Theme Songs of Scientists? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was an English physicist and astronomer who was also considered an expert mathematician who dabbled in alchemy and wrote in his spare time.

What spare time, you ask? Good question. He made many contributions to other scientific works as well, and is considered by many, all these centuries later, to be the greatest scientist ever born. His laws of motion and universal gravitation stood until Einstein happened along; he built the first practical reflecting telescope, and - but let's stop there. His discoveries, his theories are just too many to list in a single question. It would be insulting to attempt to do so. What is so fascinating about this giant of a man is his brain. Why was it so much more advanced, why did it fire at such a different rate than others, what set off his spark of pure genius?

Returning to the question and its pun, though, Newton is said to have come up with his most well-known breakthrough, the idea of universal gravitation, after seeing an apple fall from a tree. This could be a myth, but for the fact that several of his contemporaries have verified this to be true. What fascinated Newton was the fact that the apple dropped perpendicular to the earth, not sidewards or in any other way, but straight down - and this is what set his curiosity agitating to find the answer. It could have been a banana; it could have been anything else dropping to the ground - the agent was incidental, the event was the spark.

"Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)" was written in 1942 by Brown and Tobias, and made popular by the Andrew Sisters and Glenn Miller during World War II at a time when thousands of men were away at war, and their wives and girlfriends were asked to wait patiently for their return back home.

Answer: Henry Ford

American-born Henry Ford lived from 1863 until 1947. Born into a poor farming family, he showed an avid interest from a very early age in the workings of anything mechanical. Initially, though, he seemed destined for only a mediocre life as he never even attended high school - but fate had other plans. When Ford moved from his small home town to work in Detroit, he began repairing and constructing engines of various makes, and by 1903, was skilled enough at this work to found the Ford Motor Company, which, with a combination of mass production assembly line manufacturing and a happy work force (he paid them high wages), would see him go on to become one of the wealthiest people in the world.

The pun for this question combines Henry's creation of an affordable motor car for most families, with the 1966 hit song "Mustang Sally", a number not about horses, but about the motor vehicle Ford Mustang and her owner, Sally - with some of the most meaningless lyrics ever written.

Answer: Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus lived from 1473 until 1543. Born in an area of the world we now recognise as Poland, Copernicus was a multi-lingual polymath with a profound knowledge of mathematics, canon law, medicine, the classics, economics - and astronomy. It was this last field of learning in particular that led Copernicus to introduce his theory of heliocentrism, where the sun is at the centre of the known universe, while the earth and other planets revolve around it - rather than the other way around, where all the leading authorities of the day believed that the earth was the centre of the universe instead. To state and to prove otherwise was an invitation to death. Fortunately for Copernicus, his great work on this subject, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" was printed on the day he passed away from a stroke, so otherwise less peaceful means of passing were averted.

"You Are My Sunshine", which was chosen to represent this scientist's work, and which has a disputed authorship, was released in 1940 by Jimmie Davis, backed by Charles Mitchell's orchestra. This great old number, which is easy to harmonise with, has been around ever since - just like the sun.

Answer: Archimedes

Archimedes was a Greek genius who lived from approximately 287-212 BC. He was a skilled astronomer, mathematician, physicist, engineer - and an inventor to boot. It never fails to amaze me how all those great minds from so long ago, without any of the technological aids and equipment we take so readily for granted today, possessed such intellect, such acquired knowledge, that still blaze across our universe today. His mathematical knowledge in particular was just incredible.

Among other discoveries, Archimedes gave the world "the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral... an approximation of pi...a proof of the law of the lever, the concept of center of gravity... designs of innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines..." (Wikipedia).

When people mention the name of Archimedes, they usually think of his discovery for determining the volume of an irregularly shaped object - and how he apparently came up with this notion while taking a bath, noticing how the water in the bath rose or fell when he got in and out. Perhaps he did or didn't find it in this way - but at least he was clean.

And naturally, this allows him to be associated with Bobby Darin's 1958 hit song "Splish Splash (I was Taking a Bath)".

Answer: Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American modern-day genius who lived from 1847 to 1931. Fascinated by electrical and chemical experiments from an early age, his inventions both lit up and connected the world, and included early forms of the movie camera, the light bulb, phonograph, an early radiograph (he was ultimately terrified of x-rays), a machine that measured infrared radiation, the stock ticker, the quadruplex (four messages transmitted on a single wire), and many, many more.

Regarding the movie camera, Edison disliked talking movies intensely because he was deaf, and they limited his ability to lip-read and follow the plot. Ultimately though, he grew to believe that the loss of his hearing was in reality a great gift, as it enabled him to spend more time in reading - and focusing on any work in hand. That's a fascinating, and inspirational, thought, don't you agree?

Although this inventor's genius cannot be doubted, he wasn't a particularly nice person at times - but then, nobody said he was a God. Edison himself would be shocked at being equated in such a way - because he didn't believe in God as such. Rather he believed that Nature was the great force of the universe. He had other startling and unique beliefs over the years - quite fascinating if you have the time to look him up - but ultimately died at the age of 84, with nature having run its course on his life.

And the song of course associated with this great mind? "Electric Shock", a 2012 number by the South Korean girls group, f(x).

Answer: Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland in 1847, and died in Canada in 1922. To Bell goes the credit of introducing the first practical telephone - and for founding the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Because his mother, and later, his wife, were both profoundly deaf, this led to Bell having a deep interest all his life in hearing and elocution. This interest developed into a more practical aspect of developing various devices to improve hearing - and it was this that led to the invention of the telephone. His impressively inventive mind also saw Bell producing breakthrough work on telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. Rather comically though, as an inventor, Bell was often irritated when he was interrupted during his work - so consequently refused to allow a telephone installed in his study.

A heart-warming note of interest is that it was Bell's love for his mother and his concern for her increasing deafness from when he was a boy, and his early attempts to help her hear what was going on around her, that led to his amazing telephone. He always sat beside her during family outings and visitors to tap out conversations to her with a manual sign language. Bell also spent years of his life working with deaf children and adults.

To his song, though: "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", which was written by the team of Becker and Fagen, was released in 1974 by the rock band, Steely Dan. With the usual somewhat meaningless lyrics of most rock songs, Rikki is advised in the song not to lose the singer's phone number, just in case she decides to call him. On Alexander Graham Bell's invention of course.

Answer: Gregor Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) was a German-Czech Augustinian abbot who was a prime mover behind the concept of genetics and heredity with his experiments on pods of peas. His work today is heralded as one of the great scientific breakthroughs, but this was only the case many years after his death. People on the land had known for centuries about the advantages of crossbreeding various stock and plants to produce more profitable outcomes, but without really understanding how this came about. Mendel demonstrated that if a yellow pea and a green pea were crossbred, the next generation of their peas would always be yellow - but in the generation that followed, the ratio would be 1 green pea to 3 yellow peas - leading him to the discovery of recessive (green peas) and dominant (yellow peas) traits. This opened the door to later scientists working on the concept of our genes.

Mendel, you could say, was a true scientist. Because he came from a poor family, and struggled terribly in his early years with paying his fees, he eventually decided to join a monastic order because it gave him free access to his studies, relieving him of the "perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood." (Wikipedia) After his eventual death, and because of the order's ongoing disputes with the government over taxing religious institutions, his successor, shockingly so, burned all of Mendel's research. When his remains were exhumed in 2021, however, and his genome was traced, it revealed that Mendel had a recessive trait of heart problems - but the dominant trait that polished him off were kidney problems. So in his death, this great man's work continued on.

And his song? With words and music by Harry Clifton, a music hall performer, and with this comical song, and others, made popular over Clifton's career, "Shelling Green Peas" (c 1860) was definitely the choice of tune for Gregor Mendel.

Answer: George Stephenson

Known as the "Father of Railways" English-born George Stephenson lived from 1781 to 1848. This amazing inventor was actually illiterate until the age of eighteen, at which time he put himself through night school to study the three Rs. By the age of twenty, he was in charge of controlling the winding gears at a coal mine and working as a brakesman after his marriage. Ten years later, following the death of his wife and daughter, he was skilled enough to be in charge of the repair and maintenance of all coal mine engines - while being fascinated by steam driven ones in particular. It was this fascination, in spite of the snobbery he came up against because of his working man's accent, that led to his invention of his first locomotive in 1814 - and the rest is history.

This question links Stephenson's invention with the 1941 hit song "Chattanooga Choo Choo", written by Mack Gordon and made popular by the likes of Mitch Miller, with the song tracing the journey by train from Pennsylvania Station in New York to Chattanooga in Tennessee. The great rhythm in the song emphasis the rhythm of a train under way.

Answer: Ivan Pavlov

Experimental neurologist and psychologist Ivan Pavlov lived from 1849 until 1936. He is renowned for his work of classical conditioning in which he endeavoured to explain how people can be conditioned to respond to various triggers in their lives. Pavlov carried out his initial experiments on canines by showing that a dog responded favourably to the sight of food (by salivating), which it would normally do. However, when he then included the stimulus of the sound of a ringing bell while presenting food to the dog, he found that, eventually, the sound of the bell alone was enough to make the dog salivate. From there Pavlov went on to apply his findings to humans and far wider research into other forms of conditioning.

"Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow" is a very old song written in 1892 by Joseph Tabrar. It tells the tale of a little girl wanting a dog, but her father wouldn't buy her one, and purchased a kitten for her instead. "He bought a pussycat and I'm very fond of that, but I'd rather have a bow wow wow" are some of its lyrics. This song about a dog is associated with Ivan Pavlov's experiments on classical conditioning with his own dog.

Answer: Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud lived from 1856 until 1939. He was an Austrian neurologist most famous for conceiving the idea of psychoanalysis, in which a relaxed and comfortable conversation between himself and his individual patients allowed them to reveal to him any issues that were troubling them at a sometimes sub-conscious level. Though he is often held up to mockery today by many modern psychologists, he has to be given credit for being the first specialist to try to really understand the workings of the individual mind.

"Thinking Out Loud" is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran off his second album. The question pairs the name of that song with Sigmund Freud's method of having his patients talk out loud about their problems.