We all thank the scientists of yesteryears for the contributions they have made thereby, making our lives more comfortable and easier. To appreciate them, we bring to you a list of Christmas-born scientists; read on to learn about them.
Isaac Newton
According to the old-style Julian calendar, the pioneer of physics Isaac Newton who made several discoveries on gravity, optics, motion,and many more was born on 25th December 1642. However, modern historians quote the currently used Gregorian calendar, January 4, 1643, as his actual birthday.
John Phillips
Born on 25th December 1800, at the age of 7 John lost both his parents. William Smith, a surveyor and fossil hunter also known as the “father of English geology” was his uncle who took John along with him at a young age. Subsequently, Phillips became a great geologist and authored several papers in the field of astronomy.
Richard E. Shope
Born on 25th December 1901, Richard made a significant contribution in the times of the 1918 influenza pandemic which killed 20 to 50 million people globally. In the year 1928, he began testing the infected pigs from the same pathogen. Later, in 1933 a British team build off Shope’s work and was able to isolate the human influenza virus for the first time.
William Gregor
Born on 25th December 1761, William Gregor is known as the man who discovered titanium but he was also a British chemist, mineralogist, painter, and clergyman. In 1790 while he was walking along the sandy banks of a stream near Cornish village of Manaccan, he observed the sample of titanium. At first, he proposed calling the metal ‘menacanite’ or ‘menachine’.
Inna A. Dobruskina
Inna was born in a communal residence in Moscow city on December 25, 1933. She is known as the world’s leading authority on a Triassic period (between 252 and 201 million years ago) of plant life forms. She extensively traveled across China, France, Austria, South Africa, Russia, and the United States to explore and study Triassic deposits.
Gerhard Herzberg
Gerhard was born in Germany on 25th December 1904. His work on Spectroscopy, a three-volume textbook,‘Molecular Spectra and Molecular Structure’ is considered top-notch. In 1952, he discovered that Uranus and Neptune’s atmospheres have hydrogen and in 1971, won the Nobel prize in Chemistry for his valuable contributions to science.
Adolf Windaus
Born on 25th December 1876, the based Nobel laureate won the prize for his contribution in Chemistry in 1928. Adolf Windausthroughout his career studies sterols, a class of organic compounds that includes cholesterol.
