Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. A bitter and largely inconclusive war was being waged between the city-states of Florence and Pisa in the year 1503. The army of Florence was at the gates of Pisa and all feared the bloody and prolonged siege that obviously lay ahead. It was at this time that the Signoria of Florence sought the aid of a world-famous painter, who despite being a gentle humanitarian who even went as far as to stop eating meat due to his great love for animals, surely possessed the creative genius to bring an end to this war. Who was this world famous scientist, and creator of art?
2. At about the same time that William Shakespeare was staging a play about a melancholy young prince from Elsinore, a real-life Danish nobleman was dying of indigestion in Prague. As was his custom, he had over-eaten, and now, deathly ill, could see his death fast approaching. He called for his brilliant assistant, Johannes Kepler, and begged him to carry on the great work in which they had both been involved. Whithin hours of Kepler giving his promise, this man, who was the greatest astronomer that his century had known, lay dead.
Even at his death he was an imposing figure, his huge girth caused the bed to groan, and the tip of his nose gleamed in the glow of the candle, for as a young man he had lost the end of his nose in a duel, and it had been replaced by a plate made of gold and silver alloy.
Who was he?
3. As the Chief Judge leaned forward, a hush fell over the crowded courtroom. There were some in the courtroom, young medical students from the University of Basle who admired the courage of their teacher. And there were those wealthier doctors and orthodox physicians who hated him for his revolutionary views.
The aged jurist spoke: "This court finds that the services of the doctor cannot be valued as he claims, at one hundred gulden. He performed none of the treatments of recognized physicians. The quick recovery of the patient can only be applied to natural causes, and not to the few pills offered by the Doctor."
The young doctor leaped to his feet in defiance and shouted, "This is a mockery of justice, you have joined the sinful alliance of incompetent physicians and charlatans against me."
His friends pulled him down, but the damage had been done. Charges of treason (!) were framed against him and he was forced to flee Basle, and live life as a wandering outcast until his untimely death at the age of forty-eight.
Who was this man who challenged the ancient traditions of medical practice, and is called the "Father of Toxicology"?
4. At 8 am, several workmen stopped outside a London house and removed the front door. At 9 am, a long horse-drawn carriage stopped in front of the house. A heavily-wrapped object, around twelve feet long was delicately removed from the wagon, and carried through the doorway, as carefully as if it were a crate of eggs. At 10 am, the chemist's delivery wagon discharged three small, but heavy barrels on the sidewalk. This famous scientist's assistants then carried these barrels inside and replaced the front door, leaving the intrigued neighbours to speculate fruitlessly about what was going on at that house on that morning of 1662.
Several weeks earlier, he had challenged a London glass-blower to construct the longest and strongest glass tube ever made. It was to be shaped in the form of a 'J', with the long leg twelve feet long and the short leg five feet long and closed with a stopcock. One of the greatest experiments in scientific history was about to take place at that London house.
Who was this scientist?
5. At the age of eighteen, he had already achieved some distinction as a mathematician in the small town of Beaumont. In his mind however, Paris was the only city through which he could enter the larger world of Science. He obtained letters of recommendation and, in 1767, set out for Paris to seek the help of the leading French mathematician, D'Alembert. But when he presented himself and his references at D'Alembert's home, he was given polite excuses and was sent away without even being able to see the mathematician. Weeks went by, and he was still unable to obtain an audience. Persistent in his ambition, he now decided to try a different approach. He wrote a paper on the principles of mechanics and sent in to D'Alembert with his request for an audience. This was a language that a mathematician could understand and appreciate. D'Alembert sent for this young scientist at once, saying: "You need no introduction other than the recommendation of your own work."
Who was this famous mathematician, who is referred to as the "French Newton", who has both an equation and a 'demon' to his name?
6. The handful of scholars and scientists who subscribed to the French "Journal de Physique" must have found the 1811 edition rather uninteresting. Two of the articles contained a parochial squabble involving credit for a minor discovery, other articles were by regular contributors, who seemed to spend more time writing about their experiments than actually performing them. Near the back of the book was some mildly interesting speculation by an Italian professor on the distinction between atoms and molecules. A few advertisements followed and that was all. It seemed to be an undistinguished issue, destined to gather dust and to gradually sink into obscurity.
But such was not to be its fate. It became so famous that a century after its appearance, delegations of scientists, representing nearly every nation, travelled to Italy to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of this issue. They came to pay tribute to that Italian professor whose article on atoms and molecules had become one of the most famous documents in the field of physics.
Who was that Italian Professor?
7. This poor blacksmith's son, worked as an apprentice in a bookshop. Once, a customer presented him with a set of tickets to a series of lectures by Sir Humphrey Davy, of the Royal Society. This marked a turning point in his life. He was overjoyed, but could not fathom how he, as a scientifically untrained youth could get a start in even the most menial sort of scientific work.
He boldly sent a neatly copied set of Davy's lecture notes to him and requested any kind of job in his laboratory. Years later, Sir Humphrey was to refer to this young man as the greatest of all his discoveries.
Who was he?
8. The following notice was affixed to the door of a Vienna Hospital's maternity clinic: "Beginning today, May 15th, 1847, every doctor or student coming into the lying-in clinic from the dissecting room must positively wash his hands in the basin of chlorine water provided by the entrance. No exceptions to this rule!"
Seems like common sense doesn't it? However this very proclamation was met with such widespread derision by the scientific community at the time, that this doctor, who discovered that at the time doctors were indeed the killers of their own patients through their apathetic attitude towards hygiene, was forced to leave the hospital and join another. Who was this early proponent of the germ and antiseptic theory?
9. Coming back to the modern world, this renowned physicist, besides maintaining a bet for around 29 years, was also the only person to ever play himself in an episode of "Star Trek". A truly inspirational person, his battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis made him a worldwide icon, and had thrown his considerable scientific achievements into stark relief. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Who is he?
10. One day in the year 1824, while working in his laboratory, this young chemist, while working with compounds of an inorganic nature, quite accidentally formed an unexpected substance that took the form of white needle-like crystals. His keen mind tried to place them as he remember how, several years earlier, he had, as a student analyzed urine into its component parts. One of the component parts was urea, which consisted of the same white crystals. However, urea was an organic compound, something formed as a result of protein breakdown in the liver, and according to science at the time such compounds could not be formed from inorganic compounds as they possessed a 'vital force'. This scientist was so skeptical about his findings that he did not publish them for over four years, He did not realise at the time that his discovery would revolutionize chemical thought and would be responsible for the overthrow of the 'vital force' theory that had a stranglehold over the minds of chemists in the early nineteenth century.
Who was this scientist?
Source: Author
Shrivats
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