Scientists Who Changed the World Quiz

Answer: Pythagoras

Pythagoras' Theorem was probably known to the Babylonians but Pythagoras (581-497 BC) may well have been the first to prove it. It is perhaps ironic that Pythagoras is remembered today for this theorem, the principles of which had previously been known for over a thousand years, and yet his more original discoveries are obscure.

As the discoverer of the musical scale, in effect creating a rule book for the musical harmonies that we take for granted, it is arguable that this has had a much more profound impact on the history of the world than a simple, largely borrowed mathematical formula.

Answer: Archimedes

Archimedes (287-212 BC) was responsible for the science of hydrostatics, the study of displacement of bodies in water. He discovered the principles of static mechanics and pycnometry (the measurement of the volume or density of an object). Known as the 'father of integral calculus', Archimedes' reckonings were later used by, among others, Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz and Newton.

Answer: Leonardo Da Vinci

If this were a quiz of scientists who -could have- changed the world, Da Vinci (1452-1519) would top the list. But regardless of the fact that many of the designs for his potentially world-changing creations were never published, his methodical approach to science marks a significant and symbolic stepping-stone from the Middle Ages into the modern era. Hoping to secure employment with the Duke of Milan, he wrote to him that his areas of expertise included: the construction of bridges and irrigation canals, the designing of military weapons and architecture, as well as painting and sculpture. To add to the list, Leonardo is also credited with being the first ever person to conceive of a bicycle!

Answer: Daniel Fahrenheit

Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736), of course, was the creator of the Fahrenheit scale of temperature. The Kelvin scale is more suitable for scientific purposes and the Celsius scale is neater, based as it is on decimals. The advantage of using the Fahrenheit scale is that is it designed with the everyday use in mind, rarely needing, for example, negative degrees. Fahrenheit using his glass-blowing skills to create his thermometer, found that the boiling points of different liquids varied according to the fluctuations in atmospheric pressure; the lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point of water - a useful fact for anyone wishing to make a cup of tea at high altitude!

Answer: Antoine Lavoisier

Despite the importance of Lavoisier's (1743-1794) scientific achievements, they were not enough to save his life in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution. Lavoisier was a prominent figure in French public life and, most significantly, ran a tax-collecting firm. Those running such companies were considered to be enemies of the revolution.

A prominent member of the revolutionary leadership, Marat, who had earlier attempted to forge a career in science and had his work criticised by Lavoisier used this as pretext to try him.

It ultimately led to the guillotine and a tragic end to the life of France's most outstanding scientist.

Answer: John Dalton

John Dalton (1766-1844) began teaching at his school at the age of 12. Two years later he and his elder brother purchased a school where they taught roughly 60 children.
His paper on colour blindness, which both he and his brother suffered from, and which was known as daltonism for a long while, was the first to be published on the condition. Dalton is also largely responsible for the transforming of meteorology from an imprecise art based on folklore to a real science; how much more precise it is nowadays is perhaps debatable!

Answer: Louis Pasteur

By the time of his death, Pasteur (1822-1895) was world-famous and tributes poured in. Perhaps the most dramatic gesture of all, however, came almost a half-century later. A 9-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, whom Pasteur had saved from rabies, went on to become the caretaker at the Pasteur Institute (founded in 1888) where the scientist was buried.

Answer: Thomas Alva Edison

Arguably the best-known American of his generation, Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was considered to be retarded at school due to his hearing difficulty, and attended only occasionally for five years.
Despite this inauspicious start Edison unquestionably changed the world, holding as he did 1,093 patents singularly or jointly. Yet the most prolific inventor felt he had only scratched the surface of the possible. "Until man duplicates a blade of grass," he once said, "nature can laugh at this so called 'scientific knowledge'," adding, "We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything."

Answer: Marie Curie

Marie Curie (1867-1934) would go on to be elected to her husband's former post of Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne, and became the institution's first female professor in the process. Her achievements in this postion included the establishment of a research laboratory for radioactivity in 1912.
The laboratory would go on to become world-renowned for its contribution to physics. This was due in no small part to a gift bestowed on Curie by the United States in 1921 which greatly facilitated the centre's work: a gram of rare radium.
She received her second Nobel Prize in 1911 (her first was awarded jointly with her husband Pierre in 1903), this time in chemistry, in recognition of her discovery of polonium and radium.
Even today, Marie Curie's notebooks of her studies remain too radioactive to handle.

Answer: Albert Einstein

Almost inevitably, Einstein was also drawn into the atomic bomb race. He was asked by the fellow scientists in 1939 to warn the US President of the danger of Germany creating an atomic bomb. Einstein himself had been a German citizen, but had renounced his citizenship in favour of Switzerland, and ultimately America, having moved there in 1933 following the rise to power of Hitler in his home country. Roosevelt's response to Einstein's warning was to initiate the Manhattan project to create an American bomb first.

After the war Einstein spent time trying to encourage nuclear disarmament.