Much is known about scientists such as Darwin, Newton, and
Einstein, but what about lesser known scientists - people who have
not achieved a high level of fame, but who have contributed greatly
to human knowledge? What were their lives like? What were their
struggles, aims, successes, and failures? How do their discoveries
fit into the bigger picture of science as a whole? Overlooked,
sidelined, excluded, discredited: key figures in scientific
discovery come and take their bow in an alternative Nobel prize
gallery. Antoine Lavoisier: the father of French chemistry who gave
oxygen its name, Lavoisier was a wealthy man who found himself on
the wrong side of a revolution and paid the price with his life.
Mary Anning: a poor, working-class woman who made her living
fossil-hunting along the beach cliffs of southern England. Anning
found herself excluded from the scientific community because of her
gender and social class. Wealthy, male, experts took credit for her
discoveries. George Washington Carver: born a slave, Carver become
one of the most prominent botanists of his time, as well as a
teacher at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver devised over 100 products
using one major ingredient - the peanut - including dyes, plastics
and gasoline. Alfred Wegener: a German meteorologist, balloonist,
and arctic explorer, his theory of continental drift was derided by
other scientists and was only accepted into mainstream thinking
after his death. He died in Greenland on an expedition, his body
lost in the ice and snow. Nikola Tesla: a Serbian American
inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and
futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the
modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. A
competitor of Edison, Tesla died in poverty despite his
intellectual brilliance. Jocelyn Bell Burnell: a Northern Irish
astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first
radio pulsars (supernova remnants) while studying and advised by
her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the
Nobel Prize in physics while Bell Burnell was excluded. Fred Hoyle:
an English astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar
nucleosynthesis - the process whereby most of the elements on the
Periodic Table are created. He was also noted for the controversial
positions he held on a wide range of scientific issues, often in
direct opposition to prevailing theories. This eccentric approach
contributed to him to being overlooked by the Nobel Prize committee
for his stellar nucleosynthesis work. Any one of these figures
could have been awarded a Nobel prize. Not every scientific
discoverer was lauded in their time, for reasons of gender, race,
or lack of wealth, or (in the case of Lavoisier) being too wealthy:
in the 21st century, there are many more reparations and
reputations to be made.
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