Italian artist, engineer, and scientist

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal....

American inventor

Thomas Edison was an American inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world-record 1,093 patents. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial research laboratory. Edison was the quintessential...

German astronomer

Johannes Kepler German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the...

prime minister of Cape Colony

Cecil Rhodes was a financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890–96) and organizer of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated...

American industrialist

Henry Ford was an American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. (Read Henry Ford’s 1926 Britannica essay on mass production.) Ford spent most of his life...

French chemist and microbiologist

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist who was one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. Pasteur’s contributions to science, technology, and medicine are nearly without...

Swiss architect

Le Corbusier was an internationally influential Swiss architect and city planner, whose designs combine the functionalism of the modern movement with a bold sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the...

German scientist and philosopher

Hermann von Helmholtz was a German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement...

Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician

Galileo was an Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the...

French philosopher and scientist

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s...

American architect

Daniel Burnham was an American architect and urban planner whose impact on the American city was substantial. He was instrumental in the development of the skyscraper and was noted for his highly successful...

French chemist

Antoine Lavoisier was a prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored...

German physicist and philosopher

Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and philosopher who discovered (1925) a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics...

Greek mathematician

Archimedes was the most famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. He is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing...

Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin was a Scottish engineer, mathematician, and physicist who profoundly influenced the scientific thought of his generation. Thomson, who was knighted and raised to the peerage...

American mathematician

John von Neumann was a Hungarian-born American mathematician. As an adult, he appended von to his surname; the hereditary title had been granted his father in 1913. Von Neumann grew from child prodigy...

English clergyman and scientist

Joseph Priestley was an English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry. He is...

American businessman

Steve Jobs was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what...

British-German astronomer

William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, the founder of sidereal astronomy for the systematic observation of the stars and nebulae beyond the solar system. He discovered the planet Uranus,...

British artist and author

William Morris was an English designer, craftsman, poet, and early socialist, whose designs for furniture, fabrics, stained glass, wallpaper, and other decorative arts generated the Arts and Crafts movement...

British social reformer

Robert Owen was a Welsh manufacturer turned reformer, one of the most influential early 19th-century advocates of utopian socialism. His New Lanark mills in Lanarkshire, Scotland, with their social and...

British-American inventor

Alexander Graham Bell was an inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments, during a life lived in Canada and the United States, were the invention of the telephone (patented...

American engineer

Theodore von Kármán was a Hungarian-born American research engineer best known for his pioneering work in the use of mathematics and the basic sciences in aeronautics and astronautics. His laboratory at...

American engineer

Vannevar Bush was an American electrical engineer and administrator who developed the Differential Analyzer and oversaw government mobilization of scientific research during World War II. The son of a...

British mathematician and logician

Alan Turing was a British mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer...

American industrialist and inventor

George M. Pullman was an American industrialist and inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, a luxurious railroad coach designed for overnight travel. In 1894, workers at his Pullman’s Palace Car Company...

German mathematician

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician, generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for his contributions to number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary...

French military engineer

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban was a French military engineer who revolutionized the art of siege craft and defensive fortifications. He fought in all of France’s wars of Louis XIV’s reign (1643–1715)....

British chemist

Sir Humphry Davy was an English chemist who discovered several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium) and compounds, invented the miner’s safety lamp, and became one of the greatest exponents...

Italian physicist

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian physicist and inventor of a successful wireless telegraph, or radio (1896). In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with German physicist Ferdinand...

American inventor

Robert Fulton was an American inventor, engineer, and artist who brought steamboating from the experimental stage to commercial success. He also designed a system of inland waterways, a submarine, and...

Swedish inventor

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other more powerful explosives and who also founded the Nobel Prizes. Alfred Nobel was the fourth son of Immanuel...

American rocket scientist and chemist

Jack Parsons was an American rocket scientist and chemist who made significant contributions to the development of rocket technology and missile systems and was a cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory...

Finnish architect

Alvar Aalto was a Finnish architect, city planner, and furniture designer whose international reputation rests on a distinctive blend of modernist refinement, indigenous materials, and personal expression...

English architect and artist

Inigo Jones was a British painter, architect, and designer who founded the English classical tradition of architecture. The Queen’s House (1616–19) at Greenwich, London, his first major work, became a...

WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange is an Australian computer programmer who founded the media organization WikiLeaks. Practicing what he called “scientific journalism”—i.e., providing primary source materials with a minimum...

Russian author and scientist

Mikhail Lomonosov was a Russian poet, scientist, and grammarian who is often considered the first great Russian linguistics reformer. He also made substantial contributions to the natural sciences, reorganized...

Scottish inventor

James Watt was a Scottish instrument maker and inventor whose steam engine contributed substantially to the Industrial Revolution. Watt was also known for patenting the double-acting engine and an early...

American chemist

Irving Langmuir was an American physical chemist who was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry.” He was the second American and the first...

German printer

Johannes Gutenberg was a German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from movable type. Elements of his invention are thought to have included a metal alloy that could melt readily...

Polish-born French physicist

Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903...

American business executive

Larry Ellison (born August 17, 1944, New York City, New York) is an American businessman and entrepreneur who cofounded the software company Oracle Corporation (ORCL) and was its chief executive officer...

American engineer

Igor Sikorsky was a pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. Sikorsky’s father was a physician and professor of psychology. His mother also was a physician...

Italian automobile manufacturer

Enzo Ferrari was an Italian automobile manufacturer, designer, and racing-car driver whose Ferrari cars often dominated world racing competition in the second half of the 20th century. Enzo Ferrari was...

Ṣafavid shah of Persia

ʿAbbās I was the shah of Persia from 1588 to 1629, who strengthened the Safavid dynasty by expelling Ottoman and Uzbek troops from Persian soil and by creating a standing army. He also made Eṣfahān the...

American engineer and automobile manufacturer

Walter P. Chrysler was an American engineer and automobile manufacturer, founder of Chrysler Corporation. (Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.) Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry...

American artist and inventor

Samuel F.B. Morse was an American painter and inventor who developed an electric telegraph (1832–35). In 1838 he and his friend Alfred Vail developed the Morse Code. He was the son of the distinguished...

American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer

Howard Hughes was an American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer and director who acquired enormous wealth and celebrity from his various ventures but was perhaps better known for his eccentricities,...

American engineer

James B. Eads was an American engineer best known for his triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Mo. (1874). Another project provided a year-round navigation channel for New...

German-born American engineer

Wernher von Braun was a German engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany and after World War II in the United States. Braun was born into a...