PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: technology
Italian artist, engineer, and scientist
Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: “Leonardo from Vinci”) Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the...
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...
prime minister of Cape Colony
Cecil Rhodes, financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890–96) and organizer of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines,...
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....
Swiss architect
Le Corbusier, internationally influential Swiss architect and city planner, whose designs combine the functionalism of the modern movement with a bold sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the first...
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...
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...
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...
American architect
Daniel Burnham, American architect and urban planner whose impact on the American city was substantial. He was instrumental in the development of the skyscraper and was noted for his highly successful...
French chemist
Antoine Lavoisier, prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored 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...
American mathematician
John von Neumann, Hungarian-born American mathematician. As an adult, he appended von to his surname; the hereditary title had been granted his father in 1913. Von Neumann grew from child prodigy to one...
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 businessman
Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is...
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 artist and author
William Morris, English designer, craftsman, poet, and early socialist, whose designs for furniture, fabrics, stained glass, wallpaper, and other decorative arts generated the Arts and Crafts movement...
British social reformer
Robert Owen, Welsh manufacturer turned reformer, one of the most influential early 19th-century advocates of utopian socialism. His New Lanark mills in Lanarkshire, Scotland, with their social and industrial...
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...
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 engineer
Vannevar Bush, American electrical engineer and administrator who developed the Differential Analyzer and oversaw government mobilization of scientific research during World War II. The son of a Universalist...
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 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...
German mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for his contributions to number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary...
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...
British chemist
Sir Humphry Davy, English chemist who discovered several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium) and compounds, invented the miner’s safety lamp, and became one of the greatest exponents of...
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....
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...
Swedish inventor
Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other more powerful explosives and who also founded the Nobel Prizes. Alfred Nobel was the fourth son of Immanuel and...
Finnish architect
Alvar Aalto, Finnish architect, city planner, and furniture designer whose international reputation rests on a distinctive blend of modernist refinement, indigenous materials, and personal expression in...
English architect and artist
Inigo Jones, British painter, architect, and designer who founded the English classical tradition of architecture. The Queen’s House (1616–19) at Greenwich, London, his first major work, became a part...
Russian author and scientist
Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian poet, scientist, and grammarian who is often considered the first great Russian linguistics reformer. He also made substantial contributions to the natural sciences, reorganized...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Australian computer programmer
Julian Assange, Australian computer programmer who founded the media organization WikiLeaks. Practicing what he called “scientific journalism”—i.e., providing primary source materials with a minimum of...
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...
Ṣafavid shah of Persia
ʿAbbās I, shah of Persia from 1588 to 1629, who strengthened the Safavid dynasty by expelling Ottoman and Uzbek troops from Persian soil and by creating a standing army. He also made Eṣfahān the capital...
American industrialist
Walter P. Chrysler, American engineer and automobile manufacturer, founder of Chrysler Corporation. (Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.) Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry (“Hank”)...
American artist and inventor
Samuel F.B. Morse, American painter and inventor who developed an electric telegraph (1832–35). In 1838 he and his friend Alfred Vail developed the Morse Code. He was the son of the distinguished geographer...
American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer
Howard Hughes, American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer and director who acquired enormous wealth and celebrity from his various ventures but was perhaps better known for his eccentricities,...
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...
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...
Dutch scientist and mathematician
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, who founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and made original contributions to the science...
king of Judaea
Herod, Roman-appointed king of Judaea (37–4 bce), who built many fortresses, aqueducts, theatres, and other public buildings and generally raised the prosperity of his land but who was the centre of political...
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...