| He/She | Who is he/she? |
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| This Fellow of the Royal Society was a professor of anatomy and physiology at Bonn in 1858. He helped to show how heat is related to mechanical energy and was first to study the propagation speed of nerve impulses in frogs. He once was quoted saying "Whoever in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility may rest assured that he seeks in vain." |
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| This 1900 graduate of Zurich Polytechnic earned a degree as a secondary school teacher of math and physics. He published much of his work while employed in a patent office. He was a professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft. He spent the remainder of his professional life in a research position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. |
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Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821-1894) German physicist original name Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand Helmholtz He made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement of the law of the conservation of energy. He brought to his laboratory research the ability to analyze the philosophical assumptions on which much of 19th-century science was based, and he did so with clarity and precision. |
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Einsein, Albert (1879-1955) German-American physicist He developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Recognized in his own time as one of the most creative intellects in human history, in the first 15 years of the 20th century Einstein advanced a series of theories that proposed entirely new ways of thinking about space, time, and gravitation. His theories of relativity and gravitation were a profound advance over the old Newtonian physics and revolutionized scientific and philosophic inquiry. |