News Biography

                          Alan Turing Alan Turing was a man before his time. This brilliant code-breaker helped turn the tide of World War II, and he was one of the founders of computer science. Turing was a Renaissance man who studied and made contributions to the philosophical study of the nature of intelligence, to biology and to physics. His biography reveals that he was also the victim of anti-homosexual attitudes and laws, losing his security clearance and resorting to suicide two years later. Background: Born right before the start of WW I, and parked in England by his Indian civil service parents, Turing studied quantum mechanics, a very new field, probability, and logic theory at King’s College, Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow. His paper-based theoretical model for the Turing Machine, an automatic computational design, proof of the theorem that automatic computation cannot solve all mathemat...

              Albert Abraham Michelson The nineteenth century physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson, was the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. He became famous for his establishment of the speed of light as a fundamental constant and other spectroscopic and meteorological investigations. He had a memorable career that included teaching and research positions at the Naval Academy, the Case School of Applied Science, Clark University, and the University of Chicago. Life: Born to a Jewish family on December 19, 1852 in Strzelno, Provinz Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Michelson was brought to America when he was only two years old. He was brought up in the rough mining towns of Murphy’s Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a trader. He completed his high school education in San Francisco and later in 1869 he went to Annapolis as an appointee of President U.S. Grant to the U.S. Naval Acad...

                                      Al-Battani Al-Battani is sometimes known by a Latinized version of his name, being Albategnius, Albategni or Albatenius. His full name was Abu Abdallah Mohammad ibn Jabir ibn Sinan al-Raqqi al-Harrani al-Sabi al-Battani. Al-Battani’s father was Jabir ibn Sinan al-Harrani who had a high reputation as an instrument maker in Harran. The name makes the identification certain that al-Battani himself was skilled in making astronomical instruments and there is a good indication that he learnt these skills from his father. Early Life and Career: Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinan al-Battani al-Harrani was born around 858 C.E. in Harran. Battani was first educated by his father Jabir Ibn San’an al-Battani, who also was a well-known scientist. He then moved to Raqqa, situated on the bank of the Euphrates, where he received an advanced education...

                                  Agnes Arber Agnes Robertson Arber was a British plant anatomist and morphologist, a Biology philosopher, and a Botany historian. Though born in London, most of her life was spent in Cambridge. In recognition of her contributions to botany, she was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1946. She was the first woman botanist to be elected and only the third woman to be elected into this famous scientific institution. Because of her contributions to botanical science, Agnes Arber received the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society of London at the age of 69 – the first woman to receive such accolade. In terms of her scientific research, it focused on the monocotyledon class of flowering plants. During the beginning of the 20 th  century, she contributed to the development of morphological research and studies in botany. The later part of her life and wo...

                           Ada Lovelace Born two centuries ago, Ada Lovelace was a pioneer of computing science. She took part in writing the first published program and was a computing visionary, recognizing for the first time that computers could do much more than just calculations. Early Life and Education Ada Lovelace was born in London, England, UK on December 10, 1815. She was named Augusta Ada Byron, but her surname changed after she married. Her father was the brilliant, yet notorious poet Lord Byron (mad, bad and dangerous to know!) and her mother was Anne Isabella Milbanke. Her father was one of the greats of poetry, but his personality was unstable. Her mother was highly intelligent, had been well-educated by private tutors, and was particularly enthusiastic about mathematics and the sciences. Ada’s father abandoned his wife and daughter, leaving Britain forever when Ada was one month ol...

                           Aage Bohr Aage Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his work detailing the structure of the atomic nucleus. Early Life and Education Aage Niels Bohr was born in Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen, on June 19, 1922. In the same year as Aage was born, his father, Niels Bohr, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the structure of atoms and the radiation emitted by them. Aage’s mother, Margrethe Nørlund, gave birth to six children – all boys; Aage was the fourth. Margrethe was well educated; she assisted Niels Bohr with his paperwork and discussed his scientific research with him in detail. Aage Bohr’s education was both conventional and, from a scientific point of view, extraordinarily privileged. Like many other students of high school age in Copenhagen, he attended grammar school – the Sortedam Gymnasium.  Unlike ...

                                 Hippocrates Hippocrates is regarded as the father of Western medicine. He systematized medical treatments, disentangling them from religion and superstitions. He trained physicians in his methods and, with his followers, is responsible for authoring a large body of medical textbooks. The famous Hippocratic Oath binds physicians to following good ethical practices. Beginnings Hippocrates was born in 460 BC (the first year of the 80th Olympiad) on the island of Kos in Ancient Greece. Hippocrates was a common name in Greece, so to be certain of his identity, he is often referred to as Hippocrates of Kos or Hippocrates the Great. On a timeline of illustrious scholars, Hippocrates lived after Pythagoras; at the same time as Socrates, Plato, and Democritus; and he was still alive during Aristotle’s early life. Lifetimes of Selected Anci...