Galileo

Synopsis

Born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy, Galileo Galilei was a mathematics professor who made pioneering observations of nature with long-lasting implications for the study of physics. He also constructed a telescope and supported the Copernican theory, which supports a sun-centered solar system. Galileo was accused twice of heresy by the church for his beliefs, and wrote books on his ideas. He died in Arcetri, Italy, on January 8, 1642.

Early Life

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa in the Duchy of Florence, Italy. He was the first of six children born to Vincenzo Galilei, a well-known musician and music theorist, and Giulia Ammannati. In 1574, the family moved to Florence, where Galileo started his formal education at the Camaldolese monastery in Vallombrosa.

In 1583, Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. Armed with high intelligence and talent, he soon became fascinated with many subjects, particularly mathematics and physics. While at Pisa, Galileo was exposed to the Aristotelian view of the world, then the leading scientific authority and the only one sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. At first, Galileo supported this view, like any other intellectual of his time, and was on track to be a university professor. However, due to financial difficulties, Galileo left the university in 1585 before earning his degree.

Academic Career

Galileo continued to study mathematics, supporting himself with minor teaching positions. During this time he began his two-decade study on objects in motion and published The Little Balance, describing the hydrostatic principles of weighing small quantities, which brought him some fame. This gained him a teaching post at the University of Pisa, in 1589. There Galileo 

conducted his fabled experiments with falling objects and produced his manuscript Du Motu (On Motion), a departure from Aristotelian views about motion and falling objects. Galileo developed an arrogance about his work, and his strident criticisms of Aristotle left him isolated among his colleagues. In 1592, his contract with the University of Pisa was not renewed.

Galileo quickly found a new position at the University of Padua, teaching geometry, mechanics and astronomy. The appointment was fortunate, for his father had died in 1591, leaving Galileo entrusted with the care of his younger brother Michelagnolo. During his 18-year tenure at Padua, he gave entertaining lectures and attracted large crowds of followers, further increasing his fame and his sense of mission.

Controversial Findings

In 1604, Galileo published The Operations of the Geometrical and Military Compass, revealing his skills with experiments and practical technological applications. He also constructed a hydrostatic balance for measuring small objects. These developments brought him additional income and more recognition. That same year, Galileo refined his theories on motion and falling objects, and developed the universal law of acceleration, which all objects in the universe obeyed. Galileo began to express openly his support of the Copernican theory that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. This challenged the doctrine of Aristotle and the established order set by the Catholic Church.

In July 1609, Galileo learned about a simple telescope built by Dutch eyeglass makers, and he soon developed one of his own. In August, he demonstrated it to some Venetian merchants, who saw its value for spotting ships and gave Galileo salary to manufacture several of them. However, Galileo’s ambition pushed him to go further, and in the fall of 1609 he made the fateful decision to turn his telescope toward the heavens. In March 1610, he published a small booklet, The Starry Messenger, revealing his discoveries that the moon was not flat and smooth, but a sphere with mountains and craters. He found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun. He also discovered Jupiter had revolving moons, which didn’t revolve around the earth.

Soon Galileo began mounting a body of evidence that supported Copernican theory and contradicted Aristotle and Church doctrine. In 1612, he published his Discourse on Bodies in Water, refuting the Aristotelian explanation of why objects float in water, saying that it wasn’t because of their flat shape, but instead the weight of the object in relation to the water it displaced. In 1613, he published his observations of sunspots, which further refuted Aristotelian doctrine that the sun was perfect. That same year, Galileo wrote a letter to a student to explain how Copernican theory did not contradict Biblical passages, stating that scripture was written from an earthly perspective and implied that science provided a different, more accurate perspective. The letter was made public and Church Inquisition consultants pronounced Copernican theory heretical. In 1616, Galileo was ordered not to “hold, teach, or defend in any manner” the Copernican theory regarding the motion of the earth. Galileo obeyed the order for seven years, partly to make life easier and partly because he was a devoted Catholic.

In 1623, a friend of Galileo, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, was selected as Pope Urban VIII. He allowed Galileo to pursue his work on astronomy and even encouraged him to publish it, on condition it be objective and not advocate Copernican theory. In 1632, Galileo published the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a discussion among three people: one who supports Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the universe, one who argues against it, and one who is impartial. Though Galileo claimed Dialogues was neutral, it was clearly not. The advocate of Aristotelian belief comes across as the simpleton, getting caught in his own arguments.

Reaction by the Church

Church reaction against the book was swift, and Galileo was summoned to Rome. The Inquisition proceedings lasted from September 1632 to July 1633. During most of this time, Galileo was treated with respect and never imprisoned. However, in a final attempt to break him, Galileo was threatened with torture, and he finally admitted he had supported Copernican theory, but privately held that his statements were correct. He was convicted of heresy and spent his remaining years under house arrest. Though ordered not to have any visitors nor have any of his works printed outside of Italy, he ignored both. In 1634, a French translation of his study of forces and their effects on matter was published, and a year later, copies of the Dialogue were published in Holland. While under house arrest, Galileo wrote Two New Sciences, a summary of his life’s work on the science of motion and strength of materials. It was printed in Holland in 1638. By this time, he had become blind and in ill health.

Death and Legacy

Galileo died in Arcetri, near Florence, Italy, on January 8, 1642, after suffering from a fever and heart palpitations. But in time, the Church couldn’t deny the truth in science. In 1758, it lifted the ban on most works supporting Copernican theory, and by 1835 dropped its opposition to heliocentrism altogether.

In the 20th century, several popes acknowledged the great work of Galileo, and in 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret about how the Galileo affair was handled. Galileo's contribution to our understanding of the universe was significant not only in his discoveries, but in the methods he developed and the use of mathematics to prove them. He played a major role in the scientific revolution and, deservedly so, earned the moniker "The Father of Modern Science."

Personal Life

In 1600, Galileo met Marina Gamba, a Venetian woman, who bore him three children out of wedlock: daughters Virginia and Livia, and son Vincenzo. He never married Marina, possibly due to financial worries and possibly fearing his illegitimate children would threaten his social standing. He worried the two girls would never marry well, and when they were older, had them enter a convent. His son’s birth was eventually legitimized and he became a successful musician.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

                     

Early Life and Education:

Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar was an Indian Mathematician who was born in Erode, India in 1887 on December 22. He was born into a family that was not very well to do. He went to school at the nearby place, Kumbakonam. Ramanujan is very well known for his efforts on continued fractions and series of hypergeometry. When Ramanujan was thirteen, he could work out Loney’s Trigonometry exercises without any help. At the of fourteen, he was able to acquire the theorems of cosine and sine given by L. Euler. Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics by George Shoobridge Carr was reached by him in 1903. The book helped him a lot and opened new dimensions to him were opened which helped him introduce about 6,165 theorems for himself. As he had no proper and good books in his reach, he had to figure out on his own the solutions for all the questions. It was in this quest that he discovered many tremendous methods and new algebraic series.

In 1904, he received a merit scholarship in a local college and became more indulgent into mathematics. He lost his interest in all other subjects due to which he lost his scholarship. Even after two attempts, he did not succeed to get a first degree in the field of arts. In 1909, he got married and continued his clerical work and, side by side, his investigations of mathematics. Finally in 1911, he published some of his results.

It was in January 1913 that he sent his work to a Cambridge Professor named G. H. Hardy but he did not appreciate Ramanujan’s work much as he had not really done reached the standard of the mathematicians of the west. But he was given a scholarship in May by the University of Madras.

Contributions and Achievements:

Ramanujan went to Cambridge in 1914 and it helped him a lot but by that time his mind worked on the patterns on which it had worked before and he seldom adopted new ways. By then, it was more about intuition than argument. Hardy said Ramanujan could have become an outstanding mathematician if his skills had been recognized earlier. It was said about his talents of continued fractions and hypergeometric series that, “he was unquestionably one of the great masters.” It was due to his sharp memory, calculative mind, patience and insight that he was a great formalist of his days. But it was due to his some methods of working in the work analysis and theories of numbers that did not let him excel that much.

He got elected as the fellow in 1918 at the Trinity College at Cambridge and the Royal Society. He departed from this world on April 26, 1920.

MAX BORN

Synopsis

Max Born was born in Breslau, Germany, on December 11, 1882, into a family of upper-class Jewish academics. He pursued his interest in science and mathematics at leading universities in Germany, England and Scotland, coming up with proofs and theories in relation to the First Law of Thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. He was forced to serve in the German army in World War I and was expelled from Germany in 1933. After WWII, he was opposed to nuclear weapons and espoused his belief in an indeterminate universe. Born shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Walter Bothe in 1954. He died on January 5, 1970, in Göttingen, Germany.

Early Life

Max Born was born on December 11, 1882, in Breslau, Germany (now Wroc?aw, Poland) to an upper-middle-class family of Jewish descent. His father, Gustav Born, was a professor of anatomy and embryology at the local university, and his mother, Margarete, who died when Max was just four years old, came from a family of local industrialists. He had a younger sister, Käthe, and a half-brother Wolfgang (from his father's second marriage), who later became a professor of art history at the City University of New York.

A frail child, Born eventually attended the renowned König-Wilhelm Gymnasium after home tutelage, moving on to and through several universities—the University of Breslau, Heidelberg University and Zurich University—spending only a year at each. He settled down to get his Ph.D. and Habilitation­—the highest academic credit a scholar can achieve—at the University of Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on the stability of elastic wires and tapes, earning the Prize of the Philosophical Faculty.

A Life of Science

Through his peripatetic education, Born had picked up an interest inmatrix calculus,higher analysis, astronomy and physics. He continued his studies under a Nobel Prize­-winning physicist at Cambridge and returned to his hometown university to work on the theory of relativity, collaborating with and then taking over for a renowned professor there, which led to his first brush with Albert Einstein (who would become a friend).

In 1915 Born moved to Berlin to work with Max Planck at the university there but was drafted in the German army after the outbreak of World War I. During the war, he was able to continue his scientific pursuits, working on the theory of sound ranging and publishing his first book, Dynamics of Crystal Lattices. After the war, he resumed his work in a professorship in Frankfurt, where he worked in a lab with the future Nobel Prize winner Otto Stern on the latter's early molecular experiments.

During a period of extended stability, 12 years as professor of theoretical physics at Göttingen, Born did his most important work on quantum mechanics. James Franck was also there as professor of experimental physics, and together they made the university a hotspot for atomic and molecular phenomena, with soon-to-be-well-known physicists such as Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Maria Goeppert-Mayer all flocking to the institution.

But in 1933, when Adolph Hitler rose to power in Germany, Born, who was Jewish, was stripped of his credentials and forced to emigrate to England. After a brief stint at Cambridge, he was appointed Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he spent the remainder of his career. He retired in 1953, and in 1954 was awarded the Nobel Prize, shared with Walther Bothe, for his contributions to theoretical physics.

Death and Legacy

Max Born died on January 5, 1970, in Göttingen, Germany. He and his wife had returned to Germany in 1954, after his retirement, moving to the spa town of Bad Pyrmont. He had been deeply affected by the detonation of the atomic bomb, speaking out against the dangers of nuclear weapons, and signing the "Göttingen Eighteen," a declaration by eminent scientists protesting the possible arming of the West German military with nuclear weapons.

Among Born's achievements was the first mathematically precise statement of the First Law of Thermodynamics. There is a Max Born Institute and a Max Born Award from the Optical Society. Gustav Born donated his father's letters to illuminate his scientific life, and Max Born's life and concerns are detailed in the biography The End of a Certain World.

MARIE CURIE

Synopsis

Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.

Early Life

Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.

For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in 

Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.

Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo.

Discoveries

Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another. At first, they worked on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.

Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the wordradioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn't slow down.

Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Science Celebrity

Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.

Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

Final Days and Legacy

All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

James C. Maxwell

Synopsis

Born on June 13, 1831, in Edinburgh, Scotland, James C. Maxwell studied at the University of Cambridge before holding a variety of professorship posts. Already known for his innovations in optics and gas velocity research, his groundbreaking theories around electromagnetism, articulated in the famed Maxwell's Equations, greatly influenced modern physics as we know it. Maxwell died in England on November 5, 1879.

Academic Background

James Clerk Maxwell was born on June 13, 1831, at 14 India Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. Having a keen intellect from childhood, he had one of his geometry papers presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh during his adolescence. By 16 he'd enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, pursuing a fervent interest in optics and color research. He studied there for three years and eventually attended Cambridge University's Trinity College, graduating in 1854.

After teaching at Trinity for a time, Maxwell moved on to Marischal College as part of the physics faculty. He wed Katherine Mary Dewar in 1858.

Saturn's Rings

While at Marischal, Maxwell pondered a major astronomical question, looking at the case of Saturn and coming up with the idea that the planet's rings are comprised of particles, a theory later confirmed via 20th-century space probes. For this, Maxwell received the Adam Prize.

Upon Marischal becoming part of the University of Aberdeen, Maxwell took on a professor position at King's College in London. He taught there until 1865, when he resigned from his post to do research from his home in Glenlair. Having continued to do work with Cambridge University as well, Maxwell was instrumental in helping to establish the institution's Cavendish Laboratory, and he took on roles there as lab director and professor of experimental physics at the start of the 1870s.

Pioneer in Electromagnetism

Maxwell had continued his research on color and made groundbreaking discoveries around gas velocity. It was during Maxwell's time at King's College that he began to share revolutionary ideas around electromagnetism and light.

Fellow physicist Michael Faraday had already championed the notion that electricity and magnetics were connected; Maxwell, via experimentation with vortexes, expanded on Faraday's work and came up with the theory of electromagnetic movement being conceptualized in the form of waves, with said energy travelling at light speed.

Maxwell's Equations

Supporting his theorems, Maxwell's Equations—speaking to the scholar's aptitude in using math to articulate scientific occurrences—were found in the paper "Dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field," presented to the Royal Society of London in 1864 and published the following year. In 1873 he published the book A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, which further expounded on his research.

Maxwell's other scientific contributions included producing the first color photograph, taken in 1861, and creating structural engineering calculations for bridge maintenance. He earned an array of awards over the course of his career, including the Rumford Medal, Keith Prize and Hopkins Prize, in addition to receiving membership in groups like the Royal Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam. Other publications included Theory of Heat (1871) and Matter and Motion (1877).

Death and Legacy

James C. Maxwell died in Cambridge, England, on November 5, 1879, from abdominal cancer. His discoveries paved the way for much of the modern world's technological innovations and continued to influence physics well into the next century, with thinkers like Albert Einstein praising him for his indispensable contributions. Maxwell's original house, now a museum, is the site of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation.

DENNIS RITCHIE

 

     DENNIS RITCHIE 

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born 1941) is best known for his work on computer languages and operating systems ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and especially Unix. For a man who did not start out in the computer industry, he has had a profound influence on the entire computer programming world. He told Investor's Business Daily , "It's not the actual programming that's interesting. But it's what you can accomplish with the end results that are important." And if that is the case, then Ritchie has had an important effect on most, if not all, computer users today.

Early Fascination with Harvard's Univac I

Ritchie was born on September 9, 1941, in Bronx-ville, New York. He was born to Alistair Ritchie, a switching systems engineer for Bell Laboratories, and Jean McGee Ritchie, a homemaker. Ritchie grew up in New Jersey, and after a childhood in which he did very well academically, he went on to attend Harvard University. There he studied science and graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics. While he was still going to school, Ritchie happened to go to a lecture about how Harvard's computer system, a Univac I, worked. He was fascinated by what he heard and wanted to find out more. Outside of his Harvard studies, Ritchie began to explore computers more thoroughly, and was especially interested in how they were programmed.
While still at Harvard, Ritchie got a job working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At that time computer programming was not a degree, and computer labs were looking for anyone with potential to help on their computers. Ritchie, with his unflagging curiosity, seemed perfect for the job. Ritchie worked at MIT for many years helping develop, alongside other scientists, more advanced computer systems and software.

Began Work on Operating Systems
He also began work on developing an operating system for more portable computers. Most computers at the time took up entire rooms and had limited dial-in access, but smaller desktop computers were being developed, and these did not have easy to use operating systems. Ritchie decided that one was needed. MIT, Honeywell, and General Electric agreed, and administered his project. Other scientists from colleges and private companies came to help build the system, one that was able to handle up to a thousand users at once and could be run 24 hours a day. Ritchie never saw programming as a problem but rather as a puzzle to be solved.
After the project was finished, just about the time that he graduated, Ritchie determined that computers, rather than physics, would be his career. He got a job at Bell Labs, where his father had worked for years. At the time, in 1967, it was the nation's primary phone provider, and it had one of the best labs in the world, one that was responsible for developing a multiplicity of technical advances, from new switching devices to transistors, as well as new computer advances. Ritchie told Investor's Business Daily , "Instead of focusing on specific projects, I wanted to be around people with a lot of experience and ideas. So I started working on various projects to learn my way around the profession."

Built Unix to Fulfill Computer Needs
Ritchie began working with Kenneth Thompson, who had joined Bell Labs in 1966. Both men had been watching how the minicomputer was becoming more and more popular in the early 1970s. What was needed, they thought, was a simpler and more feasable interaction between various computers. It took them months to come up with a solution, but when they were finished they had written the Unix operating system. An operating system is necessary for a user to copy, delete, edit, and print data files. It allows a person to move data around from disk to screen to printer and back to disk for storage. Without an operating system computers would not be accessible to anyone but an expert few. Before the creation of Unix, operating systems had been complex and expensive. Unix was comparatively cheap and simple, and it could be used on just about any machine, which meant buyers were not stuck with the cumbersome software that came with their computers. They could buy and install a variety of software systems, because Unix was compatible with all of them. This had not been possible before.
Ritchie and his team released Unix to the public at a symposium on Operating Systems Principles that was hosted by IBM, and it was an immediate success. Ritchie and Thompson then set out to improve the system.

Development of C Programming Language

Unix was written in machine language, which had a small vocabulary and did not deal well with multiple computers and their memories. So Ritchie combined some aspects of the older systems with aspects of the new one, and came up with the "C" programming language. In the early twenty-first century, "C" is still the dominant language of computer programming. It was such a simple, concise language that almost every single computer maker at the time switched to it.
"C" uses very little syntax and few instructions, but it is extremely structured and modular. Because of this it was easy to use in different computers. There were large blocks of "C" functions that were already written that programmers could copy whole into their own programs without having to start from scratch, making it faster and easier to implement. These blocks were easily accessible, available in libraries so programmers could access them. By the middle of the 1980s "C" had become one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Because of the speed with which "C" could be used to write programs and run them, companies began using "C" to develop their own software.

Continued Drive to Improve Computer Functionality

By 1973 Ritchie and Thompson had re-written the Unix operating system, using "C" instead of machine language, and had done massive testing on it. It was so simple to use that programmers all over were switching to smaller machines to do their programming, giving up the larger computers they thought they would never want to leave. Bell Labs became Lucent Technologies Inc., and began to sell Unix to developers, creating a whole new division for the company. Ritchie has credited his success in part to the fact that he did not have a computer background and therefore had an open mind to possibilities that others might not have thought existed.
Ritchie became the leader of the Computing Techniques Research Department at Lucent Technologies in 1990. In that role he wrote applications and managed the growth of already released operating systems. Over the years Ritchie has received numerous awards, including the ACM award for the outstanding paper of 1974 in systems and languages, the IEEE Emmanuel Piore Award in 1982, a Bell Laboratories Fellow in 1983, an Association for Computing Machinery Turing Award in 1983, an ACM Software Systems Award in 1983, and an IEEE Hamming Medal in 1990. He was also elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering in 1988. In April of 1999 he was the recipient of the United States National Medal of Technology. All of the awards Ritchie received were in conjunction with Thompson. Ritchie is now the head of Lucent Technologies' Systems Software Research Department, and is still striving to make computers work better and more easily for users.


Personal Life Mirrored Professional

Asked what he liked to do in his personal life, Ritchie admitted that his personal and professional lives are mixed together. He said in an interview on the Old Unix website, "I've done a reasonable amount of traveling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time. I'm a home-body and get fatigued by it fairly soon, but enjoy thinking back on experiences when I've returned and then often wish I'd arranged a longer stay in the somewhat exotic place."

Books

Almanac of Famous People , 8th edition, Gale Group, 2003.
Newsmakers 2000 , Issue 1, Gale Group, 2000.
Notable Scientists: From 1900 to the Present , Gale Group, 2001.
World of Computer Science , 2 volumes, Gale Group, 2002.

Nikola Tesla

Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla was born in July of 1856, in what is now Croatia. He came to the United States in 1884, and briefly worked with Thomas Edison before the two parted ways. He sold several patent rights, including those to his alternating-current machinery, to George Westinghouse. His 1891 invention, the "Tesla coil," is still used in radio technology today. Tesla died in New York City on January 7, 1943.

Early Life

Famous Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in what is now Smiljan, Croatia. Tesla's interest in electrical invention was likely spurred by his mother, Djuka Mandic, who invented small household appliances in her spare time while her son was growing up. Tesla's father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest. After studying in the 1870s at the Realschule, Karlstadt (later renamed the Johann-Rudolph-Glauber Realschule Karlstadt); the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria; and the University of Prague, Tesla began preparing for a trip to America.

Famed Inventor

Tesla came to the United States in 1884, and soon began working with famed inventor and business mogul Thomas Edison. The two worked together for a brief period before parting ways due to a conflicting business-scientific relationship, attributed by historians to their incredibly different personalities: While Edison was a power figure who focused on marketing and financial success, Tesla was a commercially out-of-tune and somewhat vulnerable, yet extremely pivotal inventor, who pioneered some of history's the most important inventions. His inventions include the "Tesla coil," developed in 1891, and an alternating-current electrical system of generators, motors and transformers—both of which are still used widely today.

On the AC electrical system alone, Tesla held 40 basic U.S. patents, which he later sold to George Westinghouse, an American engineer and business man who was determined to supply the nation with the Tesla's AC system. He would succeed in doing just that, not long after purchasing Tesla's patents. Around this time, conflict arose between Tesla and Edison, as Edison was determined to sell his direct-current system to the nation. According to the Tesla Memorial Society of New York, Tesla-Westinghouse ultimately won out because Tesla's system was "a superior technology," presenting greater "progress of both America and the world" than Edison's DC system. Outside of his AC system patents, Tesla sold several other patent rights to Westinghouse.

At the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago, Tesla conducted demonstrations of his AC system, which soon became the standard power system of the 20th century, and has remained the worldwide standard ever since. Two years later, in 1895, Tesla designed the first hydroelectric powerplant at Niagara Falls, a feat that was highly publicized throughout the world.

Around 1900—nearly a decade later after inventing the "Tesla coil"—Tesla began working on his boldest project yet: Building a global communication system—through a large, electrical tower—for sharing information and providing free electricity throughout the world. The system, however, never came to fruition; it failed due to financial constraints, and Tesla had no choice but to abandon the Long Island, New York laboratory that housed his work on the tower project, Wardenclyffe. In 1917, the Wardenclyffe site was sold, and Tesla's tower was destroyed.

"It's a sad, sad story," Larry Page, Google's co-founder, said of Tesla in a 2008 interview with Forbes magazine. "[Tesla] couldn't commercialize anything. He could barely fund his own research."

In addition to his AC system, coil and tower project, throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed and developed ideas for a number of important inventions—most of which were officially patented by other inventors—including dynamos (electrical generators similar to batteries) and the induction motor. He was also a pioneer in the discovery of radar technology, X-ray technology and the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most AC machinery. Tesla was not without his major faults, however, as he supported the use of population control via eugenics and forced sterilizations.

Death and Legacy

Poor and reclusive, Nikola Tesla died on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86, in New York City—where he had lived for nearly 60 years. His legacy, however, has been thriving for more than a century, and will undoubtedly live on for decades to come.

Several books and films have highlighted Tesla's life and famous works, including Nikola Tesla, The Genius Who Lit the World, a film created by the Tesla Memorial Society and the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia; and The Secret of Nikola Tesla, which stars Orson Welles as John Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan). In recent years, a street sign entitled "Nikola Tesla Corner" was installed in honor of the famous inventor, near the 40th Street-6th Avenue intersection in New York City.

Wardenclyffe Project

Over the past several years, several nonprofit organizations, high-profile individuals, municipalities and Tesla enthusiasts have been involved in a different kind of effort to uphold Tesla's legacy: A project to preserve Tesla's still-standing, still-abandoned New York laboratory, Wardenclyffe, and turn it into a museum of the famous inventor's work. For more than a decade, New York's Nikola Tesla Science Center has been working to gain momentum and, subsequently, funding for preserving Wardenclyffe. Since then, the lab's ownership has been passed through several hands, and public interest for the project has slowly but steadly been growing.

Interest escalated in February 2009, when the Wardenclyffe site was posted for sale, for nearly $1.6 million. For several years, the Tesla Science Center worked diligently to raise funds for the lab's preservation. In 2012, Matt Inman of TheOatmeal.com collaborated on an internet fundraising effort with The Tesla Science Center the result of which was raising enough cash so that the TSC was finally able to purchase the property in 2013. The organization plans to turn the site into a science museum.