Stats: 53 of the Most Important Scientists

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Answer Stats

Nationality	Birth Year	Invention, Discovery or Achievement	Answer	% Correct
German-American	1879	Generated the famous equation E= mc^2 to describe the speed of light, and is considered the father of modern physics. He also produced the General Theory of Relativity.	Albert Einstein	94%
British	1643	Developed the Laws of Motion, Gravity, and Differential and Integral Calculus.	Sir Isaac Newton	90%
British	1809	Contemporaneously developed the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection with Alfred Russell Wallace.	Charles Darwin	82%
Polish-French	1867	Discovered radioactivity, polonium, radium, and was the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in separate categories of science.	Marie Curie	82%
Italian	1564	Improved the telescope, proved that not all objects orbited Earth, discovered sunspots, and invented the pendulum and the first thermometer.	Galileo Galilei	77%
Serbian-American	1856	Known for the Alternating Current (AC) and his many inventions including his coil. The SI unit of magnetic flux density is named after him.	Nikola Tesla	77%
Austrian-Czech	1822	A monk, he was the founder of genetics, and tested his theory on pea plants.	Gregor Mendel	73%
Polish	1473	First person to formulate a heliocentric model of the universe and often regarded as the person who started the scientific revolution.	Nicolaus Copernicus	73%
Italian	1452	A mathematician, inventor, engineer, anatomist, painter and much more. He conceptualized tanks and helicopters.	Leonardo Da Vinci	67%
Greek	c. 287 BCE	Mathematician who came up with many inventions, including the siege engine and the screw pump. He discovered buoyancy, and proved that the sphere had two-thirds the volume and the surface area of a cylinder.	Archimedes	65%
French	1822	Created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax and created a way to sterilize milk and wine.	Louis Pasteur	63%
Danish	1885	Was one of the founders of quantum mechanics alongside Werner Heisenberg, and advanced our understanding of atomic structure. Has an element named after him.	Niels Bohr	63%
British	1942	Known for gravitational singularity theorems, the prediction that black holes should emit radiation and for having motor neuron disease.	Stephen Hawking	63%
British	1824	Developed the first and second laws of thermodynamics, absolute zero, and has a temperature scale named after him.	Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)	62%
Scottish	1881	Discoverer of the first antibiotic, penicillin.	Alexander Fleming	61%
Greek	c. 460 BCE	Referred to as the "Father of Medicine" best known today for his namesake oath that binds physicians to "first do no harm".	Hippocrates	59%
Greek	c. 384 BCE	Although many of his theories (including the five senses, five elements, geocentrism, and theories of motion) were later disproven, his ideas were massively influential in the Middle Ages and beyond. Better known for his philosophy, he also had persisting scientific contributions, such as the establishment of meteorology.	Aristotle	57%
German	1858	His constant yields the energy of a photon when multiplied by its frequency. Discovered energy quanta and laid the foundation for theoretical physics.	Max Planck	55%
Italian	1745	Discoverer of the battery and methane, with the SI unit of electric potential named after him.	Alessandro Volta	54%
Italian-American	1901	One of the creators of the atomic bomb, creator of the nuclear reactor, and discoverer of the neutrino and weak interaction. An element, particle, institute, telescope, paradox, and accelerator lab is named after him.	Enrico Fermi	54%
New Zealander	1871	Discovered the half-life in radioactivity, the proton, and was the first person to split an atom. He has an element named after him.	Ernest Rutherford	51%
German	1571	Extensively studied the motion of planets and their elliptical orbits around the sun, and created his namesake laws of planetary motion.	Johannes Kepler	51%
German	1845	Discovered X-rays and has a unit of measurement and element named after him.	Wilhelm Röntgen	51%
French	1623	Clarified the concepts of pressure, made contributions to the study of fluids and invented the calculator. He was a child prodigy and has an SI unit named after him.	Blaise Pascal	45%
British	1791	He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and electrolysis. Also discovered that magnetism could affect rays of light.	Michael Faraday	45%
British	1934	First observed many "human" behaviors in animals in the Gombe chimpanzees. Dubbed part of the "Trimates" by Louis Leakey, alongside Diane Fossey and Birutė Galdikas.	Jane Goodall	43%
British	1920	X-ray crystallographer whose foundational contribution to discovering the structure of DNA was often overlooked in favor of Francis Crick & James Watson.	Rosalind Franklin	42%
British	1749	Created the first vaccine (which was against smallpox).	Edward Jenner	41%
German	1646	He developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and made contributions in almost every academic field–scientific and not.	Goffried von Leibniz	41%
Swedish	1707	The father of modern taxonomy (binomial nomenclature) and ecology.	Carolus Linnaeus	38%
Scottish	1831	Formulated the electromagnetic theory, and laid the foundations for special relativity and quantum mechanics.	James Clerk Maxwell	36%
French	1743	Named oxygen and hydrogen and established that sulfur was an element. He also discovered the law of conservation of mass.	Antoine Lavoisier	35%
German-American	1912	Lead designer of the V-2 rocket, the first artificial object launched into space. Worked for Nazi Germany, and then was poached by the U.S after the war ended.	Wernher von Braun	35%
British	1791	First conceptualized the computer.	Charles Babbage	31%
Dutch	1632	He was the first person to observe and document single celled organisms.	Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek	29%
British	1635	First coined the word "cell", developed the concept of extinction and contributed to theories of gravity and geological origins of topography. Claimed that his theory of gravity was stolen.	Robert Hooke	29%
American	1901	One of the founders of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. He won two Nobel Prizes, one in Peace and one in Chemistry.	Linus Pauling	26%
American	1918	Assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, conceptualized nanotechnology, and theorized quantum electrodynamics.	Richard Feynman	26%
British	1856	Discoverer of the electron and isotopes, and invented the mass spectrometer.	J. J. Thomson	25%
Austrian	1844	Discovered Entropy (S= K*log W) and died by suicide while on vacation.	Ludwig Boltzmann	22%
German	1880	Developed the first comprehensive theory of continental drift, which was only later confirmed to be caused by plate tectonics.	Alfred Wegener	19%
Greek	c. 194 BCE	First person to use the word "geography". He was also the first person to calculate the circumference of earth and the tilt of its axis.	Eratosthenes	18%
British	1731	Discovered Hydrogen, the composition of atmospheric air, and calculated the density and mass of the Earth.	Henry Cavendish	17%
Belgian	1894	Priest and physicist who theorized the "Big Bang" and an expanding universe.	Georges Lemaître	16%
British	1778	Discovered sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, boron and barium. He also clarified that iodine and chlorine were elements.	Humphry Davy	16%
Iraqi	c. 780	Considered the founder of modern algebra.	Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi	16%
French	1744	Made the first truly cohesive theory of evolution. Was the first to coin the terms invertebrates, and biology in the modern sense. In malacology he was a taxonomist of great stature.	Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck	15%
Austrian	1903	One of the principal founders of ethology, the study of animal behavior, especially instinct and imprinting. Controversial for his work for Nazi Germany.	Konrad Lorenz	15%
Iraqi	c. 965	First theorized that vision originates in the brain, known as the founder of optics and by some as the first scientist for his pioneering pursuit of the scientific method	Ibn al-Haytham	11%
American	1911	Discovered resonance states, proved the beta decay theory, worked under Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project, and was the first to theorize that an asteroid had caused the extinction of dinosaurs.	Luis Alvarez	11%
Serbian	1879	Calculated the climates for all planets in the solar system but most famous for his namesake cycles that explain long-term variations in Earth's climate and contribute to ice ages and warm periods.	Milutin Milanković	10%
German	1834	Originated many terms in evolutionary biology, such as phylogeny and phylum, and theorized that ontogeny (the development of the fetus) tracks a species' evolutionary history. He was also a eugenicist and promoter of scientific racism.	Ernst Haeckel	8%
Scottish	1726	Considered the father of modern geology, he disproved the young earth theory and postulated the universality of scientific principles across space and time.	James Hutton	7%

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53 of the Most Important Scientists - Statistics