Famous Inventors Born in February!

Thomas Alva Edison 

Date of Birth: February 11, 1847

Notable Works: Edison was an American inventor and businessman who created many devices like the light bulb, the phonograph and motion pictures. He applied the principles of mass production to the process of invention by hiring many people to develop new technologies and inventions. He built the first industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Julian Seymour Schwinger

Date of Birth: February 12, 1918

Notable Works: Schwinger was an American physicist best known for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. He developed a relativistic perturbation model and the first electroweak model for QED. He introduced several other mathematical models to explain electron-positron formation, spin values of 3/2, and the different varieties of neutrinos. He was awarded a third of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his many contributions to QED

Charles Darwin 

Date of Birth: February 12, 1809

Notable Works: Darwin is best known for his two works “On the Origin of Species” and “Descent of Man” outlining his theories of evolution and his voyages to the Galapagos Islands aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.

He outlined how all species of life branch from other species through a process he called natural selection. Natural selection is how a species passes on survival properties by successfully surviving to reproduce. If a mutation occurs that improves survivability, this mutation could be passed on to their offspring. Unsuccessful species die off before reproducing and therefore, do not pass on the bad mutation.

Étienne François Geoffroy

Date of Birth: February 13, 1672

Notable Works: Geoffroy was the French physician best known for compiling the first chemical affinity tables.

Geoffroy made systematic tests of acting substances on one another and recording the results. He then published tables of substances and the things that share an affinity with them.

Willem Johan Kolff

Date of Birth: February 14, 1911

Notable Works: Kloff was a Dutch-American physician who was a pioneer of hemodialysis,  artificial heart, as well as in the entire field of artificial organs. He constructed the first dialysis machine to replace the function of kidneys. Dialysis machines are directly responsible for saving thousands of lives of people suffering from renal failure.

Galileo Galilei

Date of Birth: February 15, 1564

Notable Works: Galileo was an Italian natural philosopher who was the key figure at the beginning of the scientific revolution and made several major contributions to its progress.

Galileo was one of the first to express the belief that the basic laws of science could be broken down into mathematics. He studied speed and gravity to predict paths of projectile motion. He was among the first to take a closer look at the skies above with a telescope. He verified the phases of Venus, discovered four Moons of Jupiter, and observed the rings of Saturn.

Julius Thomsen

Date of Birth: February 16, 1826

Notable Works: Thomsen was a Dutch chemist who first identified a need for a period on the periodic table with a valence number of zero. His reasoning was based on how some periods had positive valences and others had negative valences, so there must be a period where the transition occurs between positive and negative.

He also predicted these elements should have atomic weights of 4, 20, 36, 84, and 132.

Thomsen is also known for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle in thermochemistry.

René Laënnec

Date of Birth: February 17, 1781

Notable Works: Laënnec was a French physician who is considered to be the father of chest medicine. He advanced the understanding of several abdominal conditions such as peritonitis and cirrhosis.

He is also credited with the invention of the stethoscope. He made his discovery after trying to listen to the heart of an overweight female patient. He couldn’t perform the usual technique of placing his ear over her chest so he rolled up paper to form a tube. He found he could hear her heartbeat clearly and better than if he had listened to her chest directly.

Alessandro Volta

Date of Birth: February 18, 1745

Notable Works:

Volta was an Italian physicist who was a pioneering figure in early electricity research and invented the chemical electric battery. He introduced the concept of electromotive force, or the force required to separate positive and negative charges. His battery was similar to the citrus battery using zinc and copper electrodes separated by an acid.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Date of Birth: February 19, 1473

Notable Works: Copernicus was a Prussian astronomer who first devised a model of the universe that moved the Earth from the center of all things. His model had the Earth and other celestial bodies revolving around the Sun. He also pointed out the Earth rotates on its axis to cause day and night.

This idea was picked up and expanded upon by several influential astronomers such as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. This era of scientific expansion is known as the Copernican Revolution.

Element 112 was named copernicium after Copernicus.