My Favorite Scientist Project---Due Date:
You will pick a scientist who was important to the progress of science, and asked to prepare a biography following the outline given. Try to learn as much as possible about the scientific, political, and social climate in which the scientist lived
Part 1: The Paper
Format / Grading:
Total Points: 60 TEST POINTS (20 for the paper, 20 for part 2, 20 for Part 3)
Length: 1 page
Font: no larger than 12 pt
Margins: no greater than one inch
Sources: at least 2
Bibliography: formatted correctly in MLA style (see easybib.com)
Personal Background
o Date and place of birth, date and cause of death
o Family background, schooling
o What influenced his/her career choice and/or work?
o What kind of involvement did this person have outside the scientific community? Was he/she involved in politics or other community activities?
Time Period
o What was going on during the time period in which your scientist worked?
o What was the social, economic and political climate like?
Contribution to History
o Significance of the biologist’s work to the history of science
o Influence of his work by or on other scientists
o How much of his/her work was “luck?”
o Controversy surrounding his/her work or ideas and who disagreed with the scientist
o Awards or recognition received
o Were his/her ideas accepted by the scientific community?
Part 2: The Mini-Poster
This is the fun part - you will design a Mini Poster to Advertise your scientist! It should be half of a normal sheet of colored card stock cut in a unique shape---heart, triangle, gravestone, etc. On the front of the “poster” you need to have the scientist’s name, Greatest achievement or what he/she is known for, country of citizenship, and a motto about the biologist. The real challenge in this project is to see just how creative and original you can be! Think about an appropriate (motto) – for example, for the inventor of the Bunsen burner…Robert Bunsen: His flame will never go out.
**The person with the best poster wins a prize and it will be voted on by your peers.
Part 3: Presentation--You will do a short presentation on your scientist. You will take 2-3 minutes to speak about what area the science did he/she focus on. Talk about at least 3 of his/her major accomplishments. Lastly, why you chose this scientist. Show your poster!
FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS! Choose one (or find one on your own) and then tell the teacher so there are no duplicates
1. George Washington Carver (1864-1963)- An American scientists, educator, botanist and inventor. Carver made more than three hundred different products from the peanut. Carver devised over 100 products using one of these crops—the peanut—including dyes, plastics and gasoline. He died in 1943. George also found 118 ways to make industrial materials from sweet potatoes, like rubber. He also made five hundred dyes from various southern plants.
2. Raymond Dart (1893-1988). Pioneering paleoanthropologist. Discoverer of the Taung Child, he was the first scientist to provide hard evidence that humans first evolved in Africa.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882). English naturalist. One of the most famous scientists who ever lived. His book, On the Origin of Species, convinced many of the reality of evolution. Remembered for the theory of natural selection, the credit for which he had to share with Alfred Wallace, who formulated it independently.
3. Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002). Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist whose experiments provided crucial information allowing Watson, Crick, and Wilkins to elucidate the double-helix structure of DNA.
4. Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). French naturalist and zoologist. Founder of the fields of vertebratepaleontology and comparative anatomy. One of the most prolific authors of scientific literature in the history of biology.
5. Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) Famous For: Created the process of pasteurization for treating milk and wine As one of the founders of medical microbiology, Louis Pasteur’s education in the field of chemistry and microbiology may be credited with his success. His germ theory of disease became the catalyst to his process we know as pasteurization. 6. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) Famous For: Coined the term “cell” Born on 1635 in the Isle of Wight, England, Robert Hooke received his higher education at Oxford University where he studied physics and chemistry. His work included the application what is known today as Hooke’s law, his use of microscopy, and for the discovery of the “cell” in 1665 using cork and a microscope.
7. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Famous For: Modern Genetics When he wrote “Experiments on Plant Hybridization”, he paved the way for biology students to study genetic traits in peas. During his experiments, Gregor found that a specific trait would be dominant over other traits in the same species. This became to be recognized as the Mendelian inheritance.
8. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) Famous For: Theory of Evolution After attending the University of Cambridge and taking up medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Darwin was considered a naturalist. As a biologist, he proposed the concept that “all species of life” came from a single source. His theory of evolution marked the beginning of the discussion on natural selection.
9. Francis Crick and James Watson—developed a 3-D view of the double helix of DNA
10. Louis and Mary Leakey The paleoanthropologist team that convinced the world that humans first evolved in Africa.
11. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). Swedish botanist, zoologist, and taxonomist. Creator of the modern system of scientific nomenclature. Early evolutionary theorist
12. Barbara McClintock (1902-1992). American cytogeneticist. One of the foremost biologists of the twentieth century. During her research on color mosaicism in maize in the early 1940s, she discovered transposons, mobile genetic elements that can move from one location to another within the genome. McClintock produced the first genetic map for maize. Also a pioneer in theory, she proposed the idea of gene regulation — and showed how it could be affected by transposition — long before such a notion was accepted or even considered by other biologists.
13. Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799). Showed light is essential to plant respiration and further demonstrated that the gas released by plants is oxygen 14. Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958) German-born American geneticist. First biologist to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. Although one of the most prominent geneticists of his era, Goldschmidt was rejected by his colleagues when he proposed a saltational theory of evolution.
15. Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002). American paleontologist, who, along with Niles Eldredge, revived thesaltationist tradition in biology by pointing out that the typical fossil form comes into being rapidly and remains largely the same thereafter, right up to the time of extinction ("punctuated equilibrium").
16. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Prussian naturalist and scientific explorer. As a public personification of science, Humboldt was to the nineteenth century, what Einstein was to the twentieth.
17. Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945). American geneticist. Elucidated the connection between meiosis and genetic segregation. His discoveries about genes and their locations on chromosomes helped make biology into an experimental science. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1933).
18. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873). British paleontologist. Namer of the Devonian and Cambrian periods. One of the foremost scientists of his era.
19. Hamilton O. Smith (1931-). American microbiologist. Shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Werner Arber and Daniel Nathans for the discovery of restriction endonucleases, which led to the development of recombinant DNA technology.
20. William Smith (1769-1839). Established from geological evidence, independently ofCuvier, the fact that evolution has occurred over time.
21. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564). The founder of modern human anatomy. Born in Brussels near a hill where condemned criminals were tortured, executed, and left to rot, Vesalius must have been familiar with the details of human anatomy even as a child. As a medical professor, he went on to make the acquaintance intimate by handling and dissecting the bodies himself —
22. Alfred Wallace (1823-1913). British naturalist. Developed the theory of natural selection independently of Charles Darwin. One of the most creative, adventurous, and amiable biologists of the 19th century. 23. John Xantus (1825-1894) Hungarian naturalist. Collected and identified many new animals and plants in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico.
24. Norton Zinder (1928-) American biologist. Discoverer of bacterial transduction, the transfer of genetic material from one bacterium to another by bacteriophages. This process is now much used in the intentional genetic transformation of bacteria.
25. René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757). French scientist. Made important contributions to many fields of biology, especially entomology, ornithology, and agriculture.
26. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931)Williams was born in Pennsylvania and attended medical school in Chicago, where he received his M.D. in 1883. He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, and he performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893.
27. Dr. Charles Richard Drew (1904-1950)Born in Washington, D.C., Drew earned advanced degrees in medicine and surgery from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 1933 and from Columbia University in 1940. He is particularly noted for his research in blood plasma and for setting up the first blood bank.
28. Charles Henry Turner (1867-1923)A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner received a B.S. (1891) and M.S. (1892) from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. (1907) from the University of Chicago. A noted authority on the behavior of insects, he was the first researcher to prove that insects can hear.
29. William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician. He was the first to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and body by the heart, though earlier writers had provided precursors of the theory.[1][2] After his death the William Harvey Hospital was constructed in the town of Ashford, several miles from his birthplace of Folkestone.
30. Anton van Leeuwenhoek (October 24, 1632 – August 26, 1723) was a Dutch tradesman and scientist. He is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist. He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology. 31. Louis Pasteur ( / ˈ l uː i p æ ˈ s t ɜr /, French: [lwi pastœʁ]; December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist who is well known for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases, and his discoveries have saved countless lives ever since.
32. Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine.
33. Benjamin Franklin—inventor and discovery of many different scientific phenomena like electricity, bifocal, the stove, etc.
34. Leonardo Da Vinci—accurate accounting of the human anatomy, plant anatomy, geology and astronomy to name a few
35. Jane Goodall—research chimpanzees and determined their social and cultural habits and activities
36. Rosalind Franklin--Genetics
37. Marie Curie--Chemistry
38. Albert Einstein--Physics
39. Elizabeth Blackwell—first woman to graduate from medical school
40. Maria Mitchell
41. Florence Nightingale--Nursing
42. John Audubon—ornithology—study of birds 43. Dr, Henry Lee—Forensic scientist
44. Clara Barton—founder of the American Red Cross
45. Barbara McClintock--Biology
46. Michio Kaku—physicist
47. Neil DeGrasse Tyson—astronomer; science educator
48. Ben Carson--neuropediatrician
49. David Ho—HIV/Aids researcher
50. Ellen Ochoa-female astronaut
51. Albert Vinicio Baez--physicist
52. Dr. Jacinto Convit—physician and physicist