Famous Physicists

Isaac Newton

*he was born prematurely about 11-15 weeks early.

*he was considered by many to be the father of modern physics

*he invented calculus, and with calculus in hand, people could now create mathematical models of changing systems

*his three laws of motion and his law of gravitation, however, are still one of the first things that all physics students learn, and are the basis behind a lot of physics that is done today.

*he became a mathematics professor at the age of 26

* he was a religious person and he has written a lot about Biblical hermeneutics.

*he completed his graduation in the year 1665 and the generalized binomial theorem was discovered by him in the same year.

*delivered lectures on the subject of optics from the year 1670-1672. In the mean time, he studied refraction of light and demonstrated the decomposition of white light in a color spectrum.

*he was named after his father who died three months before he was born.

*he likes to draw, his room was even colored on the ceilings and walls.
*He went to Trinity College at Cambridge University with the intention of becoming a Church of England minister.
OPTICS:
Newton used prisms to show that sunlight was made up of all all the colors of the rainbow. This proved that the ancient Greeks’ ideas about light were wrong. In Newton’s time, astronomy was severely hampered because lenses in telescopes broke some of the light into unwanted colors, causing a somewhat unclear view. Although not the first to consider using a curved mirror instead of a lens, Newton was the first to successfully construct a telescope using this principle—a principle still used today in many telescopes.

When Cambridge University reopened in 1667, Isaac Newton returned to do a Masters Degree, while teaching and doing research.

André-Marie Ampère

*The French physicist and mathematician
*He is mainly credited for laying down the basis of electrodynamics (now known as electromagnetism).
*His name endures in everyday life in the ampere, the unit for measuring electric current.
* His father, Jean-Jacques Ampère, was an affluent businessman and local government official.
* His father gave him Latin lessons and encouraged him to pursue his passion for mathematics.
*He took his first regular job in 1799 as a modestly paid mathematics teacher, which gave him the financial security to marry and be a father of his first child, Jean-Jacques, the next year. 
*In 1802, he was appointed a professor of physics and chemistry at the École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse.
Foundation of Electrodynamics

On September 11, 1820, Ampere heard of Oersted's discovery that a magnetic needle is acted on by a current. A week later, he presented a full paper to the Academy about his own findings. He demonstrated that parallel wires carrying currents either attract or repel each other depending whether currents are in the same or in opposite directions. This laid the groundwork for the science of 

electrodynamics or electromagnetism.

James Watt

*His Father was a prominent citizen of Greenock, and was at various times chief magistrate and treasurer of the town.
*The quadrants lying about his father's carpenter's shop led him to the study of optics and astronomy; his ill health induced him to pry into the secrets of physiology; and his solitary walks through the country attracted him to the study of botany and history. 
*While carrying on the business of a mathematical-instrument maker, he received an order to build an organ; and, though without an ear for music, he undertook the study of harmonics, and successfully constructed the instrument.

*He was born in Greenock, Scotland, in 1736

*At the age of nineteen, he was sent to Glasgow to learn the trade of a mathematical-instrument maker. 

*He was engaged in the improvement of harbors and in the deepening of the Forth, Clyde and other rivers in Scotland.

*In 1755, he had been granted a patent by Parliament that prevented anybody else from making a steam-engine like the one he had developed.

*His grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a well known 

mathematician and local schoolmaster

Galileo Galilei

* was born in Pisa Italy 
*the first of six children of Vincenzo Galilei, a famous composer, and Giulia Ammannati. Four of their six children survived infancy, and the youngest Michelangelo also became a noted composer.

*Although he seriously considered the priesthood as a young man, he enrolled for a medical degree at the University of Pisa at his father's urging. He did not complete this degree, but instead studied mathematics.

*Discovered the phases of Venus, the four satellites of Jupiter Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede.

*He taught geometry, mechanics and astronomy at the University of Padua from 1592 to 1610.
*He was one of the first people to observe sunspots, which helped develop the predictions that would help identify the annual patterns.

*According to his notes, he observed the planet Neptune in 1612, but did not recognize it as a planet. He thought it was simply another dim star.

*His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the study of motion.

*In the fall of 1609, he began observing the heavens with instruments that magnified up to 20 times.
*He became blind at the age of 72. His blindness has often been attributed to damage done to his eyes by telescopic observations he made .The truth is he was blinded by a combination of cataracts and glaucoma. Galileo died at Arcetri in 1642, the year Isaac Newton was born leaving behind his resourceful creations.

Heinrich Hertz

* a German physicist 
*He was born in 1857 and died of blood poisoning in 1894 at the age of 37 
*He applied Maxwell's theories to the production and reception of radio waves. In recognition of his work, the unit of frequency of a radio wave -- one cycle per second -- is named the Hertz.

* In 1888, in a corner of his physics classroom at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic in Berlin, he generated electric waves by means of the oscillatory discharge of a condenser through a loop provided with a spark gap, and then detecting them with a similar type of circuit. Hertz's condenser was a pair of metal rods, placed end to end with a small gap for a spark between them. When these rods were given charges of opposite signs, strong enough to spark, the current would oscillate back and forth across the gap and along the rods. With this oscillator, Hertz solved two problems: 1) timing Maxwell's waves (he had demonstrated, in the concrete, what Maxwell had only theorized: that the velocity of radio waves was equal to the velocity of light), and 2) how to make the electric and magnetic fields detach themselves from wires and go free as Maxwell's waves. 

* Discovered radio waves and photoelectric effect.

Robert Hooke

*British natural philosopher, architect and polymath
*perhaps the most neglected natural philosophers of all time despite the significant role he played in the scientific revolution
*His father was the minister of the Church of England.
*At the age of thirteen young Hooke was able to enter Westminster School, and from there went to Oxford, where some of the finest scientists in England were working at the time.
* He was appointed as a chemical assistant to Dr Thomas Willis and later met the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and gained a position as his assistant from about 1655 to 1662.


Hooke’s law
~ law of elasticity discovered by the English scientist Robert Hooke in 1660, which states that, for relatively small deformations of an object, the displacement or size of the deformation is directly proportional to the deforming force or load. Under these conditions the object returns to its original shape and size upon removal of the load. Elastic behaviour of solids according to Hooke’s law can be explained by the fact that small displacements of their constituent molecules, atoms, or ions from normal positions is also proportional to the force that causes the displacement.

Christian Huygens

-- a Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and inventor who was the leading proponent of the wave theory of light.

-- He also made important contributions to mechanics, stating that in a collision between bodies, neither loses nor gains "motion'' (his term for momentum).

-- In 1654, his attention was directed to the improvement of the telescope. Together with his brother, Christian Huygens devised a new and better way of grinding and polishing lenses. As a result of these improvements, Huygens was able during 1655 and 1656 to resolve numerous astronomical questions of the day including the fact that Saturn's rings were made of rocks and the presence of Titan. 

--  In 1656, Huygens invented the first pendulum clock, as described in his 1658 article "Horologium". The time-pieces previously in use had been balance-clocks, Chris Huygens' pendulum clock was regulated by a mechanism with a "natural" period of oscillation and had an error of less than 1 minute a day, the first time such accuracy had been achieved. His later refinements reduced his clock's errors to less than 10 seconds a day.




James Prescott Joule

*He was born at Salford, near Manchester, England, on December 24, 1818.
*He was the second of five children born to a wealthy brewery owner.
*He initially was educated at home, before being tutored, at the age of sixteen, by the eminent Manchester scientist John Dalton.
*When their father became ill, James and his brother took over running the brewery. 
*In 1839, he began a series of experiments involving mechanical work, electricity and heat. 
*He was influenced by the thinking of Franz Aepinus and tried to explain the phenomena of electricity and magnetism in terms of atoms surrounded by a "calorific ether in a state of vibration".
*He died at home in Sale and is buried in Brooklands cemetery there. 


Joule's major contributions to physics were in proving that energy can neither be created or destroyed, finding the mechanical equivalent of heat, and discovering Joule's law. The idea of conservation of energy was proved by Joule in a series of experiments.  In his early years Joule proved that heat produced in a small electromagnet built by him was from electrical energy which was in turn generated by mechanical energy which powered the dynamo. From this experiment Joule concluded that the heat produced in the electromagnet was energy which came directly from the human effort that went into the machine. 

In an effort to quantify mechanical work, Joule used a brass paddle wheel which was turned by falling weights, which possessed potential energy because of their position. As they fell, they lost their potential energy, which in turn provided kinetic energy to the wheel. As the paddle wheel turned, it stirred the water in a copper tub. By noting that there was a rise in the temperature of the water every time a weight fell, and by relating the rise to the falling weights, Joule was able to claim that the mechanical energy from the falling weights was being converted to heat energy in the water. He proved that the quantity of heat capable of increasing the temperature of a pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit requires the expenditure of a mechanical energy represented by the fall of 772 pounds through the space of one foot. Joule showed through his research, that work can be converted to heat with a fixed conversion ratio of one to the other and vice versa. His principle of Conservation of Energy became the first law of Thermodynamics, a field of physics that Joule is often referred to as the chief founder of.