaugurate the electrical era in the United States. At birth Steinmetz was afflicted...
Canadian scientist
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, Canadian radio pioneer who on Christmas Eve in 1906 broadcast the first program of music and voice ever transmitted over long distances. The son of an Anglican minister, Fessenden...
American inventor
Edwin H. Armstrong, American inventor who laid the foundation for much of modern radio and electronic circuitry, including the regenerative and superheterodyne circuits and the frequency modulation (FM)...
British scientist
Lord Rayleigh, English physical scientist who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are basic to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. He received the Nobel Prize...
American inventor and manufacturer
Eli Whitney, American inventor, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer, best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin but most important for developing the concept of mass production of interchangeable...
English inventor and engineer
Henry Bessemer, inventor and engineer who developed the first process for manufacturing steel inexpensively (1856), leading to the development of the Bessemer converter. He was knighted in 1879. Bessemer...
American astronomer
George Ellery Hale, American astronomer known for his development of important astronomical instruments, including the Hale Telescope, a 200-inch (508-cm) reflector at the Palomar Observatory, near San...
Flemish cartographer
Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer whose most important innovation was a map, embodying what was later known as the Mercator projection, on which parallels and meridians are rendered as straight lines...
Swiss-Belgian physicist
Auguste Piccard, Swiss-born Belgian physicist notable for his exploration of both the upper stratosphere and the depths of the sea in ships of his own design. In 1930 he built a balloon to study cosmic...
American electronics engineer
Steve Wozniak, American electronics engineer, cofounder, with Steve Jobs, of Apple Computer, and designer of the first commercially successful personal computer. Wozniak—or “Woz,” as he was commonly known—was...
American inventor
Oliver Evans, American inventor who pioneered the high-pressure steam engine (U.S. patent, 1790) and created the first continuous production line (1784). Evans was apprenticed to a wheelwright at the age...
American engineer and inventor
Vladimir Zworykin, Russian-born American electronic engineer and inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems. Zworykin studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, where from...
American industrialist and inventor
Cyrus McCormick, American industrialist and inventor who is generally credited with the development (from 1831) of the mechanical reaper. McCormick was the eldest son of Robert McCormick—a farmer, blacksmith,...
British actor and director
Edward Gordon Craig, English actor, theatre director-designer, producer, and theorist who influenced the development of the theatre in the 20th century. Craig was the second child of a liaison between...
Russian scientist
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian research scientist in aeronautics and astronautics who pioneered rocket and space research and the development and use of wind tunnels for aerodynamic studies. He was also...