Great Scientists during the 1800s

Beck-Handle Microscope

Last week's blog paying homage to Stephen Hawking raised my curiosity about what scientific discoveries occurred during the lifetime of Isaac Beckley Werner, from 1844-1895.  Even during the early years of such a young country, there were scientists at work, perhaps the best remembered being Benjamin Franklin.  However, as a young and evolving country, our clever minds seemed to focus more on inventions.  Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, but during the years after Isaac's birth there were several inventions we take for granted today:  Walter Hunt invented the safety pin in 1849 (the patent to which he sold for $400!); David M. Smith invented the spring clothes pin in 1853; Daniel C. Stillson invented the pipe wrench in 1869; George Westinghouse invented the Railway air brake in 1872; Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph in 1877; and Henry W. Seely invented the electric iron in 1881.

Charles Darwin

Although we appreciate these inventors, and many more that I did not name, America did not produce as many scientists.  To continue my homage to great scientists begun last week, I want to share the stories of five Europeans.  (I am saving one American scientist for next week's blog, as his amazing story deserves to be better known.)

I will begin with Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution by natural selection remains well known even today.   Born in 1809 and died in 1882, his ideas about the origin of the species would have been known to Isaac Werner.  Because I have mentioned him in other blogs and because his name remains familiar today, I will not elaborate on his scientific discoveries.

Gregor Johann Mendel

Having begun with Darwin, who was born first among those I will mention, I will continue with Gregor Johann Mendel, born in July of 1822, died in January 1884, a scientist and an Augustinian friar and abbot.  From his experiments with pea plants between  1856 and 1863 he established certain rules of heredity caused by invisible "factors" which we now know as genes.  Prior to his work, it was thought that characteristics passed from parents in a blended form of inheritance, in which traits were averaged.  He began his research using mice, but his bishop disapproved of a friar studying animal sex, so Mendel began using plants as his experimental subjects.  His fellow scientists did not immediately appreciate the significance of Mendel's research, but today he is known as the "father of modern genetics."

Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was born December 27, 1822 and died September 28, 1895 and is best known for developing the technique to stop bacterial contamination in milk and wine with a process we know as pasteurization.  However, he is also important for his work concerning vaccination, so important in preventing diseases and treating rabies and  anthrax victims. Unfortunately, rumors arose concerning his own accounts of discoveries, and when his laboratory notebooks were finally donated to the French National Library in 1971, and made more available for research in 1985 nearly a century after his death, personal traits of this man, who was surely a genius, were not always so admirable.

Wilhelm Rontgen

When a teacher intercepted an unflatering caricature drawn by Wilhelm Rontgen during his high school years, Rontgen was expelled, and the result was that he lacked the credentials to enter Utrecht University.  Born March 27, 1845 and died February 10, 1923, Rontgen was fortunately able to continue his studies at Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich as a mechanical engineering student, and later at the University of Zurich and the University of Strassburg.  Another twist to his life occurred during the time of W.W. I.  He planned to join family in America and had accepted a position at Columbia University in NYC when W.W. I broke out.  He never made it to America.  He had won the 1st Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his production and detection of electromagnetic radiation in a wave length know as X-rays (or Rontgen rays) and would have been a valuable scientific resource for America.

Marie Curie

The name of the last European scientist to be mentioned is probably familiar to you.  Marie Sklodowska Curie was born November 7, 1867 and died July 4, 1934, the child of a well-to-do family whose land and fortune were lost because of patriotic and political activities.  Her life was further changed when she fell in love with a young relative whose family opposed his marriage to a girl with no wealth.  Eventually her romantic life was revived by marriage to a fellow scientist with whom she won her first Nobel Prize in 1903 for physics and in 1911, well after his death, she won her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  As for the young man whose family denied his choice of Marie as his wife, his feelings for her seemed not to have changed.  He was often seen in his final days sitting contemplatively before Marie's statute at the Radium Institute she had founded.  Her scientific achievements were the development of the theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of the two elements, polonium and radium.  It was her work and not wealth that mattered to her, and her humanitarian efforts were as admirable as her scientific achievements.  During W.W. I she understood that surgical theaters with X-ray equipment and generators to power the facilities at the front would give wounded soldiers the best chance for survival.  She tried to donate her gold Nobel medals to the war effort but the French National Bank rejected them; however, she did buy war bonds with her Nobel prize money.  Her war efforts for the soldiers meant little scientific research was done during this time, and exposure to the ionising radiation in her research and from unshielded equipment used in the field hospitals during the war are believed to be the cause of her death. 

I find it fascinating to consider history from a broad perspective.  While the struggles of Isaac B. Werner and his neighbors on the prairie are the center of my research, I am also interested in understanding those homesteaders within the larger context of other places and events.  The late 1800s were also the Golden Age for wealthy Americans, and as we see from this brief summary of scientists in Europe, it was a time of great scientific discovery.  What might Isaac Werner's creative mind have discovered if his education and tools had been those of the European scientists discussed in this blog?

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Next week's blog will focus on an American scientist working during Isaac Werner's lifetime.  His name is probably known to you, but the story of his life may surprise you!