Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) was an English physicist and mathematician. He is famous for his work on the laws of motion, optics, gravity, and calculus. In 1687, Newton published a book called the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in which he presents his theory of universal gravitation and three laws of motion.

Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope in 1668, he also developed a theory of light based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the colours of the rainbow. Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.

Newton's ideas on light, motion, and gravity dominated physics for the next three centuries, until modified by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976) was a Chinese Communist leader. He was the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. People have different opinions about Mao. The reasons people have called him bad are because they blame him for millions of Chinese deaths, and say that he was not skilled at running the government. They also say that he was impatient and would not wait for things he wanted to achieve. But people who agreed with Mao's Chinese Communist group say that he was a hero, who helped women and peasants gain rights. They also say that he saved China from foreign rule.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 in Bonn – March 26, 1827 in Vienna) was a German composer. He wrote classical music for the piano, orchestras and different groups of instruments. His best-known works are his third ("Erotica"), fifth , sixth ("Pastoral") and ninth ("Choral") symphonies, the eighth ("Pathetique") and fourteenth ("Moonlight") piano sonatas, two of his latter piano concertos, his opera "Fidelio", and also the piano piece Fur Elise. When he was a young man, he was a talented pianist. Beethoven was popular with the rich and important people in Vienna, Austria, where he lived.

In 1801, however, he began to lose his hearing. His deafness became worse. In 1817, he was completely deaf. Although he could no longer play in concerts, he continued to compose. During this time he composed some of his greatest works. He is said to be one of the greatest classical composers who has ever lived.

He moved to Vienna in 1792 and lived there for the rest of his life. He never married.

Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French microbiologist and chemist. He and also his wife, Marie, are best known for their experiments supporting the Germ theory of disease, and he is also known for his vaccinations, most notably the first vaccine against rabies. He made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the asymmetry (different shapes) of crystals. He is also well known for his way of keeping milk and wine from going sour for longer. That process is called pasteurization.

Pasteur's later work on diseases included work on chicken cholera. During this work, Pasteur noticed how a culture of the responsible bacteria had spoiled, and it failed to induce the disease in some chickens which he was infecting with the disease.

Karl Heinrich Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German political thinker who wrote about money (economics) and power (politics). Marx thought that if a place that works together runs on wage-labor, then there would always be class struggle. Marx thought that this class struggle would result in workers taking power. His most famous book was the Communist Manifesto. He wrote it with Friedrich Engels in 1848. The book sets out the ideas and aims of communism. His ideas are called Marxism.

His most important work is Das Capital, or Capital. He spent many years working on the three parts of the book. Das Capital describes how "capitalism" works and the problems this creates. The book has led to many arguments between those who agree with the book and those who do not. Marx's ideas have been thought of as responsible for socialist revolutions (like the Russian Revolution).

Marx's most popular theory was his "Materialism". He believed that religion, morality, social structures and other things are all rooted in economics.

Karl Marx was born in Trier (Germany) in 1818, but he had to move many times because the government did not like his ideas. Marx lived for a long time in London. He died there in 1883. After he died, his friend Engels finished many of his works.

Marx also wrote the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in his early days.

Many people continue to follow and develop Marx's ideas.

John Locke

John Locke (pronounced 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), known as the Father of Liberalism , was an English philosopher and physician. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, a lot of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. He is mentioned in the American Declaration of Independence.

Locke's theories were usually about identity and the self. Locke thought that we are born without thoughts, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience.

James Watt

James Watt (January 19, 1736 - August 19, 1819) was a Scottish mathematician and engineer. He did not invent the first steam engine, but he did modify it to work better. There were other patented steam engines (such as the Saver and Newcomer steam engines) in use by the time Watt started his work on them. His major contribution is in developing the modern form of the steam engine. The Watt steam engine is credited for driving the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. James Watt was a brilliant engineer and he also transformed the Newcomer engine.

Today, most people honour him by naming a unit of power, the watt, after him.

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell (born 13 June 1831 in Edinburgh – died 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician, physicist and discoverer of Maxwell's equations.

Maxwell grew up in a rich religious family. In 1845, when he was only 14, he wrote a paper describing a way of drawing mathematical curves with a piece of string. In 1847 he started studying mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. In 1850 Maxwell changed to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He won prizes from the university for his work and was given his degree in 1854. From 1855 to 1872 he did research on colour blindness.

In 1856 Maxwell was made a professor of 'Natural Philosophy' (which is what science was called then) at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He worked there until the two colleges in Aberdeen joined together in 1860 and he lost his job. He then became a professor at King's College London. In 1861, Maxwell was made a member of the Royal Society, a group of important scientists. In 1871, became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge.

He studied many things, but is known best for his mathematical work on electromagnetism and on the behaviour of gases.


Maxwell died in 1879 from cancer.

George Washington

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. He was also the commander in chief of all American forces during the American Revolutionary War. For his central role in the beginning of the United States, he is often called the father of his country.

Genghis Khan (c. 1162 – August 18, 1227) was one of the world most powerful military leaders ever, who joined with the Mongol tribes and started the Mongol Empire. His children and his grandchildren etc. passed down his throne and started the largest empire in the world.

Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, was the first ever emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) in China. No one knows where the burial site of Genghis Khan is. He was a Mongol Emperor who was very successful in battle, killing many enemies, such as the Jin Dynasty. He was a very strong and powerful Emperor who occupied much of China and the some surrounding countries of China.

Genghis Khan was not born with the name Genghis; he was actually born with the name Temujin. After being a very successful tribe’s leader and conquering a lot of land, people referred to him as Genghis, meaning “Universe ruler”. Over the next few decades Genghis led a massive military campaign conquered vast areas killing many people, giving him a reputation in the history books as a 'brutal monster'.

Galileo Galileo

Galileo Galileo (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, and instrument maker. He ran into conflict with the Catholic Church of his day, and was put on trial for heresy by the Inquisition.

Astronomy

Some people believe that Galileo was the first person to build a telescope. This is not true, but he was the first person to publish his observations of objects in the sky, like the Moon, stars and other planets. He discovered that the Milky Way is made of many stars, that the Moon has hills, and he found four moons around Jupiter, now called the Galilean moons. Later scientists found many others. He also discovered sunspots, which are dark areas of the Sun. He saw that the planet Venus has light and dark phases just like the Moon. This helped people to know that the Sun is at the center of the Solar System, as Copernicus said.


Physics

Galileo also studied natural forces, and other things that are now called principles of physics. A legend says that he climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and dropped cannonballs of different weights, to see which would strike the ground first. Even though their weights were not the same, they hit the ground at the same time. Galileo found that objects fall to the ground at the same rate, unless things like wind resistance change the rate. This went against the views of Aristotle, an ancient philosopher whose theory was different. Galileo's findings were ignored by most people, and Aristotle's view was still accepted as correct until Isaac Newton proved Galileo was right. This also led to Newton creating his Law of Gravity.

Galileo also tried to determine the speed of light. He climbed a hill, and had an assistant climb another hill, both carrying lanterns with closed shutters. He then opened the shutter of his lantern. His assistant opened his own shutter when he saw Galileo's lantern. Galileo then measured the time it took for his assistant's shutter to open. Knowing the time difference, and the distance between the hills, he tried toestimate the speed of light. However, this did not work.


Trial for heresy

Galileo came to accept the findings of Copernicus, that the Sun was the center of the then-known universe, and not the Earth. Because he promoted this and other ideas, he came to the notice of the Committee of Propaganda, the dreaded Inquisition. The Church taught that the Earth stood still, while everything in the sky moved around it. The Inquisition ruled that other theories could only be discussed as possibilities, not facts.

Galileo later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632. The book was in the form of conversations between three men. The man representing the Church's point of view was called 'Simplicio'. At this, the Inquisition took action. He was arrested and put on trial. They found him "vehemently suspect of heresy". They reminded him of the fate of Giordano Bruno, who had been burnt at the stake for heresy. Bruno's heresy was to believe the Earth went round the Sun, and that there were many other stars. The Inquisition forced Galileo to recant (say he was wrong) under the threat of execution, and to withdraw his works from publication. Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
In time, more and more of Galileo's findings were accepted as true. Late in the 20th century, Pope John Paul II called Galileo the "father of modern physics", and made a public apologyfor how the Church treated him earlier.

Euclid of Alexandria

Euclid of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria ,Egypt and worked at the Library of Alexandria. Little is known about this person, but people think he lived there when Ptolemy I was Pharaoh. It is not known where or when he was born.


The Elements

• Euclid collected together all that was known of geometry, which is part of mathematics. His Elements is the main source of ancient geometry. Textbooks based on Euclid have been used up to the present day. In the book, he starts out from a small set of axioms (that is, a group of things that everyone thinks are true). Euclid then shows the properties of geometric objects and of whole numbers, based on those axioms. 
• The Elements also includes works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, and possibly quadric surfaces. Apart from geometry, the work also includes number theory. Euclid came up with the idea of greatest common divisors. They were in his Elements. The greatest common divisor of two numbers is the greatest number that can fit evenly in both of the two numbers. 
• The geometrical system described in the Elements was long known simply as geometry, and was considered to be the only geometry possible. Today that system is referred to as Euclidean geometry to distinguish it from other so-called non-Euclidean geometries that mathematicians discovered in the 19th century. 

Constantine I

Constantine I (27 February 272 – 22 May 337 AD) was a powerful general who reigned over the Roman Empire as emperor, until his death. He made the previously named city Byzantium (now Istanbul, Turkey) capital of the whole Roman Empire. As emperor, he named the city Constantinople, which means "City of Constantine" in Greek. 

• Before Constantine became Emperor, he was fighting for the throne at the Battle of Melina Bridge. When he saw a cross in the sky with the word sin hoc signor vinces ,he changed his deity from Apollo to Jesus and won the battle. 
• In pagan Rome before this, it had been against the law to believe in Christianity, and Christians had been tortured or killed, but Constantine made sure that this stopped, and that they were given their property back. He went on to organize the whole Catholic Church at the Council of Nicea, even though he himself did not get baptized until near the end of his life. 
• Constantine was also a big part of the beginning of the Orthodox religion, after changing the point from which he ruled from Rome to Byzantium. 

Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He is famous for his work on the theory of evolution. His book On the Origin of Species (1859) did two things. First, it provided a great deal of evidence that evolution has taken place. Second, it proposed a theory to explain how evolution works. That theory is natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is the key to understanding biology, and the diversity of life on Earth.


Evolution

• While on H.M.S. Beagle, and later back home in London, Darwin had come across the ideas of the Rev. T.R. Malthus. Malthus had realised that, although humans could double their population every 25 years, it did not happen in practice. He thought the reason was that a struggle for existence (or resources) limited their numbers. If numbers increased, then famine, wars and diseases caused more deaths. Darwin, who knew that all living things could, in principle, increase their numbers, began to think about why some survived, while others did not. His answer took years to develop. 
• The theory of evolution says that all living things on Earth, including plants, animals and microbes, come from a common ancestor by slowly changing throughout the generations. Darwin suggested that the way living things changed over time is through natural selection. This is the better survival and reproduction of those that best fit their environment. Fitting into the place where you live is called adapting. Those who fit best into the place where they live, the best adapted, have the best chance to survive and breed. Those who are less well-adapted tend not to survive. If they do not survive well enough to raise young, this means they do not pass on their genes. In this way, the species gradually changes. 
• The first chapter of the Origin deals with domesticated animals, such as cattle and dogs. Darwin reminded readers of the huge changes mankind had made in its domestic animals, which were once wild species. The changes were brought about by choosing animals with desirable characters to breed from. This had been done generation after generation, until our modern breeds were produced. Perhaps what man had done deliberately might happen in nature, where some would leave more offspring than others. 
• Darwin noticed that although young plants or animals are very similar to their parents, no two are exactly the same and there is always a range of shape, size, colour, and so on. Some of these differences the plant or animal may have got from their own ancestors, but some are new and caused by mutations. When such differences made an organism more able to live in the wild, it would have a better chance to survive, and would pass on its genes to its offspring, and they to their offspring. Any difference that would cause the plant or animal to have less of a chance to live would be less likely to be passed on, and would eventually die out altogether. In this way groups of similar plants or animals (called species) slowly change in shape and form so that they can live more successfully and have more offspring who will survive them. So, natural selection had similarities to selective breeding, except that it would happen by itself, over a much longer time. 
• He first started thinking about this in 1838, but it took a full twenty years before his ideas became public. By 1844 he was able to write a draft of the main ideas in his notebook. think that he did not talk about his theory because he was afraid of public criticism. He knew his theory, which did not discuss religion, raised questions about the literal truth of the Book of Genesis. Whatever the reason, he did not publish his theory in a book until 1859. In 1858 he heard that another biologist, Alfred Russell Wallace, had the same ideas about natural selection. Darwin and Wallace's ideas were first published in the Journal of the Linnaean Society in London, 1858. Then, Darwin published his book the next year. The name of the book was On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. This is usually called The Origin of Species. 

Augustus

Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) was the first and one of the most important Roman Emperors. He led Rome in its transition from a Republic to a great Empire.

Life 

• Octavian, as he was originally called, was the adopted son of the dictator of the Roman Republic, Gaius Julius Caesar. Octavian came into power in the Second Triumvirate. This was three men ruling over the Roman Republic. The other triumvirs were Mark Antony and Lepidus. 
• All three were loyal to Julius Caesar, the assassinated dictator, killed in 44 BC. Following his death a civil war broke out across Rome, between those loyal to Caesar, and the conspirators, led by two of Caesar's killers, Brutus and Cassius. 
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• At first, Octavian was the junior partner in the triumvirate. Lepidus was more experienced in government, and Mark Antony was a fine military leader. The triumvirate defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi, 42 BC, largely due to Antony's leadership. Then they split the leadership of the Republic three ways. Antony took the east, Lepidus took spain and part of North Africa, and Octavian took Italy. 
• Antony followed in Caesar's footsteps by going to Egypt and becoming Cleopatra's lover. They had three children together. His absence from Rome allowed the intelligent Octavian to build up support. 
• The triumvirate broke up in 33 BC, and disagreement turned to civil war in 31 BC. Antony was defeated by Octavian at the naval Battle of Actium and then at Alexandria. He committed suicide, as did his lover, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 30 BC. 
• After winning this bloody power struggle, Octavian was voted as Emperor by the Senate following the battle of Actium in 31 BC. He took the name "Augustus" (which meant 'exalted'). He ruled until AD 14, when his stepson and son-in-law Tiberius became Emperor in his place. 
• During his reign, some of those who were against his government were murdered (especially those senators who wanted to keep the Roman Republic). He promised to make Rome a Republic again, but instead proclaimed himself High Priest (Pontifex Maximus). Many temples in the provinces set up statues of him as one of their gods. The name of the month "August" in English (and most other European languages) comes from him. His main accomplishment was the creation of the Roman Empire, a political structure that lasted for nearly five centuries more. He first recruited and set up the Praetorian Guard. 

Ancient Sources

• Historians often use the Res Gestae Divi Augusti as a source about Augustus. It was written by him as an inscription for his tomb which recorded all his achievements. 
• The historian Tacitus is very often used by historians as it gives the an anti-Augustan perspective whereas many other sources and histories were written about Augustus very positively (propaganda). An example of writers like these is Valleys Paterculus, Virgil, Ovid. The most fameous work of Augustan propaganda is the aeneid
• Cassius Dio presents a quite impartial account of Augustus as emperor. 

Aurelius Augustine’s

Aurelius Augustine’s was a philosopher, theologian, and was bishop of the North African city of Hippo Regions for the last part of his life. Augustine is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity, and is considered to be one of the church fathers. He framed the concepts of original sin and just war.

In Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of Reformation teaching on salvation and grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is a saint, and his feast day is celebrated annually on June 15. Among the Orthodox he is called Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed. "Blessed" here does not mean that he is less than a saint, but is a title bestowed upon him as a sign of respect. The Orthodox do not remember Augustine so much for his theological speculations as for his writings on spirituality.

Asoka

Asoka (sometimes written as Asoka) means "He who is loved by the Gods and who is friendly to everyone . He was an Indian emperor, of the Maurya dynasty of India who ruled from 273 BCE to 232 BCE. Often cited as one of India's greatest emperor, Asoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests. After fighting a war with 200,457 casualties, he decided to become a Buddhist and lead with peace, not war. In order to accomplish this, he set up hospitals for animals and humans, as well as shade and rest areas along roads for weary travellers to rest

Aristotle

Aristotle (Stagira, Macedonia, 384 BC – Chalices, Euboea, Greece, 7 March 322 ) was a Greek philosopher. He was one of the most important philosophers in the history of Western civilization. It is said that Aristotle wrote many books, but only a much smaller number survives. Aristotle was the boyhood tutor of Alexander the Great, who later sent him plants and animals from parts of his new empire.


Philosophy

• The three greatest ancient Greek philosophers were Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Socrates taught Plato, then Plato taught Aristotle. These three thinkers turned early Greek philosophy into the beginnings of Western philosophy as it is today. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, who later conquered the entire Middle East. 
• Plato's main ideas were that knowledge from the senses was always confused and not pure. True knowledge can be gotten from the thinking soul that turns away from the world. Only the soul can have knowledge of "Forms", the real way things are. The world is only a copy of these "Forms" and is not perfect. 
• Aristotle thought differently. He thought that knowledge from the senses was more important. These thoughts became some of the roots of the scientific method after hundreds of years. Most of the things Aristotle wrote that we still have today are notes from his speaking and teaching. Some of his important writings are Physics, Metaphysics, (Nicomachean) Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul), and Poetics. 
• He also had problems with the atomic theory. He did not believe in Democritus' theories about the atomic theory. He believed that all matter was continuous whereas Democritus stated the all matter was made up of tiny indivisible things called "atoms". Democritus was proved right by physicist John Dalton in 1804. 

Logic

• Aristotle also wrote about logic. Aristotle is the father of logic. Logic is a type of thought that allows us to decide whether an idea is true or false. Still today, Aristotle's ideas on logic have influence across the world. 

Antoine Philips van Leeuwenhoek

Antoine Philips van Leeuwenhoek (24 October 1632 – 30 August 1723; name pronounced 'Leuwenhoek') was a Dutch tradesman and scientist from Delft, Netherlands. He is known as "the father of microbiology". He is best known for his work to improve the microscope. Using his handcrafted microscopes, he was the first to see and describe single celled organisms, which he originally referred to as animalcules, and which we now refer to as microorganisms. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in small blood vessels.


Van Leeuwenhoek never wrote books, just letters. In his youth he was apprenticed to a draper; a later civil position allowed him to devote time to his hobby: grinding lenses and using them to study tiny objects. With his simple microscopes ,skilfully ground, powerful single lenses capable of high image quality ,he observed protozoa in rainwater and pond and well water and bacteria in the human mouth and intestine. He also discovered blood corpuscles, capillaries, and the structure of muscles and nerves. In 1677, he first described the spermatozoa of insects, dogs, and humans. His research on lower animals argued against the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and his observations helped lay the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology and protozoology.

Antoine Lavoisier

• Antoine Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794) was a French nobleman, chemist and biologist. He is often called the "father of modern chemistry".
• He was the first scientist to recognise and name the elements hydrogen and oxygen and was an important figure in the start of atomic theory.
• He was executed, along with hundreds of other nobles, during the French Revolution.

Alexander Graham Bell

• Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 - August 2, 1922) was a teacher, scientist, and inventor. He was the founder of the Bell Telephone Company.
• Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His family was known for teaching people how to speak English clearly (elocution). Both his grandfather, Alexander Bell, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught elocution. His father wrote often about this and is most known for his invention and writings of Visible Speech. In his writings he explained ways of teaching people who were deaf and unable to speak. It also showed how these people could learn to speak words by watching their lips and reading what other people were saying.
• Alexander Graham Bell went to the Royal High School of Edinburgh. He graduated at the age of fourteen. At the age of sixteen, he got a job as a student and teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin in Morayshire. He spent the next year at the University of Edinburgh. While still in Scotland, he became more interested in the science of sound (acoustics). He hoped to help his deaf mother. From 1866 to 1867, he was a teacher at Somersetshire College in Bath, Somerset.
• In 1870 when he was 23 years old, he moved with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford, Ontario. Bell began to study communication machines. He made a piano that could be heard far away by using electricity. In 1871 he went with his father to Montreal, Quebec in Canada, where he took a job teaching about "visible speech". His father was asked to teach about it at a large school for deaf mutes in Boston, Massachusetts, but instead he gave the job to his son. The younger Bell began teaching there in 1871. Alexander Graham Bell soon became famous in the United States for this important work. He published many writings about it in Washington, D.C.. Because of this work, thousands of deaf mutes in America are now able to speak, even though they cannot hear.
• In 1876, Bell was the first inventor to patent the telephone, and he helped start the Bell Telephone Company with others in July 1877. In 1879, this company joined with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company. In 1880, they formed the American Bell Telephone Company, and in 1885, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), still a large company today. Along with Thomas Edison, Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company on January 25, 1881.
• Bell married Mabel Hubbard on July 11, 1877. He died at his home near Bad deck, Nova Scotia in 1922.

Alexander Fleming

• Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 - 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. His father Hugh, died at 59 when Alexander was only seven. He is best known for discovering the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928. He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for this discovery with Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. His accidental finding of penicillin in the year 1928 marked the start of today's antibiotics.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. 

He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. His theories of special and general relativity are of huge importance to many branches of physics and astronomy. They have been verified by many experiments and observations. 

Einstein is famous for his theories about light, matter, gravity, space, and time. His most famous equation is E = mc2. It means that energy and mass are different forms of the same thing. 

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers and over 150 non-scientific works. He received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. 

On the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin nuclear research. That research, begun by a newly established Manhattan Project, resulted in the U.S. becoming the first and only country to possess nuclear weapons during the war. He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

Beliefs

Many scientists only care about their work, but Einstein also spoke and wrote often about politics and world peace. He liked the ideas of socialism and of having only one government for the whole world. He also worked for Zionism, the effort to try to create the new country of Israel.

Einstein's family was Jewish, but Einstein never practiced this religion seriously. He liked the ideas of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and also thought that Buddhism was a good religion.

Even though Einstein thought of many ideas that helped scientists understand the world much better, he disagreed with many scientific theories that were developed later in his life. Many scientific theories discuss things that we cannot know for certain, but only as probabilities. Einstein did not like these kinds of theories; he thought that it should be possible to understand anything, if we had the correct theory. He once said, "I do not believe that God plays dice with the Universe."

Because Einstein helped science so much, his name is now used for several different things. A unit used in photochemistry was named for him. It is equal to Avogadro's number multiplied by the energy of one photon of light. The chemical element Einsteinium is named after the scientist as well. In slang, we sometimes call a very smart person an "Einstein."

One of his inspiring sayings is "There are two ways to live your life, one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."

There is still a strong criticism of Einstein. Ronald William Clark says that Einstein hated Germany and the Germans since his youth. A group in Germany called G.O. Mueller wrote a whole encyclopaedia refuting Einstein's relativity. G.O. Mueller, Aristotle, Kant, and Leibniz say space and time are categories of perception, not distortable "things", and not joined together. The speed of light could be higher. Paul Dirac and others thought that constants can change over time, too (e.g. gravitation). G.O. Mueller lists about 4000 Einstein-critical works since 1905, rallying worldwide for rethinking relativity.

Adolf Hitler

• Adolf Hitler (German pronunciation: adɔlf hɪtlɐ; 20 April 1889 in Barnaul am Inn, Austria – 30 April 1945 in Berlin, Germany) was the leader of Germany during World War II. Hitler also lead the NSDAP (often called the Nazi Party), the democratically elected party which ruled Germany at this time. He became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. This appointment was allowed by the German constitution. He became dictator (complete ruler) in 1934. He called himself the Fuehrer (leader) of the German Empire. He ruled until 1945 when he killed himself.
• The Nazis created a dictatorship called the Third Reich. In 1933, they blocked out all of the other political parties. They killed their enemies or put them in concentration camps. Hitler and his men also persecuted and killed Jews and other ethnic, religious, and political minorities. In what is called The Holocaust, the Nazis killed six million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other groups of people.Because of the invasion of Poland, the world was lead into World War II, which harmed many parts of Europe. Because of Hitler, at least 50 million people died. During World War II, Hitler was the Commander-in-Chief of the whole German forces and made all important decisions. This was part of the so called Führerprinzip.

Adam Smith

• Adam Smith (1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, who is called the Father of Modern Economics. His book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was very important. People call the book just The Wealth of Nations. It stated some of the ideas on which modern economics is based, especially market economics. In the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith asks 'what can a person do that is best for his country?' He decides that if every person does what is best for himself and his little circle of family and friends, then the country will do better. This is because every person knows a lot about his own situation (what he needs, what he wants, what works and what does not work), much more than the government knows. This sort of thinking is called "liberal theory", a main part of liberalism.
• He was also a philosopher who wanted to know why people thought (felt) that some things are good and others bad. He wrote an earlier book, in 1759, called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He thought that sympathy was very important in ethics. Sympathy is when you see how someone else is feeling, imagine what it feels like, and then end up feeling the same way, for Smith, sympathy is like "putting yourself in someone else's shoes". For example, sympathy makes us feel happy to see someone else who is happy, or feel sorry for someone who is sad. Sympathy may even make us feel pain when we see someone in pain (as if we had been hurt). Both Smith and his friend David Hume, who was another Scottish philosopher, wrote about the importance of sympathy in ethics.