Archive for Era – Renaissance
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1646 – Liebniz – bio
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1646 and became known primarily for his contributions to philosophy and mathematics but was also accomplished in many other fields. He created the modern binary number system that is used by computers and at the same time as Newton, invented calculus. PRECURSOR: -0385 – Aristotle 1571 [...]
1596 – Descartes – bio
Rene Descartes was born in France in 1596. He is known as “the father of modern philosophy” and also contributed to mathematics and general science. The cartesian coordinate system is named for him and he created analytic geometry. He also did some work in the field of optics, with both refraction and reflection. Prior to [...]
1623 – Pascal – bio
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont, France. He is mostly known as being an outstanding mathematician, but also was a physicist and philosopher. He made significant contributions to the areas of conic sections and projective geometry. Pascal’s triangle is a number matrix in the shape of a triangle with the numbers staggered so [...]
1500 – Fontana/Tartaglia – bio
Niccolo Fontana was born in Brescia, Italy around 1500 and became known as Tartaglia, which was a knickname meaning stammerer; the result of sabre wounds to his jaw. In 1537 he wrote Nova Scienta, which applied mathematical principles to the trajectories of cannonballs. This work later influenced Galileo. He produced both some of the earliest [...]
1546 – Brahe – bio
Tycho Brahe was born in 1546 in Sweden. He was an astronomer and alchemist who is known for his contributions to astronomy. While he was probably the last astronomer to work mostly without a telescope, he revolutionized the use of precise instrumentation in astronomy. Because of this precision, he was able to discover and document [...]
1662 – Boyle’s law
Boyle’s law describes the inverse relationship between pressure and volume in gases. In a closed system if temperature stays constant and either pressure or volume increases, the other (pressure or volume) will decrease proportionally. PRECURSOR: barometer SUCCESSOR: Robert Hooke ideal gas law
1571 – Kepler – bio
Born in 1571 in the Stuttgart region of Germany, Johannes Kepler was a mathematician and astronomer. Kepler became the first published defender of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. He described planetary orbits as platonic solids and then realized that the orbits are eliptical. Kepler studied the golden ration and wrote this about it: “Geometry has [...]
1595 – microscope
While optics and the principles of magnification had been studied for hundreds of years, the first real microscope was crafted by three lensmakers in Holland around 1595. PRECURSOR: SUCCESSOR: 1608 – telescope 1632 – van Leeuwenhoek
1650 – vacuum pump
In 1650, Otto von Guericke of Germany, invented the first known vacuum pump.
1642 – Newton – bio
Isaac Newton was born in 1643 in Linconshire, England. He made exceptional contributions to physics, mathematics and astronomy and was also accomplished in philosophy and theology. His laws of motion and gravity became landmarks for centuries. He and Liebnitz independently developed calculus. He investigated the refraction of light and created the first working reflecting telescope. [...]
