Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Topology
• Trignometry
• Combinatorics
• Logic
• Number theory

Applied mathematics

• Dynamical systems and differential equations
• Mathematical physics
• Computing
• Information theory and signal processing
• Probability and statistics
• Game theory
• Operations research

Related Topics

• Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Linear Equations
• Applied Physics
• Nano Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Medicine
• Fluid dynamics
• Computational Mathematics
• Gamma Ray Optics
• Onfrared Optics
• Relative Velocity
• Iciam
• Intelligent Imaging Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering
• Neuroscience Research
• Quantum Cosmology
• Brain Research

• Aaron Klug
• Abraham Cowley
• Academia Sinica
• Academy of Sciences
• Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
• Andrew Huxley
• Anne, Princess Royal
• Antarctica
• Archibald Geikie
• Arundel House
• BBC
• Bengt Skytte
• Benjamin Franklin
• Bibcode
• Biology
• Biology Letters
• Bodleian Library
• British Academy
• British Museum
• Burlington House
• Cell biology
• Central London
• Charles Babbage
• Chicheley Hall
• Christopher Wren
• CONICET
• Copley Medal
• Croonian Lecture
• Crown Estates
• Cyril Wyche
• Daniel Wray
• David Glover
• Davies Gilbert
• Denis Papin
• DESG
• Edward Sabine
• Engineering Council
• EngineeringUK
• English Restoration
• English trusts law
• Epistles (Horace)
• Ernest Rutherford
• European Commission
• Fleet Street
• Francis Bacon
• Fred Kavli
• Garter King of Arms
• George Biddell Airy
• George Porter
• Gottfried Leibniz
• Grant-in-aid
• Great Fire of London
• Gresham College
• Gulliver's Travels
• Hans Sloane
• Henry Hallett Dale
• Henry Oldenburg
• History of science
• Horace
• Humphry Davy
• Interface Focus
• Isaac Newton
• Isis (journal)
• J. J. Thomson
• James Bradley
• James Burrow
• James South
• JANET
• John Evelyn
• John Hadley
• John Pethica
• John Pringle
• John Wilkins
• Jonathan Swift
• Joseph Banks
• Joseph Dalton Hooker
• JSTOR
• Julie Maxton
• Kathleen Lonsdale
• Laputa
• Latin
• Learned societies
• Learned society
• Lightning conductor
• Listed building
• M4 corridor
• Marjory Stephenson
• Martin Folkes
• Martyn Poliakoff
• Michael Atiyah
• Milton Keynes
• Molecular biology
• Montmor Academy
• Natural philosopher
• Neal Stephenson
• New Atlantis
• Nullius in verba
• Nutation
• Open access journal
• Open Biology
• Paul Nurse
• Peer review
• PubMed Identifier
• Robert Hooke
• Robert Moray
• Romanian Academy
• Royal Academy
• Royal Charter
• Royal Institution
• Royal Irish Academy
• Royal Society
• Royal Society Range
• Russell Group
• Samuel Pepys
• Science (journal)
• Science Council
• Science Media Centre
• Scientific method
• Second World War
• Shilling
• Silicon Fen
• Silicon Glen
• Silicon Gorge
• Society Islands
• Society of Biology
• Solomon's House
• Somerset House
• The Baroque Cycle
• Thomas Birch
• Thomas Henry Huxley
• Thomas Sprat
• UK Research Councils
• UK Space Agency
• United Kingdom
• University of Oxford
• University of Tehran
• Wellcome Trust
• William Crookes
• William Croone
• William Henry Bragg
• William Huggins
• William Spottiswoode
• 
  

• 
  Academia Sinica
  The Academia Sinica (Chinese: 中央研究院; pinyin: Zhōngyāng Yánjiùyuàn, literally "Central Research Academy"; "Chinese Academy" in Latin), headquartered in the Nangang District of Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. It supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences, to life sciences, and to humanities and social sciences.
  Academia Sinica has made great progress in recent years, according to Taiwanese scholar Chang Jui-te. An increasing number of research papers written by its faculty members, which numbered 1,150 in 2001, are appearing in international journals. Some journals, published by Academia Sinica itself, such as Zoological Studies and Statistical Sinica, have received international recognition. Academia Sinica plays a major role in the field of Chinese studies. For example, the archaeological findings by researchers at the Institute of History and Philology have, in combination with written documents, led to a virtual rewriting of ancient Chinese history, pushing back the span of Chinese history by many centuries.
  
  wn.com/Academia_Sinica
• 
  Antarctica
  Antarctica
  
  This map uses an orthographic projection, near-polar aspect. The South Pole is near the center, where longitudinal lines converge.
  Antarctica (ⁱ/æntˈɑrtɨkə/ or /ænˈtɑːktɨkə/) is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km² (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in thickness.
  Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F). There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there, including many types of algae, animals (for example mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades), bacteria, fungi, plants, and protista. Vegetation where it occurs is tundra.
  
  wn.com/Antarctica
• 
  Arundel House
  Coordinates: 51°30′43″N 0°6′51″W / 51.51194°N 0.11417°W / 51.51194; -0.11417
  Arundel House was a town-house or palace located between the Strand and the Thames, near St Clement Danes.
  It was originally the town house of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, during the Middle Ages. In 1539 it was given to William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton. It reverted to the Crown on Fitzwilliam's death and was granted in 1545 to Thomas Seymour, brother to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Protector (of the infant King Edward VI, son of King Henry VIII). After Seymour's execution in 1549 for treason, the house was sold to Henry Fitz Alan, 12th Earl of Arundel, for around £40. It later housed Thomas Howard's collection of Old Masters and classical sculpture (a 2nd century AD relief from Ephesus kept at the house may be seen in the 17th century gallery at the Museum of London), and also hosted his protégé Wenceslaus Hollar.
  The Roman Baths, Strand Lane were situated within the grounds, and remain in the ownership of the National Trust.
  
  wn.com/Arundel_House
• 
  Bodleian Library
  The Bodleian Library ( /ˈbɒdliən/ or /bɒdˈliːən/), the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or simply "the Bod", under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom and under Irish Law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Though University members may borrow some books from dependent libraries (such as the Radcliffe Science Library), the Bodleian operates principally as a reference library and in general documents may not be removed from the reading rooms.
  The Library occupies a group of five buildings near Broad Street: these range in date from the late medieval Duke Humfrey's Library to the New Bodleian of the 1930s. Since the 19th century a number of underground stores have been built below parts of these.
  Today, the Bodleian also includes several off-site storage areas as well as many other libraries in central Oxford:
  
  wn.com/Bodleian_Library
• 
  Burlington House
  Coordinates: 51°30′32″N 0°8′22″W / 51.50889°N 0.13944°W / 51.50889; -0.13944
  Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the mid 19th century after being purchased by the British government. The main building is at the northern end of the courtyard and houses the Royal Academy, while five learned societies occupy the two wings on the east and west sides of the courtyard and the Piccadilly wing at the southern end. These societies, collectively known as the Courtyard Societies are:
  Burlington House is most familiar to the general public as the venue for the Royal Academy's temporary art exhibitions.
  The house was one of the earliest of a number of very large private residences built on the north side of Piccadilly, previously a country lane, from the 1660s onwards. The first version was begun by Sir John Denham in or just after 1665. It was a red-brick double-pile hip-roofed mansion with a recessed centre, typical of the style of the time, or perhaps even a little old fashioned. Denham may have acted as his own architect, or he may have employed Hugh May, who certainly became involved in the construction after the house was sold in an incomplete state in 1667 to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, from whom it derives its name. [1] Burlington had the house completed.
  
  wn.com/Burlington_House
• Chicheley Hall
  Chicheley Hall, in Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, was built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style. It is one of the finest country houses in Buckinghamshire, described by Marcus Binney in The Times as "one of the dozen finest and loveliest English country houses that will ever come on the market".
  An ancient manor house on the site belonged to the Pagnell family of Newport Pagnell, but was given by them to the church. Cardinal Wolsey gave it to Christ Church, Oxford, but it reverted to the Crown, and was acquired by a merchant, Anthony Cave in 1545, who built a manor house in the form of a hollow square. By the time of the English Civil War, the house belonged to the Chester family. The house was damaged during the war, and demolished afterwards. The present Chicheley Hall was built on the same site. All that remains of the old manor today is one Jacobean over-mantel with termini caryatids, and some panelling in the 'new' Chicheley Hall.
  The present hall was built between 1719 and 1723, with the interior fittings completed in 1725. The house was often attributed to the architect Thomas Archer, but has more recently been attributed to Francis Smith, who is thought to have designed it for Sir John Chester.
  
  wn.com/Chicheley_Hall
• 
  European Commission
  The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.
  The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "commissioners" ). There is one member per member state, though members are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 27 is the Commission President (currently José Manuel Durão Barroso) proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament. The Council then appoints the other 26 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and then the 27 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The first Barroso Commission took office in late 2004 and its successor, under the same President, took office in 2010.
  The term "Commission" is used either in the narrow sense of the 27-member College of Commissioners (or College) or to also include the administrative body of about 23,000 European civil servants who are split into departments called Directorates-General and Services. The internal working languages of the Commission are English, French and German. The Members of the Commission and their "cabinets" (immediate teams) are based in the Berlaymont building of Brussels.
  
  wn.com/European_Commission
• 
  Fleet Street
  Coordinates: 51°30′51″N 0°06′32″W / 51.51417°N 0.10889°W / 51.51417; -0.10889
  Fleet Street is a street in the City of London named after the River Fleet, London's largest underground river. It was the origin and home of the British newspapers until the 1980s. Even though the last major British news office, Reuters, left in 2005, the term Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonym for the British national press.
  As early as the 13th century, it seems to have been known as Fleet Bridge Street, and in the early part of the 14th century it began to be mentioned frequently by its present name, spelled, of course, in accordance with the customs of those days. Fleet Street began as the road from the commercial City of London to the political hub of Westminster. The length of Fleet Street marks the expansion of the City in the 14th century. At the east end of the street is where the River Fleet flowed against the medieval walls of London; at the west end is the Temple Bar which marks the current City of London/City of Westminster boundary, extended there in 1329.
  
  wn.com/Fleet_Street
• 
  Great Fire of London
  The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall. It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster, Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St. Paul's Cathedral and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the City's 80,000 inhabitants. The death toll is unknown but traditionally thought to have been small, as only six verified deaths were recorded. This reasoning has recently been challenged on the grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded, while the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims leaving no recognisable remains.
  
  wn.com/Great_Fire_of_London
• 
  Gresham College
  Coordinates: 51°31′04″N 0°06′35″W / 51.5177°N 0.1098°W / 51.5177; -0.1098
  Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in central London, England. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham and today it hosts over 140 free public lectures every year within the City of London.
  Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, left his estate jointly to the City of London Corporation and to the Mercers' Company, which today support the college through the Joint Grand Gresham Committee under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London. Gresham's will provided for the setting up of the College—in Gresham's mansion in Bishopsgate, on the site now occupied by Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower—and endowed it with the rental income from shops sited around the Royal Exchange, which Gresham had established.
  The early success of the College led to the incorporation of the Royal Society in 1663, which pursued its activities at the College in Bishopsgate before moving to its own premises in Crane Court in 1710. The College remained in Gresham's mansion in Bishopsgate until 1768, and moved about London thereafter until the construction in 1842 of its own buildings in Gresham Street EC2. Gresham College did not become part of the University of London on the founding of the University in the 19th century, although a close association between the College and the University persisted for many years. Since 1991, the College has operated at Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn EC1.
  
  wn.com/Gresham_College
• 
  M4 corridor
  The M4 corridor is the area in the United Kingdom adjacent to the M4 motorway, which runs from London to South Wales. The area is a major hub for high-technology companies. Technology companies with major operations located in the area include Citrix Systems, Dell, Huawei, Lexmark, LG, Novell, Nvidia, Panasonic, SAP and Symantec.
  Important cities and towns in the area include Bath, Bracknell, Bristol, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Newport, Slough, Swansea and Swindon. The area is served by the M4 Motorway, the Great Western Main Line, including the South Wales Main Line, and London Heathrow Airport.
  The eastern end of the English M4 corridor is home to a large number of technology companies, particularly in Berkshire, Swindon and the Thames Valley. For this reason this part of the M4 Corridor is sometimes described as England's "Silicon Valley".Slough, Windsor, Maidenhead, Reading, Bracknell and Newbury are the main towns in the Berkshire stretch of the M4.
  Reading is home to many information technology and financial services businesses, including Cisco, Microsoft, ING Direct, Oracle, Prudential, Yell Group and Ericsson. Vodafone is located in Newbury, O2 plc is in Slough and the headquarters of Hutchison 3G UK are in Maidenhead.
  
  wn.com/M4_corridor
• 
  Milton Keynes
  Coordinates: 52°02′10″N 0°46′12″W / 52.036°N 0.770°W / 52.036; -0.770
  Milton Keynes (ⁱ/ˌmɪltən ˈkiːnz/ mil-tən-KEENZ), sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, about 45 miles (72 km) south-east of Leicester and 49 miles (79 km) north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967, with the design brief to become a 'city' in scale.
  At designation, its 89 km² (34 sq mi) area incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between. It took its name from the existing village of Milton Keynes, a few miles east of the planned centre.
  At the 2001 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent Newport Pagnell, was 184,506, and that of the wider borough, which has been a unitary authority independent of Buckinghamshire County Council since 1997, was 207,063 (compared with a population of around 53,000 for the same area in 1961). The Borough’s population in 2009 is estimated to be nearly 241,000, with almost all the increase arising in the urban area.
  
  wn.com/Milton_Keynes
• 
  Royal Institution
  The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often abbreviated as the Royal Institution or RI) is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.
  The Royal Institution was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch, the 9th Earl of Winchilsea, for
  Much of its initial funding and the initial proposal for its founding were given by the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, under the guidance of philanthropist Sir Thomas Bernard and American-born British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Since its founding it has been based on Albemarle Street in Mayfair. Its Royal Charter was granted in 1800.
  Throughout its history, the Institution has supported public engagement with science through a programme of lectures, many of which continue today. The most famous of these are the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, founded by Michael Faraday.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Institution
• 
  Somerset House
  Somerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It was extended by classical Victorian wings to north and south. A building of the same name was first built on the site more than two centuries earlier. The East Wing of Somerset House forms part of King's College London.
  In the sixteenth century, the north bank of the Thames between London and Westminster was a favoured site for the mansions of the nobility. In 1539, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, obtained a grant of land at "Chester Place, outside Temple Bar, London" from Henry VIII of England. When the boy-king Edward VI of England came to the throne in 1547, Seymour became Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. About 1549 he pulled down an old Inn of Chancery and other houses that stood on the site and began to build himself a truly imposing residence, making liberal use of the other nearby buildings including some of the chantries and cloisters at St. Paul's Cathedral which were demolished at the behest of Somerset and other leading Protestant nobles as part of the ongoing Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was a two storey house built around a quadrangle with a gateway rising to three stories and was one of the earliest examples of Renaissance architecture in England. It is not known who designed the building.
  
  wn.com/Somerset_House
• 
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
• 
  University of Oxford
  Coordinates: 51°45′40″N 1°15′12″W / 51.7611°N 1.2534°W / 51.7611; -1.2534
  The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or Oxford) is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096. The University grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In post-nominals, the University of Oxford was historically abbreviated as Oxon. (from the Latin Oxoniensis), although Oxf is now used in official university publications.
  After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge, where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient English universities have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to their cultural and practical associations, as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Oxford

• Aaron Klug
  Sir Aaron Klug, OM, PRS (born 11 August 1926) is a Lithuanian-born British chemist and biophysicist, and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.
  Klug was born in Želva, Lithuania to Jewish parents Lazar and Bella (née Silin) Klug with whom he moved to South Africa at the age of two. He later graduated with a degree in science at the University of Witwatersrand and studied crystallography at the University of Cape Town before moving to England, completing his doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1953.
  He moved to Birkbeck College in the University of London in late 1953, and started working with Rosalind Franklin in John Bernal's lab. This experience aroused a lifelong interest in the study of viruses, and during his time there he made discoveries in the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. In 1962 he moved to the newly built MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Over the following decade Klug used methods from X-ray diffraction, microscopy and structural modelling to develop crystallographic electron microscopy in which a sequence of two-dimensional images of crystals taken from different angles are combined to produce three-dimensional images of the target.
  
  wn.com/Aaron_Klug
• 
  Abraham Cowley
  Abraham Cowley (1618 – 28 July 1667) was an English poet born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721.
  His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faerie Queene. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had read it twice before he was sent to school.
  As early as 1628, that is, in his tenth year, he composed his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe, an epic romance written in a six-line stanza, a style of his own invention. It is not too much to say that this work is the most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity on record; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order.
  Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Constantia and Philetus, being sent about the same time to Westminster School. Here he displayed extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year the Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton. These three poems of considerable size, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled Poetical Blossoms, dedicated to the head master of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows.
  
  wn.com/Abraham_Cowley
• 
  Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
  Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, OM, KBE, PRS (5 February 1914, Banbury, Oxfordshire – 20 December 1998 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) was a British physiologist and biophysicist, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles.
  Hodgkin was educated at The Downs School near Malvern, Gresham's School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1930, he was the winner of a bronze medal in the Public Schools Essay Competition organized by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
  During the Second World War, he volunteered to work on Aviation Medicine at Farnborough and was subsequently transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) where he worked on the development of centimetric radar, including the design of the Village Inn AGLT airborne gun-laying system. Earlier, in March 1941, Hodgkin had flown on the test flight of a Bristol Blenheim fitted with the first airborne centimetric radar system.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Lloyd_Hodgkin
• 
  Andrew Huxley
  Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley, OM, FRS (22 November 1917 – 30 May 2012) was an English physiologist and biophysicist, who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his experimental and mathematical work with Alan Hodgkin on the basis of nerve action potentials, the electrical impulses that enable the activity of an organism to be coordinated by a central nervous system. Hodgkin and Huxley shared the prize that year with John Eccles, who was cited for research on synapses. Hodgkin and Huxley's findings led the pair to hypothesize the existence of ion channels, which were isolated only decades later. Together with the Swiss physiologist Robert Stämpfli he evidenced the existence of saltatory conduction in myelinated nerve fibres.
  Huxley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 17 March 1955. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on 12 November 1974. Sir Andrew was then appointed to the Order of Merit on 11 November 1983.
  Huxley was the youngest son of the writer and editor Leonard Huxley by his second wife Rosalind Bruce, and hence half-brother of the writer Aldous Huxley and fellow biologist Julian Huxley, and grandson of the biologist T. H. Huxley. He studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1947 he married Jocelyn Richenda Gammell Pease (1925–2003), the daughter of the geneticist Michael Pease and his wife Helen Bowen Wedgwood, a daughter of the first Lord Wedgwood, and is thus affiliated with the Darwin–Wedgwood family. They have one son and five daughters:
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Huxley
• 
  Anne, Princess Royal
  Anne, Princess Royal KGKTGCVO (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise; born 15 August 1950), is the only daughter of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. At the time of her birth, she was third (behind her mother and elder brother) and rose to second (after her mother's accession) in the line of succession to the thrones of the 16 Commonwealth realms; however, after the birth of two younger brothers and six nieces and nephews she is currently tenth in line.
  The seventh holder of the title Princess Royal, Anne is known for her charitable work, being the patron of over 200 organisations, and she carries out about 700 royal engagements and public appearances per year. She is also known for equestrian talents; she won two silver and one gold medal at the European Eventing Championships,^{[citation needed]} and is the only member of the British Royal Family to have competed in the Olympic Games. Currently married to Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, she has two children from her previous marriage to Mark Phillips and two granddaughters. She is known for letting her children live private lives and allowing them to have freedoms that most royal children don't have. Mail Online dubbed her "The best king we never had".
  
  wn.com/Anne,_Princess_Royal
• 
  Archibald Geikie
  Sir Archibald Geikie, OM, KCB, PRS, FRSE (28 December 1835 – 10 November 1924), was a Scottish geologist and writer.
  Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835, the eldest son of musician and music critic James Stuart Geikie. The elder brother of James Geikie, he was educated at Edinburgh High School and University of Edinburgh.
  In 1855 was appointed an assistant on the British Geological Survey. Wielding the pen with no less facility than the hammer, he inaugurated his long list of works with The Story of a Boulder; or, Gleanings from the Note-Book of a Geologist (1858). His ability at once attracted the notice of his chief, Sir Roderick Murchison, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship, and whose biographer he subsequently became.
  With Murchison some of his earliest work was done on the complicated regions of the schists of the Scottish Highlands; and the small geological map of Scotland published in 1862 was their joint work: a larger map was issued by Geikie in 1892. In 1863 he published an important essay "On the Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scotland", in Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow, in which the effects of ice action in that country were for the first time clearly and connectedly delineated.
  
  wn.com/Archibald_Geikie
• 
  Benjamin Franklin
  Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.
  Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical and democratic values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
  
  wn.com/Benjamin_Franklin
• 
  Charles Babbage
  Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
  Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine.
  Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event.
  His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26 December 1792. However after the obituary appeared, a nephew wrote to say that Charles Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptised on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Babbage
• 
  Christopher Wren
  Sir Christopher Wren FRS (20 October 1632 – 25 February 1723) is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710. The principal creative responsibility for a number of the churches is now more commonly attributed to others in his office, especially Nicholas Hawksmoor. Other notable buildings by Wren include the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and the south front of Hampton Court Palace.
  Educated in Latin and Aristotelian physics at the University of Oxford, Wren was a notable astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, as well as an architect. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.
  Wren was born at East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren DD (1589–1658), at that time the rector of East Knoyle and later Dean of Windsor. A previous son of Dr Wren, also named Christopher, was born on 22 November 1631 and died the same day. John Aubrey’s confusion of the two persisted occasionally into late twentieth-century literature.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Wren
• 
  Cyril Wyche
  Sir Cyril Wyche FRS (1632 – ?1707) was an English lawyer and politician.
  He was born in Constantinople, Turkey, where his father, Sir Peter Wyche, was the English Ambassador. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford with Bachelor of Arts in 1653. He received his Master of Arts (MA) in 1655 and his Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) in 1665. Between the time he received his MA and his DCL, he was knighted (1660). This is so close in time to the English Restoration that he was almost certainly a Cavalier, and may have served in the military for the Royalist cause.
  He was an original member of the Royal Society and served as President from 1683–1684. He joined the bar in 1670 and became the Secretary to the Lieutenancy of Ireland in 1692. He was a Member of Parliament for several districts at different times, (MP for Callington (1661–1678), for East Grinstead (1681–1685), for Saltash (1685–1687), and for Preston (1702–1705) From the Sackler Archive of Fellows of the Royal Society.
  He married Mary, daughter of George Evelyn of Wootton and niece of John Evelyn, the diarist. Around 1690 he purchased Hockwold Hall (then called The Poynings) at Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk. He died there and a monument to him can be found in the church of St. Peter in Hockwold.
  
  wn.com/Cyril_Wyche
• Daniel Wray
  Daniel Wray (1701–1783) was an English antiquary and Fellow of the Royal Society.
  Born on 28 November 1701 in the parish of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, he was the youngest child of Sir Daniel Wray (died 1719), a London citizen and soap-boiler residing in Little Britain, by his second wife. His father was knighted on 24 March 1708, while high sheriff of Essex, where he possessed an estate near Ingatestone. At the age of thirteen Daniel the son entered Charterhouse School as a day scholar. In 1718 he matriculated from Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1722, and M.A. in 1728.
  Between 1722 and 1728 he paid a prolonged visit to Italy in the company of James Douglas. On 13 March 1729 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, and on 18 June 1731 he was incorporated at Oxford. He resided generally at Cambridge until 1739 or 1740, but after being elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in January 1741 he became a more habitual resident of London, lodging at the house of Arthur Pond. At a later date he removed to lodgings at Richmond and after his marriage took a house in town, first in King Street, Covent Garden, and afterwards in Duke Street, Soho, and another at Richmond.
  
  wn.com/Daniel_Wray
• David Glover
  David Moore Glover FRS FRSE (born 28 March 1948) is a British geneticist, current Balfour Professor of Genetics at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He serves as the first editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Open Biology published by the Royal Society.
  
  
  
  wn.com/David_Glover
• Davies Gilbert
  Davies Gilbert (born Davies Giddy) FRS (6 March 1767 – 24 December 1839) was a British engineer, author, and politician. He was elected to the Royal Society on 17 November 1791 and served as President of the Royal Society from 1827 to 1830.
  Davies Giddy was born, the only child of Edward Giddy, curate of St Erth church, and Catherine Davies, daughter of Henry Davies of Tredrea. Davies Giddy would later adopt Gilbert as his surname, the maiden name of his wife.
  He was educated at Penzance Grammar School and by his father, and by Rev Malachy Hitchens, the mathematical astronomer. He went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, from whence he graduated with a M.A. on 29 June 1789.
  Davies was High Sheriff of Cornwall from 1792 to 1793. He served in the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Helston in Cornwall from 1804 to 1806 and for Bodmin from 1806 to 1832.
  Giddy was an intimate friend of physician Thomas Beddoes, had attended Beddoes' lectures in Oxford and had been a confidant of Beddoes in his plans for the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. He noticed and encouraged Humphry Davy and convinced Beddoes that Davy was the man to work in the laboratory at the Institution.
  
  wn.com/Davies_Gilbert
• 
  Denis Papin
  Denis Papin (22 August 1647 - c. 1712) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine and of the pressure cooker.
  Born in Chitenay, (Loir-et-Cher, Centre Région), Papin attended a Jesuit school there, and from 1661 attended University at Angers, from which he graduated with a medical degree in 1669. In 1673, while working with Christiaan Huygens and Gottfried Leibniz in Paris, he became interested in using a vacuum to generate motive power.
  Papin first visited London in 1675, and worked with Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679, publishing an account of his work in Continuation of New Experiments (1680). During this period, Papin invented the steam digester, a type of pressure cooker with a safety valve. He first addressed the Royal Society in 1679 on the subject of his digester, and remained mostly in London until about 1687, when he left to take up an academic post in Germany.
  As a Huguenot, Papin found himself greatly affected by the increasing restrictions placed on Protestants by Louis XIV of France and by the King's ultimate revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In Germany he was able to live with fellow Huguenot exiles from France.
  
  wn.com/Denis_Papin
• 
  Edward Sabine
  General Sir Edward Sabine KCB FRS (14 October 1788 – 26 June 1883) was an Anglo-Irish astronomer, geophysicist, ornithologist, explorer and the 30th President of the Royal Society.
  Two branches of Sabine's work are notable: Determination of the length of the seconds pendulum, a simple pendulum whose time period on the surface of the Earth is two seconds, that is, one second in each direction; and his research on the Earth's magnetic field. He led the effort to establish a system of magnetic observatories in various parts of British territory all over the globe, and much of his life was devoted to their direction, and to analyzing their observations.
  While most of his research bears on the subjects just mentioned, other research deals with the birds of Greenland (Sabine's Gull is named for him), ocean temperatures, the Gulf Stream, barometric measurement of heights, arc of the meridian, glacial transport of rocks, the volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands, and various points of meteorology.
  Edward Sabine was born on Great Britain Street, Dublin to Joseph Sabine, a member of a prominent Anglo-Irish family whose connections with the country can be traced back to the seventeenth century. His mother, Sarah Hunt, died when he was just one month old. His elder brother was naturalist Joseph Sabine.
  
  wn.com/Edward_Sabine
• 
  Ernest Rutherford
  Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation, proving that the former was essentially helium ions. This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".
  Rutherford performed his most famous work after he had moved to the Victoria University of Manchester in the UK in 1907 and was already a Nobel laureate. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton. This led to the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by two students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.
  
  wn.com/Ernest_Rutherford
• 
  Francis Bacon
  Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban(s),KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
  Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
  Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created both the Baron Verulam in 1618, and the Viscount St Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died by contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.
  
  wn.com/Francis_Bacon
• Fred Kavli
  Fred Kavli (born 1927) is a Norwegian and naturalized American physicist, business leader, inventor, and philanthropist. He was born in the village of Eresfjord, Nesset municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. Today Kavli lives in the city of Santa Barbara, California in the United States. He established The Kavli Foundation in the year 2000 to support basic scientific research. He has only recently appeared in the mainstream media for his work, primarily his philanthropic efforts. He is divorced and has two grown children. An avid art collector, Kavli has gathered a large collection of Norwegian oil paintings.
  Kavli grew up on the family farm in the tiny Norwegian village of Eresfjord (pop. 450).
  At 14, together with his brother Aslak, he began his first enterprise creating wood pellet fuel for cars. This was during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of Norway.
  Inspired by his father's 13 years in San Francisco the young Kavli wanted to move to the US. Three days after he received his engineering physics degree from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in Trondheim he left for America on the SS Stavangerfjord.
  
  wn.com/Fred_Kavli
• 
  George Biddell Airy
  Sir George Biddell Airy PRS KCB (27 July 1801 – 2 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation has been tarnished by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of Neptune.
  Airy was born at Alnwick, one of a long line of Airys who traced their descent back to a family of the same name residing at Kentmere, in Westmorland, in the 14th century. The branch to which he belonged, having suffered in the English Civil War, moved to Lincolnshire and became farmers. Airy was educated first at elementary schools in Hereford, and afterwards at Colchester Royal Grammar School. An introverted child, Airy gained popularity with his schoolmates through his great skill in the construction of peashooters.
  
  wn.com/George_Biddell_Airy
• 
  George Porter
  George Hornidge Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham, OM, FRS (6 December 1920 – 31 August 2002) was a British chemist.
  Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, South Yorkshire. He was educated at Thorne Grammar School, then won a scholarship to the University of Leeds and gained his first degree in chemistry. He then served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War.
  Porter then went on to do research at Cambridge under Norrish where he began the work that ultimately led to them becoming Nobel Laureates.
  His original research in developing the technique of flash photolysis to obtain information on short-lived molecular species provided the first evidence of free radicals. His later research utilised the technique to study the minutiae of the light reactions of photosynthesis, with particular regard to possible applications to a hydrogen economy, of which he was a strong advocate.
  He was Assistant Director of the British Rayon Research Association from 1953–4, where he studied the phototendering of dyed cellulose fabrics in sunlight.
  
  wn.com/George_Porter
• 
  Gottfried Leibniz
  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (sometimes von Leibniz) (German pronunciation: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈvɪlhɛlm fɔn ˈlaɪbnɪts] or [ˈlaɪpnɪts]) (July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He wrote in several languages, but primarily in Latin (~40%), French (~30%) and German (~15%).
  
  wn.com/Gottfried_Leibniz
• 
  Hans Sloane
  Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, PRS (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753) was an Irish physician and collector, notable for bequeathing his collection to the United Kingdom which became the foundation of the British Museum. He also introduced drinking chocolate milk to Europe and gave his name to Sloane Square in London, and Sir Hans Slone Square in his birthplace Killyleagh.
  Hans Sloane was born on 16 April 1660 at Killyleagh in County Down, Ireland, His father was the head of a Scottish colony sent over by James I. His father died when he was six years old. Hans Sloane had a brother, William, who purchased South Stoneham House near Southampton in 1740.
  As a youth he collected objects of natural history and other curiosities. This led him to the study of medicine, which he went to London to pursue, directing his attention to botany, materia medica, and pharmacy. His collecting propensities made him useful to John Ray and Robert Boyle. After four years in London he travelled through France, spending some time at Paris and Montpellier, and taking his M.D. degree at the University of Orange in 1683. He returned to London with a considerable collection of plants and other curiosities, of which the former were sent to Ray and utilized by him for his History of Plants.
  
  wn.com/Hans_Sloane
• 
  Henry Hallett Dale
  Sir Henry Hallett Dale, OM, GBE, PRS (9 June 1875 – 23 July 1968) was an English pharmacologist and physiologist. For his study of acetylcholine as agent in the chemical transmission of nerve impulses (neurotransmission) he shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Loewi.
  Henry Hallett Dale was born in Islington, London, to Charles James Dale, a pottery manufacturer from Staffordshire, and his wife, Frances Anne Hallett, daughter of a furniture manufacturer. Henry was the third of seven children, one of whom (his younger brother, Benjamin Dale) became an accomplished composer and warden of the Royal Academy of Music. Henry was educated at the local Tollington Park College and then The Leys School Cambridge (one of the school's houses is named after him) and in 1894 entered Trinity College at Cambridge University, working under the physiologist John Langley. For a few months in 1903 he also studied under Paul Ehrlich in Frankfurt, Germany. Also in 1903, Dale assisted Ernest Starling and William Bayliss in the vivisection of a dog, by removing the dog's pancreas and then killing the dog with a knife, which ultimately led to the events of the Brown Dog affair.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Hallett_Dale
• 
  Henry Oldenburg
  Henry Oldenburg (Heinrich) (c. 1619 – 5 September 1677) was a German theologian known as a diplomat and a natural philosopher. He was one of the foremost intelligencers of Europe of the seventeenth century, with a network of correspondents to rival those of Fabri de Peiresc, Marin Mersenne and Ismaël Boulliau. At the foundation of the Royal Society he took on the task of foreign correspondence, as the first Secretary.
  Born in Bremen, Germany, he trained in theology and received his degree on 2 November 1639. His movements during the 1640s are unclear, but he is thought to have worked as a tutor in England for much of the decade. In 1648 he left England and travelled, returning in the end to Bremen.
  He came to London in 1653, as a diplomat; and settled in England of the Interregnum. He forged a strong relationship with his lifelong patron Robert Boyle, and was tutor to his nephew Richard Jones. Either through John Milton, whom he met early in his mission, or through Lady Ranelagh, sister to Boyle and the mother of Richard Jones, Oldenburg gained entry to an important intellectual circle, including Samuel Hartlib, whose extensive web of correspondents Oldenburg was to take over, John Dury who became his father-in-law, and others such as William Petty.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Oldenburg
• 
  Horace
  Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as almost the only Latin lyrics worth reading, justifying his estimate with the words: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
  Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Sermones and Epistles) and scurrilous iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are playful and yet serious works, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings". Some of his iambic poetry, however, can seem wantonly repulsive to modern audiences.
  His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from Republic to Empire. An officer in the republican army that was crushed at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became something of a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep") but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".
  
  wn.com/Horace
• 
  Humphry Davy
  Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA FGS (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." This paper was central to any chemical affinity theory in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1815 he invented the Davy lamp, which allowed miners to work safely in the presence of flammable gases.
  Davy was born in Penzance in Cornwall, United Kingdom, on 17 December 1778. The parish register of Madron (the parish church) records ‘Humphry Davy, son of Robert Davy, baptized at Penzance, January 22nd, 1779.’ Robert Davy was a wood carver at Penzance, who pursued his art rather for amusement than profit. As the representative of an old family (monuments to his ancestors in Ludgvan Church date as far back as 1635), he became possessor of a modest patrimony. His wife, Grace Millet, came from an old but no longer wealthy family. Her parents died within a few hours of each other from malignant fever, whereupon Grace and her two sisters were adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in Penzance. Robert Davy and his wife became the parents of five children — two boys, Humphry, the eldest, and John, and three girls.
  
  wn.com/Humphry_Davy
• 
  Isaac Newton
  Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727 [NS: 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727]) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived." His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
  
  wn.com/Isaac_Newton
• 
  J. J. Thomson
  Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited with discovering electrons and isotopes, and inventing the mass spectrometer. Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron and for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.
  Joseph John Thomson was born in 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. His mother, Emma Swindells, came from a local textile family. His father, Joseph James Thomson, ran an antiquarian bookshop founded by a great-grandfather from Scotland (hence the Scottish spelling of his surname). He had a brother two years younger than he, Frederick Vernon Thomson.
  His early education took place in small private schools where he demonstrated great talent and interest in science. In 1870 he was admitted to Owens College. Being only 14 years old at the time, he was unusually young. His parents planned to enroll him as an apprentice engineer to Sharp-Stewart & Co., a locomotive manufacturer, but these plans were cut short when his father died in 1873. He moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. In 1880, he obtained his BA in mathematics (Second Wrangler and 2nd Smith's prize) and MA (with Adams Prize) in 1883. In 1884 he became Cavendish Professor of Physics. One of his students was Ernest Rutherford, who would later succeed him in the post. In 1890 he married Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of Sir George Edward Paget, KCB, a physician and then Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He had one son, George Paget Thomson, and one daughter, Joan Paget Thomson, with her. One of Thomson's greatest contributions to modern science was in his role as a highly gifted teacher, as seven of his research assistants and his aforementioned son won Nobel Prizes in physics. His son won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for proving the wavelike properties of electrons.
  
  wn.com/J._J._Thomson
• James Burrow
  Sir James Burrow, FRS, FSA (28 November 1701 – 5 November 1782 at Starborough Castle, Lingfield, Surrey), was a Legal Reporter at Inner Temple, London, and was Vice President and twice briefly President of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1773.
  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7 April 1737, as “A Gentleman well versed in Natural and Mathematical knowledge”. He served as a member of the Royal Society Council from 1752 until 1782, initially as a Vice President from 1752, and then as a Council member. He twice served briefly as a President of the Royal Society, from October to November 1768 following the death of The Earl of Morton, and July to November 1772, following the death of James West.
  As Vice President, he was involved in the Society's activities in organising the observation of the 1761 Transit of Venus, signing the Articles of Agreement between the Council of the Royal Society and Mr Charles Mason and Mr Jeremiah Dixon for their expedition to Bencoolen in the Island of Sumatra.
  
  wn.com/James_Burrow
• James South
  Sir James South (October 1785 – 19 October 1867) was a British astronomer.
  He helped found the Astronomical Society of London, and it was under his name as president of the society from 1831 to 1832 that a petition was successfully submitted to obtain a royal charter in 1831, whereupon it became the Royal Astronomical Society.
  South and John Herschel jointly produced a catalogue of 380 double stars in 1824, reobserving many of the double stars that had been discovered by William Herschel. South then continued and observed another 458 double stars over the following year.
  He won the Copley Medal in 1826 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in that same year. He was knighted in 1831. Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honor.
  Starting around 1826, James South made plans for a new, larger telescope, an equatorially mounted achromatic refractor (a telescope with a lens) in a new observatory. He bought a 12-inch (actually about 11.8) aperture lens from Cauchoix in Paris for about 1000 pounds, large enough to be the biggest achromatic object lens in the world at the time. The telescope for the lens was completed, but dismantled around 1838. The next largest refractor, was at the Markree Observatory, which successfully completed a 13.3 inch refractor (also a Cauchoix of Paris lens) in the 1830s on a Thomas Grubb mount. The problem for James South's telescope was the equatorial mount.
  
  wn.com/James_South
• 
  John Evelyn
  John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer, gardener and diarist.
  Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time (he witnessed the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666). Over the years, Evelyn’s Diary has been over-shadowed by Pepys's chronicles of 17th-century life. Evelyn and Pepys corresponded frequently and much of this correspondence has been preserved.
  Born into a family whose wealth was largely founded on gunpowder production, John Evelyn was born in Wotton, Surrey, and grew up in the Sussex town of Lewes. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and at the Middle Temple. While in London, he witnessed important events such as the execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Having briefly joined the Royalist army, he went abroad to avoid further involvement in the English Civil War. He travelled in Italy, attending anatomy lectures in Padua in 1646 and sending the Evelyn Tables back to London. In 1644, Evelyn visited the English College at Rome, where Catholic priests were trained for service in England. In the Veneto he renewed his acquaintance with the Collector Earl of Arundel and toured the art collections of Venice with Arundel's son and heir. He acquired an ancient Egyptian stela and sent a sketch back to Rome which was published by Athanasius Kircher in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1650), though to Evelyn's annoyance, without acknowledgement to him
  
  wn.com/John_Evelyn
• 
  John Hadley
  John Hadley (16 April 1682 – 14 February 1744) was an English mathematician, inventor of the octant, a precursor to the sextant, around 1730.
  He was born in Bloomsbury, London, to Katherine FitzJames and George Hadley.
  In 1717 he became a member (and later vice-president) of the Royal Society of London. On 6 June 1734 he married Elizabeth Hodges who herself was wealthy. They had one child, a son John born in 1738.
  
  The octant is used to measure the altitude of the Sun or other celestial objects above the horizon at sea. A mobile arm carrying a mirror and pivoting on a graduated arc provides a reflected image of the celestial body overlapping the image of the horizon, which is observed directly. If the position of the object on the sky and the time of the observation are known, it is easy for the user to calculate his own latitude. The octant proved extremely valuable for navigation and displaced the use of other instruments such as the Davis quadrant.
  An American, Thomas Godfrey, independently invented the octant at approximately the same time.
  
  wn.com/John_Hadley
• John Pethica
  John Pethica FRS is Science Foundation Ireland (S.F.I.) professor of material science at Trinity College, Dublin, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. In 2001, Pethica was one of the first ten people awarded an S.F.I. principal investigator award. Following the award, he transferred his activities from Oxford to Dublin. He is also a Vice-President and Physical Secretary of the Royal Society.
  John Pethica was a pupil at St Ambrose College, Trafford, Manchester. He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge in the late 1970s. In 1999 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The 2001 recipient of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of London, Pethica is most noted for his work on the development of atom resolution atomic force microscopy.
  As of February 2005, it has been announced that Pethica will be the director of 'Naughton Institute' which will house CRANN, a new purpose built nanotechnology centre in Trinity College Dublin.
  From October 2007 John Pethica is the Chief Scientist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s National Measurement Institute.
  
  wn.com/John_Pethica
• 
  John Pringle
  Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet, FRS (10 April 1707 – 18 January 1782) was a Scottish physician who has been called the "father of military medicine" (although Ambroise Paré and Jonathan Letterman have also been accorded this sobriquet).
  John Pringle was the youngest son of Sir John Pringle, 2nd Baronet, of Stichill, Roxburghshire (1662–1721), by his spouse Magdalen (d. December 1739), daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Stobs.
  He was educated at St Andrews, at Edinburgh, and at Leiden. In 1730 he graduated with a degree of Doctor of Physics at the last-named university, where he was an intimate friend of Gerard van Swieten and Albrecht von Haller.
  He settled in Edinburgh at first as a physician, but between 1733 and 1744 was also Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University.
  In 1742 he became physician to the Earl of Stair, then commanding the British army in Flanders. About the time of the battle of Dettingen in Bavaria in June 1743, when the British army was encamped at Aschaffenburg, Pringle, through the Earl of Stair, brought about an agreement with the Duc de Noailles, the French commander, that military hospitals on both sides be considered as neutral, immune sanctuaries for the sick and wounded, and should be mutually protected. The International Red Cross, as constituted by the modern Geneva Conventions, developed from this conception and agreement.
  
  wn.com/John_Pringle
• 
  John Wilkins
  John Wilkins FRS (1 January 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an English clergyman, natural philosopher and author, as well as a founder of the Invisible College and one of the founders of the Royal Society, and Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death.
  Wilkins is one of the few persons to have headed a college at both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. He was a polymath, although not one of the most important scientific innovators of the period. His personal qualities were brought out, and obvious to his contemporaries, in reducing political tension in Interregnum Oxford, in founding the Royal Society on non-partisan lines, and in efforts to reach out to religious nonconformists. He was one of the founders of the new natural theology compatible with the science of the time.
  He is particularly known for An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language in which, amongst other things, he proposed a universal language and a decimal system of measure not unlike the modern metric system.
  
  wn.com/John_Wilkins
• 
  Jonathan Swift
  Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irishsatirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
  He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
  Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640-1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick), of Frisby-on-the-Wreake. His father, a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. Swift's father died at Dublin before he was born, and his mother returned to England. He was left in the care of his influential uncle, Godwin, a close friend and confidante of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.
  
  wn.com/Jonathan_Swift
• 
  Joseph Banks
  Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS (24 February [O.S. 13 February] 1743 – 19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771). Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him, Banksia. Approximately 80 species of plants bear Banks's name. Banks was also the leading founder of the African Association, a British organization dedicated to the exploration of Africa, and a member of the Society of Dilettanti, which helped to establish the Royal Academy.
  Banks was born in London to William Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate. Joseph was educated at Harrow School from the age of 9, and at Eton College from 1756; his fellow students included Constantine John Phipps. As a boy Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside, and developed a keen interest in nature, history and botany. When he was 17 he was inoculated with smallpox, but he became ill and did not return to school. In late 1760 he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at Oxford University. At Oxford he matriculated at Christ Church, where his studies were largely focused on natural history rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive botanical instruction, he paid the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764.
  
  wn.com/Joseph_Banks
• 
  Joseph Dalton Hooker
  Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, FRS (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend. He was Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, for twenty years, in succession to his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.
  Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England. He was the second son of the famous botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker and Maria Sarah Turner, eldest daughter of the banker Dawson Turner and sister-in-law of Francis Palgrave. From age seven, Hooker attended his father's lectures at Glasgow University where he was Regius Professor of Botany. Joseph formed an early interest in plant distribution and the voyages of explorers like Captain James Cook. He was educated at the Glasgow High School and went on to study medicine at Glasgow University, graduating M.D. in 1839. This degree qualified him for employment in the Naval Medical Service: he joined renowned polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus.
  
  wn.com/Joseph_Dalton_Hooker
• Julie Maxton
  Julie Maxton is a United Kingdom lawyer and academic.
  Born in Scotland, she studied at University College London, Canterbury University, and the University of Auckland. At Auckland her career was both academic and administrative, with periods as the Dean of Graduate Studies and as an Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Most recently, she was Dean of the Faculty of Law, and held a chair in commercial law, a post she left to come to Oxford. During this time, she was also a practicing barrister, concentrating on appellate cases.
  She holds the position of Executive Director of the Royal Society. She is the first woman to be appointed to the position in its 350 year history. Prior to her appointment at the Royal Society, she held the position of Registrar of the University of Oxford (head of the university's administration); the first woman to hold the office in the 550 years since the position was first established.
  She was married to Major Jim Carson, MBE, the first leader of the New Zealand Army Band and later Head of Music at Auckland Grammar School.
  
  wn.com/Julie_Maxton
• 
  Kathleen Lonsdale
  Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, DBE FRS (née Yardley) (28 January 1903 - 1 April 1971) was an Irish crystallographer, who established the structure of benzene by X-ray diffraction methods in 1929, and hexachlorobenzene by Fourier spectral methods in 1931. During her career she attained a number of firsts for a female scientist including first woman elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, first woman tenured professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
  Lonsdale was born at Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, the tenth child of Harry Yardley, the town postmaster, and Jessie Cameron. Her family moved to England when she was five. She studied at Woodford County High School for Girls, then moved to Ilford County High School for Boys to study mathematics and science because the girls' school did not offer these subjects.
  She earned her B.Sc. from Bedford College for Women in 1922, graduating in physics with an M.Sc. from University College London in 1924. She then joined the crystallography research team headed by William Henry Bragg at the Royal Institution. In 1927 she married Thomas Jackson Lonsdale. They had three children – Jane, Nancy, and Stephen - the latter of whom became a medical doctor and worked for several years in Malawi.
  
  wn.com/Kathleen_Lonsdale
• Marjory Stephenson
  Marjory Stephenson, MBE, FRS (24 January 1885 - 12 December 1948) was a British biochemist. She was one of the first two women (the other being Kathleen Lonsdale) elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945.
  She was the author of the textbook Bacterial Metabolism, and the second president of the Society for General Microbiology. The Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture (now Marjory Stephenson Prize Lecture), was established in 1953 in her memory. This is the Society's principal prize, awarded biennially for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology.
  In 1911 she began research on fat metabolism at University College, London and taught advanced nutrition. During the First World War she worked for the Red Cross, running hospital kitchens in France and a nurses' convalescent home in Salonika. She was mentioned in dispatches and was made MBE for her War effort.
  In 1919 she moved to the biochemistry laboratory of Newnham College and specialized in bacterial metabolic studies.
  
  wn.com/Marjory_Stephenson
• 
  Martyn Poliakoff
  Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS is a British chemist, working on gaining insights into fundamental chemistry and also on developing environmentally acceptable processes and materials. The core themes of his work are supercritical fluids,infrared spectroscopy and lasers. He is a Research Professor in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. His group comprises several members of staff, postdoctoral research fellows, postgraduate students and overseas visitors. As well as carrying out research at the University of Nottingham he is a popular lecturer, teaching a number of modules including green chemistry where much of his research lies.
  He was appointed CBE in the 2008 New Year Honours and is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering. He took up the position of Foreign Secretary and Vice-president of the Royal Society in November 2011.
  Poliakoff was an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1969 and Ph.D. in 1973 under the supervision of J. J. Turner. In 1972 he moved to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and in 1979, took a Lectureship at the University of Nottingham.
  
  wn.com/Martyn_Poliakoff
• 
  Michael Atiyah
  Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE (born 22 April 1929) is a British mathematician working in geometry.
  Atiyah grew up in Sudan and Egypt but spent most of his academic life in the United Kingdom at Oxford and Cambridge, and in the United States at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has been president of the Royal Society (1990–1995), master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1990–1997), chancellor of the University of Leicester (1995–2005), and president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005–2008). He is currently retired, and is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh.
  Atiyah's mathematical collaborators include Raoul Bott, Friedrich Hirzebruch and Isadore Singer, and his students include Graeme Segal, Nigel Hitchin and Simon Donaldson. Together with Hirzebruch, he laid the foundations for topological K-theory, an important tool in algebraic topology, which, informally speaking, describes ways in which spaces can be twisted. His best known result, the Atiyah–Singer index theorem, was proved with Singer in 1963 and is widely used in counting the number of independent solutions to differential equations. Some of his more recent work was inspired by theoretical physics, in particular instantons and monopoles, which are responsible for some subtle corrections in quantum field theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966, the Copley Medal in 1988, and the Abel Prize in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Atiyah
• 
  Neal Stephenson
  Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.
  Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Other labels such as 'baroque' often appear.
  Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired.
  He has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system, and is also cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
  Born on October 31, 1959 in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and hard scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960 and then in 1966 to Ames, Iowa, where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson studied at Boston University, first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.
  
  wn.com/Neal_Stephenson
• 
  Paul Nurse
  Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, PRS (born 25 January 1949) is a British geneticist and cell biologist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells in the cell cycle.
  When cells with nuclei divide, they divide in phases called G1 (growth), S (synthesis), G2 (growth), and M (mitosis). Nurse, Hartwell and Hunt together discovered two proteins, cyclin and CDK (cyclin dependent kinase), that control the transition from one stage to another. These proteins are called checkpoints, because they check whether the cell has divided properly. If the cell doesn't divide correctly, other proteins will attempt to repair it, and if unsuccessful, they will destroy the cell. If a cell divides incorrectly and survives, it can cause cancer and other serious diseases.
  Working in yeast, Nurse identified the gene cdc2, which controls the transition from G1 to S, when the cell grows in preparation for the duplication of DNA, and G2 to M, when the cell divides. Nurse also found the corresponding gene, CDK1, in humans. These genes stop and start cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) by adding or removing phosphate groups.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Nurse
• 
  Robert Hooke
  Robert Hooke FRS (28 July [O.S. 18 July] 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.
  His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but eventually becoming ill and party to jealous intellectual disputes. These issues may have contributed to his relative historical obscurity.
  He was at one time simultaneously the curator of experiments of the Royal Society and a member of its council, Gresham Professor of Geometry and a Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire of London, in which capacity he appears to have performed more than half of all the surveys after the fire. He was also an important architect of his time, though few of his buildings now survive and some of those are generally misattributed, and was instrumental in devising a set of planning controls for London whose influence remains today. Allan Chapman has characterised him as "England's Leonardo".
  
  wn.com/Robert_Hooke
• Robert Moray
  Sir Robert Moray (alternative spellings: Murrey, Murray) (1608 or 1609 – 4 July 1673) was a Scottish soldier, statesman, diplomat, judge, spy, freemason and natural philosopher. He was well known to Charles I and Charles II, and the French cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. He attended the meeting of the 1660 committee of 12 on 28 November 1660 that led to the formation of the Royal Society, and was influential in gaining its Royal Charter and formulating its statutes and regulations.
  Moray was the elder of two sons of a Perthshire laird, Sir Mungo Moray of Craigie. His grandfather was Robert Moray of Abercairney (near Crieff), and his mother was a daughter of George Halket of Pitfirran, Dunfermline.
  Biographers have claimed that Moray attended the University of St Andrews and continued his university education in France, however, Moray himself wrote to his friend Alexander Bruce (who probably had attended St Andrews), jocularly proposing a debate between the 2 men, in which Moray said he would force Bruce to "rub up your St Andrews language", and "one may give you your hands full that was scarcely ever farrer East then Cowper" (Cupar lies several miles to the west of St Andrews). Moray's name does not appear in the matriculation records of the university.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Moray
• 
  Samuel Pepys
  Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, ( /ˈpiːps/; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.
  His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.
  The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.
  Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, to John Pepys (1601–1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys (née Kite; d. 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was recorder and briefly MP for Cambridge in 1625. His father's first cousin, Sir Richard Pepys, was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, and appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, on 25 September 1655.
  
  wn.com/Samuel_Pepys
• 
  Thomas Birch
  Thomas Birch (23 November 1705 – 9 January 1766) was an English historian.
  He was the son of Joseph Birch, a coffee-mill maker, and was born at Clerkenwell.
  He preferred study to business but, as his parents were Quakers, he did not go to the university. Notwithstanding this circumstance, he was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1730 and priest in 1731. As a strong supporter of the Whigs, he gained the favour of Philip Yorke, afterwards lord chancellor and first earl of Hardwicke, and his subsequent preferments were largely due to this friendship. He held successively a number of benefices in different counties, and finally in London. In 1735 he became a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, of which he was secretary from 1752 to 1765. In 1728 he had married Hannah Cox, who died in the following year. Birch was killed on 9 January 1766 by a fall from his horse, and was buried in the church of St Margaret Pattens, London, of which he was then rector. He died, according to his will, "in a full confidence in the Mercy and Goodness of almighty God and with a firm persuasion of a blessed Immortality discoverable by the Light of Nature and confirmed for us Christians by that of Revelation", leaving his books and manuscripts to the British Museum, and a sum of about £500 to increase the salaries of the three assistant librarians.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Birch
• 
  Thomas Henry Huxley
  Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist (anatomist), known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
  Huxley's famous 1860 debate with Samuel Wilberforce was a key moment in the wider acceptance of evolution, and in his own career. Huxley had been planning to leave Oxford on the previous day, but, after an encounter with Robert Chambers, the author of Vestiges, he changed his mind and decided to join the debate. Wilberforce was coached by Richard Owen, against whom Huxley also debated whether humans were closely related to apes.
  Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. He was instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, and fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition.
  In 1869 Huxley coined the term 'agnostic' to describe his own views on theology, a term whose use has continued to the present day (see Thomas Henry Huxley and agnosticism).
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Henry_Huxley
• 
  Thomas Sprat
  Thomas Sprat (1635 – 20 May 1713), English divine, was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670.
  Having taken orders he became a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660. In the preceding year he had gained a reputation by his poem To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector (London, 1659), and he was afterwards well known as a wit, preacher and man of letters.
  His chief prose works are the Observations upon Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England (London, 1665), a satirical reply to the strictures on Englishmen in Samuel de Sorbière's book Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre (Paris, 1664), and a History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1667), which Sprat had helped to found. The History of the Royal Society elaborates the scientific purposes of the academy and outlines some of the strictures of scientific writing that set the modern standards for clarity and conciseness.
  In 1669 he became canon of Westminster Abbey, and in 1670 rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire. He was chaplain to Charles II in 1676, curate and lecturer at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1679, canon of Windsor in 1681, dean of Westminster in 1683 and Bishop of Rochester in 1684.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Sprat
• 
  William Crookes
  Sir William Crookes, OM, FRS (17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube.
  William Crookes was born in London, the eldest son of Joseph Crookes, a tailor of north-country origin, and his second wife, Mary Scott.
  Meteorologist and lecturer at multiple places.
  From 1850 to 1854 he filled the position of assistant in the college, and soon embarked upon original work, not in organic chemistry where the inspiration of his teacher, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, might have been expected to lead him, but on new compounds of selenium. These formed the subject of his first published papers in 1851.
  Leaving the Royal College, he became superintendent of the meteorological department at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford in 1854, and in 1855 was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College.
  Married now and living in London, he was devoted mainly to independent work. After 1880, he lived at 7 Kensington Park Gardens, where all his later work was carried out in his private laboratory. Crookes's life was one of unbroken scientific activity. The breadth of his interests, ranging over pure and applied science, economic and practical problems, and psychical research, made him a well-known personality, and he received many public and academic honours. In 1859, he founded the Chemical News, a science magazine which he edited for many years and conducted on much less formal lines than is usual with journals of scientific societies.
  
  wn.com/William_Crookes
• 
  William Henry Bragg
  Sir William Henry Bragg OM, KBE, PRS (2 July 1862 – 10 March 1942) was a British physicist, chemist, mathematician and active sportsman who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son William Lawrence Bragg – the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics. The mineral Braggite is named after him and his son.
  Bragg was born at Westward near Wigton, Cumberland, the son of Robert John Bragg, a merchant marine officer and farmer, and his wife Mary née Wood, a clergyman's daughter. When Bragg was seven years old, his mother died, and he was raised by his uncle, also named William Bragg, at Market Harborough, Leicestershire. He was educated at the Old Grammar School there, at King William's College on the Isle of Man, and having won an exhibition [scholarship], at Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1884 as third wrangler, and in 1885 was awarded a "first" in the mathematical tripos.
  In 1885, (at the age of 23), Bragg was appointed Elder Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Physics at the University of Adelaide, and started work there early in 1886. Being a skilled mathematician, at that time he had limited knowledge of physics, most of which was in the form of applied mathematics he had learnt at Trinity. Also at that time, there were only about a hundred students doing full courses at Adelaide, of whom less than a handful belonged to the science school, whose deficient teaching facilities Bragg improved by apprenticing himself to a firm of instrument makers. Bragg was an able and popular lecturer; he encouraged the formation of the student union, and the attendance, free of charge, of science teachers at his lectures.
  
  wn.com/William_Henry_Bragg