Famous scientists A-Z

Archimedes

The Greek mathematician, physicist, astronomer and inventor Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) was one of the greatest scientists of the classical age. Born in Syracuse in Sicily, he...

Aristotle

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) made a massive contribution to many aspects of human knowledge, including physics, biology, astronomy, philosophy and even politics...

Marie Curie

Marie Curie (1867–1934) was a pioneering scientist in an age when it was unusual for a woman to be a scientist at all. She is remembered today for her work with her husband...

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was a British scientist whose work on evolution—the way living things change over generations—revolutionized scientific thinking. At the beginning...

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born physicist who made some of the greatest contributions to modern science. He devised the equation E=mc2, linking mass and energy...

Michael Faraday

English scientist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) rose from humble beginnings to become one of the greatest experimental physicists of all time. His work on the properties of...

Galileo Galilei

The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is best remembered as an astronomer. His insistence that the Earth was not at the centre of the Universe and that, along with...

Robert Hooke

The English scientist, inventor, artist and architect Robert Hooke (1635–1703) is most famous for his pioneering work using the first microscopes. He was the first to use the...

Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens (1629–95) was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and inventor. He was the first to use mathematical formulae to describe the laws of physics...

Antoine Lavoisier

Known as the “father of modern chemistry”, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–94) was a French chemist. He named the gases oxygen and hydrogen, and worked out the role oxygen...

Carl Linnaeus

The Swedish scientist, Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), is famous for devising the two-part naming system, known as binomial nomenclature, used to classify all living things. A...

James Clerk Maxwell

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) was best known for developing electromagnetic theory. He wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 14, describing the...

Isaac Newton

English scientist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) lived during an exciting period of history, known as the Age of Enlightenment, where many ideas we take for granted today were being...

Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist, best known for his work on studying disease-carrying microbes (micro-organisms). These are the tiny...