The beautiful velvet knee breeches, the glossy buckled shoes, and the gleaming sword were all laid out for him to wear. He was to be presented to King George IV in a traditional ceremony in which the King honored his most distinguished subjects. But he was a Quaker, and his beliefs forbade him from wearing such garments or wearing a sword. The Lord Chamberlain was in a fury over his stubbornness, but he would not listen. At long length, a bright young groom saved the day. He was told that he could cover himself with a robe that he had recently been awarded when accepting an honorary degree from Oxford. The flaming red cloth was draped over his frail shoulders and he was ushered into the impatient King's presence. A number of Quakers in the audience gasped when they saw him bedecked in scarlet, a color that no true Quaker would be permitted to wear. However he was color-blind and was hence unaware of the faux pas he was commiting.

Who was he?

A seismologist-turned-physician who was wittier than his own king. In other words, a quicker quaker quack.

The correct answer is John Dalton.

Subsequent to this, Dalton became the first person to conduct a number of experiments on color-blindness, and to this day, the phenomneon is also known as Daltonism. He, unlike most other scientists of his day and age, lived to enjoy the plaudits of his countrymen. He was presented with the key to Paris and was given the Medal of the Royal Society of England. He was the first person to formulate the atomic theory of matter, and on his death, more than forty thousand people filed by his coffin as he lay in state. A fitting tribute to one of the greatest scientists that this world has known.

When this scientist was ten years old, his teacher, thinking to keep the class occupied for some time, asked the class to find out the sum of all numbers from one to one hundred. He was therefore extremely astonished a young boy put up his hand and came up with the correct answer immediately. At first the teacher thought the boy had memorised the answer, but when the student revealed that he had found the answer out through algebra, he realized the true extent of the child's mathematical prowess. Who was this child?

I don't know who it was, but I had fun working out the algebra problem.

Hey maybe it was you! You also figured out how to prolong life!

Oh figures my imagination is taken me over again.

That one's easy ...



Don't die.

The correct answer is Karl Gauss.

When young Karl was a student at Gottigen, he discovered that a regular polygon of 17 sides could be constructed using just a straight edge and a compass. This discovery, which might seem unimportant to the ordinary listener, was in reality a truly path-breaking accomplishment, for it was the first major improvement on Euclidian Geometry in 2200 years. Karl Gauss went on to formulate his own theory of geometry known as astral geometry.

The wind whistled through past the ropes of the small craft, and tore at the furled sails. Would this wretched storm never end? Perhaps he should quit this uncomfortable voyage now, before it really began. He had failed to qualify for the medical profession, unlike his father and grandfather, and now, at twenty two years of age, was the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle, under the command of young Captain Fitzroy. What would his father, who was successful and respected, think of him if he withdrew from the career that he had chosen in Science? Little did he know that this very voyage would make him one of the most famous scientists of all time.

Who was this man, whose discoveries virtually led to the establishment of a new branch of Science.

Very funny.

The wind whistled through past the ropes of the small craft, and tore at the furled sails. Would this wretched storm never end? Perhaps he should quit this uncomfortable voyage now, before it really began. He had failed to qualify for the medical profession, unlike his father and grandfather, and now, at twenty two years of age, was the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle, under the command of young Captain Fitzroy. What would his father, who was successful and respected, think of him if he withdrew from the career that he had chosen in Science? Little did he know that this very voyage would make him one of the most famous scientists of all time.

Who was this man, whose discoveries virtually led to the establishment of a new branch of Science.

Charles Darwin

Beagle gave it away

The correct answer is Charles Darwin. That is correct! Good job.

After meeting the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr. Gladstone, Darwin was said to have remarked, "Mr. Gladstone is a great man and yet he talked to me as if he were an ordinary person like me." Mr. Gladstone when told of this, remarked, "My feelings towards Mr. Darwin are exactly the same as his towards me."

It is indeed ironic, that a man like Charles Darwin, who was gentle and philantrophic by nature, was the focal point of one of the greatest controversies of his century, and was accused, by those who did not understand his work, of seeking to debase mankind.

On the sixth of April, 1846, an group of eminent scientists had just begun their regular meeting. It featured the reading of a scientific paper on the production of ovals and refraction. The speaker was Professor James Forbes, a distinguished mathematician from the University of Edinburgh, and group was the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The unique feature about this meeting was the fact that the original author of this noteworthy paper had been barred from appearing and publicly reporting on his work for "it was not thought proper for a boy in a round jacket to mount the rostrum there."

Who was this young genius who was fourteen years old at the time?

James Clerk Maxwell – some say his work led to quantum physics – he proposed that light was a form of electricity, amazing isn’t it. I thought so anyway, I find all such discoveries (so far ahead of others) to be amazing.


WHOO HOO I finally got to answer one before someone else...

This has been great fun and very informational - thanks Smiless

The answer is James Clerk Maxwell. That is correct! Good Job!

This young genius was to accomplish so much in his brief lifetime of 48 years, that he is still regarded as one of the world's greatest two theoretical physicists of the nineteenth century.

At the age of eighteen, when James Clerk Maxwell entered Cambridge, he was a propounder of some strange theories, such as one on the economy of sleep. He would sleep from 5:00pm. to 9:30pm, study from 10:00pm to 2:00am, excercise by running up and down the stairs from 2:00am to 2:30am, and then sleep until 7:00am. However, he was soon forced to abandon this experiment as he was greeted with a barrage of shoes and other flying objects wherever he went. His place in History is secure as one among the Great of Mathematics and Physics.

The world famous English scientist Michael Faraday, had just clapped his hands with glee and said, "Hurrah for the Yankee Experimenter! What in the world did you do?" If the recipient of this barbed praise had been anyone but who he was, then he might have exploded with, "If you would only read what I publish, and understand what you read, you'd know what you just saw!" Instead, the Princeton Science professor patiently explained the phenomenon of self-induction to the man whom the world had already credited with the discovery of induction.

Who was this man, America's greatest experimental investigator of the nineteenth century?

Tesla?

After explaining the self-induction in coils, naturally he was self-inducted into the physicists' hall of fame.

The correct answer is Joseph Henry.

This incident occured in an English laboratory, where Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday were trying in vain to draw sparks by closing and opening an electric circuit which was only capable of carrying a weak current. While Faraday and Wheatstone argued back and forth over the probable cause of the failure to produce a spark, Joseph Henry absent-mindedly wound a small length of wire around one of his fingers in the form of a corkscrew shaped coil. Before the world famous electrical scientists could stop him, Henry had opened the circuit, added his tiny coil to one of the leads, closed the circuit and then drawn some clearly visible sparks on opening the circuit again, prompting this reaction from Faraday.

Joseph Henry was truly one of the most successful scientists ever. In fact, he was so far ahead of his field, that it took the world of science half a century, to truly appreciate his work.

A man walked through the pillars of the Lyceum, reading the message that had been handed to him. His scholarly face did not bear witness to the emotions that were raging inside him. In his hand was a letter; it said, "Dear friend, with the death of your patron Alexander, there is peril in Athens for you. Your enemies will inflame the populace against you. Remember how unjustly Socrates was accused and brought to death. You must flee from Athens ..."

Who was this great scientist?