Scientists

Bhāskara II

Bhāskara II (c. 1114–1185), also known as Bhāskarāchārya (“Bhāskara, the teacher”), and as Bhāskara II to avoid confusion with Bhāskara I, was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. From verses, in his main work, Siddhānta Shiromani (सिद्धांतशिरोमणी), it can be inferred that he was born in 1114 in Vijjadavida (Vijjalavida) and living in the Sahyadri mountain ranges of Western Ghats, believed to be the town of Patan in Chalisgaon, located in present-day Khandesh region of Maharashtra by scholars. He is the only ancient mathematician who has been immortalized on a monument. In a temple in Maharashtra, an inscription supposedly created by his grandson Changadeva, lists Bhaskaracharya’s ancestral lineage for several generations before him as well as two generations after him. Colebrooke who was the first European to translate (1817) Bhaskaracharya II’s mathematical classics refers to the family as Maharashtrian Brahmins residing on the banks of the Godavari.

Born in a Hindu Deshastha Brahmin family of scholars, mathematicians and astronomers, Bhaskara II was the leader of a cosmic observatory at Ujjain, the main mathematical centre of ancient India.Bhāskara and his works represent a significant contribution to mathematical and astronomical knowledge in the 12th century. He has been called the greatest mathematician of medieval India. His main work Siddhānta-Śiromaṇi, (Sanskrit for “Crown of Treatises”) is divided into four parts called LīlāvatīBījagaṇitaGrahagaṇita and Golādhyāya, which are also sometimes considered four independent works. These four sections deal with arithmetic, algebra, mathematics of the planets, and spheres respectively. He also wrote another treatise named Karaṇā Kautūhala.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bh%C4%81skara_II

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta (c. 598 – c. 668 CE) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He is the author of two early works on mathematics and astronomy: the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (BSS, “correctly established doctrine of Brahma“, dated 628), a theoretical treatise, and the Khaṇḍakhādyaka (“edible bite”, dated 665), a more practical text.

Brahmagupta was the first to give rules for computing with zero. The texts composed by Brahmagupta were in elliptic verse[clarification needed] in Sanskrit, as was common practice in Indian mathematics. As no proofs are given, it is not known how Brahmagupta’s results were derived.

In 628 CE, Brahmagupta first described gravity as an attractive force, and used the term “gurutvākarṣaṇam (गुरुत्वाकर्षणम्)” in Sanskrit to describe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta

Frederick Soddy

Frederick Soddy FRS (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes”. Soddy was a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance and economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Soddy

Wilhelm Wien

Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈviːn] (listen); 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien’s displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.

He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation, which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.

He was a cousin of Max Wien, inventor of the Wien bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wien

Wilhelm Wien

Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈviːn] (listen); 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien’s displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.

He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation, which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.

He was a cousin of Max Wien, inventor of the Wien bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wien

Frank Wilczek

Frank Anthony Wilczek (/ˈwɪltʃɛk/; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicistmathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), distinguished professor at Arizona State University (ASU) and full professor at Stockholm University.

Wilczek, along with David Gross and H. David Politzer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction“. In May 2022, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wilczek

David Bohm

David Joseph Bohm FRS (/boʊm/; 20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American-Brazilian-British scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. Among his many contributions to physics is his causal and deterministic interpretation of quantum theory, now known as De Broglie–Bohm theory.

Bohm advanced the view that quantum physics meant that the old Cartesian model of reality—that there are two kinds of substance, the mental and the physical, that somehow interact—was too limited. To complement it, he developed a mathematical and physical theory of “implicate” and “explicate” order. He also believed that the brain, at the cellular level, works according to the mathematics of some quantum effects, and postulated that thought is distributed and non-localised just as quantum entities are. Bohm’s main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which according to Bohm is never static or complete.

Bohm warned of the dangers of rampant reason and technology, advocating instead the need for genuine supportive dialogue, which he claimed could broaden and unify conflicting and troublesome divisions in the social world. In this, his epistemology mirrored his ontology.

Born in the United States, Bohm obtained his Ph.D. under J. Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley. Due to his Communist affiliations, he was the subject of a federal government investigation in 1949, prompting him to leave the U.S. He pursued his career in several countries, becoming first a Brazilian and then a British citizen. He abandoned Marxism in the wake of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm

Grete Hermann

Grete Hermann (2 March 1901 – 15 April 1984) was a German mathematician and philosopher noted for her work in mathematics, physics, philosophy and education. She is noted for her early philosophical work on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and is now known most of all for an early, but long-ignored critique of a “no hidden-variables theorem” by John von Neumann. It has been suggested that, had her critique not remained nearly unknown for decades, the historical development of quantum mechanics might have been very different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grete_Hermann

Charles Wheatstone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wheatstone

Sir Charles Wheatstone/ˈwiːtstən/ FRSFRSEDCLLLD (6 February 1802 – 19 October 1875), was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope (a device for displaying three-dimensional images), and the Playfair cipher (an encryption technique). However, Wheatstone is best known for his contributions in the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invented by Samuel Hunter Christie, which is used to measure an unknown electrical resistance, and as a major figure in the development of telegraphy.