科学家百人箓 (one hundred most influential scientists of all times)

ngsunyu

帕拉塞尔斯（Paracelsus，或譯帕拉塞尔苏斯，1493年－1541年），中世纪瑞士医生、煉金術士、占星师。帕拉塞尔斯全名菲利普斯·奥里欧勒斯·德奥弗拉斯特·博姆巴斯茨·冯·霍恩海姆，是苏黎世一个名叫W·冯·霍恩海姆医生的儿子。他自称为帕拉塞尔斯，是因为他自认为他比罗马医生凯尔苏斯更加伟大的意思。

帕拉塞尔斯把医学和煉金術结合起来成为今日的医疗化学。他给煉金術下的结论是：煉金術的真正目的并非练成黄金，而是要制造有益人体健康的医药品。而这包括了所有化学工艺和生物化学工艺的定义。冶炼工把矿物变为金属是一个炼金士，所以厨师和烘面包的人从肉类和麦子里制造出食物来也是炼金士。他采取了炼金士的基本观点，即矿物在地下生长并发展成为更完善的形式，而人在实验室里却能够人工地模仿地下天然发生的东西。他主张一切物质都是活的并且自然地生长，而人能为实现自己的目的而加速或改造这种天然过程。

在医学上，帕拉塞尔斯提出人体本质上是一个化学系统的学说。这个化学系统由煉金術士的两种元素即汞和硫同他自己所增加的第三种元素盐所组成。在帕拉塞尔斯看来，疾病可能是由于元素之间的不平衡引起，正像盖仑派医生们认为疾病是由于体液之间的失调所引起的一样，意即任何東西的過量或者不足都有可能造成疾病，帕拉塞尔斯亦被稱為毒理學之父。但帕拉塞尔斯的学说指出平衡的恢复可以用矿物的药物而不用有机药物。

帕拉塞尔斯认为疾病的行为具有高度的特殊性，而且每一种疾病都有一种特效的化学治疗法。因此帕拉塞尔斯反对旧时的含有许多成分的万灵药而主张服用单一的物质作为药剂。这样一个转变促进了对于专科疾病的研究，并有助于把有益和有害的药物加以区别。(zh.m.wikipedia.org/帕拉塞尔苏斯)

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist. He established the role of chemistry in medicine. He published Der grossen Wundartzney (“Great Surgery Book”) in 1536 and a clinical description of syphilis in 1530.

Education
Paracelsus is said to have graduated from the University of Vienna with a baccalaureate in medicine in 1510. It is believed that he received his doctoral degree in 1516 from the University of Ferrara in Italy, where he was free to express his rejection of the prevailing view that the stars and planets controlled all the parts of the human body. He is thought to have begun using the name “para-Celsus” (above or beyond Celsus) at about that time because he regarded himself as even greater than Celsus, a renowned 1st-century Roman physician.
Soon after taking his degree, he set out upon many years of wandering through Europe and took part in the “Netherlandish wars” as an army surgeon. Later Paracelsus went to Russia, was held captive by the Tatars, escaped into Lithuania, went south into Hungary, and again served as an army surgeon in Italy in 1521. Ultimately his wanderings brought him to Egypt, Arabia, the Holy Land, and, finally, Constantinople. Everywhere he sought out the most learned exponents of practical alchemy, not only to discover the most effective means of medical treatment but also—and even more important—to discover “the latent forces of Nature,” and how to use them.

Career at Basel
In 1524 Paracelsus returned to his home at Villach in southern Austria to find that his fame for many miraculous cures had preceded him. He was subsequently appointed town physician and lecturer in medicine at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and students from all parts of Europe came to the city to hear his lectures. Pinning a program of his forthcoming lectures to the notice board of the univer- sity on June 5, 1527, he invited not only students but anyone and everyone.
Three weeks later, on June 24, 1527, Paracelsus reportedly burned the books of Avicenna, the Arab “Prince of Physicians,” and those of Galen, in front of the university. This incident is said to have recalled in many people’s minds Martin Luther, who on Dec. 10, 1520, at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg had burned a papal bull, or edict, that threatened excommunication. While Paracelsus seemingly remained a Catholic to his death, it is suspected that his books were placed on the Index Expurgatorius, a catalogue of books from which passages of text considered immoral or against the Catholic religion are removed.
Paracelsus reached the peak of his career at Basel. In his lectures he stressed the healing power of nature and dis- couraged the use of methods of treating wounds, such as padding with moss or dried dung, that prevented natural draining. He also attacked many other medical malpractices of his time, including the use of worthless salves, fumigants, and drenches. However, by the spring of 1528 Paracelsus fell into disrepute with local doctors, apothecaries, and magistrates. He left Basel, heading first to Colmar in Upper Alsace, about 50 miles north of the university. He continued to travel for the next eight years. During this time, he revised old manuscripts and wrote new treatises. With the publication of Der grossen Wundartzney in 1536 he restored, and even extended, the revered reputation he had earned at Basel.

Contributions to Medicine
In 1530 Paracelsus wrote a clinical description of syphilis, in which he maintained that the disease could be success- fully treated by carefully measured doses of mercury compounds taken internally. He stated that the “miners’ disease” (silicosis) resulted from inhaling metal vapours and was not a punishment for sin administered by moun- tain spirits. He was the first to declare that, if given in small doses, “what makes a man ill also cures him,” an anticipation of the modern practice of homeopathy. Paracelsus is said to have cured many people in the plague-stricken town of Stertzing in the summer of 1534 by administering orally a pill made of bread containing a minute amount of the patient’s excreta he had removed on a needle point.
Paracelsus was the first to connect goitre with minerals, especially lead, in drinking water. He prepared and used new chemical remedies, including those containing mercury, sulfur, iron, and copper sulfate—thus uniting medicine with chemistry, as the first London Pharmacopoeia, in 1618, indicates. Paracelsus, in fact, contributed substantially to the rise of modern medicine, including psychiatric treatment.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

安德雷亚斯·维萨里 （拉丁語：Andreas Vesalius，荷蘭語：Andries van Wesel；1514年12月31日於布鲁塞尔－1564年10月15日於扎金索斯）是一名文藝復興時期的解剖学家、医生，他编写的《人体的构造》（拉丁語：De humani corporis fabrica）是人体解剖学的权威著作之一。維薩里被认为是近代人体解剖学的创始人。
在帕多瓦大學博士學位毕业后，他留在帕多瓦教授外科和解剖学。同时，他还被邀请到博洛尼亚大学和比萨大学做演讲。演讲的对象都学习过盖伦的理论——一般都是通过讲授者聘请外科医生对动物的解剖来进行说明。没有人试图去验证一下盖伦的理论：它们被认为是无懈可击的。但维萨里做的与众不同。他使用解剖工具亲自演示操作，而学生则围在桌子周围观察学习。面对面的亲身体验式教学被认为是唯一可靠的教学方式，也是对中世纪实践的一个重大突破。
1541年，维萨里在博洛尼亚发现盖伦所有的研究结果都不是源于人体而是动物的解剖：因为古代罗马人体解剖是被禁止的，所以盖伦选用了巴巴利猕猴来代替，还坚称两者在解剖学上是相近的。于是，维萨里对盖伦的文章做了校正，并开始撰写自己的著作。在维萨里发现之前，医学界从没有注意到这一点，并且盖伦的著作一直是研究人类解剖学的基础。尽管如此，仍有人坚持采信盖伦的论点，并且嫉恨维萨里取得了这样瞩目的成果。
在文藝復興時期，很多醫生把屍體解剖，找出人生病的真正原因（因當時的教會認為人生病的原因是神懲罰人的罪，但人們受人文主義（humanism）影響，開始質疑其信仰及思想）。而维萨里則在1543年寫的《人體的構造》（De humani corporis fabrica）。這本書詳細地介紹和研究解剖學，更附有他親手繪畫、有關人體骨骼和神經的插圖。這也是他被稱為“解剖學之父”的原因之一。
1543年，维萨里邀请约翰内斯·奥坡瑞努斯帮助他印刷七卷本的《人体的构造》一书，这本关于人类解剖学的划时代巨著邀请了提香的弟子让·范·卡尔卡做插画。几周后，维萨里又为学生重新出版了一本节录，《安德里亚·维萨里-人体的构造-目录梗概》。
尽管维萨里不是第一个进行实际解剖的人，但是他的作品的价值仍是毫无疑义的——高度详细和精细的版画，即使是现在仍然被认为是经典的。而当《构造》一书出版时，维萨里只有30岁。(zh.m.wikipedia.org/安德雷亚斯·维萨里)

Andreas Vesalius (Flemish: Andries Van Wesel) was a Renaissance Flemish physician who revolutionized the study of biology and the practice of medicine by his careful description of the anatomy of the human body. Basing his observations on dissections he made himself, he wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive textbook of anatomy.

Life
Vesalius was from a family of physicians and pharmacists. He attended the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) from 1529 to 1533. From 1533 to 1536, he studied at the medical school of the University of Paris, where he learned to dissect animals. He also had the opportunity to dissect human cadavers, and he devoted much of his time to a study of human bones, at that time easily available in the Paris cemeteries.
In 1536 Vesalius returned to his native Brabant to spend another year at the Catholic University of Leuven, where the influence of Arab medicine was still dominant.
Following the prevailing custom, he prepared, in 1537, a paraphrase of the work of the 10th-century Arab physician, Rhazes, probably in fulfillment of the requirements for the bachelor of medicine degree. He then went to the University of Padua, a progressive university with a strong tradition of anatomical dissection. On receiving the M.D. degree the same year, he was appointed a lecturer in surgery with the responsibility of giving anatomical demonstrations. Since he knew that a thorough knowl- edge of human anatomy was essential to surgery, he devoted much of his time to dissections of cadaversFollowing the prevailing custom, he prepared, in 1537, a paraphrase of the work of the 10th-century Arab physi- cian, Rhazes, probably in fulfillment of the requirements for the bachelor of medicine degree. He then went to the University of Padua, a progressive university with a strong tradition of anatomical dissection. On receiving the M.D. degree the same year, he was appointed a lecturer in sur- gery with the responsibility of giving anatomical demonstrations. Since he knew that a thorough knowledge of human anatomy was essential to surgery, he devoted much of his time to dissections of cadavers and insisted on doing them himself, instead of relying on untrained assistants.
At first,Vesalius had no reason to question the theories of Galen, the Greek physician who had served the emperor Marcus Aurelius in Rome and whose books on anatomy were still considered as authoritative in medical education in Vesalius’s time. In January 1540, breaking with this tradition of relying on Galen, Vesalius openly demonstrated his own method—doing dissections himself, learning anatomy from cadavers, and critically evaluating ancient texts. He did so while visiting the University of Bologna. Such methods soon convinced him that Galenic anatomy had not been based on the dissection of the human body, which had been strictly forbidden by the Roman religion. Galenic anatomy, he maintained, was an application to the human form of conclusions drawn from the dissections of animals, mostly dogs, monkeys, or pigs.
It was this conclusion that he had the audacity to declare in his teaching as he hurriedly prepared his complete textbook of human anatomy for publication. Early in 1542 he traveled to Venice to supervise the preparation of drawings to illustrate his text, probably in the studio of the great Renaissance artist Titian. The draw- ings of his dissections were engraved on wood blocks, which he took, together with his manuscript, to Basel, Switzerland, where his major work, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (“The Seven Books on the Structure of the Human Body”), commonly known as the Fabrica, was printed in1543. In this epochal work,Vesalius deployed all his scientific, humanistic, and aesthetic gifts. The Fabrica was a more extensive and accurate description of the human body than any put forward by his predecessors. It gave anatomy a new language, and, in the elegance of its printing and organization, an unparalleled perfection.
Early in 1543, Vesalius left for Mainz, to present his book to the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, who engaged him as regular physician to the household. Thus, when not yet 28 years old, Vesaliushadattainedhisgoal had attained his goal. After relinquishing his post in Padua, and returning in the spring of 1544 to his native land to marry Anne van Hamme, he took up new duties in the service of the Emperor on his travels in Europe. From 1553 to 1556 Vesalius spent most of his time in Brussels, where he built an imposing house in keeping with his growing affluence and attended to his flourishing medical practice. His prestige was further enhanced when Charles V, on abdication from the Spanish throne in 1556, provided him with a lifetime pension and made him a count.
Vesalius went to Spain in 1559 with his wife and daughter to take up an appointment, made by Philip II, son of CharlesV, as one of the physicians in the Madrid court. In 1564 Vesalius obtained permission to leave Spain to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. He traveled to Jerusalem, with stops at Venice and Cyprus, his wife and daughter having returned to Brussels.

Assessment
Vesalius’s work represented the culmination of the humanistic revival of ancient learning, the introduction of human dissections into medical curricula, and the growth of a European anatomical literature. Vesalius performed his dissections with a thoroughness hitherto unknown. After Vesalius, anatomy became a scientific discipline, with far- reaching implications not only for physiology but for all of biology. During his own lifetime, however, Vesalius found it easier to correct points of Galenic anatomy than to challenge his physiological framework.
Conflicting reports obscure the final days of Vesalius’s life. Apparently he became ill aboard ship while returning to Europe from his pilgrimage. He was put ashore on the Greek island of Zacynthus, where he died.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

第谷·布拉赫（Tycho Brahe，1546年12月14日－1601年10月24日），丹麥貴族，天文學家兼占星術士和煉金術士。他最著名的助手是克卜勒 (Johannes Kepler)。

1577年一颗巨大彗星在丹麥上空，第谷首次將彗星視為獨立天體進行了觀測。第谷通過對彗星視動研究認為，彗星軌道不可能是完美圓周形，必然是被拉長的，且由視差判斷該彗星與地球距離比地月距離更遠。這是對亞里士多德天空完美無缺論的沉重打擊，後者曾堅持認為運動不定的彗星不能與其他天體的永恆性、規律性相一致，堅持彗星是一種大氣現象。 1583年第谷出版《論彗星》一書，提出一種介於地心說與日心說之間的理論，認為地球作為靜止的中心，太陽圍繞地球作圓周運動，而除地球之外的其他行星圍繞太陽作圓周運動。

克卜勒多次嘗試令第谷接受日心說，但不成功。第谷相信他的第谷系統，中国明朝使用了主要依据第谷的观测结果而编制的时宪曆。由于相同的原因，他認為1572年出現的超新星不近地球。其論據為若地球一直在移動，天上的恆星應該會轉換位置，但第谷觀測不到這點。事實上，那是存在的，但用肉眼看不到。另一個方法是長期觀測200年，因為最近的星系比當時的天文學家想像中遠得多。當然，當時的人無法有這麼長期的數據。(zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/第谷·布拉赫)

Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer whose work in developing astronomical instruments and in measuring and fixing the positions of stars paved the way for future discoveries. His observations—the most accurate possible before the invention of the telescope—included a comprehensive study of the solar system and accurate positions of more than 777 fixed stars.
The new star in the constellation Cassiopeia caused Tycho to dedicate himself to astronomy; one immediate decision was to establish a large observatory for regular observations of celestial events. His plan to establish this observatory in Germany prompted King Frederick II to keep him in Denmark by granting him title in 1576 to the island of Ven (formerly Hven), in the middle of The Sound and about halfway between Copenhagen and Helsingør, together with financial support for the observatory and laboratory buildings. Tycho called the observatory Uraniborg, after Urania, the Muse of astronomy. Surrounded by scholars and visited by learned travelers from all over Europe, Tycho and his assistants collected observations and substantially corrected nearly every known astronomical record.
Tycho was an artist as well as a scientist and craftsman, and everything he undertook or surrounded himself with had to be innovative and beautiful. He established a printing shop to produce and bind his manuscripts in his own way, he imported Augsburg craftsmen to construct the finest astronomical instruments, he induced Italian and Dutch artists and architects to design and decorate his observatory, and he invented a pressure system to provide the then uncommon convenience of sanitary lavatory facilities. Uraniborg fulfilled the hopes of Tycho’s king and friend, Frederick II, that it would become the centre of astronomical study and discovery in northern Europe. But Frederick died in 1588, and under his son, Christian IV, Tycho’s influence dwindled; most of his income was stopped, partly because of the increasing needs of the state for money. Spoiled by Frederick, however, Tycho had become both unreasonably demanding of more money and less inclined to carry out the civic duties required by his income from state lands.
At odds with the three great powers—king, church, and nobility—Tycho left Ven in 1597, and, after short stays at Rostock and at Wandsbek, near Hamburg, he settled in Prague in 1599 under the patronage of Emperor Rudolf II, who also in later years supported the astronomer Johannes Kepler.
The major portion of Tycho’s lifework—making and recording accurate astronomical observations—had already been done at Uraniborg. To his earlier observations, particularly his proof that the nova of 1572 was a star, he added a comprehensive study of the solar system and his proof that the orbit of the comet of 1577 lay beyond the Moon 597.  He proposed a modified Copernican system in which the planets revolved around the Sun, which in turn moved around the stationary Earth. What Tycho accomplished, using only his simple instruments and practical talents, remains an outstanding accomplishment of the Renaissance.
Tycho attempted to continue his observations at Prague with the few instruments he had salvaged from Uraniborg, but the spirit was not there, and he died in 1601, leaving all his observational data to Kepler, his pupil and assistant in the final years. With these data Kepler laid the groundwork for the work of Sir Isaac Newton.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

焦爾達諾·布鲁诺（義大利語：Giordano Bruno，1548年－1600年2月17日）是文藝復興時期的意大利哲学家、數學家、詩人、宇宙學家和宗教人物，1593年起，布鲁诺以异端罪名接受罗马宗教法庭审问，指控包括否认数项天主教核心信条（如否认地狱永罚、三位一体、基督天主性、玛利亚童贞性、圣餐化质变体论等）。布鲁诺的泛神论思想也属严重关切之点。宗教法庭判其有罪，他于1600年在罗马鲜花广场被处以火刑。

布鲁诺死后获得了可观声誉，尤其被19世纪至20世纪早期的评论者们当作科学烈士加以纪念，尽管历史学家们对此点已有争论，即对布鲁诺的异端审讯究竟在多大程度上是一种对于他天文观点的回应，还是对他哲学、神学等其他思想的回应。他因坚定支持日心说而为普通大众所熟悉，但日心说是否是他招惹天主教迫害的主要原因存在争议。布鲁诺的案例仍被认为是一个有关自由思想与新兴科学历史的重要事件。

布魯諾的主要著作有《論無限宇宙和世界》，書中支持哥白尼的日心說，並明確指出：“宇宙是無限大的”，“宇宙不僅是無限的，而且是物質的”。還著有《諾亞方舟》，抨擊死抱《聖經》的學者。

19世紀末，布魯諾的彫像矗立於當年殉難的罗马鲜花广场（義大利語：Campo dei Fiori）。是共济会修建的。(zh.wikipedia.org/焦爾達諾·布魯諾)


Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional geocentric astronomy and intuitively went beyond the Copernican heliocentric theory, which still maintained a finite universe with a sphere of fixed stars. Bruno is, perhaps, chiefly remembered for the tragic death he suffered at the stake because of the tenacity with which he maintained his unorthodox ideas at a time when both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed churches were reaffirming rigid Aristotelian and Scholastic principles in their struggle for the evangelization of Europe.

Works

In the spring of 1583 Bruno moved from Paris to London and was soon attracted to Oxford, where, during the summer, he started a series of lectures in which he expounded the Copernican theory maintaining the reality of the movement of the Earth. In February 1584 he was invited to discuss his theory of the movement of the Earth with some doctors from the University of Oxford. However, the discussion degenerated into a quarrel, and a few days later he started writing his Italian dialogues, which constitute the first systematic exposition of his philosophy. There are six dialogues, three of which are cosmologicalon the theory of the universe. In the Cena de le Ceneri (1584; “The Ash Wednesday Supper”), he not only reaffirmed the reality of the heliocentric theory but also suggested that the universe is infinite, constituted of innumerable worlds substantially similar to those of the solar system. In the same dialogue he anticipated his fellow Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei by maintaining that the Bible should be followed for its moral teaching but not for its astronomical implications. He also strongly criticized the manners of English society and the pedantry of the Oxford doctors.In the De la causa, principio e uno (1584; Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One) he elaborated the physical theory on which his conception of the universe was based: “form” and “matter” are intimately united and constitute the “one.” Thus, the traditional dualism of the Aristotelian physics was reduced by him to a monistic conception of the world, implying the basic unity of all substances and the coincidence of opposites in the infinite unity of Being. In the De l’infinito universo e mondi (1584; On the Infinite Universe and Worlds), he developed his cosmological theory by systematically criticizing Aristotelian physics; he also formulated his Averroistic view of the relation between philosophy and religion, according to which religion is considered as a means to instruct and govern ignorant people, philosophy as the discipline of the elect who are able to behave themselves and govern others.

In October 1585 Bruno returned to Paris, but found himself at odds with the political climate there. As a result, he went to Germany, where he wandered from one university city to another, lecturing and publishing a variety of minor works, including the Articuli centum et sexaginta (1588; “160 Articles”) against contemporary mathematicians and philosophers, in which he expounded his conception of religion—a theory of the peaceful coexistence of all religions based upon mutual understanding and the freedom of reciprocal discussion. At Helmstedt, however, in January 1589 he was excommunicated by the local Lutheran Church. He remained in Helmstedt until the spring, completing works on natural and mathematical magic (posthumously published) and working on three Latin poems—De triplici minimo et mensura (“On the Threefold Minimum and Measure”), De monade, numero et figura (“On the Monad, Number, and Figure”), and De immenso, innumerabilibus et infigurabilibus(“On the Immeasurable and Innumerable”)—which reelaborated the theories expounded in the Italian dialogues and developed Bruno’s concept of an atomic basis of matter and being. To publish these, he went in 1590 to Frankfurt am Main, where the senate rejected his application to stay. Nevertheless, he took up residence in the Carmelite convent, lecturing to Protestant doctors and acquiring a reputation of being a “universal man” who, the Prior thought, “did not possess a trace of religion” and who “was chiefly occupied in writing and in the vain and chimerical imagining of novelties.”

Final Years

In August 1591, at the invitation of the Venetian patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, Bruno made the fatal move of returning to Italy. During the late summer of 1591, he composed the Praelectiones geometricae (“Lectures on Geometry”) and Ars deformationum (“Art of Deformation”). In Venice, as the guest of Mocenigo, Bruno took part in the discussions of progressive Venetian aristocrats who, like Bruno, favoured philosophical investigation irrespective of its theological implications. Bruno’s liberty came to an end when Mocenigo—disappointed by his private lessons from Bruno on the art of memory and resentful of Bruno’s intention to go back to Frankfurt to have a new work published—denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition in May 1592 for his heretical theories. Bruno was arrested and tried. He defended himself by admitting minor theological errors, emphasizing, however, the philosophical rather than the theological character of his basic tenets. The Roman Inquisition demanded his extradition, and on Jan. 27, 1593, Bruno entered the jail of the Roman palace of the Sant’Uffizio (Holy Office). During the seven-year Roman period of the trial, Bruno at first developed his previous defensive line, disclaiming any particular interest in theological matters and reaffirming the philosophical character of his speculation. This distinction did not satisfy the inquisitors, who demanded an unconditional retraction of his theories. Bruno then made a desperate attempt to demonstrate that his views were not incompatible with the Christian conception of God and creation. The inquisitors rejected his arguments and pressed him for a formal retraction. Bruno finally declared that he had nothing to retract and that he did not even know what he was expected to retract. At that point, Pope Clement VIII ordered that he be sentenced as an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. On Feb. 8, 1600, when the death sentence was formally read to him, he addressed his judges, saying, “Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it.” Not long after, he was brought to the Campo de’ Fiori, his tongue in a gag, and burned alive.

Influence

Bruno’s theories influenced 17th-century scientific and philosophical thought and, since the 18th century, have been absorbed by many modern philosophers. As a symbol of the freedom of thought, he inspired the European liberal movements of the 19th century, particularly the Italian Risorgimento (the movement for national political unity). Because of the variety of his interests, modern scholars are divided as to the chief significance of his work. Bruno’s cosmological vision certainly anticipates some fundamental aspects of the modern conception of the universe. His ethical ideas, in contrast with religious ascetical ethics, appeal to modern humanistic activism, and his ideal of religious and philosophical tolerance has influenced liberal thinkers. On the other hand, his emphasis on the magical and the occult has been the source of criticism as has his impetuous personality. Bruno stands, however, as one of the important figures in the history of Western thought, a precursor of modern civilization.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

伽利略·伽利莱（Galileo Galilei, 1564年2月15日－1642年1月8日)，義大利物理學家、數學家、天文學家及哲學家，科學革命中的重要人物。其成就包括改進望遠鏡和其所帶來的天文觀測，以及支持哥白尼的日心说。伽利略做实验证明，感受到引力的物体并不是呈等速運動，而是呈加速度運動；物體只要不受到外力的作用，就會保持其原來的靜止狀態或勻速運動狀態不變。他又發表惯性原理阐明，未感受到外力作用的物体会保持不变其原来的静止状态或匀速运动状态。伽利略被譽為“現代觀測天文學之父”、“現代物理學之父”、“科學之父”及“現代科學之父”。

史蒂芬·霍金說，“自然科學的誕生要歸功於伽利略。”(zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/伽利略·伽利莱)

Galileo Galilei was an Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the study of motion. His insistence that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics changed natural philosophy from a verbal, qualitative account to a mathematical one in which experimentation became a recognized method for discovering the facts of nature. Finally, his discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system, but his advocacy of that system eventually resulted in an Inquisition process against him.

Telescopic Discoveries

In the spring of 1609 Galileo heard that in the Netherlands an instrument had been invented that showed distant things as though they were nearby. By trial and error, he quickly figured out the secret of the invention and made his own three-powered spyglass from lenses for sale in spectacle makers’ shops. Others had done the same; what set Galileo apart was that he quickly figured out how to improve the instrument, taught himself the art of lens grinding, and produced increasingly powerful telescopes. In the fall of 1609 Galileo began observing the heavens with instruments that magnified up to 20 times. In December he drew the Moon’s phases as seen through the telescope, showing that the Moon’s surface is not smooth, as had been thought, but is rough and uneven. In January 1610 he discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter. He also found that the telescope showed many more stars than are visible with the naked eye. These discoveries were earthshaking, and Galileo quickly produced a little book, Sidereus Nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger), in which he described them. He dedicated the book to Cosimo II de Medici (1590–1621), the grand duke of his native Tuscany, whom he had tutored in mathematics for several summers, and he named the moons of Jupiter after the Medici family: the Sidera Medicea, or “Medicean Stars.”

Galileo also had discovered the puzzling appearance of Saturn , later to be shown as caused by a ring surrounding it, and he discovered that Venus goes through phases just as the Moon does. Although these discoveries did not prove that the Earth is a planet orbiting the Sun, they undermined Aristotelian cosmology: the absolute difference between the corrupt earthly region and the perfect and unchanging heavens was proved wrong by the mountainous surface of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter showed that there had to be more than one centre of motion in the universe, and the phases of Venus showed that it (and, by implication, Mercury) revolves around the Sun. As a result, Galileo was confirmed in his belief, which he had probably held for decades but which had not been central to his studies, that the Sun is the centre of the universe and that the Earth is a planet, as Copernicus had argued. Galileo’s conversion to Copernicanism would be a key turning point in the scientific revolution. After a brief controversy about floating bodies, Galileo again turned his attention to the heavens and entered a debate with Christoph Scheiner (1573–1650), a German Jesuit and professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, about the nature of sunspots (of which Galileo was an independent discoverer). This controversy resulted in Galileo’s Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti(“History and Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots and Their Properties,” or “Letters on Sunspots”), which appeared in 1613. Against Scheiner, who, in an effort to save the perfection of the Sun, argued that sunspots are satellites of the Sun, Galileo argued that the spots are on or near the Sun’s surface, and he bolstered his argument with a series of detailed engravings of his observations.

Galileo’s Copernicanism

Following the appearance of three comets in 1618, Galileo entered a controversy about the nature of comets, which led to the publication of Il saggiatore ( The Assayer ) in 1623. This work was a brilliant polemic on physical reality and an exposition of the new scientific method. In 1624 Galileo went to Rome and met with Pope Urban VIII. Galileo told the pope about his theory of the tides (developed earlier), which he put forward as proof of the annual and diurnal motions of the Earth. The pope gave Galileo permission to write a book about theories of the universe but warned him to treat the Copernican theory only hypothetically. The book, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, tolemaico e copernicano (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican), was finished in 1630, and Galileo sent it to the Roman censor. Because of an outbreak of the plague, communications between Florence and Rome were interrupted, and Galileo asked for the censoring to be done instead in Florence. The Roman censor had a number of serious criticisms of the book and forwarded these to his colleagues in Florence. After writing a preface in which he professed that what followed was written hypothetically, Galileo had little trouble getting the book through the Florentine censors, and it appeared in Florence in 1632. In the Dialogue Galileo gathered together all the arguments (mostly based on his own telescopic discoveries) for the Copernican theory and against the traditional geocentric cosmology. As opposed to Aristotle’s, Galileo’s approach to cosmology is fundamentally spatial and geometric: the Earth’s axis retains its orientation in space as the Earth circles the Sun, and bodies not under a force retain their velocity (although this inertia is ultimately circular). But in the work, Galileo ridiculed the notion that God could have made the universe any way he wanted to and still made it appear to us the way it does. The reaction against the book was swift. The pope convened a special commission to examine the book and make recommendations; the commission found that Galileo had not really treated the Copernican theory hypothetically and recommended that a case be brought against him by the Inquisition.

He was pronounced to be vehemently suspect of heresy and was condemned to life imprisonment. However, Galileo was never in a dungeon or tortured; during the Inquisition process he stayed mostly at the house of the Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican and for a short time in a comfortable apartment in the Inquisition building. After the process he spent six months at the palace of Ascanio Piccolomini (c. 1590–1671), the archbishop of Siena and a friend and patron, and then moved into a villa near Arcetri, in the hills above Florence. He spent the rest of his life there. Galileo was then 70 years old. Yet he kept working. In Siena he had begun a new book on the sciences of motion and strength of materials. The book was published in Leiden, Netherlands, in 1638 under the title Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica (Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences). Galileo here treated for the first time the bending and breaking of beams and summarized his mathematical and experimental investigations of motion, including the law of falling bodies and the parabolic path of projectiles as a result of the mixing of two motions, constant speed and uniform acceleration. By then Galileo had become blind, and he spent his time working with a young student, Vincenzo Viviani, who was with him when he died on Jan. 8, 1642.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

约翰内斯·开普勒（德語：Johannes Kepler，1571年12月27日－1630年11月15日），德国天文學家、數學家。开普勒是十七世紀科學革命的關鍵人物。他最為人知的成就為开普勒定律，這是稍後天文學家根據他的著作《新天文学》、《世界的和諧》、《哥白尼天文学概要》萃取而成的三條定律。這些傑作對艾薩克·牛頓影響極大，啟發牛頓後來想出牛頓萬有引力定律。

在他的职业生涯中，开普勒曾在奥地利格拉茨的一家神学院担任数学教师，成为汉斯·乌尔里奇·艾根伯格亲王的同事。后来，他成了天文学家第谷·布拉赫的助手，并最终成为皇帝鲁道夫二世及其两任继任者马蒂亚斯和费迪南二世的皇家数学家。他还曾经在奥地利林茨担任过数学教师及华伦斯坦将军的顾问。此外，他在光学领域做了基础性的工作，发明了一种改进型的折光式望远镜（开普勒望远镜），并提及了同时期的伽利略利用望远镜得到的发现。

开普勒生活的年代，天文学与占星学没有清楚的区分，但是天文学（文科中数学的分支）与物理学（自然哲学的分支）却有着明显的区分。因為宗教信仰，克卜勒將宗教論點和理由寫進他的作品。因為相信上帝用智慧創造世界，人只要透過自然理性之光，也可理解上帝創造的計畫。。开普勒将他的新天文学描述为“天体物理学”、“到亚里士多德的《形而上学》的旅行”、“亚里士多德宇宙论的补充”、通过将天文学作为通用数学物理学的一部分改变古代传统的物理宇宙学。(zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/约翰内斯·开普勒)

German astronomer Johannes Kepler discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the time necessary to raverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”); and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits (the “harmonic law”).
Kepler himself did not call these discoveries “laws,” as would become customary after Isaac Newton derived them from a new and quite different set of general physical principles. He regarded them as celestial harmonies that reflected God’s design for the universe. Kepler’s discoveries turned Nicolaus Copernicus’s Sun-centred system into a dynamic universe, with the Sun actively pushing the planets around in noncircular orbits. And it was Kepler’s notion of a physical astronomy that fixed a new problematic for other important 17th-century world-system builders, the most famous of whom was Newton.
Among Kepler’s many other achievements, he provided a new and correct account of how vision occurs; he developed a novel explanation for the behaviour of light in the newly invented telescope; he discovered several new, semiregular polyhedrons; and he offered a new theoretical foundation for astrology while at the same time restricting the domain in which its predictions could be considered reliable. A list of his discoveries, however, fails to convey the fact that they constituted for Kepler part of a common edifice of knowledge. The matrix of theological, astrological, and physical ideas from which Kepler’s scientific achievements emerged is unusual and fascinating in its own right.
Although Kepler’s scientific work was centred first and foremost on astronomy, that subject as then understood—the study of the motions of the heavenly bodies—was classified as part of a wider subject of investigation called “the science of the stars.” The science of the stars was regarded as a mixed science consisting of a mathematical and a physical component and bearing a kinship to other like disciplines, such as music (the study of ratios of tones) and optics (the study of light). It also was subdivided into theoretical and practical categories. Besides the theory of heavenly motions, one had the practical construction of planetary tables and instruments; similarly, the theoretical principles of astrology had a corresponding practical part that dealt with the making of annual astrological forecasts about individuals, cities, the human body, and the weather. Within this framework, Kepler made astronomy an integral part of natural philosophy, but he did so in an unprecedented way—in the process, making unique contributions to astronomy as well as to all its auxiliary disciplines.
The ideas that Kepler would pursue for the rest of his life were already present in his first work, Mysterium cosmographicum (1596; “Cosmographic Mystery”). In 1595 Kepler realized that the spacing among the six Copernican planets might be explained by circumscribing and inscribing each orbit with one of the five regular polyhedrons. If the ratios of the mean orbital distances agreed with the ratios obtained from circumscribing and inscribing the polyhedrons, then, Kepler felt confidently, he would have discovered the architecture of the universe. Remarkably, Kepler did find agreement within 5 percent, with the exception of Jupiter.
In place of the tradition that individual incorporeal souls push the planets and instead of Copernicus’s passive, resting Sun, Kepler hypothesized that a single force from the Sun accounts for the increasingly long periods of motion as the planetary distances increase. Kepler did not yet have an exact mathematical description for this relation, but he intuited a connection. A few years later he acquired William Gilbert’s groundbreaking book De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (1600; “On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet, the Earth”), and he immediately adopted Gilbert’s theory that the Earth is a magnet. From this Kepler generalized to the view that the universe is a system of magnetic bodies in which, with corresponding like poles repelling and unlike poles attracting, the rotating Sun sweeps the planets around.
In 1601 Kepler published De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus (Concerning the More Certain Fundamentals of Astrology). This work proposed to make astrology “more certain” by basing it on new physical and harmonic principles. In 1605 Kepler discovered his “first law”—that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit. During the creative burst when Kepler won his “war on Mars” (he did not publish his discoveries until 1609 in the Astronomia Nova [New Astronomy]), he also wrote important treatises on the nature of light and on the sudden appearance of a new star (1606; De Stella Nova, “On the New Star”). Kepler first noticed the star—now known to have been a supernova-—in October 1604, not long after a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1603. The astrological importance of the long-anticipated conjunction (such configurations take place every 20 years) was heightened by the unexpected appearance of the supernova. Kepler used the occasion both to render practical predictions (e.g., the collapse of Islam and the return of Christ) and to speculate theoretically about the universe—for example, that the star was not the result of chance combinations of atoms and that stars are not suns.
Kepler’s interest in light was directly related to his astronomical concerns. Kepler wrote about his ideas on light in Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, Quibus Astronomiae Pars Optica Traditur (1604; “Supplement to Witelo, in Which Is Expounded the Optical Part of Astronomy”). Kepler wrote that every point on a luminous body in the field of vision emits rays of light in all directions but that the only rays that can enter the eye are those that impinge on the pupil. He also stated that the rays emanating from a single luminous point form a cone the circular base of which is in the pupil. All the rays are then refracted within the normal eye to meet again at a single point on the retina. For more than three centuries eyeglasses had helped people see better. But nobody before Kepler was able to offer a good theory for why these little pieces of curved glass had worked.
After Galileo built a telescope in 1609 and announced hitherto-unknown objects in the heavens (e.g., moons revolving around Jupiter ) and imperfections of the lunar surface, he sent Kepler his account in Siderius Nuncius (1610; The Sidereal Messenger). Kepler responded with three important treatises. The first was his Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (1610; “Conversation with the Sidereal Messenger”), in which, among other things, he speculated that the distances of the newly discovered Jovian moons might agree with the ratios of the rhombic dodecahedron, triacontahedron, and cube. The second was a theoretical work on the optics of the telescope, Dioptrice (1611; “Dioptrics”), including a description of a new type of telescope using two convex lenses. The third was based upon his own observations of Jupiter, made between August 30 and September 9, 1610, and published as Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus (1611; “Narration Concerning the Jovian Satellites”). These works provided strong support for Galileo’s discoveries.
Kepler also published the first textbook of Copernican astronomy, Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (1618–21; Epitome of Copernican Astronomy), which proved to be the most important theoretical resource for the Copernicans in the 17th century. Galileo and French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes were probably influenced by it.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

勒内·笛卡尔（法语：René Descartes，1596年3月31日－1650年2月11日），法国著名哲学家、数学家、物理学家。他对现代数学的发展做出了重要的贡献，因将几何坐标体系公式化而被认为是解析几何之父。他是二元论唯心主义跟理性主義的代表人物，留下名言「我思故我在」（或译为「思考是唯一确定的存在」），提出了「普遍怀疑」的主张，是西方现代哲学的奠基人。他的哲学思想深深影响了之后的几代欧洲人，開拓了歐陸理性主义（理性主義）哲學。

笛卡尔致力于哲学研究发表了多部重要的文集，包括了《方法论》（Discours de la méthode）、《形而上学的沉思》（Méditations métaphysiques）和《哲学原理》（les Principes de la philosophie）等，成为欧洲最有影响力的哲学家之一。

笛卡兒被广泛认为是西方现代哲学的奠基者，他第一个创立了一套完整的哲学体系。哲学上，笛卡尔是一个二元论者以及理性主义者。笛卡尔认为，人类应该可以使用数学的方法——也就是理性——来进行哲学思考。他相信，理性比感官的感受更可靠。（他举出了一个例子：在我们做梦时，我们以为自己身在一个真实的世界中，然而其实这只是一种幻觉而已）。他从逻辑学、几何学和代数学中发现了4条规则：

1. 絕不承認任何事物為真，對於我完全不懷疑的事物才視為真理；
2. 必须将每个问题分成若干个简单的部分来处理；
3. 思想必须从简单到复杂；
4. 我们应该时常进行彻底的检查，确保没有遗漏任何东西。
笛卡尔将这种方法不仅运用在哲学思考上，还运用于几何学，并创立了解析几何。

由此，笛卡兒第一步認為懷疑就是出發點，感官知覺的知識是可以被懷疑的，我們並不能信任我们的感官。所以他不會說「我看故我在」、「我聽故我在」。从这里他悟出一个道理：我們所不能懷疑的是「我們的懷疑」。意指:我們無法去懷疑的，是我們正在「懷疑」這件事時的「懷疑本身」，只有這樣才能肯定我們的「懷疑」是有真實性的，並非虛假的產物。人們覺得理所當然或習以為常的事物，他卻感到疑惑，由此他推出了著名的哲学命题——“我思故我在”（Cogito ergo sum）。笛卡尔将此作为形而上学中最基本的出发点，从这里他得出结论，“我”必定是一个独立于肉体的、在思维的东西。笛卡尔还试图从该出发点证明出上帝的存在。笛卡尔认为，我们都具有对完美实体的概念，由于我们不可能从不完美的实体上得到完美的概念，因此必定有一个完美实体——即上帝——的存在來讓我們得到這個概念。从所得到的两点出发，笛卡尔繼續推論出既然完美的事物(神)存在，那麼我們可以確定之前的惡魔假設是不能成立的，因為一個完美的事物不可能容許這樣的惡魔欺騙人們，因此藉由不斷的懷疑我們可以確信「這個世界真的存在」，而且經由證明過後的數學邏輯都應該是正確的。现实世界中有诸多可以用理性来察觉的特性，即它们的数学特性（如长、宽、高等），当我们的理智能够清楚地认知一件事物时，那么该事物一定不会是虚幻的，必定是如同我们所认知的那樣。

虽然笛卡尔证明了真实世界的存在，他认为宇宙中共有2个不同的实体，既思考(心靈)和外在世界(物質)，两者本体都来自于上帝，而上帝是独立存在的。他认为，只有人才有灵魂，人是一种二元的存在物，既会思考，也会占空间。而动物只属于物质世界。

笛卡尔强调思想是不可怀疑的这个出发点，对此后的欧洲哲学产生了重要的影响。我思故我在所產生的爭議在於所謂的上帝存在及動物一元論(黑猩猩、章魚、鸚鵡、海豚、大象等等都證實有智力)，而懷疑的主要思想，確實對研究方面很有貢獻。

同行評審(peer-review)的制度淵源於笛卡兒。在《第一哲學沉思集》出版前，Mersenne 收到委託手稿後，將其發給多位哲學家與神學家閱讀；隨後收到了六組反對意見，這些《反駁》與笛卡兒所作的《答辯》被收錄在書中的附錄一同印行，為歷史上最早的同儕評論。(zh.m.wikipedia.org/勒内·笛卡尔)

邮票上的书名是《谈谈方法》（Discours de la méthode），全名《谈谈正确引导理性在各门科学上寻找真理的方法》（法语：Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences；英语：Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences），是笛卡儿在1637年出版的著名哲学论著，对西方人的思维方式，思想观念和科学研究方法有极大的影响。(zh.m.wikipedia.org/談談方法)  

英語詞語 Philosophy（拉丁語：philosophia）源于古希臘語中的φιλοσοφία，意思為「愛智慧」，有时也译为「智慧的朋友」，该词由φίλος（philos，爱）的派生词φιλεῖν（Philein，去爱）和σοφία（Sophia，智慧）组合而成。一般认为，古希腊思想家毕达哥拉斯最先在著作中引入“哲学家”和“哲学”这两个术语。

“哲”一词在中国起源很早，如“孔门十哲”，“古圣先哲”等词，“哲”或“哲人”，专指那些善于思辨，学问精深者，即西方近世“哲学家”，“思想家”之谓。在《易經》當中已經開始討論哲學問題，形而上学的中文名稱取自《易經·繫辭上傳》「形而上者谓之道，形而下者谓之器」一語。1874年，日本啟蒙家西周，在《百一新論》中首先用漢文「哲學」來翻譯philosophy一詞。

英国哲学家罗素对哲学的定义是：       

“        哲学，就我对这个词的理解来说，乃是某种介乎神学与科学之间的东西。它和神学一样，包含着人类对于那些迄今仍为科学知识所不能肯定之事物的思考；但它又像科学一样，是诉之于人类的理性而不是诉之于权威的，不论是传统的权威还是启示的权威。一切确切的知识（罗素认为）都属于科学；一切涉及超乎确切知识之外的教条都属于神学。但介乎神学与科学之间还有一片受到双方攻击的无人之域，這片无人之域就是哲学。        ”
胡適在《中国哲学史大纲》中称「凡研究人生切要的问题，从根本上着想，要寻一个根本的解决：这种学问叫做哲学」。

今天大多数科学家都是哲學博士, 有一些是医学博士。哲學博士（拉丁語：Philosophiæ Doctor，英语：Doctor of Philosophy，簡稱：PhD／Ph.D.／D.Phil.，又譯研究博士）學位 擁有人一般在大學本科（學士)，再進行相當年數的研修後，撰畢論文並通過答辯，方獲發哲學博士學位。哲學博士的擁有人是指擁有人對其知識範疇的理論、內容及發展等都具有相當的認識，能独立進行研究，並在該範疇內對學術界有所建樹，对该学科的研究已经达到其哲学层面。因此，哲學博士基本上可以授予任何學科的博士畢業生。惟非研究性質的專業課程博士畢業生通常會用其他的學銜，例如工程學的工程學博士（簡稱D. Eng.）。(zh.m.wikipedia.org/哲學博士)

ngsunyu

大英百科全书编译 没有提名 勒内·笛卡尔 为 有史以来最有影响力的一百位科学家 (one hundred most influential scientists of all times) 之一。基于理性思考哲学在所有科学研究中的重要性，我提名勒内·笛卡尔 为 有史以来最有影响力的101位科学家 (one hundred and one most influential scientists of all times) 之一。


请建议其他值得提名的科学家，特别是中国科学家。请参考 zh.m.wikipedia.org/中国科学史 and en.m.wikipedia.org/List of Chinese Discoveries 與  zh.m.wikipedia.org/四大发明 和 zh.m.wikipedia.org/中国的100个世界第一 中的例子。

最有影响力的科学家的定义可能与达尔文的儿子所说的一样: 最有影响力归功于最早说服世界的科学家，而不一定是最早想到 新意识的科学家。 新发现只是迈出了第一步, 这个 新发现需要激励其他科学家继续研究下去并让这新发现使世界(不仅是少数国家)受益将成为有影响力的科学家。

But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. Not the man who finds a grain of new and precious quality but to him who sows it, reaps it, grinds it and feeds the world on it。 Francis Darwin (1848–1925)

ngsunyu

威廉·哈维（英語：William Harvey，1578年4月1日－1657年6月3日） 英国医生，实验生理学的创始人之一。
他根据实验，证实了动物体内的血液循环现象，并阐明了心脏在循环过程中的作用，指出血液受心脏推动，沿着动脉血管流向全身各部，再沿着静脉血管返回心脏，环流不息。他还测定过心脏每博的输出量。

他在1628年发表《关于动物心脏与血液运动的解剖研究》（Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus），1651年发表《动物的生殖》（De Generatione）等。这些成就对生理学和胚胎学的发展起了很大作用。(zh.wikipedia.org/威廉·哈维)

English physician William Harvey was the first to recognize the full circulation of the blood in the human body and to provide experiments and arguments to support this idea.

Discovery of Circulation

Harvey’s key work was Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), published in 1628. Harvey’s greatest achievement was to recognize that the blood flows rapidly around the human body, being pumped through a single system of arteries and veins, and to support this hypothesis with experiments and arguments.

Prior to Harvey, it was believed there were two separate blood systems in the body. One carried purple, “nutritive” blood and used the veins to distribute nutri- tion from the liver to the rest of the body. The other carried scarlet, “vivyfying” (or “vital”) blood and used the arteries to distribute a life-giving principle from the lungs. Today these blood systems are understood as deoxygen- ated blood and oxygenated blood. However, at the time, the influence of oxygen on blood was not understood. Furthermore, blood was not thought to circulate around the body—it was believed to be consumed by the body at the same rate that it was produced. The capillaries, small vessels linking the arteries and veins, were unknown at the time, and their existence was not confirmed until later in the 17th century, after Harvey, when the microscope had been invented.

Harvey claimed he was led to his discovery of the circulation by consideration of the venous valves. It was known that there were small flaps inside the veins that allowed free passage of blood in one direction but strongly inhibited the flow of blood in the opposite direction. It was thought that these flaps prevented pooling of the blood under the influence of gravity, but Harvey was able to show that all these flaps are cardiocentrically oriented. For example, he showed that in the jugular vein of the neck they face downward, inhibiting blood flow away from the heart, instead of upward, inhibiting pooling due to gravity.

Harvey’s main experiment concerned the amount of blood flowing through the heart. He made estimates of the volume of the ventricles, how efficient they were in expelling blood, and the number of beats per minute made by the heart. He was able to show, even with conservative estimates, that more blood passed through the heart than could possibly be accounted for based on the then current understanding of blood flow. Harvey’s values indicated the heart pumped 0.5–1 litre of blood per minute (modern values are about 4 litres per minute at rest and 25 litres per minute during exercise). The human body contains about 5 litres of blood. The body simply could not produce or consume that amount of blood so rapidly; therefore, the blood had to circulate It is also important that Harvey investigated the nature of the heartbeat. Prior to Harvey, it was thought that the active phase of the heartbeat, when the muscles contract, was when the heart increased its internal volume. So the active motion of the heart was to draw blood into itself. Harvey observed the heart beating in many animals—particularly in cold-blooded animals and in animals near death, because their heartbeats were slow. He concluded that the active phase of the heartbeat, when the muscles contract, is when the heart decreases its internal volume and that blood is expelled with considerable force from the heart. Although Harvey did quantify blood flow, his quantification is very approximate, and he deliberately used underestimates to further his case. This is very different from the precise quantification leading to the mathematical laws of someone like Galileo.

Harvey’s theory of circulation was opposed by conservative physicians, but it was well established by the time of his death. It is likely that Harvey actually made his discovery of the circulation about 1618–19. Such a major shift in thinking about the body needed to be very well supported by experiment and argument to avoid immediate ridicule and dismissal; hence the delay before the publication of his central work. In 1649 Harvey published Exercitationes Duae Anatomicae de Circulatione Sanguinis, ad Joannem Riolanem, Filium, Parisiensem (Two Anatomical Exercises on the Circulation of the Blood) in response to criticism of the circulation theory by French anatomist Jean Riolan.

Renaissance Influences

Harvey was very much influenced by the ideas of Greek philosopher Aristotle and the natural magic tradition of the Renaissance. His key analogy for the circulation of the blood was a macrocosm/microcosm analogy with the weather system. A macrocosm/microcosm analogy sees similarities between a small system and a large system. Thus, one might say that the solar system is a macrocosm and the atom is a microcosm. The Renaissance natural magic tradition was very keen on the idea of the human body as a microcosm. The macrocosm for Harvey was the Earth’s weather cycle. Water was changed into vapour by the action of the Sun, and the vapour rose, was cooled, and fell again as rain. The microcosm was the human body, where the action of the heart was supposed to heat and change the blood, which was cooled again in the extremities of the body. It also should be noted that much of his terminology for change was drawn from the alchemy of his time. Harvey was very much a man of the later Renaissance—not a man of the scientific revolution and its mechanical nature.

Studies of Reproduction

Harvey spent much of the latter part of his career working on the nature of reproduction in animals. He worked on chickens as an example of oviparous reproduction, in which embryonic development occurs within eggs hatched outside the mother’s body, and on deer as an example of viviparous reproduction, in which embryonic development occurs within the mother’s body, resulting in the birth of live young. Harvey’s work in this area generated a wealth of observational detail. At the time, reproduction was poorly understood, and Harvey investigated issues of the role of sperm and menstrual blood in the formation of the embryo. His observations were excellent, but such matters could not be resolved properly without the use of the microscope.

(全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载)

这枚PHQ不是英国皇家邮政极限明信片，因为它是把邮票放大印为明信片，包括齿孔，皇冠和面值。由于他们的存在，英国很少人用非PHQ片来自制极限明信片。PHQ 不能参加极限邮展，也许作为明信片类别展出。谁有极限明信片？
The 'PHQ' stands for Postal Headquarters. All items published by the Post Office are given a number which is prefixed by letters. The first card issued, on 16 May 1973, was numbered PHQ1, and the numbering sequence has continued to the present day.
There are three main areas of collecting interest. Many collectors like to collect only the unused cards, but some like to obtain them with first day of issue postmarks. Others like to obtain them with special handstamps that have some connection to the stamp subject matter. Also, stamp collectors will usually put the stamp on the back of the card, but a very popular variation is for the stamp to be applied to the face of the card, so that the postcard picture, stamp and postmark are all visible on the same face. (en.wikipedia.org/PHQ card)

ngsunyu

罗伯特·波义耳（英語：Robert Boyle，1627年1月25日－1691年12月30日），又译波意耳，爱尔兰自然哲学家，炼金术师，在化学和物理学研究上都有杰出贡献。虽然他的化学研究仍然带有炼金术色彩，他的《怀疑派的化学家》一书仍然被视作化学史上的里程碑。

1657年他在罗伯特·胡克的辅助下对奥托·格里克发明的气泵进行改进。1659年制成了“波义耳机器”和“风力发动机”。接下来他用这一装置对气体性质进行了研究，并于1660年发表对这一设备的研究成果。这一论文遭到以弗朗西斯·莱恩为代表的科学家的反对，为了反驳异议，波义耳阐明了在温度一定的条件下气体的压力与体积成反比的这一性质。法国物理学家马略特得到了同样的结果，但是一直到1676年才发表。于是在英语国家，这一定律被称为波义耳定律，而在欧洲大陆则被称为马略特定律。

1661年波义耳发表了《怀疑派的化学家》，在这部著作中波义耳批判了一直存在的四元素说，认为在科学研究中不应该将组成物质的物质都称为元素，而应该采取类似海尔蒙特的观点，认为不能互相转变和不能还原成更简单的东西为元素，他说：“我说的元素...是指某种原始的、简单的、一点也没有掺杂的物体。元素不能用任何其他物体造成，也不能彼此相互造成。元素是直接合成所谓完全混合物的成份，也是完全混合物最终分解成的要素。”而元素的微粒的不同聚合体导致了性质的不同。由于波义耳在实验与理论两方面都对化学发展有重要贡献，他的工作为近代化学奠定了初步基础，故被认为是近代化学的奠基人。(zh.wikipedia.org/罗伯特·波义耳)

British natural philosopher and theological writer Robert Boyle was a preeminent figure of 17th-century intellectual culture. He was best known as a natural philosopher, particularly in the field of chemistry, but his scientific work covered many areas including hydrostatics, physics, medicine, earth sciences, natural history, and alchemy. His prolific output also included Christian devotional and ethical essays and theological tracts on biblical language, the limits of reason, and the role of the natural philosopher as a Christian. He sponsored many religious missions as well as the translation of the Scriptures into several languages. In 1660 he helped found the Royal Society of London.
Boyle spent much of 1652–54 in Ireland overseeing his hereditary lands, and he also performed some anatomic dissections. In 1654 he was invited to Oxford, and he took up residence at the university from c. 1656 until 1668. In Oxford he was exposed to the latest developments in natural philosophy and became associated with a group of notable natural philosophers and physicians, including John Wilkins, Christopher Wren, and John Locke. These individuals, together with a few others, formed the “Experimental Philosophy Club,” which at times convened in Boyle’s lodgings. Much of Boyle’s best-known work dates from this period.
In 1659 Boyle and Robert Hooke, the clever inventor and subsequent curator of experiments for the Royal Society, completed the construction of their famous air pump and used it to study pneumatics. Their resultant discoveries regarding air pressure and the vacuum appeared in Boyle’s first scientific publication, New Experiments Physico- Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (1660). Boyle and Hooke discovered several physical characteristics of air, including its role in combustion, respiration, and the transmission of sound. One of their findings, published in 1662, later became known as “Boyle’s law.” This law expresses the inverse relationship that exists between the pressure and volume of a gas, and it was determined by measuring the volume occupied by a constant quantity of air when compressed by differing weights of mercury. Other natural philosophers, including Henry Power and Richard Towneley, concurrently reported similar findings about air.
Boyle’s scientific work is characterized by its reliance on experiment and observation and its reluctance to formulate generalized theories. He advocated a “mechanical philosophy” that saw the universe as a huge machine or clock in which all natural phenomena were accountable purely by mechanical, clockwork motion. His contributions to chemistry were based on a mechanical “corpuscularian hypothesis”—a brand of atomism which claimed that everything was composed of minute (but not indivisible) particles of a single universal matter and that these particles were only differentiable by their shape and motion. Among his most influential writings were The Sceptical Chymist (1661), which assailed the then-current Aristotelian and especially Paracelsian notions about the composition of matter and methods of chemical analysis, and the Origine of Formes and Qualities (1666), which used chemical phenomena to support the corpuscularian hypothesis.
Boyle also maintained a lifelong pursuit of transmutation all alchemy, endeavouring to discover the secret of transmuting base metals into gold and to contact individuals believed to possess alchemical secrets. Overall, Boyle argued so strongly for the need of applying the principles and methods of chemistry to the study of the natural world and to medicine that he later gained the appellation of the “father of chemistry.”

第二枚PHQ不是英国皇家邮政极限明信片，因为它是把邮票放大印为明信片，包括齿孔，皇冠和面值。由于他们的存在，英国很少人用非PHQ片来自制极限明信片。PHQ 不能参加极限邮展，也许作为明信片类别展出。波义耳实验室位于牛津大学，因此第二枚的剑桥和牛顿的邮戳并不理想。剑桥大学教授印制第三枚的惠特徹奇（Whitchurch）与化学邮戳好一点点，但波义耳与惠特徹奇（Whitchurch) 或 威德尼斯（Widnes）的联系并不明显。我的首选邮戳是牛津或伦敦。谁有自然极限明信片？

22 02 2022 伦敦世展戳 在 五十二樓。

ngsunyu

安東尼‧菲利普斯·范‧雷文霍克（荷蘭語：Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek；1632年10月24日~1723年8月26日）是一位荷蘭貿易商與科學家，有光學顯微鏡與微生物學之父的稱號。最為著名的成就之一，是改進了顯微鏡以及微生物學的建立。
他經由手工自製的顯微鏡，首先觀察並描述單細胞生物，他當時將這些生物稱為「animalcules」。此外，他也是最早紀錄觀察肌纖維、細菌、精蟲、微血管中血流的科學家。雷文霍克觀察自己的精液，在顯微鏡觀察下從中發現精細胞，他自認這是他生涯中的重大發現，並觀察兩棲類、軟體動物、鳥類、魚類與哺乳動物的精細胞，獲致一個新的結論，受精就是在精細胞穿進卵中而發生的。(zh.wikipedia.org/安東尼·范·列文虎克)

Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe bacteria and protozoa. His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and his observations helped lay the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology and protozoology. The dramatic nature of his discoveries made him world famous, and he was visited by many notables— including Peter I the Great of Russia, James II of England, and Frederick II the Great of Prussia.
Little is known of Leeuwenhoek’s early life. When his stepfather died in 1648, he was sent to Amsterdam to become an apprentice to a linendraper. Returning to Delft when he was 20, he established himself as a draper and haberdasher. In 1660 he obtained a position as chamberlain to the sheriffs of Delft. His income was thus secure and sufficient enough to enable him to devote much of his time to his all-absorbing hobby, that of grinding lenses and using them to study tiny objects.
Leeuwenhoek made microscopes consisting of a single, high-quality lens of very short focal length; at the time, such simple microscopes were preferable to the compound microscope, which increased the problem of chromatic aberration. Although Leeuwenhoek’s studies lacked the organization of formal scientific research, his powers of careful observation enabled him to make discoveries of fundamental importance. In 1674 he began to observe bacteria and protozoa, his “very little animalcules,” which he was able to isolate from different sources, such as rainwater, pond and well water, and the human mouth and intestine, and he calculated their sizes.
In 1677 he described for the first time the spermatozoa from insects, dogs, and man, though Stephen Hamm probably was a codiscoverer. Leeuwenhoek studied the structure of the optic lens, striations in muscles, the mouthparts of insects, and the fine structure of plants and discovered parthenogenesis in aphids. In 1680 he noticed that yeasts consist of minute globular particles. He extended Marcello Malpighi’s demonstration in 1660 of the blood capillaries by giving (in 1684) the first accurate description of red blood cells. In his observations on rotifers in 1702, Leeuwenhoek remarked that “in all falling rain, carried from gutters into water-butts, animalcules are to be found; and that in all kinds of water, standing in the open air, animalcules can turn up. For these animal- cules can be carried over by the wind, along with the bits of dust floating in the air.”
A friend of Leeuwenhoek put him in touch with the Royal Society of England, to which, from 1673 until 1723, he communicated by means of informal letters most of his discoveries and to which he was elected a fellow in 1680. His discoveries were for the most part made public in the society’s Philosophical Transactions. The first representation of bacteria is to be found in a drawing by Leeuwenhoek in that publication in 1683.
His researches on the life histories of various low forms of animal life were in opposition to the doctrine that they could be produced spontaneously or bred from corruption. Thus, he showed that the weevils of granaries (in his time commonly supposed to be bred from wheat as well as in it) are really grubs hatched from eggs deposited by winged insects. His letter on the flea, in which he not only described its structure but traced out the whole history of its metamorphosis, is of great interest, not so much for the exactness of his observations as for an illustration of his opposition to the spontaneous generation of many lower organisms, such as “this minute and despised creature.” Some theorists asserted that the flea was produced from sand, others from dust or the like, but Leeuwenhoek proved that it bred in the regular way of winged insects.
Leeuwenhoek also carefully studied the history of the ant and was the first to show that what had been com- monly reputed to be ants’ eggs were really their pupae, containing the perfect insect nearly ready for emergence, and that the true eggs were much smaller and gave origin to maggots, or larvae. He argued that the sea mussel and other shellfish were not generated out of sand found at the seashore or mud in the beds of rivers at low water but from spawn, by the regular course of generation. He maintained the same to be true of the freshwater mussel, whose embryos he examined so carefully that he was able to observe how they were consumed by “animalcules,” many of which, according to his description, must have included ciliates in conjugation, flagellates, and the Vorticella. Similarly, he investigated the generation of eels, which were at that time supposed to be produced from dew without the ordinary process of generation.
Leeuwenhoek’s methods of microscopy, which he kept secret, remain something of a mystery. During his lifetime he ground more than 400 lenses, most of which were very small—some no larger than a pinhead—and usually mounted them between two thin brass plates, riveted together. A large sample of these lenses, bequeathed to the Royal Society, were found to have magnifying powers of between 50 and, at the most, 300 times. In order to observe phenomena as small as bacteria, Leeuwenhoek must have employed some form of oblique illumination, or other technique, for enhancing the effectiveness of the lens, but this method he would not reveal. Leeuwenhoek continued his work almost to the end of his long life of 90 years.
Leeuwenhoek’s contributions to the Philosophical Transactions amounted to 375 and those to the Memoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences to 27. Two collections of his works appeared during his life, one in Dutch (1685–1718) and the other in Latin (1715–22); a selection was translated by S. Hoole, The Select Works of A. van Leeuwenhoek (1798–1807).

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

罗伯特·胡克（英語：Robert Hooke，又譯為虎克，1635年7月28日－1703年3月3日），英国博物学家、发明家。在物理学研究方面，他提出了描述材料弹性的基本定律——胡克定律，且提出了万有引力的平方反比关系。在机械制造方面，他设计制造了真空泵、显微镜和望远镜，并将自己用显微镜观察所得写成《显微术》一书；“细胞”的英文：cell，即由他命名。中文翻譯後即稱為細胞。在新技术发明方面，他发明的很多设备至今仍然在使用。除去科学技术，胡克还在城市设计和建筑方面有着重要的贡献。但由于与牛顿的论争导致他去世后鲜为人知，近来对胡克的研究逐渐兴起。胡克也因其兴趣广泛、贡献重要而被某些科学史家称为“伦敦的李奥纳多”。

1665年胡克根據英國皇家學會一院士的資料設計了一台複雜的複合顯微鏡。有一次他從樹皮切了一片軟木薄片，並放到自己發明的顯微鏡觀察。他观察到了植物细胞（已死亡），并且觉得他们的形状类似教士们所住的单人房间，所以他使用单人房间的cell一词命名植物细胞为cellua。是為史上第一次成功觀察細胞。

同年胡克出版了《顯微術》一书，该书包括了一些他使用显微镜或望远镜进行的观察，包括上述的軟木切片。胡克所用的显微镜至今仍然保存在华盛顿国家健康与医学博物馆中。荷兰工匠列文虎克受《显微术》一书启发，对胡克的显微镜镜片进行了改进，对微生物进行了细致的观察，被称为微生物学之父。胡克随后被皇家学会要求确证列文虎克的发现并予以发表。

胡克和牛顿的关系问题一直充满了争论。一般认为，两人彼此存在较大的敌意。争论起源于光学，1672年牛顿在皇家学会阐述自己的观点，认为白光经过棱镜产生色散，分成七色光，他将其解释为不同颜色微粒的混合与分开，遭到主张光波动说的胡克的尖锐批评。牛顿大怒，称胡克完全没有理解自己这一劃时代发现的意义，并威胁要离开皇家学会。这使得主张光微粒说的牛顿一直将已完成的著作《光学》延迟到胡克過世后才出版。光学出版后，奠定了光微粒说的统治地位，直到一百多年以后的菲涅耳才重新发现胡克的光波动說。

1674年－1679年间两人曾通信讨论物体的圆周运动问题，胡克给牛顿写信，说明了他从1660年以后就有的平方反比定律（见万有引力定律）的思想，但是他无法从中推导出开普勒的行星运动定律。通信中出现了常被引用的名言：“如果我看得远一些，那是因为我站在了巨人的肩膀上”。在考慮上文下理的語境後，这句话被認為是在讽刺胡克矮小。1684年1月胡克在和爱德蒙·哈雷及雷恩的谈话中声称他已经完成推导，但是哈雷和雷恩并不相信，哈雷随后告诉了牛顿。牛顿则表示在他已经完成的《自然哲学的数学原理》中有推导，哈雷随后促成此书出版，这件事使得胡克十分怀疑牛顿剽窃了他的成果，并从此不愿意公开自己的任何发现。牛顿也因此删去了手稿中所有引用胡克工作的声明。

牛顿对胡克的敌意在胡克去世后仍未消减。在牛顿影响下，皇家学会取下了胡克的肖像。这可能是胡克没有留下任何肖像的原因。牛顿还试图烧毁大量胡克的手稿和文章，但被阻止。2003年历史学家Lisa Jardine宣称发现了他的肖像，随后被证明这一画像实际上是尼德兰化学家海尔蒙特。胡克所用的印章上的人头像也被人认为是胡克的像。1728年的钱伯斯百科全书的首页插画也被认为是胡克的半身像。(zh.wikipedia.org/罗伯特·胡克)

English physicist Robert Hooke discovered the law of elasticity, known as Hooke’s law. He also conducted research in a remarkable variety of fields.

In 1655 Hooke was employed by Robert Boyle to construct the Boylean air pump. Five years later, Hooke discovered his law of elasticity, which states that the stretching of a solid body (e.g., metal, wood) is proportional to the force applied to it. The law laid the basis for studies of stress and strain and for understanding of elastic materials. He applied these studies in his designs for the balance springs of watches. In 1662 he was appointed curator of experiments to the Royal Society of London and was elected a fellow the following year.

One of the first men to build a Gregorian reflecting telescope, Hooke discovered the fifth star in the Trapezium, an asterism in the constellation Orion, in 1664 and first suggested that Jupiter rotates on its axis. His detailed sketches of Mars were used in the 19th century to determine that planet’s rate of rotation. In 1665 he was appointed professor of geometry in Gresham College. In Micrographia (1665; “Small Drawings”) he included his studies and illustrations of the crystal structure of snow flakes, discussed the possibility of manufacturing artificial fibres by a process similar to the spinning of the silkworm, and first used the word cell to name the microscopic honeycomb cavities in cork. His studies of microscopic fossils led him to become one of the first proponents of a theory of evolution.

Hooke suggested that the force of gravity could be measured by utilizing the motion of a pendulum (1666) and attempted to show that the Earth and Moon follow an elliptical path around the Sun. In 1672 he discovered the phenomenon of diffraction (the bending of light rays around corners); to explain it, he offered the wave theory of light. He stated the inverse square law to describe planetary motions in 1678, a law that Newton later used in modified form. Hooke complained that he was not given sufficient credit for the law and became involved in bitter controversy with Newton. Hooke was the first man to state in general that all matter expands when heated and that air is made up of particles separated from each other by relatively large distances.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

约翰·雷（John Ray，1627年11月29日－1705年1月17日）为英国博物学家，其有时被誉为英国博物学之父。他发表了大量植物学、动物学及自然神学方面的著作。在其专著《Historia Plantarum》中对植物的分类是现代分类学历史中重要的一步。 (zh.wikipedia.org/约翰·雷)

John Ray (spelled Wray until 1670) was a leading 17th- century English naturalist and botanist who contributed significantly to progress in taxonomy. His enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy.

Education and Expeditions
Ray was the son of the village blacksmith in Black Notley and attended the grammar school in nearby Braintree. In 1644, with the aid of a fund that had been left in trust to support needy scholars at the University of Cambridge, he enrolled at one of the colleges there, St. Catherine’s Hall, and moved to Trinity College in 1646. Ray had come to Cambridge at the right time for one with his talents, for he found a circle of friends with whom he pursued anatomical and chemical studies. He also progressed well in the cur- riculum, taking his bachelor’s degree in 1648 and being elected to a fellowship at Trinity the following year; during the next 13 years he lived quietly in his collegiate cloister.
Ray’s string of fortunate circumstances ended with the Restoration. Although he was never an excited partisan, he was thoroughly Puritan in spirit and refused to take the oath that was prescribed by the Act of Uniformity. In 1662 he lost his fellowship. Prosperous friends supported him during the subsequent 43 years while he pursued his career as a naturalist, which began with the publication of his first work in 1660, a catalog of plants growing around Cambridge. After he had exhausted the Cambridge area as a subject for his studies, Ray began to explore the rest of Britain. An expedition in 1662 to Wales and Cornwall with the naturalist Francis Willughby was a turning point in his life. Willughby and Ray agreed to undertake a study of the complete natural history of living things, with Ray respon- sible for the plant kingdom and Willughby the animal.
The first fruit of the agreement, a tour of the European continent lasting from 1663 to 1666, greatly extended Ray’s first-hand knowledge of flora and fauna. Back in England, the two friends set to work on their appointed task. In 1670 Ray produced a Catalogus Plantarum Angliae (“Catalog of English Plants”). Then in 1672 Willughby suddenly died, and Ray took up the completion of Willughby’s portion of their project. In 1676 Ray published F. Willughbeii . . . Ornithologia (The Ornithology of F. Willughby . . .) under Willughby’s name, even though Ray had contributed at least as much as Willughby. Ray also completed F. Willughbeii . . . de Historia Piscium (1685; “History of Fish”), with the Royal Society, of which Ray was a fellow, financing its publication.

Important Publications
Ray had never interrupted his research in botany. In 1682 he had published a Methodus Plantarum Nova (revised in 1703 as the Methodus Plantarum Emendata . . . ), his contribution to classification, which insisted on the taxonomic importance of the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons, plants whose seeds germinate with one leaf and those with two, respectively. Ray’s enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy. On the basis of the Methodus, he constructed his masterwork, the Historia Plantarum, three huge volumes that appeared between 1686 and 1704. After the first two volumes, he was urged to compose a complete system of nature. To this end he compiled brief synopses of British and European plants, a Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium (published posthumously, 1713; “Synopsis of Birds and Fish”), and a Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis (1693; “Synopsis of Quadrupeds”). Much of his final decade was spent on a pioneering investigation of insects, published posthu- mously as Historia Insectorum.
In all this work, Ray contributed to the ordering of taxonomy. Instead of a single feature, he attempted to base his systems of classification on all the structural characteristics, including internal anatomy. By insisting on the importance of lungs and cardiac structure, he effectively established the class of mammals, and he divided insects according to the presence or absence of metamorphoses. Although a truly natural system of taxonomy could not be realized before the age of Darwin, Ray’s system approached that goal more than the frankly artificial systems of his contemporaries. He was one of the great predecessors who made possible Carolus Linnaeus’s contributions in the following century.

Nor was this the sum of his work. In the 1690s Ray also published three volumes on religion. The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), an essay in natural religion that called on the full range of his biological learning, was his most popular and influential book. It argued that the correlation of form and function in organic nature demonstrates the necessity of an omniscient cre- ator. This argument from design, common to most of the leading scientists of the 17th century, implied a static view of nature that was distinctly different from the evolution- ary ideas of the early and mid-19th century. Still working on his Historia Insectorum, John Ray died at the age of 77.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

ngsunyu

艾萨克·牛顿爵士，PRS MP（英語：Sir Isaac Newton，1643年1月4日－1727年3月31日）是一位英格兰物理学家、数学家、天文学家、自然哲学家和煉金術士。1687年他发表《自然哲学的数学原理》，阐述了万有引力和三大运动定律，奠定了此后三个世纪里力学和天文学的基础，成为了现代工程学的基础。他通过论证开普勒行星运动定律与他的引力理论间的一致性，展示了地面物体与天体的运动都遵循着相同的自然定律；为太阳中心学说提供了强而有力的理论支持，并推动了科学革命。

在力学上，牛顿阐明了动量和角动量守恒的原理。在光学上，他发明了反射望远镜，并基于对三棱镜将白光发散成可见光谱的观察，发展出了颜色理论。他还系统地表述了冷却定律，并研究了音速。

在数学上，牛顿与戈特弗里德·莱布尼茨分享了发展出微积分学的荣誉。他也证明了广义二项式定理，提出了“牛顿法”以趋近函数的零点，并为幂级数的研究作出了贡献。

牛顿於1727年3月31日在伦敦睡夢中辭世，于西敏寺舉行國葬，成為史上第一個獲得國葬的自然科學家。牛頓之墓位於西敏寺中殿，墓地上方聳立著一尊牛頓的雕像，其石像倚坐在一堆書籍上。身邊有兩位天使，還有一個巨大的地球造型以紀念他在科學上的功績。(zh.wikipedia.org/艾萨克·牛顿)

English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton was the culminating figure of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics. In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the basic principles of modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), 1687, was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.

The Opticks
Newton was elected to a fellowship in Trinity College in 1667, and from 1670 to 1672 he delivered a series of lectures and developed them into the essay “Of Colours,” which was later revised to become Book One of his Opticks. Newton held that light consists of material corpuscles in motion. The corpuscular conception of light was always a speculative theory on the periphery of his optics, however. The core of Newton’s contribution had to do with colours. He realized that light is not simple and homogeneous—it is instead complex and heterogeneous and the phenomena of colours arise from the analysis of the heterogeneous mixture into its simple components.
The ultimate source of Newton’s conviction that light is corpuscular was his recognition that individual rays of light have immutable properties. He held that individual rays (that is, particles of given size) excite sensations of individual colours when they strike the retina of the eye. He also concluded that rays refract at distinct angles— hence, the prismatic spectrum, a beam of heterogeneous rays, i.e., alike incident on one face of a prism, separated or analyzed by the refraction into its component parts—and that phenomena such as the rainbow are produced by refractive analysis. Because he believed that chromatic aberration could never be eliminated from lenses, Newton turned to reflecting telescopes; he constructed the first ever built. The heterogeneity of light has been the foundation of physical optics since his time.
In 1675 Newton brought forth a second paper, an examination of the colour phenomena in thin films, which was identical to most of Book Two as it later appeared in the Opticks. The purpose of the paper was to explain the colours of solid bodies by showing how light can be analyzed into its components by reflection as well as refraction. The paper was significant in demonstrating for the first time the existence of periodic optical phenomena. He dis- covered the concentric coloured rings in the thin film of air between a lens and a flat sheet of glass; the distance between these concentric rings (Newton’s rings) depends on the increasing thickness of the film of air.
A second piece which Newton had sent with the paper of 1675 provoked new controversy. Entitled “An Hypothesis Explaining the Properties of Light,” it was in fact a general system of nature. Robert Hooke, who had earlier established himself as an opponent of Newton’s ideas, apparently claimed that Newton had stolen its content from him. The issue was quickly controlled, however, by an exchange of formal, excessively polite letters that fail to conceal the complete lack of warmth between the men.
Newton was also engaged in another exchange on his theory of colours with a circle of English Jesuits in Liège, perhaps the most revealing exchange of all. Although their objections were shallow, their contention that his experiments were mistaken lashed him into a fury. The correspondence dragged on until 1678, when a final shriek of rage from Newton, apparently accompanied by a complete nervous breakdown, was followed by silence. For six years he withdrew from intellectual commerce except when others initiated a correspondence, which he always broke off as quickly as possible.
During his time of isolation, Newton, who was always somewhat interested in alchemy, now immersed himself in it. His conception of nature underwent a decisive change. Newton’s “Hypothesis of Light” of 1675, with its universal ether, was a standard mechanical system of nature. However, about 1679, Newton abandoned the ether and its invisible mechanisms and began to ascribe the puzzling phenomena—chemical affinities, the generation of heat in chemical reactions, surface tension in fluids, capillary action, the cohesion of bodies, and the like—to attractions and repulsions between particles of matter.
More than 35 years later, in the second English edition of the Opticks, Newton accepted an ether again, although it was an ether that embodied the concept of action at a distance by positing a repulsion between its particles. As he conceived of them, attractions were quantitatively defined, and they offered a bridge to unite the two basic themes of 17th-century science—the mechanical tradition, which had dealt primarily with verbal mechanical imagery, and the Pythagorean tradition, which insisted on the mathematical nature of reality. Newton’s reconciliation through the concept of force was his ultimate contribution to science.

The Principia
In 1684 Newton was at work on the problem of orbital dynamics, and two and a half years later, a short tract he had written, entitled De Motu (“On Motion”), had grown into Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. This work is not only Newton’s masterpiece but also the fundamental work for the whole of modern science. Significantly, De Motu did not state the law of universal gravitation. For that matter, even though it was a treatise on planetary dynamics, it did not contain any of the three Newtonian laws of motion. Only when revising De Motu did Newton embrace the principle of inertia (the first law) and arrive at the second law of motion.
The mechanics of the Principia was an exact quantitative description of the motions of visible bodies. It rested on Newton’s three laws of motion: (1) that a body remains in its state of rest unless it is compelled to change that state by a force impressed on it; (2) that the change of motion (the change of velocity times the mass of the body) is proportional to the force impressed; (3) that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Using these laws, Newton found that the centripetal force holding the planets in their given orbits about the Sun must decrease with the square of the planets’ distances from the Sun.

Newton also compared the distance by which the Moon, in its orbit of known size, is diverted from a tan- gential path in one second with the distance that a body at the surface of the Earth falls from rest in one second. When the latter distance proved to be 3,600 (60 × 60) times as great as the former, he concluded that one and the same force, governed by a single quantitative law, is operative in all three cases, and from the correlation of the Moon’s orbit with the measured acceleration of gravity on the surface of the Earth, he applied the ancient Latin word gravitas (literally, “heaviness” or “weight”) to it. The law of universal gravitation, which he also confirmed from such further phenomena as the tides and the orbits of comets, states that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centres. The Principia immediately raised Newton to international prominence.

全文可在 www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hundred-scientists.pdf 下载。

这枚PHQ不是英国皇家邮政极限明信片，因为它是把邮票放大印为明信片，包括齿孔，皇冠和面值。由于他们的存在，英国很少人用非PHQ片来自制极限明信片。PHQ 不能参加极限邮展，也许作为明信片类别展出。谁有极限明信片？. 剑桥大学教授印制两枚不同戳但是非卖品。

Based on a sample size of two, thus not valid statistically, here we have two scientists,  neither of whom are physicist (actually both are molecular biologists), who have realized Newton maximum cards. Hopefully there are many more physicists who have realized Newton maximum cards as well.  

ngsunyu

1661年6月，牛顿进入了剑桥大学的三一学院。在1665年，牛顿获得了学位，而大学为了预防伦敦大瘟疫而关闭了。在此后两年裡，牛顿在家中继续研究微积分学、光学和万有引力定律。

1667年，牛顿获得奖学金，作为研究生重返剑桥大学三一学院。按照规定，只有被正式任命的牧师才有资格成为剑桥大学三一学院的研究生，由于持有非正统的宗教观点，牛顿不愿意成为牧师。但牧师职位的任命没有最后期限，因此牛顿先获得了研究生的名额，而牧师职位的任命被无限期地延后了。

牛顿在1669年被授予卢卡斯数学教授席位。在那一天以前，剑桥或牛津的所有成员都是经过任命的圣公会牧师。不过，卢卡斯教授之职的条件要求其持有者不得活跃于教堂（大概是如此可让持有者把更多时间用于科学研究上）。牛顿认为应免除他担任神职工作的条件，这需要查理二世的许可，后者接受了牛顿的意见。这样避免了牛顿的宗教观点与圣公会信仰之间的冲突。(zh.wikipedia.org/艾萨克·牛顿)

2010年的剑桥邮戳盖在牛顿极限明信片上正好片票戳三图一致。
法国和其他国家邮票的牛顿极限明信片很常见，但罕见的是英国邮票的极限明信片。