Items23The creator’s order
  1. 1Benjamin ThompsonBenjamin ThompsonBorn 26 Mar 1753Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, the physicist who argued that heat is a form of motion, proposed and helped found the Royal Institution in London in 1799 with Joseph Banks and other backers, to bring science to practical use and to the public. He hired Humphry Davy, whose lectures made it famous,…0i
  2. 2Spencer Fullerton BairdSpencer Fullerton BairdBorn 3 Feb 1823Spencer Fullerton Baird, a naturalist, built the Smithsonian Institution's collections into a national museum from 1850 by organising a network of collectors on railway and military surveys. As the first head of the US Fish Commission from 1871 he set up a seasonal marine laboratory at Woods Hole,…0i
  3. 3Anton DohrnAnton DohrnBorn 29 Dec 1840Anton Dohrn, a German zoologist, founded the Stazione Zoologica in Naples in 1872, largely with his own family's money and loans. He paid for it partly through a public aquarium and partly by renting laboratory "tables" to universities and governments, which then sent researchers to work with fresh…0i
  4. 4Louis PasteurLouis PasteurBorn 27 Dec 1822Louis Pasteur used the fame of his 1885 rabies treatment to launch an international public subscription, and the Pasteur Institute opened in Paris in 1888 to treat rabies, research infectious disease and train microbiologists. Colleagues such as Émile Roux and Élie Metchnikoff led much of its early…0i
  5. 5Robert KochRobert KochBorn 11 Dec 1843Robert Koch became director of the Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin when it opened in 1891, combining a research laboratory with a hospital ward. He gathered colleagues including Paul Ehrlich, Emil von Behring and Shibasaburo Kitasato, whose work there on serum therapy for…0i
  6. 6George Ellery HaleGeorge Ellery HaleBorn 29 Jun 1868George Ellery Hale persuaded wealthy donors to fund a series of ever larger telescopes: Yerkes Observatory in 1897 with Charles Yerkes's money, Mount Wilson Observatory from 1904 with the Carnegie Institution, and the 200-inch Palomar telescope, finished after his death. He also helped turn a small…0i
  7. 7Marie CurieMarie CurieBorn 7 Nov 1867Marie Curie led the physics and chemistry side of the Radium Institute in Paris, built jointly by the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute and completed in 1914, with Claudius Regaud running its medical research. She raised money abroad, including radium bought by American women's…0i
  8. 8Niels BohrNiels BohrBorn 7 Oct 1885Niels Bohr lobbied the University of Copenhagen and Danish donors, including the Carlsberg Foundation, for the Institute for Theoretical Physics, which opened in 1921. He used Rockefeller grants to bring young physicists such as Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli for long visits, making it a hub…0i
  9. 9Theodore von KármánTheodore von KármánBorn 11 May 1881Theodore von Kármán, director of Caltech's aeronautical laboratory, backed a group of students including Frank Malina and Jack Parsons who began testing rocket motors in an Arroyo Seco gully in 1936. With army funding the effort became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944, which later built…0i
  10. 10Homi J. BhabhaHomi J. BhabhaBorn 30 Oct 1909Homi J. Bhabha wrote to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in 1944 asking for support for a school of fundamental research, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research opened in Bombay in 1945. He then built India's atomic energy establishment at Trombay, now the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,…0i