DESCRIPTIONS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE IN SCIENCE
Compiled By Howie Baum
Scientists make important breakthroughs in research, technology, mathematics and the natural
and physical sciences. From Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie and Isaac Newton to Jane Goodall,
Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin, scientists advance society and our understanding of the
world.
She was Vice President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights 1937–1939.
Brian May is a founding member of the music group Queen, a world-renowned guitarist,
songwriter, producer and performer, also a Doctor of Astrophysics, and a passionate advocate
and campaigner for animal rights.
Accomplished Astronomy student Brian’s PhD studies were stalled when a musical career
superseded. The music group “Queen” remains the most successful albums act in UK chart
history.
Brian penned 22 Queen top 20 hits, among them the powerful ballads ‘Who Wants to Live
Forever’, ‘No-One But You’ and ‘Save Me’, along with anthems ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘I Want It
All’ and ‘We Will Rock You’.
He retains his keen passion for Astronomy and after a 30-year break returned to Astrophysics to
update his doctoral thesis on the Motions of Interplanetary Dust, achieving his PhD from
Imperial College, London, in 2007.
As a lifelong advocate of animal welfare, he set up the “Save Me” campaign to champion all, but
predominantly British wildlife. “Save Me” works at grass roots level in conjunction with a local
animal rescue and re-homing center, as well as doing work with the major animal welfare
groups.
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 for ‘services to the
Music Industry’ and for his charity work.
Beatrice Shilling - (March 1909 – November 1990)
She was an aeronautical engineer during WWII. She started her career in engineering early,
buying her first motorbike at the age of 14 and tinkering with it. In 1934 she earned an Masters
in Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at Manchester University.
She is most famous for the ‘Miss Shilling’s Orifice’ a simple repair for Merlin Engines fitted to
Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes.
The engine suffered from stalling during a nosedive, as fuel would flood the engine. This meant
German planes were able to outmaneuver British planes easily. She devised a simple thimble
shape with a hole cut in that limited the fuel flow and allowed British pilots to regain the
advantage.
Outside of airplanes Shilling raced motorbikes. She beat professional riders, such as Noel Pope,
and was awarded the Gold Star for lapping the Brooklands circuit at 106 miles per hour on her
Norton M30. Between 1959 and 1962 she raced with her husband in an Austin-Healey Sebring
Sprite.
Linus Pauling – He was born on February 28, 1901 in Portland, Oregon. He was the first of
three children in the financially stretched family of Herman Pauling, a pharmaceuticals salesman,
and Lucy Darling.
He became an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and
educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with
scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time, and as of
2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history
He was claimed to be the greatest chemist of the twentieth century, and arguably ever. He was
a founder of quantum chemistry, molecular biology, and molecular genetics. He also discovered
that sickle-cell anemia is a molecular disease.
In an extraordinary and long life, Pauling was the sole recipient of two Nobel Prizes – an
unequaled achievement – one for chemistry and another for peace.
Katherine Johnson - August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician
whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the
first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.
During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering
complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The
space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a
NASA scientist".
Her work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for
Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in
space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar
Module and command module on flights to the Moon.
Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she
worked on plans for a mission to Mars.
In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2016, she was also presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D.
Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award.
She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress and
in 2021, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Luis Alvarez – He was born on June 13, 1911, in San Francisco, California. His father, Walter
Clement Alvarez, was a doctor and author who wrote a large number of medical books. His
mother was Harriet Smyth.
He was a Nobel Prize winning physicist, probably most famous for the discovery of the iridium
layer and his theory that the mass extinction of dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid or comet
colliding with Earth.
Besides doing the normal work you might expect of a physics professor, Alvarez took on more
unusual projects, like making use of cosmic rays to search for hidden chambers in an Egyptian
pyramid.
Alvarez was an enthusiastic pilot; he learned to fly in 1933.
In the early 1940s he invented the Microwave Phased Array Antenna. This was a form of radar
that gave ground crew unparalleled precision in determining the position of an aircraft in flight.
The invention was a big improvement that let ground crew to give clear instructions to pilots, as
their aircraft approached runways preparing to land.
The system was particularly useful when visibility was poor, such as in fog, or other adverse
weather, or when pilots were inexperienced. Alvarez’s invention was used by the military and
civil authorities in various countries for decades, greatly enhancing air safety.
Marie Curie – was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-
school teacher.
She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father.
She became involved in a students’ revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave
Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was
under Austrian rule.
In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained degrees
in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.
She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they
were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne,
gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in
1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time
a woman had held this position.
She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University
of Paris, founded in 1914.
Timothy Berners-Lee – He is a computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World
Wide Web (sorry but it wasn’t Al Gore ☺)
Tim was honored as the "Inventor of the World Wide Web" during the 2012 Summer Olympics
opening ceremony. In 2009, he was elected as a foreign associate of the United States National
Academy of Sciences. And in 2004, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering
work.
He graduated from Queens College, Oxford and worked as an independent contractor at the
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from June to December 1980. While there,
he proposed using hypertext to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.
Over a decade later, he built the first website at CERN, and it was first put online in August of
1991. The acronym CERN comes from calling it the European Council for Nuclear Research (in
French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) was adopted.
In November 2009, He launched the World Wide Web Foundation “to tackle the fundamental
obstacles to realizing his vision of an open Web available, usable, and valuable for everyone.”
In 2013, the Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched, and he is leading the coalition of
public and private organizations, including Google, Facebook, Intel, and Microsoft.
In 2013, he was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth
Prize for Engineering. He was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the
University of St. Andrews. And in 2012, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the
Internet Society.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus:
The public-health leader faced challenges from all sides in trying to rally the globe against
COVID-19.
He was born on March 3,1965 and is an Ethiopian biologist, public health researcher, and official
who has been Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2017.
He is the first African in the role and was endorsed by the African Union. He also played a role
in the response to both the Ebola outbreak.
Before serving as Director-General, he held two high-level positions in the government of
Ethiopia: Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to
2016. Tedros was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
He also worked with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as
overseeing a Maternal and Child Health program introducing 30,000 health extension workers,
focused on reducing maternal mortality and child mortality.
Wilhelm Röntgen – (1845 – 1923)
He was born to Friedrich Conrad Röntgen, a German merchant and cloth manufacturer, and
Charlotte Constanze Frowein. At age 3, his family moved to Holland where her family lived.
He attended high school at Utrecht Technical School in Utrecht, Netherlands and took courses at
the Technical School for almost two years.
Upon hearing that he could enter the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, he passed the
entrance examination and began studies there as a student of mechanical engineering. In 1869,
he graduated with a PhD from the University of Zurich
On November 8th, 1895, he produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength
range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays. Within two weeks of first generating X-rays, he had
invented X-ray photography.
The first ever X-ray photograph was of the bones in his wife’s hand.
It was an achievement that earned him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
The discovery of X-rays was perhaps the single most important event in atomic and molecular
science, not to say surgery.
Rosalind Franklin – She contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
British chemist Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 in Notting Hill, England.
In 1942, she brought her physics and chemistry expertise to the London Coal Co., where she
investigated the properties of carbon. This was crucial to the war effort, which relied on coal and
carbon for strategic equipment like gas masks. This research was the basis of her PhD thesis at
Cambridge.
In 1950 during her research, she discovered that there were two forms of DNA and was offered
a three-year scholarship to undertake further investigation at King’s College in London.
Here she found the basic dimensions of DNA strands and the likely helical structure. She also
found that when DNA is exposed to high levels of moisture, its structure changed.
In 1953, her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed James Watson and Francis Crick the X-ray data
that Rosalind had obtained, confirming the 3D structure that the pair had speculated about for
DNA.
In March 1958, she passed away at the age of 37 from several illnesses, including ovarian
cancer. In 1962, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to James Watson,
Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for solving the structure of DNA.
Watson suggested that Rosalind, along with Wilkins, should also be awarded a Nobel Prize for
Chemistry, but the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations.
In his 1968 book, The Double Helix, Watson outlined how the two had become friends while
working together. He also remarked that he would never have won a Nobel Prize or published a
famous paper if it wasn’t for Rosalind.
THE STORY OF ONESIMUS, THE ENSLAVED MAN WHO HELPED SAVE BOSTON FROM
SMALLPOX
During the 1721 smallpox outbreak in Boston, a slave named Onesimus taught his master an
early version of inoculation — and saved hundreds of people.
In the 18th century, Onesimus was a slave who many consider the father of vaccines.
His contribution to modern medicine cannot be overstated, and he helped eradicate one of the
world’s deadliest diseases. Yet, because he came to the United States as part of the trans-
Atlantic slave trade, little of Onesimus exists in the historical record. There are no known
depictions of him — and historians aren’t even sure of his true birth and death dates.
Puritan minister Cotton Mather initially distrusted his slave, Onesimus — until he showed him
how to inoculate against smallpox.
Margaret Mead -Anthropologist - Years ago, she was asked by a student what she considered
to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected her to talk about fishhooks or
clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone)
that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break
your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You
are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one
who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person
through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead
said."
We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
Clyde Foster –
He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 21, 1931, as the sixth child of twelve. He
attended A. H. Parker High School, and the experience of living as an African American in
segregated Birmingham made him realize he needed to get away; for that reason, he attended
Alabama A&M University (a historically black university in the north of the state), where he
received his BS degree in Mathematics and Chemistry in 1954.
He was an American scientist and mathematician. He worked for the Army Ballistic Missile
Agency and then for NASA, and from 1975 to 1986 was the head of Equal Employment
Opportunity at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Foster worked regularly as a recruiter, trying to attract black workers to Marshall
The problem, both for hiring new workers and promoting current workers at NASA, was that
training was required, and while NASA itself, as a federal entity, did not segregate, its location in
a segregated state meant that employees and future employees who were African-American
could not attend the kinds of training programs they needed in order to be hired or promoted,
since those were held in public facilities, which were segregated (such as ballrooms of hotels
that allowed whites only).
Soon after he joined NASA, he was asked to train a white colleague to become his boss, at a
time when the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama was demanding change.
Foster complained to his boss and refused the assignment, and then demanded that NASA start
a program to train black workers. In the end, NASA agreed and started a training program in
collaboration with Alabama A&M University.
After serving two years in the United States Army, he moved to Selma, Alabama, and worked as
a science teacher in Dallas County, Alabama, from 1956 to 1957.
Judith Love Cohen (August 16, 1933 – July 25, 2016) was an American aerospace engineer
and author.
She was born in Brooklyn, New York. By the fifth grade, her classmates were paying her to do
their math homework. She was often the only woman in her math classes, and decided she
wanted to be a math teacher.
By age 19, she was both studying engineering in college, and dancing ballet in the Metropolitan
Opera Ballet company in New York.
After two years at Brooklyn College, Cohen married and moved to California, working as a junior
engineer for North American Aviation, attending College at night
She worked as an electrical engineer on the Minuteman missile, the science ground station for
the Hubble Space Telescope, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and the Apollo Space
Program.
During the Apollo 13 mission, the service module was damaged on the way to the moon and the
power in the command module almost failed. Luckily, the Orbitology team that she was a part
of, persuaded NASA to include the Abort Guidance System in the Lunar Module, and it was used
by them, to navigate back safely to Earth.
According to her son Neil, "My mother usually considered her work on the Apollo
program to be the highlight of her career. When disaster struck the Apollo 13 mission,
it was the Abort-Guidance System she designed, that brought the astronauts home
safely. She was there when the Apollo 13 astronauts paid a 'thank you' to the TRW
facility in Redondo Beach."
After her retirement as an engineer, she founded a children's multimedia publishing company,
eventually publishing more than 20 titles before her death in 2016.
She was the mother of computer scientist and engineer Neil Siegel and actor Jack Black.
She was an advocate for gender equality in the workplace and worked to have job openings
posted inside the company so that anyone (including women) could apply.
Stephen Hawking
George Washington Carver
Carver was born into slavery in 1864, in Diamond Grove (now Diamond), Newton County,
Missouri, near Crystal Place, sometime in the early or mid-1860s.
Black people were not allowed at the public school in Diamond Grove. George decided to go to a
school for black children 10 miles south, in Neosho. When he reached the town, he found the
school closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn.
By his own account, the next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he
wished to rent a room.
When he identified himself as "Carver's George", as he had done his whole life, she replied that
from now on his name was "George Carver". George liked Mariah Watkins, and her words "You
must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the
people" made a great impression on him.
He was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton
and methods to prevent soil depletion and the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th
century.
While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted
by repeated plantings of cotton.
He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source
of their own food and to improve their quality of life.
Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting
environmentalism.
Marie Maynard Daly (April 16, 1921 – October 28, 2003) was an American biochemist. She
was the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry
(awarded by Columbia University in 1947). She made important contributions in four areas of
research: the chemistry of histones that allow DNA to wind up in coils, protein synthesis, the
relationships between cholesterol and hypertension, and creatine's uptake by muscle cells.
Her father, Ivan C. Daly, had immigrated from the British West Indies, found work as a postal
clerk and eventually married Helen Page of Washington, D.C. They lived in New York City, and
Marie was born and raised in Corona, Queens.
She often visited her maternal grandparents in Washington, where she read about scientists and
their achievements in her grandfather's extensive library. She was especially impressed by Paul
de Kruif’s “The Microbe Hunters”, a work which influenced her decision to become a scientist.
Daly's interest in science was also influenced by her father, who had attended Cornell University
with intentions of becoming a chemist but had been unable to complete his education, due to a
lack of funds.
Daly would then continue her father's legacy by majoring in chemistry. Years later, she started a
Queens College scholarship fund in his honor to assist minority students majoring in chemistry
or physics.
Lonnie George Johnson (born October 6, 1949) is an American inventor, aerospace engineer,
and entrepreneur, whose work includes a U.S. Air Force-term of service and a twelve-year stint
at NASA, where he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He also invented the Super Soaker water gun in 1989, which has been among the world's
bestselling toys ever since. He also invented the Nerf Gun when he patented "a pneumatic
launcher for a toy projectile" which revolutionized toy blasters.
He was born in Mobile, Alabama. His mother, who finished high school, worked as a nurse's aide
and his father, who didn't finish high school, was a World War II veteran.
He explained the basic principles of electricity to Johnson at an early age. Stating that he
"always liked to tinker with things," Johnson earned the nickname "the Professor" from kids in
the neighborhood. He once tore up his sister's doll to see what made the eyes close. He also
tried to cook up rocket fuel in a saucepan but in doing so almost burned down the house.
As a teenager, Johnson attended Williamson High School, an all-black school in Mobile. He drew
much of his inspiration from George Washington Carver.
In 1968, Johnson represented his high school at a science fair in Alabama, where he was the
only black student attending the fair; This was a time when African Americans had very little
presence in science. There, he presented a robot he created, which he named "Linex," taking
home the first-place prize. The robot was powered by compressed air.
In 1969, shortly after graduating from high school, Johnson attended Tuskegee University,
obtaining a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1973 and a master's degree in nuclear
engineering.
He also holds an honorary Ph. D. in Science from Tuskegee University. He then worked for the
U.S. Air Force, where he worked on the stealth bomber program, before eventually joining
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979.
Grace Hopper (1906 – January 1, 1992) American computer scientist. She worked as a
programmer on the Harvard Mark I computer. Hopper helped to develop programming
languages which translated English into code understandable by computers. This became the
industry standard. Her work led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language still
influential today. She also served as a rear-admiral in the US Navy.
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (née Murray December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an
American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral.
One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer
programming and a programming language that she created was later extended to create
COBOL, an early high-level programming language, still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a
professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during
World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy
Reserves.
In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty.
She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment
Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her, as
was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.
Alice Augusta Ball (July 24, 1892 – December 31, 1916) was an American chemist who
developed the "Ball Method", the most effective treatment for leprosy during the early 20th
century.
She was the first woman and first African American to receive a master's degree from the
University of Hawaii and was also the university's first female and African American chemistry
professor.
She was born on July 24, 1892, in Seattle, Washington, to James Presley and Laura Louise
(Howard) Ball and was one of four children, with two older brothers, William and Robert, and a
younger sister, Addie.
She attended Seattle High School and achieved top grades in the sciences and graduated in
1910.
She went on to study chemistry at the University of Washington, earning a bachelor's degree in
pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and a second bachelor's degree in the science of pharmacy
two years later in 1914.
At the College of Hawaii, her master's thesis involved studying the chemical properties of the
Kava plant species. Because of this research and her understanding of the chemical makeup of
plants, she was later approached by Harry T. Hollmann, who was an Acting Assistant Surgeon at
the Leprosy Investigation Station of the U. S. Public Health Service in Hawaii, to study
chaulmoogra oil and its chemical properties.
Chaulmoogra oil had been the best treatment available for leprosy for hundreds of years, and at
age 23, she developed a much more effective injectable form that was very successful for
eliminating the disease.
She died young and unfortunately, she was unable to publish her revolutionary findings.
Arthur L. Dean, a chemist and later the president of the University of Hawaii, stole her work,
published the findings, and began producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra
extract.
Dean published the findings without giving Ball credit and named the technique after himself.
It was not until years after her death that Hollmann attempted to correct this injustice. He
published a paper in 1922 giving credit to Ball, calling the injectable form of the oil the "Ball
method."
Unfortunately, she still remained forgotten in the scientific record. In the 1970s, Kathryn Takara
and Stanley Ali, professors at the University of Hawaii, searched the archives to find Ball's
research. After numerous decades they were able to bring her efforts and achievements to light,
giving her the credit, she deserved.
Henry Ford
Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994) British chemist. She was awarded the Nobel prize for her work
on critical discoveries of the structure of both penicillin, the structure of vitamin B12, and later
insulin.
These discoveries led to significant improvements in health care. An outstanding chemist,
Dorothy also devoted a large section of her life to the peace movement and promoting nuclear
disarmament.
She also advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of
biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology.
She was born in Cairo, Egypt, the eldest of the four daughters of John Winter Crowfoot, then
working for the country's Ministry of Education, and his wife Grace Mary. The family lived in
Cairo during the winter months, returning to England each year to avoid the hotter part of the
season in Egypt.
In 1928 at age 18 she entered Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry. She
graduated in 1932 with a first-class honors degree, the third woman at this institution to achieve
this distinction.
In the autumn of that year, she began studying for a PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge,
under the supervision of John Desmond Bernal. It was then that she became aware of the
potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins.
In 1934, at the age of 24, Dorothy began experiencing pain in her hands. A visit to a doctor led
to a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis which would become progressively worse and crippling
over time, with deformities in both her hands and feet. In her last years, Hodgkin spent a great
deal of time in a wheelchair but remained scientifically active.
Nikola Tesla was born and raised in the Austrian Empire. He studied engineering and physics
in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working
in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry.
In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked
for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City, before he struck out on his own.
With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, he set up laboratories and companies
in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC)
induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888,
earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase
system which that company eventually marketed.
Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of
experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray
imaging.
He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first-ever exhibited. Tesla became well known
as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab
and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures.
Later in life, he experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying
degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, he lived in a series of New York hotels,
leaving behind unpaid bills.
He died in New York City in January 1943. His work fell into relative obscurity following his
death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of
magnetic flux density, the tesla in his honor.
There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.
Margaret Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems
engineer, and business owner.
She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory,
which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program.
One example of the value of Hamilton's software work occurred during the Apollo 11
mission. Approximately three minutes before Eagle's touchdown on the moon, the
software overrode a command to switch the flight computer's priority processing to a
radar system who’s 'on' switch had been manually activated due to a faulty written
operations script provided to the crew. The action by the software permitted the
mission to safely continue.
She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton
Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
She has published more than 130 papers, proceedings and reports about sixty projects and six
major programs. She is one of the people credited with coining the term "software engineering".
On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President
Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA's
Apollo Moon missions.
Margaret Hamilton – actress -
Margaret Brainard Hamilton (December 9, 1902 – May 16, 1985) was an American film actress
best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West, and her Kansas counterpart
Almira Gulch, in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's film The Wizard of Oz (1939).
A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actress in films for seven years before she
was offered the role that defined her public image. In later years, Hamilton made frequent
cameo appearances on television sitcoms and commercials. She also gained recognition for her
work as an advocate of causes designed to benefit children and animals and retained a lifelong
commitment to public education.
THE END
