Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī

Maybe we've often heard the term algorithm, the large Indonesian dictionary algorithm means a systematic procedure to solve mathematical problems in limited steps. Actually the name of the algorithm is taken from the nickname of al-Khwarizmi inventor of a Muslim mathematician who was born in Khawarizm, Uzbekistan.

Al-Khwarizmi (Khawarizm, Uzbekistan, 194 H/780 M-Baghdad, 266 H/850 M). Muslim scientists, experts in the field of mathematics, astronomy, and geography. His full name was Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi and in the west he is better known by the name Algoarisme or Algorisme.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton considered by many to be a creative genius and the greatest scientist who ever lived, was born in 1642, the year of farmers in Woolsthorpe, England. His father has died before his birth, and his mother soon remarried and moved to a neighboring town, leaving young Isaac in the care of his grandmother. Although he was not an especially good student in his youth, he did show a real mechanical aptitude. He constructed perfectly functioning mechanical toys, including a water-powered wooden clock and miniature wheat mill with a fat mouse acting as both power source and product consumer.

Perhaps due to this mechanical skill and the fact that he was a better student than farmer, it was decided to sent him to Cambridge University when he was nineteen. Before leaving Woolsthorpe, he became enganged to a local girl. However, even though he remembered her affectionately all his life, he withdrew from her and never married.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564. His father was a noble of Florence, and Galileo was well-educated. He studied medicine at the University of Oisa until he became distracted by two different events. One day while daydreaming in church, he watched a lamp swing back and forth as a result of its being pulled aside for lighting. He timed the swings with his pulses and noticed that each lasted the same amount of time, even though the swings were decreasing in size. Later he attended a lecture on geometry at the university. As a result, Galileo's interest in physics and mathematics was aroused, and he changed his major.

At age twenty five, Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, where he began experimenting with motion, especially motion due to gravity. His finding contradicted the accepted teachings of Aristotle. Other professor were shocked that Galileo would consider contradicting Aristotle and refused to even consider Galileo's experimental evidence. Science at that time was based solely on 'logical' thingking, with no attempt to support conclusion by experimentation. Galileo was forced to resign his position, and he became a professor at the University of Padua, where he pursuits found greater acceptance.

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes's family was rather well off, and he inherited enough money to be able to afford a life of study and travel. At age of eight, he was sent  away to a Jesuit school where, at the first due to health problems, he was allowed to stay in bed all morning. He maintained this habit all his life and felt that his morning meditative hours were his most productive.

At the age of sixteen, he left school and went to paris, were he studied mathematics. Four years later, he become a professional soldier, enlisting in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau adn later in the Bavarian army. He found that a soldier's life, though busy and dangerous at times, provided him with sufficient leisure time to continue his studies.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Melville Bell lectured at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), at the University of London, and in Boston. He developed a system of visible speech for the deaf, with symbols for every sound of human voice.

Alexander Graham Bell, the son of Alexander Melville Bell and the husband of a deaf woman, had his own school of vocal physiology in Boston and was very active in issues related to education of the deaf. In 1875, he conceived of the idea of the telephone. On March 10, 1876, he used his experimental apparatus to transmit the now famous "Watson, come here, I want you" to his assistant. Later that same year, the telephone was introduced to the world at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. The Bell Telephone Company was organized a year later.

Willard Frank Libby

Tritium and radiocarbon (Collected papers / Willard F. Libby)

Willard Frank Libby developed the radiocarbon dating technique in the mid-1940s. Carbon-14 was known to exist in nature, but little was known of its origins and properties. In 1939, Libby discovered that cosmic rays interacting with nitrogen at high altitudes produced a rapid formation of carbon-14. This high-altitude formation is the basis of the claim that the current ratio of carbon-14 and carbon-12 has been constant throughout history.

While working at the Enrico Fermi Institute of Nucreal Studies in Chicago, Libby was able to artificially produce the carbon-14 and accurately determine its half-life. In addition, he devised a relatively simple device that measures the amount of carbon-14 in an organic sample. Before the creation of this device, measuring carbon-14 was a very expensive and difficult process. Libby's method made radiocarbon dating a practical possibility and revolutionized the field of archeology and geology.

Marie Curie

Born Marie Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie moved to Paris and enrolled as a student of physics at the Sorbonne in 1891. While researching the magnetic properties of various steel alloys, she me Pierre Curie, and they married in 1895. In the following year, Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium. As a team, the Curies further investigated uranium and discovered the elements radium and polonium (named after Marie's native country). They also discovered that diseased, tumor-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells when exposed to radium, laying the groundwork for modern radiation therapy. The word radioactivity was coined by Madame Curie.