Famous Scientists

Have you ever contributed to science? These people did. Can you name them based on the clues?

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Last updated: February 15, 2020

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First submitted	January 29, 2013
Times taken	38,648
Average score	60.0%
Rating	4.54

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Clue	Scientist
His book "On the Origin of Species" is considered the foundational text of the theory of evolution	Charles Darwin
Formulated the Special and General theories of Relativity	Albert Einstein
When he wasn't trying to turn lead into gold or looking for secret messages in the Bible, he invented calculus and explained how the planets move	Isaac Newton
Husband and wife duo who discovered Radium and Polonium	Marie and Pierre Curie
First person to see the moons of Jupiter	Galileo Galilei
Ancient Greek considered to be the father of geometry	Euclid
Primatologist who documented the Gombe Chimpanzee War in the 1970s	Jane Goodall
Inventor of the Periodic Table	Dmitri Mendeleev
Russian physiologist who made dogs salivate by ringing a bell	Ivan Pavlov
While sitting in the bath, he figured out how to find the density of an object by measuring the amount of water it displaces, leading him to run naked in the streets yelling "Eureka!"	Archimedes
He discovered X-rays in 1895. In his native Germany, they are named after him.	Wilhelm Röntgen
Discovered that heating milk can lengthen its shelf life	Louis Pasteur
Discovered penicillin by accident in 1928	Alexander Fleming
Considered the father of modern chemistry, he was guillotined in the French Revolution	Antoine Lavoisier
Italian polymath who drew "The Vitruvian Man"	Leonardo da Vinci
Determined that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not vice versa	Nicolaus Copernicus / Aristarchus of Samos
The number e (≈ 2.71828) is named after this Swiss genius	Leonhard Euler
Inventor of the battery. A unit of electrical potential is named after him.	Alessandro Volta
Serbian-American inventor who helped make AC power possible.	Nikola Tesla
The smallest measurable distance, about 1.616255 x 10^-35 meters, is named after him	Max Planck

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56 Comments

Level 59

Mar 4, 2013

Grrrr, Jane Goodall! I had Dian Fossey stuck in my head and couldn't remember the other primate lady. LOL

+11

Level 83

Nov 11, 2015

Half the population is composed of primate ladies...

Level 47

Dec 3, 2015

Not quite - According to the CIA World Factbook, the 2013 estimate of total world population ratios is 1.01 male to every 1.0 female.

Level 83

Feb 1, 2016

^ That's near enough half. Don't be picky.

Level 69

Sep 25, 2018

Well, only half of the PRIMATE population ;-)

Level 66

Nov 1, 2018

I wouldn't even call that picky, more like pedantic.

Level 78

Nov 13, 2018

Greenland has failed to take into account the shorter lifespan of the male.

Level 68

Dec 17, 2020

Does this ratio include all primates, or just Human primates?

Level 17

Mar 4, 2020

same

Level 33

Mar 5, 2013

Terrific quiz! Well done bogomir!

Level 31

May 18, 2014

I concur! Probably the first quiz where I should have known all the answers but couldn't recall them all.

Level 46

Jul 20, 2013

If you enjoyed this quiz, I made a second one.

Level 57

Mar 6, 2014

Jonas Salk...Mendel...

Level 83

Sep 18, 2017

Except that you would get Mendel by typing in Mendeleev, so it seems superfluous to have both.

Level 84

Apr 3, 2024

Thank you for mentioning the 2 scientists left off this list! That must have been some mistake, I'm sure they'll get right on updating this so that it's comprehensive.

Level 64

Oct 8, 2016

aaaagh, I spent the whole quiz trying to remember Fleming and I couldn't remember it. And his discovery saved more lives than all of these other scientists put together!

Level 41

Nov 6, 2016

Actually Tesla was the maker of the X-Ray

Level 62

May 6, 2019

no, he was not

Level 59

Oct 30, 2020

Roentgen discovered X-Rays during an experiment where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass.

Level 73

Feb 16, 2022

The Captain's not entirely wrong. Tesla noticed an effect caused by x-rays while he was photographing Mark Twain a year before Roentgen's discovery and study of x-rays. It was a ghost image of a screw in his camera's lens that shouldn't have been visible, if I recall correctly. That's all Tesla did, though, he certainly wasn't the "maker of the x-ray".

Level 85

Aug 14, 2017

Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham al-Hasan of Basra. 10th Century Arab mathematician considered to be the father of optics and one of the earliest proponents of what is now known as the scientific method.

Would've been cool to see him show up on this one.

Level 55

May 27, 2023

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and many, many others....

Level 72

Mar 2, 2018

I knew it was Jane Good-something! >:(

Level 59

May 6, 2018

She's made so many appearances in my quizzes that I couldn't miss her even if I tried ;D

Level 72

Jan 4, 2019

Nice to see a few that usually arent in other famous scientist quizes. like davinci, tesla, pavlov, volta. (and that the davinci clue wasnt made supereasy, you either know it or you dont with this clue) But very surprised at how low the average is. The average score is 10!! (I have done many quizes by now, some much harder and usually the average isnt this low)

Level 81

Aug 2, 2019

Missed 3 but still got 5 points, by the narrowest of margins.

Level 77

Feb 16, 2020

Missed 3 and got 3 points. Times have changed.

Level 68

Jul 21, 2020

Missed 3 and got 4 points. Times have changed again.

Level 55

Aug 2, 2019

Are you sure that Antoine Lavoisier was the father of modern chemistry? What is "modern" chemistry anyway? I thought of several others who might deserve the title: Haber, Leo Baekeland, Percy Lavon Julian, Nobel, Pauling, etc.

Level 83

Feb 16, 2020

But they're not French or executed

Level 69

Mar 2, 2020

levallois, lavalois, levalois, lavallois.

no, lavoisier

Level 73

Feb 15, 2020

Isn't Euler more of a mathematician rather than a scientist? Same goes with Euclid and Archimedes (though my knowledge is not big when it comes to the ancient Greeks)?

Level 68

Feb 15, 2020

Euler was also a mathematician, but he was a first class scientist who made lots of contributions to physics and astronomy especially. In Euler's time, it didn't really make sense to make a distinction between math and science. That's also true for the ancient philosophers/mathematicians/scientists. One might argue that it still doesn't make sense today.

Level 87

Feb 16, 2020

My trivial correction: the word "considered" actually has 2 e's in it (but not in your Euclidean clue).

Level 63

Feb 18, 2020

Well, mathematics is a form of science. The quiz title may be a bit misleading but in the instructions it says "contributed to science" so they all work imo.

Level 49

Oct 24, 2021

Math isnt science, but but it is its biggest partner

Level 73

Mar 2, 2020

I agree with carry that mathematicians should be included, math is almost a prerequisite for a lot of science and as mentioned a lot of people in history were both. Archimedes discovery was definitely a scientific one, displacement is a scientific concept, not really a mathematical one.

Level 49

Oct 24, 2021

Mathematicians arent scientists, but they sure do contribute to it.

Level 62

Feb 17, 2020

Pavlov didn't actually use a bell - he used a variety of stimuli including a metronome and a buzzer. I suspect the bell fact is so ingrained now that nobody really cares whether it's accurate or not.

Level 79

Mar 2, 2020

Surprised by the high average score, especially for Pavlov.

Level 66

Mar 2, 2020

Somehow I forgot the "Eureka" person!

Level 17

Mar 4, 2020

it's because he isn't famous

Level 78

Feb 18, 2023

I mean, Archimedes is pretty famous.

Level 69

Mar 2, 2020

we call x-rays röntgen rays too.

Level 78

Mar 2, 2020

Accept "Goodell" for "Goodall"?

Level 17

Mar 4, 2020

Who do they take us for ? Quite frankly mate I find it disgusting

Level 73

Aug 24, 2020

Here's the play-by-play:

Me: Electric potential means voltage.

Me: The unit of voltage is the volt.

Me: Volt isn't anybody's name...

Me: Types volt to be sure

Me: Welp, I wonder what they want. Guess I better give up.

Level 78

Dec 14, 2022

I did the same, except i started first with Watt and Ampere.

Level 68

Dec 17, 2020

The other day, in school, we were talking about how stupid Pavlov's dogs are. Then the bell rang, and we all went for lunch.

Level 51

Jun 18, 2021

Thanks to this quiz I found out that e is called "number of Napier" instead of Euler only in Italy

Level 84

Apr 28, 2022

My nit: really should say 'evolution by natural selection'. Lots of people had theories about evolution. Darwin proposed a mechanism by which it can take place.

Level 73

Sep 12, 2023

Great quiz. Definitely one of the most frustrating on here. There must have been ten questions where I had the answer in the back of my mind somewhere. “Ohhh that’s ehhhh, aragh…..what’s name…bleep. On to the next question.” And repeat.

Level 70

Nov 23, 2023

Please accept Mendeleyev, Mendeleiev, and Mendeleef as alternate spellings of Mendeleev.

Level 66

Jan 25, 2024

Planck length isn't actually the smallest possible distance

Level 62

Mar 24, 2024

the question says smallest measurable distance. different thing

Level 66

Apr 30, 2024

It's not the smallest measurable distance either

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