• Question: Name one scientist who was born before 1770 except Greek Scientists and Isaac Newton

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 13 Jun 2014:

      Robert Hooke… (I didn’t know his birth date, so I checked it – it was before 1770). You might have heard of Hooke’s Law (where you hang weights on springs and measure what happens).

      He lived at the same time as Issac Newton [remember, there’s always a hint in the question!] and they hated each other. Newton was pretty rich, and thought that actually doing experiments was a bit common. Hooke was much more hands on. Unfortuantly he had a day job working as a lab tech, and in the end Newton took over as his boss, and destroyed/hid a lot of Hooke’s work. It’s a pretty cool story! I wish I could remember more details – you should look it up.

    • Photo: Mathew Piasecki

      Mathew Piasecki answered on 14 Jun 2014:

      Too easy. You name one, I’ll give you some clues. He was also an artist, inventor, and engineer. He lived in Florence, and may be one of the most famous scientists ever.
      Any ideas?

    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 14 Jun 2014:

      Galileo! He was born in 1564 in Pisa and did awesome work in maths and physics. His most famous experiment was to drop two identical sized balls off the leaning tower of Pisa. One of them was heavier than the other, yet they both reached the ground at the same time! Therefore he showed that everything falls at the same rate, no matter how heavy – quite weird when you first learn about it!

      He’s also famous for inventing the principle of relativity – basically physics is the same no matter how fast you’re going. This actually inspired Albert Einstein 350 years later! So Galileo was a pretty bright chap!

    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 15 Jun 2014:

      Anton von Leeuwenhoek who is considered the very first microbiologist. He’s known for his work on improving the microscope and being the first to observe bacteria in 1676, which was later repeated by Robert Hooke. He made over 500 microscopes in his day – he must have been a very busy man!

    • Photo: Sakshi Sharda

      Sakshi Sharda answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Nicolas Copernicus. He was born in Poland and is discovered for the very first time that sun is in the centre of the universe. Earlier than this, it was believed that the Earth is in the centre and all the planets and the sun revolve around it. Copernicus was the first one to detest this idea and say that Sun was the centre of the solar system. This is a very revolutionary theory about how we understand our universe today.

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