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Draft:List of Scottish Scientists

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This is a list of Scottish scientists

List[edit]

  • John Napier (1550-1617), mathematician, inventor of Logarithm and developer of Decimal numbers
  • Joseph Black (1728-1799), The physicist and chemist is especially known for his discovery of carbon dioxide and magnesium. He was also the first to introduce the concept of intrinsic heat. Black contributed to James Watt's invention of the steam engine by measuring the energy required to heat the cylinder of steam-powered air engines.
  • Duns Scotus (1265-1308), philosopher, Medieval philosopher who worked and contributed to Philosophy, Metaphysics, and the existence of God
  • Michael Scots (1175-1232), mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, philosopher, The translator translated many Arabic works into Latin.
  • James Gregory (1638-1675), mathematician and astronomer, Inventor of the Gregorian telescope
  • David Gregory, mathematician and astronomer, He contributed to the development of the infinite series.
  • Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), mathematician, He contributed to the development of Geometry and Algebra and developed the Maclaurin series, which was similar to the Taylor series.
  • Thomas Charles Hope (1766-1844), chemist, physician, He proved the existence of the element Strontium and gave his name to the Hope Experiment, which showed that water reaches its maximum density at 4 °C
  • James Stirling (1652-1770), mathematician, Stirling numbers, Stirling permutations, and Stirling's approximation are named after him. He also proved the correctness of Isaac Newton's classification of cubic plane curves.
  • John Craig (1663-1731), mathematician
  • Robert Simson (1687-1749), mathematician and professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow. The Simson line is named after him.
  • Alexander Wilson (1711-1786), surgeon, type-founder, astronomer, mathematician and meteorologist. He was the first scientist to use kites in meteorological investigations.
  • David Hume (1711-1776), He was an enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayist. Today he is best known for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. In Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume sought to create a naturalistic science of humanity that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume opposed the existence of innate ideas, arguing that all human knowledge arises solely from experience. This led him to be an empiricist who called him Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley.
  • Adam Smith (1723-1790), Scottish economist and philosopher, who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics" or "The Father of Capitalism", he wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
  • James Hutton (1726-1797), physician, geologist, natural historian, chemical manufacturer and experimental agronomist. He gained recognition as a physicist by publishing a work called "World Theory". He is considered the father of modern geology.
  • James Watt (1736-1819), inventor, engineer, mathematician, inventor of the steam engine and engine, and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution
  • Daniel Rutherford (1749-1819), chemist, botanist, physician, In 1772, nitrogen became famous for the isolation of Nitrogen.
  • Robert Brown (1773-1858), was a pioneering botanist who collected many specimens from Australia in the first half of the 19th century. Brown was born in Montrose, Scotland. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was classmates with Thomas Dick. He joined the army as a surgeon in 1795
  • Dawid Brewster (1781-1868), physicist, In science, he is mostly remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, including the study of the polarization of light and the discovery of the Brewster angle. He studied the double refraction of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity, thus making the field of optical mineralogy In science, Inventor of the kaleidoscope
  • Mary Somerville (1780-1872), She was a scientist and a polymath (sage) and a pioneer in the participation of women in science. Somerville, who studied mathematics and astronomy, was also the first woman to be nominated for the Royal Astronomical Society, along with Caroline Herschel. He pioneered the discovery of the planet Neptune.
  • Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), He is noted for investigating and describing the Silurian, Devonian and Permian systems.
  • Thomas Graham (1805-1869), chemist, chemist known for his pioneering work in dialysis and the diffusion of gases. He is regarded as one of the founders of colloid chemistry.
  • James Young (1811-1883), was a Scottish chemist best known for his method of distilling paraffin from coal and oil shales. He is often referred to as Paraffin Young.
  • James Young Simpson (1811-1870), was a Scottish obstetrician and a significant figure in the history of medicine. He was the first physician to demonstrate the anaesthetic properties of chloroform on humans and helped to popularise its use in medicine.
  • James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician. His most important achievement was his proof of his Maxwell's equations (4 equations) that electricity and magnetism, which had previously seemed unrelated to each other in classical electromagnetic theory, were the same thing. These equations are used in the fields of electricity, magnetics, and optics. Maxwell's Equations simplified the classical equations and laws in this field. Maxwell's work in the electromagnetic field, the first by Isaac Newton
  • Thomas Henderson (1798-1844), astronomer, He was the first to measure the distance to Alpha Centauri, the main component of the star system closest to Earth, the first to determine the parallax of a fixed star, and the first to determine a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. First Royal Astronomer for Scotland.
  • William Rankine (1820-1872), mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. He developed the Rankine scale, an equivalent to the Kelvin scale of temperature, but in degrees Fahrenheit rather than Celsius
  • Alexander Buchan (1828-1901), meteorologist, oceanographer and botanist and is credited with establishing the weather map as the basis of modern weather forecasting. He also proposed the theory of Buchan Spells.
  • Peter Tait (1832-1901), He was a Scottish mathematical physicist and an early pioneer of thermodynamics. He is best known for his mathematical physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-authored with Lord Kelvin, and for his early research on knot theory.
  • Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), physicist and engineer, inventor of the telephone
  • William Ramsay (1852-1916), was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air" along with his collaborator, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for their discovery of argon. After the two men identified argon, Ramsay investigated other atmospheric gases. His work in isolating argon, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon led to the development of a new section of the periodic table.




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