Best of the Best: More Scientists Quiz

Answer: Mary Leakey

Mary Leakey was the wife of Louis Leakey and the mother of Richard. She met the famous Louis when he needed an illustrator for one of his books, and they married soon after. Together they had a family and hunted for the fossil remains of early humans, or hominids, at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and other sites in East Africa.

After Louis died, Mary continued their work. In 1976 she made perhaps her most famous discovery: 3.6 million year old fossilized hominid footprints at a site called Laetoli.

At the time the footprints provided the oldest evidence of upright walking in early humans.

Answer: Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage had many talents; he was a a founder of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He formulated the Babbage principle, a division of labor used in manufacturing, and wrote about a variety of topics, including politics and religion.

He is, however, best known for his invention of the Difference Engine, which was described as a mechanical calculator. Although he died before putting his design into practical use, others have been able to read his plans and assemble a working machine.

Answer: James Watson

A geneticist, zoologist, and molecular biologist, James Watson and his associates are credited with a discovery that is considered to be a major turning point in the history of science. Their discovery of the double helix structure of a DNA molecule led to a better understanding of genetics in both plants, which can be bred and grown with better traits to increase crop yields, and animals, to help better understand the nature of some diseases and genetic disorders. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

Answer: Alfred Binet

Although Alfred Binet did not plan to become a psychologist, he become interested in developmental psychology and invented what is considered to be the first IQ test in 1905. The test was established to ascertain the person's mental age, which was divided by their chronological age, and then multiplied by 100; the purpose of the test was to discover which students might need extra help with their schoolwork. Binet worked with a collaborator, Theodore Simon, and, at the time, the test was called the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale.

A few years later the test was modified by an American psychologist and became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.

Answer: Irene

Irene Curie was the daughter of the famous Marie and Pierre Curie, the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize; it was awarded to them in Physics in 1903. Of course, Irene's famous mother was also the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. Together with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Irene worked out a way to turn boron into radioactive nitrogen.

They won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. Their daughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, is a nuclear physicist, and their son, Pierre Adrien Joliot-Curie, is a biologist.

Answer: Katherine Johnson

How impressive is this?! Katherine Johnson graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia State College when she was just eighteen years old with degrees in both math and French! She first worked as a teacher, but moved on to a job at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory where she worked as a computer, performing necessary math calculations after reading data from black boxes in airplanes.

In 1953 she began working for NASA, and stayed there for over thirty years until her retirement in 1986. Johnson notably calculated trajectories for both Alan Shepard and John Glenn as they undertook their historic firsts.

Answer: Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur is well known in many fields of science as a chemist and microbiologist, making famous discoveries related to vaccinations and pasteurization. He is also considered to be one of the Fathers of the Germ Theory of Disease. It had taken a long time for people to be able to accept the theory that microorganisms called germs could cause viruses and other diseases or could spread from one infected person to another.

The oldest hypothesis of this theory dates back to ancient India and Greece and had been discussed by educated people for centuries, but it was not proven until Pasteur's experiments.

His method of examining silkworm eggs to determine if they had been infected by the Nosema bombycis organism is still used today.

Answer: Carl Sagan

After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Sagan began college at the University of Chicago, where he eventually earned a PhD in physics. During his time there he worked for NASA on classified projects along with one of his teachers. It was during his time as the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell where he began writing many of his books; the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 was for his book, "The Dragons of Eden".

He also co-authored "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage", a television series in 1980, which earned two Emmys, a Hugo Award, and a Peabody Award.

He is credited with making science more popular, as he was frequently called "the astronomer of the people".

Answer: George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver earned his Master's in Science at Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, which is known as Iowa State University today. From there he went on to become the first principal and president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; he also taught there for over 40 years. Concerned about the overgrowing of cotton and its negative affect on the soil, Carver taught about crop rotation and the planting of alternative crops, especially peanuts.

He is well known for developing products that used not only peanuts, but also soybeans and sweet potatoes. Carver did not, however, invent peanut butter!

Answer: Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau's work with co-inventing the Aqua-Lung and improving scuba gear in the 1940s helped to unlock many of the ocean's secrets later on. He also developed the Calypso Photo Camera, which allowed for underwater photography, and the shark cage, which was used when shooting his now famous documentary, "The Silent World" (1956).

The Palme d'Or, which was awarded for his documentary, is the highest award given at the Cannes Film Festival. His work, as what he called an "oceanographic technician", opened up a new frontier that had been virtually unexplored.