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Famous Scientists

Have you ever contributed to science? These people did. Can you name them based on the clues?
Quiz by bogomir
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Last updated: February 15, 2020
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First submittedJanuary 29, 2013
Times taken36,973
Average score60.0%
Rating4.56
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Clue
Scientist
His book "On the Origin of Species" is considered the foundational text
of the theory of evolution
Charles Darwin
Formulated the Special and General theories of Relativity
Albert Einstein
When he wasn't trying to turn lead into gold or looking for secret messages in the Bible,
he invented calculus and explained how the planets move
Isaac Newton
Husband and wife duo who discovered Radium and Polonium
Marie and Pierre Curie
First person to see the moons of Jupiter
Galileo Galilei
Ancient Greek considered to be the father of geometry
Euclid
Primatologist who documented the Gombe Chimpanzee War in the 1970s
Jane Goodall
Inventor of the Periodic Table
Dmitri Mendeleev
Russian physiologist who made dogs salivate by ringing a bell
Ivan Pavlov
While sitting in the bath, he figured out how to find the density of an
object by measuring the amount of water it displaces, leading him to run
naked in the streets yelling "Eureka!"
Archimedes
He discovered X-rays in 1895. In his native Germany, they are named after him.
Wilhelm Röntgen
Discovered that heating milk can lengthen its shelf life
Louis Pasteur
Discovered penicillin by accident in 1928
Alexander Fleming
Considered the father of modern chemistry, he was guillotined in the French Revolution
Antoine Lavoisier
Italian polymath who drew "The Vitruvian Man"
Leonardo da Vinci
Determined that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not vice versa
Nicolaus Copernicus /
Aristarchus of Samos
The number e (≈ 2.71828) is named after this Swiss genius
Leonhard Euler
Inventor of the battery. A unit of electrical potential is named after him.
Alessandro Volta
Serbian-American inventor who helped make AC power possible.
Nikola Tesla
The smallest measurable distance, about 1.616255 x 10-35 meters, is named after him
Max Planck
+3
Level 59
Mar 4, 2013
Grrrr, Jane Goodall! I had Dian Fossey stuck in my head and couldn't remember the other primate lady. LOL
+11
Level 83
Nov 11, 2015
Half the population is composed of primate ladies...
+3
Level 48
Dec 3, 2015
Not quite - According to the CIA World Factbook, the 2013 estimate of total world population ratios is 1.01 male to every 1.0 female.
+3
Level 83
Feb 1, 2016
^ That's near enough half. Don't be picky.
+1
Level 69
Sep 25, 2018
Well, only half of the PRIMATE population ;-)
+3
Level 66
Nov 1, 2018
I wouldn't even call that picky, more like pedantic.
+2
Level 77
Nov 13, 2018
Greenland has failed to take into account the shorter lifespan of the male.
+1
Level 68
Dec 17, 2020
Does this ratio include all primates, or just Human primates?
+1
Level 17
Mar 4, 2020
same
+1
Level 33
Mar 5, 2013
Terrific quiz! Well done bogomir!
+2
Level 31
May 18, 2014
I concur! Probably the first quiz where I should have known all the answers but couldn't recall them all.
+4
Level 47
Jul 20, 2013
If you enjoyed this quiz, I made a second one.
+1
Level 54
Mar 6, 2014
Jonas Salk...Mendel...
+2
Level 83
Sep 18, 2017
Except that you would get Mendel by typing in Mendeleev, so it seems superfluous to have both.
+1
Level 62
Oct 8, 2016
aaaagh, I spent the whole quiz trying to remember Fleming and I couldn't remember it. And his discovery saved more lives than all of these other scientists put together!
+1
Level 41
Nov 6, 2016
Actually Tesla was the maker of the X-Ray
+8
Level 62
May 6, 2019
no, he was not
+1
Level 59
Oct 30, 2020
Roentgen discovered X-Rays during an experiment where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass.
+1
Level 74
Feb 16, 2022
The Captain's not entirely wrong. Tesla noticed an effect caused by x-rays while he was photographing Mark Twain a year before Roentgen's discovery and study of x-rays. It was a ghost image of a screw in his camera's lens that shouldn't have been visible, if I recall correctly. That's all Tesla did, though, he certainly wasn't the "maker of the x-ray".
+7
Level 84
Aug 14, 2017
Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham al-Hasan of Basra. 10th Century Arab mathematician considered to be the father of optics and one of the earliest proponents of what is now known as the scientific method.

Would've been cool to see him show up on this one.

+1
Level 55
May 27, 2023
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and many, many others....
+1
Level 71
Mar 2, 2018
I knew it was Jane Good-something! >:(
+1
Level 59
May 6, 2018
She's made so many appearances in my quizzes that I couldn't miss her even if I tried ;D
+1
Level 66
Jan 4, 2019
Nice to see a few that usually arent in other famous scientist quizes. like davinci, tesla, pavlov, volta. (and that the davinci clue wasnt made supereasy, you either know it or you dont with this clue) But very surprised at how low the average is. The average score is 10!! (I have done many quizes by now, some much harder and usually the average isnt this low)
+1
Level 82
Aug 2, 2019
Missed 3 but still got 5 points, by the narrowest of margins.
+1
Level 77
Feb 16, 2020
Missed 3 and got 3 points. Times have changed.
+2
Level 68
Jul 21, 2020
Missed 3 and got 4 points. Times have changed again.
+1
Level 54
Aug 2, 2019
Are you sure that Antoine Lavoisier was the father of modern chemistry? What is "modern" chemistry anyway? I thought of several others who might deserve the title: Haber, Leo Baekeland, Percy Lavon Julian, Nobel, Pauling, etc.
+1
Level 82
Feb 16, 2020
But they're not French or executed
+1
Level 69
Mar 2, 2020
levallois, lavalois, levalois, lavallois.

no, lavoisier

+1
Level 73
Feb 15, 2020
Isn't Euler more of a mathematician rather than a scientist? Same goes with Euclid and Archimedes (though my knowledge is not big when it comes to the ancient Greeks)?
+3
Level 68
Feb 15, 2020
Euler was also a mathematician, but he was a first class scientist who made lots of contributions to physics and astronomy especially. In Euler's time, it didn't really make sense to make a distinction between math and science. That's also true for the ancient philosophers/mathematicians/scientists. One might argue that it still doesn't make sense today.
+1
Level 87
Feb 16, 2020
My trivial correction: the word "considered" actually has 2 e's in it (but not in your Euclidean clue).
+3
Level 63
Feb 18, 2020
Well, mathematics is a form of science. The quiz title may be a bit misleading but in the instructions it says "contributed to science" so they all work imo.
+1
Level 49
Oct 24, 2021
Math isnt science, but but it is its biggest partner
+1
Level 72
Mar 2, 2020
I agree with carry that mathematicians should be included, math is almost a prerequisite for a lot of science and as mentioned a lot of people in history were both. Archimedes discovery was definitely a scientific one, displacement is a scientific concept, not really a mathematical one.
+1
Level 49
Oct 24, 2021
Mathematicians arent scientists, but they sure do contribute to it.
+2
Level 62
Feb 17, 2020
Pavlov didn't actually use a bell - he used a variety of stimuli including a metronome and a buzzer. I suspect the bell fact is so ingrained now that nobody really cares whether it's accurate or not.
+1
Level 79
Mar 2, 2020
Surprised by the high average score, especially for Pavlov.
+1
Level 66
Mar 2, 2020
Somehow I forgot the "Eureka" person!
+1
Level 17
Mar 4, 2020
it's because he isn't famous
+1
Level 76
Feb 18, 2023
I mean, Archimedes is pretty famous.
+1
Level 69
Mar 2, 2020
we call x-rays röntgen rays too.
+1
Level 77
Mar 2, 2020
Accept "Goodell" for "Goodall"?
+1
Level 17
Mar 4, 2020
Who do they take us for ? Quite frankly mate I find it disgusting
+1
Level 74
Aug 24, 2020
Here's the play-by-play:

Me: Electric potential means voltage.

Me: The unit of voltage is the volt.

Me: Volt isn't anybody's name...

Me: Types volt to be sure

Me: Welp, I wonder what they want. Guess I better give up.

+1
Level 77
Dec 14, 2022
I did the same, except i started first with Watt and Ampere.
+2
Level 68
Dec 17, 2020
The other day, in school, we were talking about how stupid Pavlov's dogs are. Then the bell rang, and we all went for lunch.
+1
Level 51
Jun 18, 2021
Thanks to this quiz I found out that e is called "number of Napier" instead of Euler only in Italy
+1
Level 83
Apr 28, 2022
My nit: really should say 'evolution by natural selection'. Lots of people had theories about evolution. Darwin proposed a mechanism by which it can take place.
+1
Level 72
Sep 12, 2023
Great quiz. Definitely one of the most frustrating on here. There must have been ten questions where I had the answer in the back of my mind somewhere. “Ohhh that’s ehhhh, aragh…..what’s name…bleep. On to the next question.” And repeat.
+1
Level 64
Nov 23, 2023
Please accept Mendeleyev, Mendeleiev, and Mendeleef as alternate spellings of Mendeleev.
+1
Level 65
Jan 25, 2024
Planck length isn't actually the smallest possible distance
+1
Level 51
Mar 24, 2024
the question says smallest measurable distance. different thing