Great minds of science

This latest title in the Great Minds of Science series offers a look at one of the greatest minds of the ancient world. An original and profound thinker, Archimedes was a mathematician, a physicist, a mechanical engineer, and an inventor. He is most famous for proving the law of the lever and inventing the compound pulley. Profiles the life and accomplishments of the third-century B.C. Greek mathematician and inventor, including his geometrical discoveries,...

With his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein is the symbol of genius. Being honored with the Nobel Prize in physics made him famous and firmed-up his reputation as a genius. Though Albert Einstein is remembered mostly as being a scientist, he was also concerned with helping people. During World War II, he assisted many Jews fleeing the Nazis. After the war, the people of Israel asked him to be their president. Einstein declined; he still...

For his discoveries of microscopic life, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek is remembered today as one of the great geniuses of science. Using microscopes he made himself, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek peered into exciting new worlds that no one knew existed before. Beginning in the 1670s, he discovered tiny, single-celled living things that he called "little animals." His curiosity led him to examine lake water, moldy bread, and even the plaque build-up on his own...

It was not always known that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies in the universe. Edwin Hubble is the man who discovered this startling idea and that the universe was expanding. As a result of these discoveries, Hubble became an international celebrity, and is remembered today as a genius of science.

In the 17th century the English physician, William Harvey described for the first time the details of the human circulatory system. Harvey discovered that the heart was a muscle and that by contracting, pushed blood through the body. He worked out the whole pattern of the heartbeat. William Harvey's genius changed how people understood the workings of the human body. This marked on the greatest advances in the study of medicine.

Copernicus worked with primitive scientific instruments to prove that Earth revolved around the sun. The idea of Earth circling the sun is universally accepted today, but this was not always the case. Centuries ago, it was widely believed that the earth stood still and the sun moved. At first, Copernicus was denounced and ridiculed for this belief. Later, scientists with more advanced instruments proved that Earth did indeed revolve around the sun....