GIANTS OF SCIENCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2694, 12 February 1924, Page 4

GIANTS OF SCIENCE.

THE GREATEST TEN. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE. Professor J. Arthur Thomson, of the University of Aberdeen, has published his list of the ten greatest scientists, and he is as good a judge as could be found. “What I mean by a great scientist,” he says, “is one who in his time has made the world new, one who has opened the gates and let in a flood of knowledge that has changed everything.” The names and what they did are as follows. — 1. Aristotle. — He was the first real scientist, the first to study animals! and plants experimentally, and he wrote a book on animals which today after a lapse of 2000 years, may be studied witli profit. All the information in that book was discovered by himself, for no other books on zoology then existed and this was only a part of his scientific work.

2. Galileo. — He discovered one of the great laws of motion, and earned the title of “Father of Mechanics.” Before his time people supposed that heavy weights fell faster than light weights. Galileo climbed on the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and let two bodies of different weights fall to the ground, and both struck simultaneously. But his greatest discovery was that the earth revolves round the sun instead of the sun around the earth. This discovery caused him a lot of trouble, but gave him a place among the elect. 3. Newton. — Besides his three laws of motion, he discovered the law of gravitation. 4. William Harvey.—His diseov ery of the cumulation of blood gave rise the science of physiology, with all the benefits the human race has derived therefrom. 5. Lavoisier. — A Frenchman he discovered the law of the conservation of matter, and he demonstrated that in all changes through which matter goes nothing is ever created or lost. When coal is burned, for example, the smoke ashes and escaping' gas weigh exactly as much as the coal. Modern chemistery is founded upon Lavoisier’s discoveries. <). Helmholst is ranked sixth on account of his discovery of the law of the conservation of energy, which means that one kind of power is ever created or lost. 7. Mieheal Faraday is given a place among the ten bcause of his practical discoveries in electricity, from which have come the telephone telegraph and many other great utilities. 8. Claude Bernard comes next whose experiments on the ductless glands of the body may result in revolutionising methods of treating certain kinds of diseases caused by abnormal secretions of the pituitary glands. 9. Darwin, of course, belongs among the ten. Prior to his time mankind believed that the human race “descended” from a perfect pair of parents, but Darwin taught the “ascent of man.” He did not discover or invent evolution, but by a review of the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms showed it to be the way the Guiding Hand of the universe works. In thousands of ways mankind has benefited by Darwin’s work. As the result of his showing that new species can be created out of older species. Dr. Charles E. Sanders, in 1903, crossed red life and red Calcutta—two species of cereals —and produced Marquis Avheat from which upwards of 300,000,000 bushels were threshed in 1918. 10. The list would not be com plete without Pasteur, the man who saved a million lives. For our knowledge of disease germs and for the serums and vaccines with which their ravages-are minimised; for pasteurised milk and the infants it has saved; for adding fifteen years to the average life of evilised human beings, and for giving us practical immunity from typhoid and hydrophobia mankind has Pasteur to thank.