What did Marie Curie win two Nobel Prizes for? She won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her research in radiation (shared with her husband), and she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for discovering radium, polonium, and isolating radium. Marie Curie is not the only person to have won two […]
#1565 What did Marie Curie win two Nobel Prizes for? Read More »
Who built the Smithsonian? The first of the Smithsonian’s many museums was built by the US government and was designed by an architect called James Renwick Jr. However, the idea for the institution and the money came from a British scientist called James Smithson, who lived from 1765 to 1829. The Smithsonian is the world’s
#1253 Who built the Smithsonian? Read More »
In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and changed the world. It is not very often where you can say that an invention caused such enormous ripples that without it, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The wheel seems an obvious example. The printing press made the spread of information, knowledge, discoveries,
#910 Johannes Gutenberg – inventor of the printing press Read More »
Alexander Cumming invented the S-bend in 1775. Toilets have existed for thousands of years, but the S-band (now the U-bend) was an invention that helped transition to indoor toilets and helped to improve sanitation levels around the world. Early people used streams running near their settlements for a toilet. That is fine, so long as
#903 Alexander Cumming – inventor of the S-bend Read More »
Shuji Nakamura invented the blue LED, without which we wouldn’t be able to have white LEDs, and we would be damaging the environment even more than we are at the moment. To make white light, you need to have red, green, and blue light in equal quantities. We perceive single wavelengths of light in the
#896 Shuji Nakamura – the inventor of the blue LED Read More »
Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman were the creators of the RSA encryption that we use many times, possibly hundreds of times, a day. They gave the first letters of their surnames to name it. Encryption has been around ever since people wanted to send secret messages. An early cipher is the Caesar cipher
#889 Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman – creators of RSA encryption Read More »
Norman Ernest Borlaug was known as the father of the Green Revolution because of the new strain of wheat he developed and the millions, possibly billions, of people he saved from starvation. He is said to have saved more lives than any person who has ever lived. There have been numerous agricultural revolutions over human
#882 Norman Ernest Borlaug – father of the Green Revolution Read More »
Henrietta Lacks developed cervical cancer and the cells taken from a tumor biopsy have formed the HeLa cell line, named after her. Ms. Lacks didn’t know that her cells had been taken and she died in October 1951, before the significance of her cells was known. She was only 31 years old. She did not
#875 Henrietta Lacks – the source of the HeLa cell line Read More »
Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seat belt in 1959. There is no way of working out how many people his invention has saved, but it must be over a million, at least. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration thinks that the three-point seatbelt saves about 15,000 lives a year in the US alone. Bohlin
#868 Nils Bohlin – inventor of the three-point seatbelt Read More »
During his career, Maurice Hilleman developed over 40 vaccinations. It is thought that his vaccinations save over 8 million lives every year. However, he was not interested in making a name for himself, only that his vaccines helped people. For this reason, despite having received his vaccines, very few people have ever heard of him.
#861 Maurice Hilleman – microbiologist specializing in vaccinology. Read More »
