The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#10551
Heinrich Streintz
1848 - 1892 (44 years)
Heinrich Streintz was an Austrian physicist. Due to the frequent diseases of their son, the parents of Streintz moved to Graz. There, he visited High School which he passed with great success in 1868. Soon the mathematical abilities of Streintz were discovered, so he occupied the subjects mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Graz. Temporarily he studied also in Leipzig, Munich, and Zurich. In Graz he attained a doctorate in 1872, and then he studied for some time under Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Leo Königsberger in Heidelberg. Afterwards he worked in Vienna under Josef Ste...
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William Sutherland
1859 - 1911 (52 years)
William Sutherland was a Scottish-born Australian theoretical physicist, physical chemist and writer for The Age newspaper. Early life and education Sutherland was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son of George Sutherland, a woodcarver, and his wife Jane, née Smith. William had siblings Alexander Sutherland, George Sutherland and Jane Sutherland. The family emigrated to Australia in 1864, staying in Sydney for six years and then moving to Melbourne in 1870. Sutherland later graduated from Wesley College. The headmaster was Martin Howy Irving who had been the second professor of classics at the University of Melbourne, but the influence of the second master, H.
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Theodore Meliteniotes
1320 - 1393 (73 years)
Theodore Meliteniotes was a Byzantine Greek astronomer, a sakellarios in the Byzantine bureaucracy, a supporter of Gregory Palamas and an opponent of the reunion with the Catholic Church. He became didaskalos ton didaskalon, i.e. the director of the Patriarchal School in 1360.
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Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
1236 - 1311 (75 years)
Qotb al-Din Mahmoud b. Zia al-Din Mas'ud b. Mosleh Shirazi was a 13th-century Persian polymath and poet who made contributions to astronomy, mathematics, medicine, physics, music theory, philosophy and Sufism.
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Hans Oswald Rosenberg
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Hans Oswald Rosenberg was a German astronomer. He worked in the University of Tübingen before losing his job in Nazi Germany for having Jewish descent. He then moved to the United States of America and then to Turkey. He studied correlations between spectra and magnitude and produced a precursor of the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram in 1910 using stars at similar distances within the Pleiades cluster.
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Kārlis Šteins
1911 - 1983 (72 years)
Kārlis Šteins was a Latvian and Soviet astronomer and populariser of this science. Biography Šteins was born on October 13, 1911 in Kazan, Russian Empire. In 1925 he finished the Riga 2nd Secondary school. In 1929 he started the studies in University of Latvia, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science. In 1934 he graduated from the University of Latvia. In 1933 he was practicing in Kraków, Poland, at Kraków Astronomical Observatory under supervision of Tadeusz Banachiewicz, and continued there until 1936. In 1933 he calculated the orbit of asteroid 1933 OP, discovered by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth, and named it 1284 Latvia; this is the first minor planet to bear a Latvia-related name.
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Heinrich Vogt
1890 - 1968 (78 years)
Heinrich Vogt was a German astronomer. Early life Vogt was born on October 5, 1890, in Gau-Algesheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany to Philipp Vogt, a farmer, and his wife Margaretha. Education In 1911, after graduating from high school in Mainz, Vogt enrolled at the University of Heidelberg to study astronomy, mathematics, and physics, where he was under the tutelage of Max Wolf. His studies were interrupted due to World War I, but he continued his scientific career and earned a PhD in 1919 with a dissertation on the topic "On the theory of Algol variables". In 1921, he completed a Habilita...
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Karl Ledersteger
1900 - 1972 (72 years)
Karl Ledersteger was an important geodesist and geophysicist. After studies of astronomy, mathematics and geodesy he worked in Germany and later in the National Survey of Austria. Later he set up the scientific department of the Federal Office for Metrology and Survey , Vienna. In the 1950s he was appointed as a professor of geodesy and astrometry at the Technical University of Vienna. He was head of many research projects, and author of about 200 scientific articles. Still a standard work of astronomical and physical geodesy is his textbook of Erdmessung published 1969.
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Theodore H. Berlin
1917 - 1962 (45 years)
Theodore H. Berlin was an American theoretical physicist. Education and career Berlin graduated in 1939 with B.S. in chemical engineering from Cooper Union. He graduated in 1940 with M.S. and in 1944 with Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His thesis advisor was Kasimir Fajans.
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Jean-Charles Houzeau
1820 - 1888 (68 years)
Jean-Charles Houzeau de Lehaie was a Belgian astronomer and journalist. A French speaker, he moved to New Orleans after getting in trouble for his politics in Belgium. In the U.S. he continued his journalistic, astronomical, and political pursuits. He was an abolitionist and joined with unionists in Texas before the American Civil War. In New Orleans he worked with Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez at the newspapers he founded in the 1860s.
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Leslie Earl Simon
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Leslie Earl Simon was an American military officer and scientist, and author of the book German Research in World War II: An Analysis of the Conduct of Research. He was a major general in the U.S. Army's Ordnance Department, and director of the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground military facility in Maryland.
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William Peddie
1861 - 1946 (85 years)
William Peddie FRSE LLD was a Scottish physicist and applied mathematician, known for his research on colour vision and molecular magnetism. Life He was born in Papa Westray in Orkney on 31 May 1861 the son of Rev John Peddie and his wife, Marion Beashe. He was educated at Kirkwall Grammar School.
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Kushyar Gilani
971 - 1029 (58 years)
Abul-Hasan Kūshyār ibn Labbān ibn Bashahri Daylami , also known as Kūshyār Daylami , was an Iranian mathematician, geographer, and astronomer from Daylam, south of the Caspian Sea, Iran. Career Kūshyār Daylami's main work was probably done about the beginning of the 11th century, and seems to have taken an important part in the elaboration of trigonometry. He continued the investigations of the 10th century mathematician and astronomer Abul Wáfa, and devoted much space to this in his , which incorporated the improved values of the planetary apogees observed by al-Battani. The tables were translated into the Persian language before the end of the century.
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Elis Strömgren
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Svante Elis Strömgren was a Swedish–Danish astronomer. Strömgren was born in 1870 in Helsingborg, in the Scania province of Sweden. He received his doctorate at Lund University in 1898, becoming docent there the same year. He worked at the University of Kiel from 1901, and assisted in the publication of Astronomische Nachrichten from 1901 to 1904. He became Professor of Astronomy and director of the Copenhagen Observatory of the University of Copenhagen in 1907. He died in Copenhagen in 1947. The minor planet 1422 Strömgrenia was named in his honour.
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Carl Bremiker
1804 - 1877 (73 years)
Carl Bremiker was a German astronomer and geodesist. First educated as a surveyor, Bremiker worked on the Rhenish-Westphalia survey until 1835. He earned a doctorate and was an assistant to Johann Franz Encke. On 26 October 1840 Bremiker discovered a comet, which is now designated as C/1840 U1 . For this discovery he won the Lalande Prize in 1840. He made entries and revisions for five of the star charts of the Berlin Academy and collaborated on the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch.
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Alexander Meissner
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
Alexander Meissner was an Austrian engineer and physicist. He was born in Vienna and died in Berlin. His field of interest was: antenna design, amplification and detection advanced the development of radio telegraphy. In March 1913 he discovered the principle of positive feedback independently of Edwin Armstrong, and by applying positive feedback to vacuum tube amplifiers, Meissner co-invented the electronic oscillator, which became the basis of radio transmission by 1920 and has innumerable uses today. The inductively-coupled oscillator circuit he invented is today known as the Meissner osci...
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Egbert Adriaan Kreiken
1896 - 1964 (68 years)
Egbert Adriaan Kreiken was a Dutch teacher and astronomer. He was born at Barneveld in the Netherlands, to a family of teachers. After being awarded his Ph.D. in 1923, he would become a professor of astronomy in Amsterdam.
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Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov
1880 - 1954 (74 years)
Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov was an astronomer and pioneer of geodynamics. Orlov studied at Saint Petersburg University, graduating with distinction in 1902. He subsequently developed his scientific background through study at the University of Paris, at the University of Lund under Carl Charlier then at the University of Göttingen under with Johann Emil Wiechert.
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Elsa Neumann
1872 - 1902 (30 years)
Elsa Neumann was a German physicist. She was the first woman to receive a PhD in physics from the University of Berlin, in 1899. Early life and education Elsa was the daughter of Maximilian and Anna née Meyer, an older brother was the ornithologist Oscar Neumann while a sister Alice was a sculptor. As a woman, Elsa Neumann was generally denied access to higher education. In 1890 she graduated with a Lehrerinnenprüfung , a degree that did not require higher education at that time and was considered less than a Realgymnasium education. Thus she took private lessons with various professors in order to acquire the advanced knowledge and skills necessary for university-level studies.
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Harold Jacoby
1865 - 1932 (67 years)
Harold Jacoby was an American astronomer, born in New York City. Career overview Jacoby received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1885 and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1895. He applied himself to astronomical research, and was appointed assistant astronomer for the United States eclipse expedition to West Africa .
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Arthur Berson
1859 - 1942 (83 years)
Arthur Josef Stanislaus Berson was a German meteorologist and pioneer of aerology who was a native of Neu Sandez, Galicia . After visiting the gymnasium in Neu Sandez, Berson studied philology in Vienna. He then studied meteorology and geography in Berlin, where he had as instructors Ferdinand von Richthofen and Wilhelm von Bezold. In 1890 he was an assistant to meteorologist Richard Aßmann at the Meteorological Institute in Berlin. During this period of time he was also secretary of the Deutschen Verein zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt, the first aeronautical organization in Germany. In 1900...
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Federigo Zuccari
1783 - 1817 (34 years)
Federigo, Vincenzo Antonio, Ludovico Zuccari was an Italian astronomer, professor of Astronomy at the Naples University, professor of Mathematical Geography at the Military Academy of Naples and director of the Astronomical Observatory of Naples.
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Noah Ernest Dorsey
1873 - 1959 (86 years)
Noah Ernest Dorsey was an American physicist, known for his contributions to measurement technology. He was born in Annapolis, Maryland and studied at Johns Hopkins University where he obtained a B.A. and a Ph.D. . He worked at the same place a few years, was with U. S. Bureau of Soils and the Department of Agriculture as well, before he eventually joined National Bureau of Standards where he stayed until retirement in 1943. His research was on standards of radioactivity and x-ray measurements , becoming the leader of the Radium Section and publishing a widely used book covering this emer...
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Daniel Kirkwood
1814 - 1895 (81 years)
Daniel Kirkwood was an American astronomer. Kirkwood was born in Harford County, Maryland, to John and Agnes Kirkwood. He graduated in mathematics from the York County Academy in York, Pennsylvania, in 1838. After teaching there for five years, he became Principal of the Lancaster High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and after another five years he moved on to become Principal of the Pottsville Academy in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. In 1851, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. The same year he became Professor of Mathematics at Delaware College and in 1856 Prof...
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William Marshall Smart
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
William Marshall Smart was a 20th-century Scottish astronomer. Life He was born in Doune in Stirlingshire the son of Peter Fernie Smart and his wife, Isabella Marshall Harrower. He was educated at the McLaren High School, in Callander, and graduated MA from the University of Glasgow in 1910 in mathematics and natural philosophy. He went on to graduate with a triple first in the Mathematical Triposes at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Tyson Medal for astronomy.
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Vincenzo Riccati
1707 - 1775 (68 years)
Vincenzo Riccati was a Venetian Catholic priest, mathematician, and physicist. Life Vincenzo Riccati was born in 1707 in Castelfranco Veneto, a small town about 30 km north of Padua. He was the brother of Giordano Riccati, and the second son of Jacopo Riccati. He began his studies at the College of St. Francis Xavier in Bologna, under the guidance of Luigi Marchenti, a pupil of the French mathematician Pierre Varignon. He entered the Society of Jesus on December 20, 1726. He taught belles lettres in the colleges of the Order in Piacenza , Padua , and Parma . He then went to Rome to study theology.
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Thomas Jefferson Jackson See
1866 - 1962 (96 years)
Thomas Jefferson Jackson See was an American astronomer whose promulgated theories in astronomy and physics were eventually disproven. His educational and professional career were dogged by plagiarism and conflict, including his attacks on relativity. He was fired from his position at two observatories, eventually serving out his professional years at a naval shipyard in California.
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Plato Tiburtinus
1110 - 1145 (35 years)
Plato Tiburtinus was a 12th-century Italian mathematician, astronomer and translator who lived in Barcelona from 1116 to 1138. He is best known for translating Hebrew and Arabic documents into Latin, and was apparently the first to translate information on the astrolabe from Arabic.
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Ralph Copeland
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Ralph Copeland FRSE FRAS was an English astronomer and the third Astronomer Royal for Scotland. Life Copeland was born at Moorside Farm, near Woodplumpton in Lancashire, England the son of Robert Copeland, yeoman, and his wife, Elizabeth Milner, and attended Kirkham Grammar School. He spent five years in Australia where he discovered his interest in astronomy. He returned in 1858 to pursue a career in engineering.
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Geminiano Montanari
1633 - 1687 (54 years)
Geminiano Montanari was an Italian astronomer, lens-maker, and proponent of the experimental approach to science. He was a member of various learned academies, notably the Accademia dei Gelati. Montanari's famous students include Domenico Guglielmini, Francesco Bianchini, Gianantonio Davia and Luigi Ferdinando Marsili.
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Moritz von Rohr
1868 - 1940 (72 years)
Moritz von Rohr was an optical scientist at Carl Zeiss in Jena, Germany. A street in Jena is named after him: Moritz-von-Rohr-Straße, near Carl-Zeiss-Promenade and Otto-Schott-Straße. Life Moritz von Rohr was born in Lonzyn near Hohensalza, then part of the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen, but now in Poland and known as Łążyn, near Inowrocław. He obtained a doctorate of philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1892.
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Henry Crozier Keating Plummer
1875 - 1946 (71 years)
Henry Crozier Keating Plummer FRS FRAS was an English astronomer. Early years and education Born in Oxford, Plummer was the son of William Edward Plummer and nephew of the distinguished astronomer John Isaac Plummer . He gained his education at St. Edward's School and then Hertford College at Oxford University. After studies in physics, he became a lecturer at Owen's College, Manchester, instructing in mathematics.
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Andreas Jaszlinszky
1715 - 1783 (68 years)
Andreas Jaszlinszky was the Slovak-born author of the early physics textbooks Institutiones physicae pars prima, seu physica generalis and Institutiones physicae pars altera, seu physica particularis .
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Hugo Gyldén
1841 - 1896 (55 years)
Johan August Hugo Gyldén was a Finland-Swedish astronomer primarily known for work in celestial mechanics. Gyldén was the son of Nils Abraham Gyldén, Professor of Classical philology at the University of Helsinki and baroness Beata Sofia Gyldén. He spent his student years at his father's university, graduating as a filosofie magister from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in 1860. He studied under Lorenz Leonard Lindelof and then went to do a postdoctoral at Gotha under Peter Hansen working on the orbit of Neptune. In 1871 he was called by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to be its astronomer and head of the Stockholm Observatory.
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Su Song
1020 - 1101 (81 years)
Su Song , courtesy name Zirong , was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman. Excelling in a variety of fields, he was accomplished in mathematics, astronomy, cartography, geography, horology, pharmacology, mineralogy, metallurgy, zoology, botany, mechanical engineering, hydraulic engineering, civil engineering, invention, art, poetry, philosophy, antiquities, and statesmanship during the Song dynasty .
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Taavet Rootsmäe
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Taavet Rootsmäe was an Estonian astronomer. In 1913 he graduated from Tartu University. Since 1919 he taught at Tartu University . From 1919 to 1948 he was the first head of University of Tartu Old Observatory.
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Robert Grant
1814 - 1892 (78 years)
Robert Grant, FRS was a Scottish astronomer. Career He was born on 17 June 1814 at Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire, where his father was engaged in trade. An illness of six years interrupted his education, and he taught himself, on his recovery at age 19, in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and mathematics. After some brief study at King's College, Aberdeen, he entered in 1841 his brother's counting-house in London, and there set about collecting materials for a history of astronomy.
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Oenopides
490 BC - 420 BC (70 years)
Oenopides of Chios was an ancient Greek geometer, astronomer and mathematician, who lived around 450 BCE. Biography Only limited information are known about the early life of Oenopides except his birthplace which was the island of Chios around 490 BCE. It is believed that Oenopides spent time in Athens but there is only circumstantial evidence to support this. Plato mentions him in Erastae: A Dialogue On Philosophy which places him in Athens. The English translator of the same book reveals one other aspect in Oenopides life which was his travel in Egypt in which he enriched his knowledge in ...
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Paolo Frisi
1728 - 1784 (56 years)
Paolo Frisi was an Italian mathematician and astronomer. Biography Frisi was born in Melegnano in 1728; his sibling Antonio Francesco, born in 1735, went on to be a historian. Frisi was educated at the local Barnabite monastery and afterwards in that of Padua. When twenty-one years of age he composed a treatise on the figure of the earth, and the reputation which he soon acquired led to his appointment by the King of Sardinia to the professorship of philosophy in the College of Casale. His friendship with Radicati, a man of liberal opinions, occasioned Frisi's removal by his clerical superi...
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Reinhold Furth
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Prof Reinhold Heinrich Furth was a German-speaking physicist born in Prague, noted for his 1951 BAAS lecture Physics and Social Equilibrium. He is also remembered for his 1934 theory that stars are composed of Antiparticles.
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Vinko Dvořák
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Vinko Dvořák was a Czech-Croatian physicist, professor and academician. He studied mathematics and physics at the Charles University in Prague, and after graduating he became an assistant to professor Ernst Mach. After obtaining his doctorate in Prague in 1873/1874 he came to Zagreb and founded the Physics Cabinet at the Faculty of Philosophy in 1875.
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Arkady Timiryasev
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Arkady Klimentievich Timiryazev was a Russian Marxist physicist and philosopher. Biography Arkady was the son of the prominent agronomist and biologist Kliment Timiryazev. He was closely associated with Maxim Gorky. Although he was deemed a professor of physics at Moscow State University, he was derided as the "monument's son" by people who questioned his competence. He was an ardent defender of the classical physics propounded by Isaac Newton and was particularly noted for his vitriolic denunciations of Albert Einstein. He used his Bolshevik ideology to attack other Soviet physicists such as Abram Ioffe and Sergei Vavilov.
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Wilhelm Altar
1900 - 1995 (95 years)
Wilhelm Altar , known to family and colleagues as William Altar, was an Austrian-born theoretical physicist whose significant contributions led to the development of the magneto-ionic theory. Altar contributed to the mathematical and conceptual underpinnings that were verified by Appleton's research, in collaboration with Dr. Altar. Altar was not credited with his contributions until 1982, decades after Appleton received the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Giordano Riccati
1709 - 1790 (81 years)
Giordano Riccati or Jordan Riccati was an Italian mathematician and physicist. Biography Giordano Riccati was born in 1709 in Castelfranco Veneto, a small town about 30 km north of Padua. He was the brother of Vincenzo Riccati, and the fifth son of the theoretical mechanician Jacopo Riccati. He began his studies at the College of St. Francis Xavier in Bologna, under the guidance of Francesco Saverio Quadrio and Luigi Marchenti, a pupil of the French mathematician Pierre Varignon. In 1727, he returned to Castelfranco, where his father taught him geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statics and dynamics.
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Henry Chamberlain Russell
1836 - 1907 (71 years)
Henry Chamberlain Russell was an Australian astronomer and meteorologist. Early life Russell was born at West Maitland, New South Wales, the fourth son of the Hon. Bourn Russell and his wife Jane, née Mackreth. Russell was educated at West Maitland Grammar school and the University of Sydney, .
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Seth Ward
1617 - 1689 (72 years)
Seth Ward was an English mathematician, astronomer, and bishop. Early life He was born in Hertfordshire, and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1636 and M.A. in 1640, becoming a Fellow in that year. In 1643 he was chosen university mathematical lecturer, but he was deprived of his fellowship next year for opposing the Solemn League and Covenant .
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Alexander Dallas Bache
1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Alexander Dallas Bache was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline. Originally an army engineer, he later became Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and built it into the foremost scientific institution in the country before the Civil War.
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Campanus of Novara
1210 - 1296 (86 years)
Campanus of Novara was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and physician who is best known for his work on Euclid's Elements. In his writings he refers to himself as Campanus Nouariensis; contemporary documents refer to him as Magister Campanus; and the full style of his name is Magister Campanus Nouariensis. He is also referred to as Campano da Novara, Giovanni Campano or similar. Later authors sometimes applied the forename Johannes Campanus or Iohannes Campanus.
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William Wilson
1875 - 1965 (90 years)
William Wilson FRS FHAS was a leading figure in academic circles. He was born at Goodyhills, in the Abbey Holme district of Cumberland in 1875. He was educated at the village school at Holme St Cuthbert, Cumberland, before attending the Aspatria Agricultural College, Aspatria, Cumberland.
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David Thomson
1817 - 1880 (63 years)
Prof David Thomson was a 19th-century Scottish physicist. He was known as Davie Thomson or later Auld Dauvit. Life He was born on 27 November 1817 the son of David Thomson a merchant in Leghorn in Italy. He was educated in Italy and Switzerland then sent to Glasgow University in 1832. In 1836 he won a place at Trinity College, Cambridge where he gained a BA in 1839 .
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