Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items19
1
Humphry Davy
Born
Humphry Davy used electricity to isolate potassium and sodium and designed the miner's safety lamp, but in the early 1800s he was also London's most fashionable lecturer: his chemistry demonstrations at the Royal Institution drew such crowds that Albemarle Street became one of the first one-way streets. He showed that experiment could be public spectacle without losing rigour, and he hired a young Michael Faraday.
More about Humphry Davy2
Michael Faraday
Born
Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and laid the foundations for electric motors and generators, and he also founded the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for young people in 1825, giving many of them himself. His 1860 series The Chemical History of a Candle, still in print, explains combustion, air and water through a single burning candle. It remains a model of building big ideas from an everyday object.
More about Michael Faraday3
Mary Somerville
Born
Mary Somerville, largely self-taught in mathematics, translated and expanded Laplace's celestial mechanics as The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), then wrote On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), a bestselling synthesis of contemporary science. A review of it by William Whewell helped popularise the word scientist. In 1835 she and Caroline Herschel became the first women elected honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society.
More about Mary Somerville4
Thomas Henry Huxley
Born
Thomas Henry Huxley was a leading comparative anatomist who became Darwin's most effective public defender. He gave lectures to working men in London, and his 1868 talk On a Piece of Chalk, explaining deep time from a lump of chalk in his pocket, is still a classic of science writing. He coined the word agnostic and argued for science education in schools.
More about Thomas Henry Huxley5
Jacob Bronowski
Born
Jacob Bronowski was a mathematician who worked on wartime operational research and studied the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, later turning to biology. His 1973 BBC series The Ascent of Man, a 13-part history of science as human culture, was largely unscripted to camera. The episode filmed at Auschwitz, where he speaks about the dangers of certainty, is one of the most quoted moments in science television.
More about Jacob Bronowski6
Richard Feynman
Born
Richard Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel prize in physics for quantum electrodynamics and was a celebrated teacher: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, from his Caltech courses of the early 1960s, are still used worldwide. His most famous public moment came at the 1986 Challenger inquiry, when he dropped a piece of O-ring rubber into iced water to show it lost its resilience. His short book QED explains quantum theory with almost no mathematics.
More about Richard Feynman7
Carl Sagan
Born
Carl Sagan was a planetary scientist who helped explain Venus's extreme greenhouse effect and worked on NASA missions including Viking and Voyager, for which he curated the Golden Record. His 1980 television series Cosmos reached hundreds of millions of viewers, and his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot reflects on a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1 at his urging. Some colleagues resented his fame, yet he did serious research throughout.
More about Carl Sagan8
Stephen Jay Gould
Born
Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard palaeontologist, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium with Niles Eldredge in 1972, and for nearly thirty years wrote a monthly essay for Natural History magazine, around 300 in all. Collections such as The Panda's Thumb and the book Wonderful Life, about the Burgess Shale fossils, made evolutionary biology lively for general readers. Some biologists felt he overstated his disagreements with them.
More about Stephen Jay Gould9
Jane Goodall
Born
Jane Goodall began studying wild chimpanzees at Gombe in Tanzania in 1960 and soon observed them making and using tools, which forced scientists to rethink what made humans distinct. National Geographic films and her books such as In the Shadow of Man made her research world famous, and she spent her later decades lecturing almost constantly for conservation through her institute and the Roots and Shoots youth programme. She died in October 2025.
More about Jane Goodall10
Stephen Hawking
Born
Stephen Hawking showed in 1974 that black holes should emit radiation, one of the major results of modern theoretical physics, while living with motor neurone disease. A Brief History of Time (1988), written for general readers, sold millions of copies, though many buyers admitted not finishing it. His later illustrated edition and The Universe in a Nutshell were more approachable, and his public profile made cosmology part of popular culture.
More about Stephen Hawking11
Hans Rosling
Born
Hans Rosling was a physician and professor of international health who spent years investigating the paralytic disease konzo in rural Mozambique. With his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna, he built Gapminder's animated bubble charts, and his 2006 TED talk showing global health data moving through time became one of the site's most watched. His posthumous book Factfulness (2018) argues the world is better than people assume.
More about Hans Rosling12
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Born
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, has directed New York's Hayden Planetarium since 1996, where an exhibit that left out Pluto made him central to the debate over its planetary status. He hosted the 2014 revival of Cosmos and the long-running StarTalk podcast, which mixes scientists with comedians. Critics sometimes find him glib, but his reach among people who would never pick up a physics book is unmatched.
More about Neil deGrasse Tyson13
Jim Al-Khalili
Born
Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical nuclear physicist at the University of Surrey whose research includes quantum effects in biology, explored with biologist Johnjoe McFadden in the book Life on the Edge. Since 2011 he has presented BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific, long conversations with researchers about their work and lives. The programme is a good example of communication that lets other scientists speak.
More about Jim Al-Khalili14
Brian Cox (physicist)
Born
Brian Cox is a particle physicist at the University of Manchester who worked on the ATLAS experiment at CERN. His BBC series Wonders of the Solar System (2010) and Stargazing Live, co-hosted with Dara Ó Briain, brought astronomy to prime time, and he is the Royal Society's professor for public engagement in science. Wonders of the Solar System is the place to start.
More about Brian Cox (physicist)15
Marcus du Sautoy
Born
Marcus du Sautoy is a research mathematician working in group theory and number theory who has held Oxford's Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science since 2008. His book The Music of the Primes explains the Riemann hypothesis without equations, and he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2006. He also makes theatre about maths, showing it as a creative subject.
More about Marcus du Sautoy16
Alice Roberts
Born
Alice Roberts is a clinical anatomist and biological anthropologist who has studied ancient human skeletons, and since 2012 has been Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. Her series The Incredible Human Journey (2009) traced human migration out of Africa through genetics and fossils, and her books on anatomy and archaeology are clear and well referenced.
More about Alice Roberts17
Hannah Fry
Born
Hannah Fry researched the mathematics of patterns in human behaviour, from urban crime to riots, at University College London, and became Cambridge's first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics. Her book Hello World examines algorithms in everyday life, and she gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2019. She is particularly good at showing where maths goes wrong as well as right.
More about Hannah Fry18
Maggie Aderin
Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a space scientist who has built instruments for telescopes and Earth-observation satellites, has co-presented BBC's The Sky at Night since 2014. She has spoken to thousands of schoolchildren about becoming a scientist despite dyslexia and doubtful teachers. Her talks are especially effective at showing young people that scientists can look and sound like them.
More about Maggie Aderin19
Katie Mack (astrophysicist)
Born
Katie Mack is a theoretical cosmologist who works on dark matter and the early universe and holds the Hawking chair at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. Her book The End of Everything (2020) explains five possible ways the universe could end with real physics and genuine humour. She built a large audience by answering questions on social media, showing a new route for researchers to reach the public.
More about Katie Mack (astrophysicist)
