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Albert Einstein was one of the most brilliant scientists and thinkers of
geometry when he was 12 years old. School bored him because it required
own or to play his violin. Yet he graduated from college in 1900 and earned
think.
Einstein thought about the rules that govern the way the world works.
movement called Brownian motion. He said that the particles were being
bumped into by tiny bits of matter called atoms that are too small to see.
He also thought about light and electricity. Einstein knew that light
result, called the photoelectric effect, by saying that light is made of tiny
bundles of energy called photons. Photons hitting the metal knock particles
solved the mystery of the photoelectric effect. In 1921, Einstein won the
most famous prize in science, the Nobel Prize, for this work.
Another thing Einstein thought about was time. He said that time does
not always flow at the same rate. He proposed that motion affects time. He
theory has a new explanation for gravity. Einstein said that gravity comes
from curves or dents in the fabric of space. Objects make dents in space the
way a bowling ball makes a dent in a mattress. The Moon falls into the dent
made by Earth and rolls around the Earth. Scientists later proved that the
dent a star makes in space-time bends light as the light passes by.
Einstein changed physics by showing that new ideas could come just
from thinking. Before Einstein, most new ideas in physics had come from
Einstein also said that matter and energy are the same thing. He
expressed this relation in a famous equation: E=mc2. This equation says that
energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light squared (c2). Energy can
therefore be changed into matter, and matter into energy. The ability to turn
matter into energy led to the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear
power.
FAME AND LATER YEARS
Einstein left. In 1933, he came to the United States, where he lived the rest
of his life. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955.
Einstein’s last great idea was that every force in nature is part of one
master force. Physicists are still working on this idea, which they call the
theory of everything.
LEONARDO da VINCI
Leonardo da Vinci was not only one of the greatest painters of all
during the late 1400s and early 1500s mostly in Italy. Da Vinci imagined
inventions, like a flying machine, that were not made until hundreds of
years later.
GOOD AT EVERYTHING
Leonardo was born in 1452 in the small town of Vinci, near Florence,
some of them unfinished. But he had original ideas that influenced Italian
artists long after his death. Leonardo believed painting was a science. He
applied scientific thinking in his art so that his paintings looked more like
the real world. One of his most important painting techniques was sfumato, a
blending of one area of color into another so there are no sharp outlines.
Mona Lisa. When you look at this portrait, notice how colors shade into
each other on her face and hands. See how Leonardo has blurred the edges
of her mouth to give her the hint of a smile. This mysterious smile has
change at any moment because of the way Leonardo has softened the edges
Leonardo places the figures in this painting in a way that increases the drama
His body, which is set slightly apart from the others, forms a stable
triangle. The apostles are arranged in four groups, some leaning toward
Christ and some leaning away. Their gestures and the expressions on their
better way of communicating ideas than words were. He drew catapults and
war machines. He drew the muscles and skeletons of human beings and
notebooks. His ideas were far in advance of what other people were thinking
at the time. But the notebooks were not published during his lifetime. Had
which he called germs, cause many diseases. He also showed that heating
certain liquids, like milk, kills harmful germs in the liquid. This method
No one knew what caused infections when Louis Pasteur was a boy in
the early 1800s. No one knew that germs spread disease. There were no
bacteria get into living things and then multiply. He proved that diseases
is called the germ theory of disease. It led to antibiotics and other medicines
that kill bacteria. Pasteur’s discovery has saved the lives of many people.
HOW PASTEUR HELPED INDUSTRY
during the mid-1800s because much of the wine was spoiling. Pasteur
discovered that germs were getting into the wine and turning it sour. He
found that heat killed these germs and prevented the wine from spoiling.
Pasteur later applied his discovery to milk. His way of heating foods to kill
disease was killing off silkworms before they could spin silk threads. Pasteur
showed that the disease was in the silkworm eggs and that getting rid of any
infected eggs could keep the disease from spreading. Pasteur became a
national hero in France for saving the wine and silk industries.
laboratory. When he put weakened germs into the bodies of animals, the
animals became immune to the disease caused by the germs. Pasteur made a
rabies. People can get this deadly disease if they are bitten by an animal
infected with rabies. In 1885, a mother begged Pasteur to treat her young son
who had been badly bitten by a dog with rabies. The vaccine worked, and
the boy lived. Pasteur then became an even greater national hero. In 1888,
the Pasteur Institute in Paris was founded in his honor. Pasteur became its
1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, sharing the prize in
At a time when women scientists were rare, Marie Curie probed the
mysteries of radioactivity and X rays. In 1903, she and her husband won the
1911, Marie Curie won a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She is
In 1891, Maria traveled to Paris, France. She called herself Marie, the
French form of Maria. She attended the Sorbonne, a famous college in Paris.
Marie studied physics and mathematics and graduated at the top of her class!
She also met a French chemist named Pierre Curie. They married in 1895.
down into other elements. In the process, they give off energy in the form of
radiation. Marie and Pierre built on the work of Wilhelm Roentgen, who
parts—the elements it is made of. In July 1898, they reported the discovery
into his teaching post at the Sorbonne. She was the first woman to teach at
the university. She poured her energy into research and raising her
daughters. One daughter, Irene, followed her parents into scientific research.
Marie Curie earned little money from her famous research. Her Nobel
Prize money paid for more research. She did not patent—reserve for her own
gain—her discoveries. She left them free for other scientists to use.
SERVICE IN WORLD WAR I
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Marie Curie helped equip
ambulances with X-ray machines. The International Red Cross named her its
head of Radiological Service. She taught doctors how to use X rays to help
wounded soldiers. X rays help doctors see inside the body so they can figure
radiation for years. At that time, no one knew that radiation was dangerous.
Curie’s work gave her leukemia, a form of cancer. Marie Curie died on July
greatest thinkers.
Greece). His father was a doctor. When Aristotle was 17, he went to Athens,
the biggest and richest city in ancient Greece. He stayed there for most of his
life, studying and teaching. He set up his own school, where students
335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens. In 323 BC, Alexander died, and his
INVESTIGATIONS
science, especially biology (the study of all living things), zoology (the
study of animals), and astronomy (the study of the universe). He tried to find
out how humans think, and how they experience the world around them. He
also tried to describe invisible things, such as the mind and the soul. He
He looked for clues in what he saw and for proof. He didn’t use guesswork
or accept whatever people already believed. His method of questioning
Aristotle wrote many books, and he kept notes to help teach his
students. These might easily have been lost after ancient Greek civilization