12.GALILEO GALILEI(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

12.GALILEO GALILEI 1564 - 1642.

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian scientist who was probably more responsible for the development of the scientific method than any other individual, was born in 1564, in the city of Pisa. As a young man, he studied at the University of Pisa, but dropped out for financial reasons. Nevertheless, he was able, in 1589, to obtain a teaching position at that university. A few years later, he joined the faculty of the University of Padua and remained there until 1610. It was during this period that the bulk of his scientific discoveries were made.

Galileo's first important contributions were made in mechanics. Aristotle had taught that heavy objects fall at a more rapid rate than light objects, and generations of scholars had accepted this assertion on the Greek philosopher's authority. Galileo, however, decided to test it, and through a series of experiments, he soon found that Aristotle had been incorrect. The fact is that heavy and light objects fall at the same velocity except to the extent that they are retarded by the friction of the air. (Incidentally, the tradition that Galileo

11.LOUIS PASTEUR(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

11.LOUIS PASTEUR 1822 - 1895.

The French chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur is generally acknowledged to be the most important single figure in the history of medicine. Pasteur made many contributions to science, but he is most famous for his advocacy of the germ theory of disease and for his development of the technique of preventive inoculation.

Pasteur was born in 1822, in the town of Dole, in eastern France. As a college student in Paris, he studied science. His genius was not evident during his student days; in fact, one of his professors recorded him as "mediocre" in chemistry. However, after receiving his doctorate in 1847, Pasteur soon showed that his professor's judgment had been in error. His research on the mirror-image isomers of tartaric acid made Pasteur a renowned chemist when he was only twenty-six years old.

He then turned his attention to the study of fermentation, and showed that that process is due to the action of certain types of microorganisms. He also demonstrated that the presence of certain other species of microorganisms could produce undesirable products in the fermenting beverages. This soon led him to the idea that some species of microorganisms could pro-duce

10.ALBERT EINSTEIN(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

10.ALBERT EINSTEIN 1879 - 1955.

Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time, is best known for his theory of relativity. There are actually two theories involved: the special theory of relativity, formulated in 1905, and the general theory of relativity, formulated in 1915, which might better be called Einstein's Iaw of gravitation. Both theories are highly complicated, and no attempt will be made to explain them here; however, a few comments on special relativity are in order.

A familiar maxim has it that "everything is relative." Einstein's theory, however, is not a repetition of this philosophical platitude, but rather a precise mathematical statement of the way in which scientific measurements are relative. It is obvious that subjective perceptions of time and space depend on the observer. Before Einstein, however, most people had always believed that behind these subjective impressions were real distances and an absolute time, which accurate instruments could measure objectively. Einstein's theory

9.CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

9.CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 1451-1506.

Columbus, by attempting to find a westward route from Europe to the Orient, inadvertently discovered the Americas, and thereby had a greater influence on world history than he could possibly have anticipated. His discovery, which inaugurated the age of exploration and colonization in the New World, was one of the critical turning points in history. It opened to the people of Europe two new continents for the settlement of their expanding populations, and provided a source of mineral wealth and raw materials that altered the economy of Europe. His discovery led to the destruction of the civilizations of the American Indians. In the long run, it also led to the formation of a new set of nations^'in the western hemisphere, vastly different from the Indian nations which had once inhabited the region, and greatly affecting the nations of the Old World.

The main outlines of Columbus's story are well known. He was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. When he grew up, he became a ship's captain and a skilled navigator. He eventually became convinced that it was possible to find a practical route to East Asia by sailing due west across the Atlantic Ocean, and he pursued this idea with great tenacity.

^"Columbus before Isabella," by Vacslav Brozik.

Eventually, he persuaded Queen Isabella I of Ca stile to finance his

8.JOHANN GUTENBERG(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

8. JOHANN GUTENBERG 1400 - 1468.

Johann Gutenberg is often called the inventor of printing. What he actually did was to develop the first method of utilizing movable type and the printing press in such a way that a large variety of written material could be printed with speed and

accuracy.

 No invention springs full-blown from the mind of a single man, and certainly printing did not. Seals and signet rings, which work on the same principle as block printing, had been used since ancient times. Block printing had been known in China many centuries before Gutenberg, and, in fact, a printed book dating from about 868 has been discovered there. The process was also known in the West before Gutenberg. Block printing makes possible the production of many copies of a given book. However, the process has one major drawback: since a completely new set of woodcuts or plates must be made for each new book, it is impractical for

7.TS'AI LUN(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

7. TS'AI LUN f1.C. 105 A.D.

Ts'ai Lun, the inventor of paper, is a man whose name is prob­ably unfamiliar to most readers. Considering the importance of his invention, the extent to which he has been ignored in the West is indeed surprising. There are major encyclopedias which do not have even brief articles on Ts'ai Lun, and his name is seldom mentioned in standard history textbooks. In view of the obvious importance of paper, this paucity of references to Ts'ai Lun may arouse suspicion that he is a purely apocryphal figure. Careful research, however, makes it absolutely clear that Ts'ai Lun was a real man, an official at the Chinese imperial court, who, in or about the year 105, presented Emperor Ho Ti with samples of paper. The Chinese account of Ts'ai Lun's invention

(which appears in the official history of the Han dynasty) is en­tirely straightforward and believable, without the least hint of magic or legend about it. The Chinese have always credited Ts'ai Lun with

6. ST. PAUL(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

6. ST. PAUL C. 4 A.D. - C. 6 4 A.D.

The apostle Paul, who was a younger contemporary of Jesus, became the foremost proselytizer of the new religion of Christianity. His influence on Christian theology proved to be the most permanent and far-reaching of all Christian writers and thinkers.

Paul, also known as Saul, was born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia (in present-day Turkey), a few years into the Christian era. Although a Roman citizen, he was of Jewish birth, and in his youth he learned Hebrew and received a thorough Jewish education. He also learned the trade of tent making. As a young man, he went to Jerusalem to study under Rabbi Gamaliel, an eminent Jewish teacher. Though Paul was in Jerusalem at the same time as Jesus, it is doubtful whether the two men ever met.

After the death of Jesus, the early Christians were regarded as heretics and suffered persecution. For a while, Paul himself participated in this persecution. However, during a journey to Damascus he had a vision in which Jesus spoke to him, and he was converted to the new faith. It was the turning point of his life. The onetime opponent of Christianity became the most vigorous and influential proponent of the new religion.

Paul spent the rest of his life thinking and writing about