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World History, Part 1
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Scientific Revolution Resume Project
Name: ____________________________________ Period: ______ Due Date: Tuesday, January 4, 2011
OBJECTIVE: Create a resume for an influential scientist.
SCENARIO: Your assigned scientist is applying for a job and must create a resume.
WHAT IS A RESUME? A resume is a summary of experiences and skills; it highlights accomplishments to
show a potential employer that you are qualified. A resume should reflect more than just paid work experience –
it should include some details of more important experiences. In this case, it should include discoveries,
theories, and published materials (books written).
DIRECTIONS: Using the biographical information provided (that should be enough to get you started) and
your textbook, create an informative and interesting resume. The more remarkable the resume the more likely
your scientist will be to get the job.
Follow the format below when you are writing your resume. Make sure you have information under each
category. Each category – 1) Education and Background; 2) Experience; and 3) Activities, Interests, and Skills)
should contain AT LEAST two facts. Facts must be accurate.
RESUME LAYOUT:
Name and Address: Country where scientist was from or where they lived.
Education and background: Did you receive formal education? Were your discoveries through observation
and not in a classroom?
Experience: Previous jobs. What you discovered, invented, new theory you proposed, groundbreaking
information published, etc.
Activities, Interests, Skills: Feel free to add interesting facts or even be a bit humorous!
Name
Address
Education and Background:
Experience:
Activities, Interests, Skills:
Your completed resume is due by the end of class on Tuesday, 1/4 so that I can make copies for you to distribute
during the second phase of the assignment. If your resume is not complete by the due date, you will receive a
‘0’ on the assignment because you will not be able to participate in the second phase of the assignment.
Second Phase: On Wednesday, 1/5 (Pd.1) & Thursday, 1/6 (Pd.2), we will conduct interviews. You will
interview as many scientists as time will allow and you must be prepared to be interviewed as well. You will
receive copies of each scientist’s resume and you will record information about each scientist on a ‘Scientist
Chart’ to use as a study guide.
GRADING:
Your completed resume is worth 32 points (1 point for Name, 1 point for Address, 5 points for each fact (5
points x AT LEAST 6 facts = 30 points). You will be graded on completion and accuracy of information. You
will receive classwork credit for the second phase of the assignment (the interview round table).
Ms. McKenna
World History, Part 1
Thanks to Ms. Stewart
Sir Isaac Newton
Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, and the greatest scientist of his era.
Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. His father was a prosperous
farmer, who died three months before Newton was born. His mother remarried and Newton was left in
the care of his grandparents. In 1661, he went to Cambridge University where he became interested in
mathematics, optics, physics and astronomy. In October 1665, a plague epidemic forced the university
to close and Newton returned to Woolsthorpe. The two years he spent there were an extremely fruitful
time during which he began to think about gravity. He also devoted time to optics and mathematics,
working out his ideas about 'fluxions' (calculus).
In 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Trinity College. Two years later
he was appointed second Lucasian professor of mathematics. It was Newton's reflecting telescope,
made in 1668, that finally brought him to the attention of the scientific community and in 1672 he was
made a fellow of the Royal Society. From the mid-1660s, Newton conducted a series of experiments
on the composition of light, discovering that white light is composed of the same system of colours
that can be seen in a rainbow and establishing the modern study of optics (or the behaviour of light). In
1704, Newton published 'The Opticks' which dealt with light and colour. He also studied and published
works on history, theology and alchemy.
In 1687, with the support of his friend the astronomer Edmond Halley, Newton published his single
greatest work, the 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' ('Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy'). This showed how a universal force, gravity, applied to all objects in all parts of the
universe.
In 1689, Newton was elected member of parliament for Cambridge University (1689 - 1690 and 1701 1702). In 1696,Newton was appointed warden of the Royal Mint, settling in London. He took his
duties at the Mint very seriously and campaigned against corruption and inefficiency within the
organisation. In 1703, he was elected president of the Royal Society, an office he held until his death.
He was knighted in 1705.
Newton was a difficult man, prone to depression and often involved in bitter arguments with other
scientists, but by the early 1700s he was the dominant figure in British and European science. He died
on 31 March 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/newton_isaac.shtml
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World History, Part 1
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Nicolas Copernicus
Copernicus was a Polish astronomer, best known for his theory that the Sun and not the Earth is at the
centre of the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in Thorn (modern day Torun) in Poland. His
father was a merchant and local official. When Copernicus was 10 his father died, and his uncle, a
priest, ensured that Copernicus received a good education. In 1491, he went to Krakow Academy, now
the Jagiellonian University, and in 1496 travelled to Italy to study law. While a student at the
University of Bologna he stayed with a mathematics professor, Domenico Maria de Novara, who
encouraged Copernicus' interests in geography and astronomy.
During his time in Italy, Copernicus visited Rome and studied at the universities of Padua and Ferrara,
before returning to Poland in 1503. For the next seven years he worked as a private secretary to his
uncle, now the bishop of Ermland.
The bishop died in 1512 and Copernicus moved to Frauenberg, where he had long held a position as a
canon, an administrative appointment in the church. This gave him more time to devote to astronomy.
Although he did not seek fame, it is clear that he was by now well known as an astronomer. In 1514,
when the Catholic church was seeking to improve the calendar, one of the experts to whom the pope
appealed was Copernicus.
Copernicus' major work 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' ('On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres') was finished by 1530. Its central theory was that the Earth rotates daily on its axis and
revolves yearly around the sun. He also argued that the planets circled the Sun. This challenged the
long held view that the Earth was stationary at the centre of the universe with all the planets, the Moon
and the Sun rotating around it.
'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' was published in early 1543 and Copernicus died on 24 May
in the same year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/copernicus.shtml
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World History, Part 1
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Johannes Kepler
Born: December 27, 1571 Weil, Swabia, Germany
Died: November 15, 1630 Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler's discovery of three basic laws governing the motion of
planets made him one of the chief founders of modern astronomy (the study of the universe and its
stars and planets).
Early life
Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil, Germany. He was the son of Heinrich and
Katharina Guldenmann Kepler. His father was a mercenary (a soldier serving only for money).
Although a member of the Protestant faith, his father helped put down a Protestant uprising in the Low
Countries (Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg). Kepler's parents allowed him to watch the great
comet of 1577 and an eclipse (passing into shadow) of the Moon. Kepler was a sickly child but an
excellent student. At thirteen he entered a religious training school at Adelberg, Germany.
Following Kepler's graduation from the University of Tübingen in 1591, he became interested in
astronomy, particularly the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who stated that the Earth
moved around the Sun in a circle. The University of Tübingen recommended Kepler for the post of the
"mathematician of the province" in Graz, Austria. He arrived there in 1594 and began composition of
the almanac, in which the major events of the coming year were predicted. His first almanac was a
success. The occurrence of two events that he had predicted, an invasion by the Turks and a severe
winter, established his reputation. In 1597 Kepler married Barbara Muehleck. Of their five children
only one boy and one girl reached adulthood.
Work in astronomy
Kepler sought the job of assistant to Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), astrologer (one who interprets the
positions of stars and planets and their effect on human affairs) and mathematician to Rudolph II
(1552–1612), in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Kepler took his new position in 1600. When Brahe died the
following year, Kepler was appointed to replace him. His first job was to prepare Brahe's collection of
studies in astronomy for publication, which came out between 1601 and 1602.
Kepler was also left in charge of Brahe's records, which forced him to make an assumption that led to a
new theory about the orbits of all the planets. A difference between his theory and Brahe's data could
be explained only if the orbit of Mars was not circular but elliptical (oval-shaped). This meant that the
orbits of all planets were elliptical (Kepler's first law). This helped prove another of his statements. It is
known as Kepler's second law, according to which the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps over
equal areas in equal times in its elliptical orbit.
Kepler published these laws in his discussion of the orbit of the planet Mars, the Astronomia nova
(1609). The two laws were clearly spelled out in the book's table of contents. They must have been
seen by any careful reader alert enough to recognize a new idea of such importance. Still, the Italian
astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) failed to use the laws in his printed works—although they
would have helped his defense of Copernicus's ideas.
New jobs and the third law
In 1611 Rudolph II stepped down from the throne, and Kepler immediately looked for a new job. He
obtained the post of province mathematician of Linz, Austria. By the time he moved there in 1612 with
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his two children, his wife and his favorite son, Friedrich, were dead. Kepler's fourteen years in Linz
were marked by his second marriage to Susan Reuttinger, and by his repeated efforts to save his
mother from being tried as a witch.
Kepler also published two important works while in Linz. In the Harmonice mundi (1618) his third law
was announced. It stated that the average distance of a planet from the sun, raised to the third power,
divided by the square of the time it takes for the planet to complete one orbit, is the same for all
planets. Kepler believed that nature followed numeric relationships since God created it according to
"weight, measure and number." Kepler used the same idea in describing geometry (the study of points,
lines, angles, and surfaces). Kepler's second work, the Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (published
1618–21), proposed a physical explanation of the motions of planets, namely, "magnetic arms"
extending from the sun.
Kepler wandered over Europe in the last three years of his life. He was in Ulm, Germany, when his
Tabulae Rudolphinae (1628) was published. It not only added the positions of over two hundred stars
to those contained in Brahe's published works, but it also provided planetary tables that became the
standard for the next century. Kepler died on November 15, 1630. He was a unique symbol of the
change over from the old to the new spirit of science.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Jo-Ki/Kepler-Johannes.html
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Galileo Galilei
Galileo was a hugely influential Italian astronomer, physicist and philosopher.
Galileo Galilei was born on 15 February 1564 near Pisa, the son of a musician. He began to study
medicine at the University of Pisa but changed to philosophy and mathematics. In 1589, he became
professor of mathematics at Pisa. In 1592, he moved to become mathematics professor at the
University of Padua, a position he held until 1610. During this time he worked on a variety of
experiments, including the speed at which different objects fall, mechanics and pendulums.
In 1609, Galileo heard about the invention of the telescope in Holland. Without having seen an
example, he constructed a superior version and made many astronomical discoveries. These included
mountains and valleys on the surface of the moon, sunspots, the four largest moons of the planet
Jupiter and the phases of the planet Venus. His work on astronomy made him famous and he was
appointed court mathematician in Florence.
In 1614, Galileo was accused of heresy for his support of the Copernican theory that the sun was at the
centre of the solar system. This was revolutionary at a time when most people believed the Earth was
in this central position. In 1616, he was forbidden by the church from teaching or advocating these
theories.
In 1632, he was again condemned for heresy after his book 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems' was published. This set out the arguments for and against the Copernican theory in the
form of a discussion between two men. Galileo was summoned to appear before the Inquisition in
Rome. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, later reduced to permanent house arrest
at his villa in Arcetri, south of Florence. He was also forced to publicly withdraw his support for
Copernican theory.
Although he was now going blind he continued to write. In 1638, his 'Discourses Concerning Two
New Sciences' was published with Galileo's ideas on the laws of motion and the principles of
mechanics. Galileo died in Arcetri on 8 January 1642.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/galilei_galileo.shtml
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World History, Part 1
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William Harvey
Harvey was an English physician who was the first to describe accurately how blood was pumped
around the body by the heart.
William Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent on 1 April 1578. His father was a merchant. Harvey was
educated at King's College, Canterbury and then at Cambridge University. He then studied medicine at
the University of Padua in Italy, where the scientist and surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius tutored him.
Fabricius, who was fascinated by anatomy, recognised that the veins in the human body had one-way
valves, but was puzzled as to their function. It was Harvey who took the foundation of Fabricius's
teaching, and went on to solve the riddle of what part the valves played in the circulation of blood
through the body.
On his return from Italy in 1602, Harvey established himself as a physician. His career was helped by
his marriage to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of Elizabeth I's physician, in 1604. In 1607, he became a
fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and, in 1609, was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's
Hospital. In 1618, he became physician to Elizabeth's successor James I and to James' son Charles
when he became king. Both James and Charles took a close interest in and encouraged Harvey's
research.
Harvey's research was furthered through the dissection of animals. He first revealed his findings at the
College of Physicians in 1616, and in 1628 he published his theories in a book entitled 'Exercitatio
Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus' ('An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the
Heart and of the Blood in Animals'), where he explained how the heart propelled the blood in a circular
course through the body. His discovery was received with great interest in England, although it was
greeted with some scepticism on the Continent.
Harvey was also the first to suggest that humans and other mammals reproduced via the fertilisation of
an egg by sperm. It took a further two centuries before a mammalian egg was finally observed, but
nonetheless Harvey's theory won credibility during his lifetime.
Harvey retained a close relationship with the royal family through the English Civil War and witnessed
the Battle of Edgehill. Thanks to Charles I he was, for a short time, warden of Merton College, Oxford
(1645 - 1646). He died on 3 June 1657.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/harvey_william.shtml
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Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
Vesalius was a Flemish-born anatomist whose dissections of the human body helped to correct
misconceptions dating from ancient times.
Andreas Vesalius was born on 31 December 1514 in Brussels, Belgium, then part of the Holy Roman
Empire. He came from a family of physicians and both his father and grandfather had served the holy
Roman emperor. Vesalius studied medicine in Paris but was forced to leave before completing his
degree when the Holy Roman Empire declared war on France. He then studied at the University of
Louvain, and then moved to Padua to study for his doctorate. Upon completion in 1537 he was
immediately offered the chair of surgery and anatomy.
Surgery and anatomy were then considered of little importance in comparison to the other branches of
medicine. However, Vesalius believed that surgery had to be grounded in anatomy. Unusually, he
always performed dissections himself and produced anatomical charts of the blood and nervous
systems as a reference aid for his students, which were widely copied.
In the same year Vesalius wrote a pamphlet on blood letting, a popular treatment for a variety of
illnesses. There was debate about where in the body the blood should be taken from. Vesalius'
pamphlet was supported by his knowledge of the blood system and he showed clearly how anatomical
dissection could be used to test speculation, and underlined the importance of understanding the
structure of the body in medicine.
In 1539, his supply of dissection material increased when a Paduan judge became interested in
Vesalius' work, and made bodies of executed criminals available to him. Vesalius was now able make
repeated and comparative dissections of humans. This was in marked contrast to Galen, the standard
authority on anatomy who, for religious reasons, had been restricted to animals, mainly apes. Vesalius
realised that Galen's and his own observations differed, and that humans do not share the same
anatomy as apes.
In 1543, Vesalius published 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica'. The book was based largely on human
dissection, and transformed anatomy into a subject that relied on observations taken directly from
human dissections. Vesalius now left anatomical research to take up medical practice. Maintaining the
tradition of imperial service, he became physician to the imperial court of Emperor Charles V and in
1555 took service with Charles' son, Philip II of Spain.
In 1564, he left for a trip to the Holy Land but died on 15 October 1564 on the Greek island of
Zakynthos during the journey home.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/vesalius_andreas.shtml
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Francis Bacon
Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman, and a pioneer of modern scientific thought.
Francis Bacon was born on 22 January 1561 in London. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, keeper
of the great seal for Elizabeth I. Bacon studied at Cambridge University and at Gray's Inn and became
a member of parliament in 1584. However, he was unpopular with Elizabeth, and it was only on the
accession of James I in 1603 that Bacon's career began to prosper. Knighted that year, he was
appointed to a succession of posts culminating, like his father, with keeper of the great seal.
However, Bacon's real interests lay in science. Much of the science of the period was based on the
work of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. While many Aristotelian ideas, such as the position of
the earth at the centre of the universe, had been overturned, his methodology was still being used. This
held that scientific truth could be reached by way of authoritative argument: if sufficiently clever men
discussed a subject long enough, the truth would eventually be discovered. Bacon challenged this,
arguing that truth required evidence from the real world. He published his ideas, initially in 'Novum
Organum' (1620), an account of the correct method of acquiring natural knowledge.
Bacon's political ascent also continued. In 1618 he was appointed lord chancellor, the most powerful
position in England, and in 1621 he was created viscount St Albans. Shortly afterwards, he was
charged by parliament with accepting bribes, which he admitted. He was fined and imprisoned and
then banished from court. Although the king later pardoned him, this was the end of Bacon's public
life. He retired to his home at Gorhambury in Hertfordshire, where he continued to write. He died in
London on 9 April 1626.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bacon_francis.shtml
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René Descartes (1596–1650)
The French thinker René Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy (the study of the universe
and man's place in it). His Discourse on Method and Meditations defined the basic problems of
philosophy for at least a century.
Early life
René Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, France. His father, Joachim, served in the
Parliament of Brittany, France. Jeanne Brochard Descartes, his mother, died in 1597. His father
remarried and René and his older brother and sister were raised by their maternal grandmother and by
a nurse for whom he retained a deep affection. In 1606 Descartes entered La Flèche, a religious college
established for the education of the sons of noblemen. As a child he was often ill and was allowed to
spend a portion of each day studying in bed. He used this time for meditation and thought. According
to Descartes's description of his eight-year course of studies at La Flèche, he often felt embarrassed at
the extent of his own ignorance.
Travel and study
After leaving college at age eighteen, Descartes earned a law degree in Poitiers, France. From 1618 to
1628 he traveled throughout Europe as a soldier. Living on income from inherited properties,
Descartes served without pay and saw little action. He was present, however, at one of the major
battles of the Thirty Years War (1618–48). Descartes sought out famous mathematicians, scientists,
and philosophers (those who seek wisdom) wherever he traveled. The most significant of these
friendships was with Isaac Beeckman, a Dutch mathematician, who encouraged Descartes to begin
writing scientific theories on mathematics and music.
Descartes was deeply influenced by three dreams he had in 1619 in Ulm, Germany. He interpreted
them to mean that all science is one and that its mastery is universal wisdom. This idea of the unity of
all science was in opposition to the belief that the sciences were distinguished by their different objects
of study. Descartes felt that if one could draw conclusions from a correct method of reasoning, then
one could know everything. He began to devote his efforts to proving that he had discovered such a
method. To focus better on his work, Descartes moved to Holland, where he lived peacefully for the
next twenty years.
First works
Descartes's first major work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, was written by 1629 but was not
published until 1701. The work begins by assuming that man's knowledge has been limited by the
belief that science is determined by the various objects of experience. The first rule therefore states that
all true judgment depends on reason alone. For example, mathematical truths are valid even without
observation and experiment. The second rule argues that the standard for true knowledge should be the
certainty demanded of mathematical demonstrations. The third rule states that the mind should be
influenced only by what can clearly be observed. The remaining rules are devoted to the explanation of
these ideas or to showing their use in mathematical problems.
By 1634 Descartes had written The World, in which he supported several theories, including the idea
of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) that Earth is not the center of the universe but revolves around
the sun. Only fragments of the book survive, because when Descartes heard that a book published by
Galileo (1564–1642), which also supported Copernicus, had been condemned by the Catholic Church,
his fear of similar treatment led him to withdraw his work. In 1634 he also wrote the brief Treatise on
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Man, which attempted to explain human physiology (a branch of biology dealing with organs, tissues,
and cells).
Other works
In 1637 Descartes finished Discourse on Method, which uses a personal account of his education as an
example of the need for a new method of study. Descartes also presents four rules for reducing any
problem to its basics and then constructing solutions. In 1641 and 1642 Meditations on First
Philosophy appeared together with six sets of objections by other famous thinkers. The Meditations is
one of the most famous books in the history of philosophy. While earlier Descartes works were
concerned with explaining a method of thinking, this work applies that method to the problems of
philosophy, including the convincing of doubters, the existence of the human soul, the nature of God,
and the basis of truth.
The remainder of Descartes's career was spent defending his positions. In 1644 he published the
Principles of Philosophy, which breaks down and expands the arguments of the earlier Meditations. In
1649 Descartes accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–1689) to become her
teacher. During this time he wrote The Passions of the Soul, which explains passion as a product of
physical and chemical processes. The weather in Sweden caused Descartes's health to suffer, however,
and after a brief illness he died in Stockholm in 1650.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Descartes-Rene.html
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Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe is probably the most famous observational astronomer of the sixteenth-century, although
is not always clear whether he is better remembered for the fact that his data provided the basis for the
work of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), or because of the more colourful aspects of his life and death.
Born into the high nobility of his native Denmark in 1546, he was groomed by his family for a career
at court, but from an early age showed greater interest in astronomy than law, the discipline of choice
for aspiring royal councillors and administrators. After three years at the University of Copenhagen, he
spent much of the period from 1562 to 1576 travelling in Germany, studying at the Universities of
Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Rostock, and working with other scholars in Basle, Augsburg, and Kassel. It
was in Rostock in 1566 that he lost part of his nose in a duel, and subsequently wore a prosthesis.
The appearance in 1572 of a "new star" (in fact a supernova) prompted Tycho's first publication, which
was issued by a Copenhagen printer in 1573. In 1574, he gave some lectures on astronomy at the
University of Copenhagen. Already he was of the opinion that the world-system of Copernicus was
mathematically superior to that of Ptolemy, but physically absurd. In 1576, his permanent relocation to
Basle, which he considered the most suitable place for him to continue his astronomical studies, was
forestalled by King Frederick II, who offered him in fief the island of Hven in the Danish Sound. With
generous royal support, Tycho constructed there a domicile and observatory which he called
Uraniborg, and developed a range of instruments of remarkable size and precision which he used, with
the aide of numerous assistants and students, to observe comets, stars, and planets.
In 1588, Tycho issued from his press a work on the comet which had appeared, causing a flurry of
other publications, in 1577. The eighth chapter of this book also contained Tycho's system of the
world, which retained the earth as the unmoving centre of the universe but rendered the other planets
satellites of the Sun. In 1596 he published a volume of his correspondence with another nobleastronomer, Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel, and Wilhelm's mathematician Christoph Rothmann. The
latter was a committed Copernican, and Tycho's forceful arguments for the superiority of his own
cosmology was one reason for his publication of the letters. Other works begun on Hven were the
Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (1598), an illustrated account of his instruments and
observatories, and the Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata (1602), which contained his theory of
lunar and solar motions, part of his catalogue of stars, and a more detailed analysis of the supernova of
1572. However, the erosion of Tycho's funding and standing following King Christian IV's attainment
of his majority caused the astronomer to leave Denmark in 1597. In 1599 he settled near Prague,
having been appointed Imperial Mathematician by Emperor Rudolph II, and was joined by Johannes
Kepler the following year. He died of uraemia in 1601.
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/tycho.html
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Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691)
Boyle was a leading intellectual figure of the 17th century and one of the founders of modern
chemistry.
Robert Boyle was born on 27 January 1627 in County Waterford in the south-east of Ireland. He was
the seventh son of the earl of Cork. He was educated at Eton and then travelled and studied in Europe.
He returned from the continent in 1644 extremely interested in science and settled in Dorset where he
built a laboratory. In 1655 or 1666, Boyle moved to Oxford. It was here that he engaged Robert Hooke
as an assistant and together they devised the most famous piece of experimental equipment associated
with Boyle, the vacuum chamber or air-pump.
At this time even the idea of an experiment was controversial. The established method of 'discovering'
something was to argue it out, using the established logical rules Aristotle and others had worked out
2,000 years before. Boyle was more interested in observing nature and drawing his conclusions from
what actually happened. He was the first prominent scientist to perform controlled experiments and
publish his work with details concerning procedure, apparatus and observations. He began to publish in
1659 and continued to do so for the rest of his life on subjects as diverse as philosophy, medicine and
religion.
It is Boyle's Law for which he remains most famous. This states that if the volume of a gas is
decreased, the pressure increases proportionally. Understanding that his results could be explained if
all gases were made of tiny particles, Boyle tried to construct a universal 'corpuscular theory' of
chemistry. He defined the modern idea of an 'element', as well as introducing the litmus test to tell
acids from bases, and introduced many other standard chemical tests.
In 1660, together with 11 others, Boyle formed the Royal Society in London which met to witness
experiments and discuss what we would now call scientific topics.
In 1668, Boyle moved permanently to London, living with his sister. In 1680 he refused the presidency
of the Royal Society because the oath required violated his strongly held religious principles. Boyle
died in London on 31 December 1691.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/boyle_robert.shtml
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Sir Isaac Newton
Nicolas Copernicus
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
William Harvey
Andreas Vesalius
Francis Bacon
René Descartes
Tycho Brahe
Robert Boyle
http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/JohannesKepler/
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109N/1995/lectures/kepler.html