R.A. Millikan

        Robert Andrews Millikan was born on the 22nd of March, 1868, in Morrison,U.S.A , as the second son of the Reverend Silas Franklin Millikan and Mary Jane Andrews. He led a rural existence in childhood, attending the Maquoketa High School . After working for a short time as a court reporter, he entered Oberlin College in 1886. During his undergraduate course his favourite subjects were Greek and mathematics; but after his graduation in 1891 he took, for two years, a teaching post in elementary physics. It was during this period that he developed his interest in the subject in which he was later to excel. In 1893, after obtaining his mastership in physics, he was appointed Fellow in Physics at Columbia University. He afterwards received his Ph.D. (1895) for research on the polarization of light emitted by incandescent surfaces - using for this purpose molten gold and silver at the U.S. Mint.

Oil Drop Experiment

      As a scientist, Millikan made numerous momentous discoveries, chiefly in the fields of electricity, optics, and molecular physics. His earliest major success was the accurate determination of the charge carried by an electron, using the elegant "falling oil-drop method"; he also proved that this quantity was a constant for all electrons , thus demonstrating the atomic structure of electricity. Next, he verified experimentally Einstein's all-important photoelectric equation, and made the first direct photoelectric determination of Planck's constant h . In addition his studies of the Brownian movements in gases put an end to all opposition to the atomic and kinetic theories of matter. During 1920-1923, Millikan occupied himself with work concerning the hot-spark spectroscopy of the elements (which explored the region of the spectrum between the ultraviolet and X-radiation), thereby extending the ultraviolet spectrum downwards far beyond the then known limit. The discovery of his law of motion of a particle falling towards the earth after entering the earth's atmosphere, together with his other investigations on electrical phenomena, ultimately led him to his significant studies of cosmic radiation .

     Millikan,in his life;remained a prolific author, making numerous contributions to scientific journals. He was not only a foremost scientist, but his religious and philosophic nature was evident from his lectures on the reconciliation of science and religion, and from his books: Science and Life; Evolution in Science and Religion; Science and the New Civilization ; Time,Matter and Values.Shortly before his death he published Electrons (+ and –), Protons; Photons, Neurtrons , Mesotrons and Cosmic Rays; his Autobiography.During World War I, Millikan was Vice-Chairman of the National Research Council, playing a major part in developing anti-submarine and meteorological devices. Advancement of Science, and was the American member of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League. He held honorary doctor's degrees of some twenty-five universities, and was a member or honorary member of many learned institutions in his country and abroad. He has been the recipient of the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, of the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of Great Britain, and of the Nobel Prize for Physics 1923. He was also made Commander of the Legion of Honour, and received the Chinese Order of Jade.

     Millikan was an enthusiastic tennis player, and golf was also one of his recreations.Professor Millikan married Greta Erwin Blanchard in 1902; they had three sons: Clark Blanchard, Glenn Allen, and Max Franklin.He died on the 19th of December, 1953, in San Marino, California.

Nikola Tesla

   Nikola Tesla ( 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian American Inventor, physicst,mechanical engineer, electrical engineer and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commerical electricity and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on the theories of electromagnetic technology discovered by Michael Faraday. Teslas's parents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication and the radio.Born to Serbian parents in the village of Smiljan  (now part of Gospic, present day Croatia), Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen.Because of his 1894 demonstration of short range wireless communication through radio and his eventual victory in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

      In the end of his life in the 1930s, Tesla became reclusive, living alone in a New York City hotel room and only appearing occasionally to make unusual statements to the press. Because of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the years Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal "mad scientist". He died penniless and in debt in January, 1943.Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a popular culture comeback. In 2005, he was listed amongst the top 100 nominees in the TV show "The Greatest American", an open access popularity poll conducted by AOL and The Discovery Channel.  

  Briefly worked with Thomas Edison before the two parted ways.He died on January 7, 1943, in New York City.He sold several patent rights, including those to his alternating-current machinery, to George Westinghouse. His 1891 invention, the Tesla coil, is used in radio technology. The SI unit measuring magnetic field B (magnetic flux / intensity / induction), the TESLA , was named in his honor.

Hans Christian Orsted

    Danish physicist and philosopher Hans Christian Orsted is best known for discoverering the connection between electricity and magnetism known as electromagnetism. Orsted was born in Rudkobing on the Danish island of Lolland. Orsted became interested in science while working as a young boy for his father, Soren Christian Orsted, who owned a pharmacy. Educated primarily through self-study at home, both Orsted and his brother, Anders Sandoe Orsted, went to Copenhagen in 1793 to take entrance exams for Copenhagen University. The brothers passed and distinguished themselves academically at the University. By 1796, Orsted receivied honors for his papers in both aesthetics and medicine.Although he passed his pharmaceutical examination in 1797, Orsted continued his education and, in 1801 received a travel scholarship and public grant that was to profoundly affect his future. With the awards, Orsted spent three years traveling in Europe. 

        In 1820, which Orsted described as the happiest year of his life, Orsted considered a lecture for his students focusing on electricity and magnetism that would involve a new electric battery. During a classroom demonstration,Orsted saw that a compass needle deflected from magnetic north when the electric current from the battery was switched on or off. This deflection interestred Orsted convincing him that magnetic fields might radiate from all sides of a live wire just as light and heat do. However, the initial reaction was so slight that Orsted put off further research for three months until he began more intensive investigations. Shortly afterwards, Orsted's findings were published, proving that an electric current produces a magnetic field as it flows through a wire. This discovery revealed the fundamental connection between electricity and magnetism, which most scientists thought to be completely unrelated phenomena. The result was an intensive effort throughout the scientific community in electrodynamics research, including French physicist André-Marie Ampère's (1775-1836) developments of a single mathematical form to represent the magnetic forces between current-carrying conductors. Orsted's discovery also represented a major step toward a unified concept of energy.

Although some accounts of Orsted's discovery described the event as purely accidental, Orsted's earlier travels in Europe and wide range of studies had drawn him to a believe in the unity of nature, and that a relationship therefore must exist between most natural phenomena, including electricity and magnetism. If Orsted had not been looking for such a relationship, he possibly would not have placed the compass near an electrical current to see if there was an effect. Orsted's discovery, which laid the foundation for the theory of electromagnetism, led toresearch that created much of the technology in common use today, including radio, television, and fiber optics . In honor of its discoverer, the physical unit of magnetic field strength was named Oersted in 1932.

        Among Orsted's continued scientific works, he was one of the first scientists to produce pure aluminum and to conduct experiments in the compressibility of fluids . Orsted had a wide range of interests, including education, philosophy, politics, and literary affairs. Orsted, who married Birgitte Ballum and had eight children, spent over 50 years at Copenhagen University and the Technological College. To the Danish people, Orsted is as much revered for his efforts as a teacher and educator as for his discovery of electromagnetism. His combination of scientific thought and wide-ranging efforts in cultural and political activities helped to transform Danish society. Orsted believed that Denmark would best progress as a country through a close cooperation between research and industry. To help ensure that all of the small country's human resources were fully utilized, Orsted emphasized the need for a comprehensive nationwide system of education and training. At the time of his death in 1851, orsted was head of the Polytechnical Institute at Copenhagen University. In 1993, nearly a century and a half after his death, the first Dutch satellite was named in Orsted's honor.

Hendrik Lorentz

Hendrik Anton Lorentz ( 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time.He discoverd the Lorentz Force.Force exerted by a charged particle moving in the magnetic field which is f=qVBSinƟ where q is the magnitude of charged particle,v the speed of charged particle,B the magnetic strength of the field and SinƟ the angle between the direction of B and v.  
     He was born as the son of nursery-owner Gerrit Frederik Lorentz and his wife née Geertruida van Ginkel. When he was four years old, his mother died, and in 1862 his father married Luberta Hupkes. In those days the grade school did not only have school hours in the morning and in the afternoon, but also in the evening, when teaching was more free .  After the 5th form and a year of study of the classics, he entered the University of Leyden in 1870, obtained his B.Sc. degree in mathematics and physics in 1871, and returned to Arnhem in 1872 to become a night-school teacher, at the same time preparing for his doctoral thesis on the reflection and refraction of light. In 1875, at the early age of 22, he obtained his doctor's degree, and only three years later he was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Leyden, newly created for him. In spite of many invitations to chairs abroad, he always remained faithful to his Alma Mater. He continued at Leyden as Extraordinary Professor, delivering his famous Monday morning lectures for the rest of his life. The far-seeing directors of Teyler's Foundation thus enabled his unique mind to be freed from routine academic obligations, permitting him to spread his wings still further in the highest secluded realms of science, which are attainable by so few.

     In 1878, he published an essay on the relation between the velocity of light in a medium and the density and composition thereof. The resulting formula, proposed almost simultaneously by the Danish physicist Lorenz, has become known as the Lorenz-Lorentz formula.Lorentz also made fundamental contributions to the study of the phenomena of moving bodies. In an extensive treatise on the aberration of light and the problems arising in connection with it, he followed A.J. Fresnel's hypothesis of the existence of an immovable ether, which freely penetrates all bodies. This assumption formed the basis of a general theory of the electrical and optical phenomena of moving bodies.From Lorentz stems the conception of the electron; his view that his minute, electrically charged particle plays a role during electromagnetic phenomena in ponderable matter made it possible to apply the molecular theory to the theory of electricity, and to explain the behaviour of light waves passing through moving, transparent bodies.The so-called Lorentz transformation (1904) was based on the fact that electromagnetic forces between charges are subject to slight alterations due to their motion, resulting in a minute contraction in the size of moving bodies. It not only adequately explains the apparent absence of the relative motion of the Earth with respect to the ether, as indicated by the experiments of Michelson and Morley, but also paved the way for Einstein's special theory of relativity.It may well be said that Lorentz was regarded by all theoretical physicists as the world's leading spirit, who completed what was left unfinished by his predecessors and prepared the ground for the fruitful reception of the new ideas based on the quantum theory.In 1919, he was appointed Chairman of the Committee whose task it was to study the movements of sea water which could be expected during and after the reclamation of the Zuyderzee in The Netherlands, one of the greatest works of all times in hydraulic engineering. His theoretical calculations, the result of eight years of pioneering work, have been confirmed in actual practice in the most striking manner, and have ever since been of permanent value to the science of hydraulics.An overwhelming number of honours and distinctions from all over the world were bestowed on Lorentz. International gatherings were presided over by him with exceptional skill, both on account of his amiable and judicious personality and his masterly command of languages. Until his death he was Chairman of all Solvay Congresses, and in 1923 he was elected to the membership of the "International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation" of the League of Nations. Of this Committee, consisting of only seven of the world's most eminent scholars, he became the President in 1925.Through his great prestige in governmental circles in his own country, Lorentz was able to convince them of the importance of science for national production. He thus initiated the steps which finally led to the creation of the organisation now generally known under the initials T.N.O. (Dutch for Applied Scientific Research).

    Lorentz was a man of immense personal charm. The very picture of unselfishness, full of genuine interest in whoever had the privilege of crossing his path, he endeared himself both to the leaders of his age and to the ordinary citizen.In 1881 Lorentz married Aletta Catharina Kaiser, whose father, J.W. Kaiser, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, was the Director of the Museum which later became the well-known Rijksmuseum (National Gallery) of Amsterdam, and the designer of the first postage stamps of The Netherlands. There were two daughters and one son from this marriage. The eldest daughter Dr. Geertruida Luberta Lorentz is a physicist in her own right and married Professor W.J. de Haas, Director of the Cryogenic Laboratory (Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory) of the University of Leyden.Lorentz died at Haarlem on February 4, 1928.

Stephen Hawking

Choose to overcome the limitations and develop extraordinary means of communicating knowledge and understanding that you have...

Stephen Hawking was born January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. From an early age, he showed a passion for science and the sky. At age 21, while studying cosmology at Cambridge, Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Despite his debilitating illness, he has done ground-breaking work in physics and cosmology and his several books strive to make science accessible to everyone.The eldest of Frank and Isobel Hawking's four children, Stephen William Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo, which has long been a source of pride for the noted physicist. Stephen was born into a family of thinkers. At a time when few women thought of going to college, the Scottish-born Isobel earned her way into Oxford University in the 1930s, making her one of the college's first female students. Frank Hawking, another Oxford graduate, was a respected medical researcher with a specialty in tropical diseases.

Stephen Hawking was born to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Although Hawking's parents were living in North London, he was born in Oxford as his parents felt it was safer to stay in Oxford for the later stages of the pregnancy. (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe.)When his father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research in 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953 (At that time, boys could attend the girls' school until the age of 10). and then from the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not exceptional, student.Inspired by his mathematics teacher, Hawking originally wanted to study the subject at university. However, Hawking's father wanted him to apply to University College,Oxford, where his father had attended. As University College did not have a mathematics fellow at that time, applications were not accepted from students who wished to study that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences with an emphasis in Physics. He was accepted and gained a scholarship. While at Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries".

Early in his academic life Stephen, while recognized as bright, was not an exceptional student. At one point in high school, his mother recalled, he was third from the bottom of his class. Instead, Stephen turned his mind loose on pursuits outside of school. He loved board games, and with a few close friends created new games of their own. At the age of 16 Stephen, along with several buddies, constructed a computer out of recycled parts for solving rudimentary mathematical equations.Hawking's unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination: "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves". After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he left for graduate work at Trinity Hall,   Cambridge.he mid to late 1970s were a period of growing fame and success for Hawking, his work was now much talked about, he was appearing in popular television documentaries and in 1979 he was made the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post he held for 30 years until his retirement in 2009. Hawkin's inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics had the title "Is the end in sight for Theoretical Physics" and promoted the idea the supergravity would help resolve many of the outstanding problems that Physicists were studying. 

U.S. President Barack Obama
talks with Stephen Hawking

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North Pole: one cannot travel north of the North Pole, as there is no boundary. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.

Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN, in 2006 Hawking proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had no unique initial state, and therefore it is inappropriate for physicists to attempt to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state.Top-down cosmology posits that in some sense, the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine tuning question.

Hawking made news in 2012 for two very different projects. It was revealed in early April that he had participated in a 2011 trial of a new headband-styled device called the iBrain. The device is designed to "read" the wearer's thoughts by picking up "waves of electrical brain signals," which are then interpreted by a special algorithm, according to an article in The New York Times. This device could be a revolutionary aid to Hawking and others with ALS.Also around this time, Hawking showed off his humorous side on American television. He made a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory, a popular comedy about a group of young, geeky scientists. Playing himself, Hawking brings the theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) back to Earth after finding an error in his work. Hawking earned kudos for this lighthearted effort.