Category Scientist & Invensions

Alexander Graham Bell was an influential scientist engineer, and inventor who is considered to be the inventor of the first practical telephone. Bell’s mother and wife were both deaf, and this motivated his research on hearing and speech.

         Bell experimented with sound, working with devices such as ‘harmonic telegraph,’ that is used to send multiple messages over a single wire. While trying to discover the secret to transmitting multiple messages on a single wire, Bell heard the sound of a plucked string along some of the electrical wire. This was caused because one of Bell’s assistants, Thomas A. Watson, was trying to reactivate a transmitter. It made Bell believe he could send the sound of a human voice over the wire.

        After receiving a patent on March 7th, 1876, for transmitting sound along a single wire, he successfully transmitted human speech on March 10.

        Bell’s first words with the working telephone were spoken to his assistant Watson. They were “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”

        Bell also had a strong interest in other scientific fields, conducting medical research, searching for alternative fuel sources, developing hydrofoil watercraft and much more.

J.J. Thomson, an English physicist, took science to new heights with his 1897 discovery of the electron the subatomic particle.

     When Thomson began his research career, it was thought that atoms were the smallest particles. Nobody had a clear picture of how atoms might look. It was already known that atoms were associated in some way with electric charges.

   In 1897, aged40, Thomson carried out a now famous experiment with a cathode ray tube. His experiment proved the existence of a new fundamental particle that was much smaller than the atom. It was named the electron.

     In discovering the electron, Thomson also moved toward the invention of an immensely important new tool for chemical analysis the mass spectrometer.

      Then, in 1912, Thomson discovered that stable elements could exist as isotopes. Isotopes are different forms of the same element that exist with different atomic masses.

    J.J. Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1906

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist. He is best known for developing the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis.

       Psychoanalysis is a method of treatment through which an analyst uncovers unconscious conflicts based on the free associations, dreams, and fantasies of the patient.

     All of Freud’s work revolved around the mind how it worked, and how to diagnosis and treat certain maladies of the mind. He analyzed himself as well. He began to pick apart his dreams, and tried to decipher their meaning.

    In doing so, he provided an incredible account of how dreams originate and why. He explored what would become known as Freudian slips, where one has a slip of the tongue and either misreads something, or forgets a name.

    Freud established a theory as to why this happens often to some people. Sigmund Freud’s greatest achievement was in the area of the unconscious mind.

    Although many before him were aware of its existence, he was the one who was finally able to achieve scientific recognition in the area of psychoanalysis.

Max Planck was a German theoretical physicist, who made significant contributions. He changed our understanding of physics when he discovered that hot objects do not radiate a smooth, continues range of energies as was earlier believed.

      Instead, he found that the energies radiated by hot objects have distinct values. His discovery was the beginning of the Quantum theory an entirely new type of physics that revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. In fact, we can say that the quantum theory grew from the ideas of Max Planck.

    A quantum is the smallest possible amount of energy. Planck’s constant a fixed number is used to calculate the energy of quanta. The theory has been developed to explain the behavior of particles and the energy they emit. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918.

Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity through his investigations of uranium and other substances.

       Becquerel had become a highly respected physicist by 1896. After the discovery of the x-ray in 1895, Becquerel began to investigate whether there was a fundamental connection between this form of invisible radiation and visible light.

      His expertise with phosphorescent materials, his familiarity with uranium compounds, and his general skill in laboratory techniques, including photography, all played a key role in his discovery of radioactivity. Becquerel experimented by placing phosphorescent crystals on a sealed photographic plate that had been wrapped in opaque paper, and never exposed to direct light.

    After the plate was developed, images were visible on it. He passed the results on to Madame Curie, who named this phenomenon radioactivity. In 11903, Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize for physics with the chemists Pierre and Marie Curie.