They Changed Their World and Ours 10 Quiz

Answer: James Watt

James Watt (1736-1819) was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, a seaport town on Firth of Clyde. He was a shipbuilder's son, and his parents were very relgious Presbyterians; however, Watt eventually became a deist. When he was eighteen, he traveled to London to study instrument making, but after returning to Scotland and settling in Galsgow, he was prevented from establishing a business to practice his trade because he had not served as an apprentice. Fortunately, the University of Glasgow had recently inherited several mathematical and astrological instruments, and the institution contracted with Watt to restore and repair them. A few individuals were so impressed with his skill that he was hired full-time and given a shop on the campus.

While at the University of Glasgow, Watt grew tremendously interested in the steam engine, partiuclarly as a source of power for initiating and maintaining motion. Jeronimo de Ayanz y Beaumont of Spain and Thomas Savery had each developed steam-driven pumps during the 1600s, but it was Thomas Newcomen's steam engine in 1712 that was gaining everyone's attention and was frequently used for pumping water, particularly out of mines. Still, the engine had its faults; the engine required a constant cycle of heating and cooling of its cylinder so that the engine wasted three quarters of its thermal energy instead of converting it to mechanical energy. When Watt discovered this, he invented and added a condenser, a chamber for the condensing of the steam separate from the cylinder containing a piston, and he surrounded the cylinder with a steam jacket to help regulate the cylinder's termperature. The end result was a steam engine incredibly more sophisticated, powerful, and efficient than any previous engine. However, Watt did not stop there. He eventually found a way to utilize the steam engine for rotary power. His insight concerning the modifications of the steam engine helped to initiate and spur onward the Industrial Revolution in Britain and from there to the rest of the world.

Watt also created a mechanical copy machine for the duplication of printed material and did several chemical experiments culminating in a bleach for fabrics. He coined the word "horsepower" to refer to a unit of measurement that compared steam power to that of horses, and the SI unit of measuring power--the Watt--is named in honor of him. Apparently, he was also a great conversationalist on philosophical matters but preferred not to write on such subjects except in letters exchanged between himself and his friends, and he lacked the personality for carrying out business, stating that he "would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain". Though he achieved great wealth over the course of his life, this accomplishment was due to acumen of his business partners.

Answer: Carl Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) was born in Brunswick in what is now part of Lower Saxony in Germany. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother, an illiterate housewife. Gauss was a child prodigy, and many stories exist of the genius he displayed in his early years. His birthdate was never recorded officially; however, his mother remembered that he was born eight days before the Feast of the Ascension, which, while never occurring on a fixed date of the calendar, is always 39 days after Easter. This is all the information he needed to calculate eventually his birthday. Even more surprisingly, when he was only three, he found and corrected an error in his father's accounts. The man was so astounded that he eventually permitted Gauss to manage all of his finances. Furthermore, when he was seven, he dumbfounded his teachers by figuring the sum--within a few seconds--of all integers from 1 to 100. At the age of twelve, he was challenging Euclid's geometry.

His genius was so talked about that it caught the attention of the Duke of Brunswick, who in turn was so impressed with Gauss that he sent the boy at age fifteen to the Collegium Carolinium and from there to the University of Gottingen. While a student, he became the first known individual to find a pattern in the occurrence of prime numbers, which before that point in time had been concluded by most to be a random assortment. He also constructed the first known regular seventeen-sided figure or heptadecagon by discovering a method of creating an unlimited number of regular polygons. According to one story, Gauss eventually requested that the heptadecagon be carved into his headstone upon his death; however, the stonemason refused because, as he claimed, the image would appear to most viewers as merely a circle. He also provided the first understandable exposition of complex numbers and imaginary numbers, and his notations and theories unleashed their full potential. At age twenty-two, he proved what we call today the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, and at twenty-four he published his "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae", which laid the foundation for modern number theory and contained the first proof lf the law of quadratic reciprocity.

In 1801, the Italian priest and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres but only momentarily, one might say, as it soon disappeared "behind" the sun on its revolution. However, after the calculations of when it should "reappear", it could not be found. Meanwhile, Gauss, who also was greatly interested in astronomy, had worked out a logarithmic formula based on the "least squares approximation method" for where Ceres should be in space, and the dwarf planet was eventually refound according to Gauss's predictions. His fame skyrocketed, and he was appointed Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Astronomical Observatory in Gottingen. From this point, Gauss's studies and theories began to travel in even more radical directions. In the field of probability and statistics, he established concepts that are now referred to as Gaussian distribution, Gaussian function, and the Gaussian error curve (aka "the bell curve"). He began to study modular arithmetic, which is currently applied not only in abstract algebra but also in computer science, cryptography, and musical art. Then, while employed to perform a survey of royal Hanoverian property, he began to theorize ideas that would challenge Euclidian geometry, which was based entirely on flat planes. While calculating distances using the direction of light, Gauss had not quite grasped the radical idea that light can travel on a curve; however, his speculations were leading to triangular shapes with interior angles adding up to greater than 180 degrees (the sum all angles within a Euclidian triangle equal). He, therefore, began studying and writing about differential geometry, which deals with the curves of surfaces.

He also was responsible for a couple of remarkable inventions. The first is the heliotrope, a device that uses a mirror to reflect sunlight over great distances for the purpose of marking positions in surveying. Second, he invented the first electric telegraph. He later in life became greatly interested in electromagnetism and collaborated with Wilhelm Weber on attempts to measure the earth's magnetic field. Today, the SI unit of measuring magnetic induction is called the "gauss".

Answer: Paracelsus

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, (1493-1541) was born in a village called Egg near Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Both of his parents had experience as physicians or medical care workers, and his father, also a notable chemist, taught his son medicine, botany, and mineralogy as well as natural philosophy. Furthermore, as a boy, Paraclesus was exposed to the ideals of humanism and the Renaissance through his education at St. Paul's Abbey at Lavanttal, Austria. After studying at various universities, including those at Basel, Switzerland, and Ferrara, Italy, he settled in Venice for a while and served as a traveling military surgeon. In 1524, he was in Salzburg, Austria, and in 1525, Freiburg, Germany.

In 1527, he was back in Basel, where he established his own practice and became a lecturer at the city's university. However, he soon created great controversy because he consistently challengeed the traditional practices of medicine. He burned older prestigious medical texts, wrote criticism of other instructors and practising doctors, and openly ridiculed and abused them vocally. To make matters worse, he frequently sought medical advice and guidance from individuals who had no academic training but who, nevertheless, were successful in the treatment of their patients with herbal and chemical medicines. His defiance of authority became so outrageous that many began comparing him to Martin Luther. His response was, "I leave it to Luther to defend what he says and I will be responsible for what I say. That which you wish to Luther, you wish also to me: You wish us both in the fire." Eventually, threatend with legal consequences he could no longer defend himself against, he moved to Alsace, France. That is when his pseudonym began to be most apparent as the author of various texts. Whether he invented his name or borrowed it from others who had begun referring to him as "Paracelsus" is not known. Also, during this time is when he did his work on a mercurial treatment of syphilis and his studies of various effects suffered by miners.

His significance lies in his insistence on an understanding of chemistry and mineralogy among those who were going to practice as physicians. He created chemical therapies and chemical urinalysis, and he was most likely the first to speculate that digestion was the result of biochemical activity. He also created a great number of medicines, including various opiates, liniments, and pre-antiseptics. Furthermore, he was instrumental in the fight against blood letting, as he felt this disturbed the chemical balance of the body.

Answer: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was born in Delft in the Dutch Republic. His father, a basket maker, died when Leeuwenhoek was five years old; his mother remarried, and his step-father, who was a painter, then died when Leeuwenhoek was ten. At the age of sixteen, Leeuwenhoek became an apprentice to a book-keeper for a linen-draper's shop in Amsterdam, where he worked for six years before returning to Delft and opening his own draper's shop. Interestingly, the painter Johannes Vermeer lived in Delft as well. Leeuwenhoek served as the executor of Vermeer's will, and some have speculated that Leeuwenhoek appears in a couple of Vermeer's paintings.

His work with cloth is what contributed to his interest in magnifying lenses. Trying to determine the quality of the thread in his cloth, he found the lenses that he was using unsatisfactory. Thus, he set about trying to make his own better lenses and developed a remarkable process for doing so. His creations were successful--so successful that he was driven by curiosity to look at more than merely thread. Over the course of his life, he noted observations of blood, sweat, tears, saliva, semen, tooth tartar, hair, feathers, insect parts, spices, minerals, crystals, and countless other materials.

His most significant finding, however, was the discovery of single-celled organisms, mostly different species of bacteria that he referred to as "animalcules" (meaning "tiny animals"). He was surprised to discover that a tiny drop of water from a marsh might contain thousands of these one-celled creatures, and, as he noted, "There are more animals living in the scum of the teeth than there are men in a whole kingdom". His work reached the ears of London's Royal Society, who were tremendously impressed with his findings. Of course, his description of microscopic single-celled organisms was challenged at first, as no one knew of their existence at the time; however, his work along these lines was soon proved credible. The result was his election to the Royal Society himself, great fame, and the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline.

Answer: Montesquieu

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) died before he saw the fruition of his work practiced on such a grand scale around the world, but what an impact his ideas did ultimately have! He published "The Spirit of the Laws" anonymously in 1748; however, it did not meet with a friendly reception by either the supporters or the critics of Louis XV's government, and the Catholic Church banned the book by placing it on its "Index of Prohibited Books". However, during the 1780s, James Madison in particular took very seriously Montesquieu's ideas in "The Spirit of the Laws" to help construct the "Constitution of the United States of America." Madison used Montesquieu's suggestions that the powers of government be divided into three bodies--the executive, the legislative, and the judicial--and that a system of checks and balances be established among these three bodies so that despotism or tyranny could never exist. Of course, several nations around the world would soon imitate this model of government as well.

Montesquieu was born in southwest France to highly esteemed parents. His father had been a soldier and could trace his noble lineage far back into France's history. His mother was an heiress, and it was through her that Montesquieu inherited his title Baron of la Brede. His parents both died while he was young, and he became a ward of his uncle; when his uncle died, Montesquieu inhertied a second barony and became the Baron of Montesquieu as well. He studied law, began his own practice, and became a judge. However, he eventually gave up the practice of law so that he might devote himself entirely to his studies of political philosophy and to writing. In 1721, he published "Persian Letters", a satirical work about two travelers from Persia who report on Europe as they are experiencing it and are accidentally exposing the flaws and foolishness of the societies of the continent. In 1734, he published "Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline." Of course, his most famous work "The Spirit of the Laws" was published in 1748. It was so significant to the "Founding Fathers" of the United States' "Constitution" that they quoted more from it than any other text, except maybe the Bible. Montesquieu ultimately traced his ideas for the structure of government to the wilderness societies of ancient Germany; thus, he remarked, "This beautiful system was invented in the woods".

Montesquieu was also somewhat of an early anthropologist. In "The Spirit of the Laws", he also established his meteorological climate theory, one that argued that people and their societies are products of the climates they inhabit. Considering the continent of Europe, Montesquieu argued, "If we travel North, we meet with people who have few vices and a great share of frankness. If we draw near the South, we fancy ourselves entirely removed from the verge of morality". Thus, he contributed to the stereotypical point of view that the southern Latin countries were a much more promiscuous society.

Answer: Nikolaus Otto

Nikolaus August Otto (1832-1891) grew up in Holzhausen an der Haide, Germany. He didn't finish high school but was known for his commendable academic performance. Though as a student his primary interests had lain in science and technology, he finished an apprenticeship to a small business and then went to Frankfurt, where he began work for Philipp Jakob Lindheimer as essentially a grocer. Traveling throughout western Germany, he sold items such as rice, sugar, and coffee.

Then, in the fall of 1860, he learned of a new kind of engine that used gasoline as its fuel. He and his brother began speculating that they could build one of their own, and they did. However, it was merely a copy of the Parisian Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir's engine and brought them little recognition and certainly no profit. Next, in 1862, Otto and his brother put together a four-cycle compressed charge engine, but this was a failure as it broke after only a few minutes of operating. However, in 1864, after his brother had given up and quit and Otto had teamed with the sugar industrialist Eugen Langen as his financial supporter, Otto built a free piston atmospheric engine, one that relied on the explosion of gas to create a vacuum resulting in pressure to move the pistons of the engine. Finally, in 1876, the four-stroke "Otto cycle" engine was created. It is this machine that was modified to create the automobile's engine. The "Otto cycle" engine relies on four strokes of the pistons: (1) the downward intake stroke during which fuel and air enter the combustion chamber, (2) the the upward compression stroke during which the piston compresses the fuel and air mixture, (3) the downward power stroke which ignites the mixture with a spark or a flame, and then (4) the upward exhaust stroke which allowed the resulting gas to escape.

This engine was much more powerful and efficient that either the steam engine or the two-stroke gasoline engine. The secret was the compression of the fuel and air; this added step allowed the engine to move or power other items at an incredibly faster speed. The engine became so popular that the Otto and Langen firm produced and sold nearly fifty thousand of these machines over seventeen years. Cashing on this success, Otto began to manufacture these engines in the United States. To finish off his contribution to the automotive industry, Otto invented the electric ignition in 1884.

Answer: Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was born Johann Mendel but acquired the name "Gregor" after he began his religious life at the Augustinian St. Thomas's Abbey. His parents were German-speaking farmers who lived on property that had belonged to the family for over 130 years, land on the Moravian-Silesian border of the Austrian Empire (land which is now part of the Czech Republic). As a child, he pursued interests in horticulture and beekeeping, activities that would certainly be useful to his studies and observations as an adult. At age eleven, his parents sent him away to grammar school on the advice of a priest who noticed Mendel's aptitude for learning. Then, in 1840, he began a two-year program at the Philosophical Institute of the University of Olmutz (now Olomouc), where he had great success in physics and mathematics.

After completion of his studies, rather than return to the farm, he entered a monastic life at St. Thomas's Abbey or Altbrunn at Brno. There he was able to take advantage of a diverse and intellectual community where he could continue pursuit of his own interests. As a priest, Mendel's duties consisted of visiting the sick and the dying, but he found this so stressful that he himself became ill. Eventually, he took up a position as a substitute instructor. However, as he was unable to pass a new exam that a new law required of teachers, he was sent to the University of Vienna to improve his knowledge. While there, he studied physics under Christian Doppler (of the Doppler Effect fame) and botany and the use of the microscope under Franz Unger, who influenced Mendel with cell theory and pre-Darwin evolutionary theory. He then returned to the Abbey, where he taught and for fourteen years had time to pursue the various experiments for which he is now famous. Eventually, his experiments came to an end when he himself became Abbot and no longer had time for other pursuits outside of his administrative duties. Furthermore, as Abbot, he became entangled in a great number of controversies with the government because he refused to pay new taxes designed to glean money from church property, even after the government took control of some of the Abbey's property.

During Mendel's fourteen years between his leaving the University of Vienna and his becoming Abbot of St. Thomas's, he carried out the most significant known experiments with hybridization up to that point in history. Specifically from 1856 to 1863, Mendel grew and tested around 28,000 different plants, but, of course, he focused primarily on the pea because of its distinct varieties, ease of pollination, and high success rate for seed germination. He was able to determine that the plants were demonstrating the existence of "dominant" and "recessive" traits (terms he coined) that were initiated by certain "invisible factors". These "factors" would, of course, one day be referred to as "genes". Ultimately, there were four possibilities when crossbreeding--Dominant/Dominant (which resulted in a purebred with the Dominant trait), Dominant/recessive, recessive/Dominant (both of which resulted in hybrids), and recessive/recessive (which resulted in a purebred with the recessive trait. Ultimately, he was able to formulate three different laws of heredity: the Law of Segregation, the Law of Independent Assortment, and the Law of Dominance.

During his lifetime, Mendel published only two papers about his experiments with heredity, and these attracted very little interest among scientists, who tended to see Mendel's work as studies on hybridization useful to farmers instead of groundbreaking ideas about biological inheritance. Mendel had also studied heredity in mice and in bees, but the great majority of his published studies were in the field of meteorology to support his founding of the Austrian Meteorological Society in 1865. Thus, scientists and scholars didn't reach a real understanding of how heredity works until the twentieth century, and even Charles Darwin himself got it wrong with his theory of pangenesis. Various scientists within a remarkably very short time of each other's work published rediscoveries of Mendel's studies and conclusions, and after a couple of decades of intense debate, Mendelian genetic theory and Darwin's natural selection theory merged to create our current understanding of heredity.

Answer: Matsuo Basho

Matsuo Munefusa, aka Matsuo Basho, (1644-1694) was the descendent of a samurai family that was no longer prestigious but rather poor and living on a farm near a small town outside of Kyoto. He worked as a servant for the lord of a local castle and developed while there a love for poetry, particularly the haikai poetry (not to be confused with "haiku"). Haikai was a new approach to Japanese culture, language, and literary style. It was considered unorthodox because it attempted to combine what was traditionally kept apart. Haikai writings combined low culture with high culture, vulgar expressions and popular folk forms with classical and traditional art forms, Chinese traditions with Japanese traditions. At the age of 29, Matsuo Munefusa moved to Edo (now Tokyo), where he integrated himself among intellectual circles and established himself as a haikai master, making a living from teaching poetry.

However, in 1680, he renounced this lifestyle to lead the life of a spiritual man. He moved into a Basho-an, a hut made of banana plant stalks and leaves, and took part of the name of this kind of domicile to use as his own. Thus, he began to be known as Matsuo Basho. He continued to write poetry, but now he did so in the style of the Chinese recluse poets. In 1684, he began making several journeys, mostly on foot, throughout the countryside of Japan to visit distant sites of religious and literary significance. He also kept records of his travels in diaries, sensationalizing some of the details for poetic effect. What is remarkable, however, about his travel journals is that, while in prior times such diaries would have been written in verse form, Basho wrote his in a style of prose that incorporated a mixture of prose, poetry, painting, and lifestyle. His most famous travelogue is "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", which tells of a spiritual journey through nature and attempts to imitate past conventions inspired by visiting poetic shrines. The book is a culmination of a five-month journey he began in 1689 with his friend Sora.

In "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", he also popularized the idea of haiku as stand-alone poetry. Originally, haiku were the opening verse to a longer sequence of linked poems. However, Basho fell in love with the idea of the challenge of capturing a mood, an emotional experience, or a meaningful idea or observation within the compact limited form of three lines and a limited number of syllables (the 5-7-5 syllable pattern wasn't established until the late 1800s, long after Basho's lifetime). In addition to relying on the haiku as a stand-alone poem, he also very radically rejected the classical and traditional norms for writing haiku. He used common words and objects to represent the rustic or peasant life rather than elite and refined language and subjects. Take the following rather comical piece from "The Narrow Road to the Deep North":

Fleas, lice--
a horse passes water
by my pillow

Of course, he was more than capable of a more serious kind of writing:

Spring going--
birds crying and tears
in the eyes of the fish

or

Planting rice seedlings
the hands--in the distant past pressing
the grass of longing

I'll give one last haiku to illustrate better why Basho was so radical:

An old pond--
A frog leaps in,
The sound of water

In classical Japanese poetry, frogs always represented spring and new life; the frog would sing with a beautiful voice and would be sitting next to a beautiful flower in a beautiful crystal stream. This is what Basho's readers would have expected as soon as he mentioned "a frog". Instead, they get an "old pond", bringing to mind something brown and stagnant, not flowing and life giving. As Basho shocks readers with a different vision of the frog, he makes a splash, so to speak, or a ripple in his culture--"the sound of the water" made by the frog jumping into the pond. Thus, Basho is himself the frog in this poem, and ironically, he IS bringing about new life--to an old poetry.

Answer: Otto Lilienthal

Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was born and grew up in Anklam, Prussia, where he and his brother Gustav studied birds and became so fascinated with flying that they began to experiment with the possibilities of manned flight. They created strap-on wings but, of course, failed to achieve anything resembling sustained flight. Lilienthal eventually attended various technical schools and established himself as a professional design engineer. He then devoted his life to building appartuses and machines for manned flight, a devotion that was interrupted only by his service during the Franco-Prussian War. Of course, he had to make a living and supported himself by working as an engineer at various companies, establishing his own boiler and steam engine manufacturing company, receiving patents such as that on one of his mining machines, and publishing books like his 1889 "Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation", which provided a detailed study of thrust and aerodynamics.

During his life, he created various hang gliders, wing-flapping machines, monoplanes, and biplanes and attempted flights from high natural hills as well as from a large hill that he had built outside of Berlin. In 1893, he achieved his longest distance of flight--250 meters or 820 feet. News of his experiments traveled around the globe, naturally, and published articles with photographs contributed to his fame.

On the day of August 9, 1896, Lilienthal visited the Rhinow Hills, as he had done a few times before, and continued his attempts at flight. His glider began a nosedive from which he could not recover, and he plummeted 15 meters (49 feet). He suffered a break in his third cervical vertebra and eventually became unconscious. He died the next day in the clinic of Ernst von Bergmann, one of the most successful European surgeons at that time.

The Wright Brothers considered Lilienthal's studies and experiments tremendously important to thier own attempts at flight. They both credited him as one of the most significant inspirations for their motivations. Wilbur was quoted as saying that Otto Lilienthal was "easily the most important" of all the individuals who attempted to fly during the 1800s, and Orville visited Lilienthal's widow in Germany to pay him tribute. Furthermore, the safety aspects, such as shock absorbers and harnesses, that Lilienthal developed after certain crashes as well as lessons learned by the Wrights from studying Lilienthal's crashes helped the Wrights to establish their own safety precautions.

Answer: Petrus Peregrinus

Hardly anything at all is know of Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt (Pierre Pelerin de Maricourt) who lived during the thirteenth century, including his year of birth or year of death. Sometime after 1261, he wrote his "Nova compositio astrolabii particularis", a treatise explaining the construction of an astrolabe that could be used at various latitudes without its user having to exchange plates. However, this treatise turned out not to be very popular or useful for most users of the astrolabe, an instrument used by navigators and astronomers to measure the heights of heavenly bodies from the horizon.

Peregrinus's fame comes from a 1269 letter addressed to "the dearest of friends"--"Epistola ad Sigerum de Foucaucourt miletum de magnete". He wrote this apparently while participating in the French army's attack on Lucerna in central Italy during the Crusades, his engineering skills most likely being used for the making of siege machines. As his "friend" was not evidently well educated, Peregrinus explained magnetism and compass use in a thorough and elementary manner. Such an approach served to popularize the mass reproduction of this letter and circulation of it throughout Europe. Not only did Peregrinus explain polariity and magnetic repulsion and attraction, but his observations about broken-off pieces of magnets being complete magnets themselves are somewhat an anticipation of the modern molecular theory of magnetism. Furthermore, he speaks of a magnetized needle pivoting in a circle, which anticipates the invention of the dry compass, and of a magnet driving the revolution of a wheel, which anticipates the invention of a magnetic motor. Most significant to the general population, of course, is his explanation of how to make and operate a floating compass.

When one considers the use of the compass for historically important exploration over the next few centuries--such as that done by Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama--it is easy to see how significant Peregrinus's letter turned out to be.