Famous Inventors Born in May

George Andrew Olah 

Date of Birth: May 22, 1927

Profession: Hungarian-American chemist

Notable Works: His research involved the generation and reactivity of carbocations via superacids. 

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Tolman Award (1991); Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1994); ForMemRS (1997); Arthur C. Cope Award (2001); Order of the Rising Sun (2003); Priestley Medal (2005); Hungarian Order of Pro Merit (2006)

Ebenezer Butterick

Date of Birth: May 29, 1826 

Profession: American tailor, inventor, manufacturer, and fashion business executive

Notable Works: He is regarded as the inventor, together with his wife Ellen Augusta Pollard Butterick, of tissue paper dress patterns offered in multiple standard sizes, also known as graded sewing patterns, which the couple began selling in 1863. The product revolutionized home sewing.

Heinrich Gustav Magnus

Date of Birth: May 2, 1802

Profession: German experimental scientist

Notable Works:  He discovered the first of the platino–ammonium class of compounds; the August–Roche–Magnus formula; Magnus green salt. He was the first to identify the three sulfonic acids sulphonic acid, ethionic acid and isethionic acid and their salts

Prestigious Honours and Awards: ForMemRS (1863)

Sumio Iijima

Date of Birth: May 2, 1939

Profession:  Japanese physicist and inventor

Notable Works: Inventor who was the first to clearly describe the formation of carbon nanotubes and imagine their potential.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: 1985 Nishina Memorial Award; 1996: Asahi Prize; 2002: Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics; 2007: Fujihara Award; 2007: Balzan Prize; 2008: The Kavli Prize; 2009: Order of Culture; 2015: European Inventor Award

Henri Pitot 

Date of Birth: May 3, 1695

Profession:  French hydraulic engineer, inventor

Notable Works:  the inventor of the pitot tube.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: The Pitot theorem of plane geometry; and Rue Henri Pitot in Carcassonne are named after him.

Louis J. Ignarro 

Date of Birth: May 31, 1941

Profession: American pharmacologist.

Notable Works: For demonstrating the signalling properties of nitric oxide, he was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize 

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.1998; National Academy of Sciences. 1999; National Academy of Sciences. 1999; Canadian Medal of Merit. 2008; Institute of Medicine. 2011; Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. 2014

Hans Berger

Date of Birth: May 21, 1873

Profession: German psychiatrist. 

Notable Works: He is best known as the inventor of electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924, which is a method used for recording the electrical activity of the brain, commonly described in terms of brainwaves, and as the discoverer of the alpha wave rhythm which is a type of brainwave. Alpha waves have been eponymously referred to as the “Berger wave.”

Edward Norton Lorenz

Date of Birth: May 23, 1917

Profession: American mathematician, meteorologist 

Notable Works: He is best known as the founder of modern chaos theory, a branch of mathematics focusing on the behaviour of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Symons Gold Medal (1973); Crafoord Prize (1983); Kyoto Prize (1991); Roger Revelle Medal (1992); Lomonosov Gold Medal (2004)

Oliver Heaviside

Date of Birth: May 18, 1850

Profession: English self-taught mathematician and physicist 

Notable Works: He invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vector calculus, and rewrote Maxwell’s equations in the form commonly used today. He also invented the Heaviside step function, using it to calculate the current when an electric circuit is switched on.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Faraday Medal (1922); Fellow of the Royal Society

Pieter Zeeman

Date of Birth: 25 May 1865 

Profession: Dutch physicist. Nobel laureate.

Notable Works: He discovered the Zeeman effect. This research involved an investigation of the effect of magnetic fields on a light source. He discovered that a spectral line is split into several components in the presence of a magnetic field.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Nobel Prize for Physics (1902); Matteucci Medal (1912); Henry Draper Medal (1921); ForMemRS (1921); Rumford Medal (1922); Franklin Medal (1925)