Scientists, Discoveries and Inventions
| Scientist | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Isaac Newton | Laws of motion, gravitation, dispersion of light, reflecting telescope |
| Galileo Galilei | Telescope observations (moons of Jupiter), laws of falling bodies, pendulum |
| Archimedes | Buoyancy (upthrust) principle |
| Albert Einstein | Relativity, E = mc^2, photoelectric effect (Nobel 1921) |
| Michael Faraday | Electromagnetic induction, laws of electrolysis |
| Hans Oersted | Magnetic effect of electric current |
| Alessandro Volta | Voltaic cell (battery) |
| Luigi Galvani | Animal electricity |
| Georg Ohm | Ohm's law |
| James Watt | Improved the steam engine |
| Thomas Edison | Phonograph, electric bulb (carbon filament) |
| Graham Bell | Telephone (1876) |
| Marconi | Radio (wireless telegraphy) |
| J. L. Baird | Television |
| Wright brothers | First aeroplane (1903) |
| Roentgen | X-rays (1895) |
| Becquerel | Radioactivity |
| Marie Curie | Polonium and radium; two Nobel Prizes (physics, chemistry) |
| J. J. Thomson | Electron |
| Rutherford | Nucleus, proton |
| Chadwick | Neutron |
| Niels Bohr | Atomic model |
| Dalton | Atomic theory |
| Mendeleev | Periodic table |
| Lavoisier | Law of conservation of mass; "Father of Modern Chemistry"; named oxygen |
| Priestley | Discovered oxygen |
| Cavendish | Hydrogen; value of G |
| Robert Boyle | Boyle's law (gas pressure and volume) |
| Avogadro | Avogadro's hypothesis |
| Alfred Nobel | Dynamite; Nobel Prizes |
| Alexander Fleming | Penicillin (1928) |
| Edward Jenner | Smallpox vaccine |
| Louis Pasteur | Germ theory, pasteurisation, rabies vaccine |
| Robert Koch | TB and cholera bacteria |
| Ronald Ross | Malaria parasite in mosquitoes |
| William Harvey | Blood circulation |
| Landsteiner | Blood groups |
| Banting and Best | Insulin |
| Darwin | Natural selection |
| Mendel | Laws of heredity |
| Watson and Crick | DNA double helix |
| Hooke | Cell |
| Robert Brown | Nucleus; Brownian motion |
| Linnaeus | Binomial nomenclature |
| Stephen Hawking | Black holes, A Brief History of Time |
Indian scientists
| Scientist | Contribution |
|---|---|
| C. V. Raman | Raman effect (scattering of light), Nobel Prize in Physics 1930 (first Asian in science); National Science Day: 28 February |
| J. C. Bose | Crescograph; showed plants respond to stimuli; wireless waves |
| Srinivasa Ramanujan | Mathematician; National Mathematics Day: 22 December |
| Homi J. Bhabha | Father of the Indian nuclear programme |
| Vikram Sarabhai | Father of the Indian space programme |
| A. P. J. Abdul Kalam | Missile Man, 11th President, SLV-III and Agni |
| S. Chandrasekhar | Chandrasekhar limit (white dwarf mass); Nobel Prize 1983 |
| Har Gobind Khorana | Genetic code; Nobel Prize 1968 |
| M. S. Swaminathan | Green Revolution |
| Meghnad Saha | Ionisation equation |
| S. N. Bose | Bose-Einstein statistics; boson |
| Salim Ali | Birdman of India |
| Aryabhata | Zero, value of pi, Aryabhatiya; first Indian satellite named after him |
| Sushruta | Father of Surgery (plastic surgery) |
| Charaka | Father of Indian Medicine, Charaka Samhita |
| Venkatraman Ramakrishnan | Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 (ribosome structure) |
Keep practising
Notes are only half the work. Test yourself with questions and discuss doubts with other aspirants.
Prepared for exam revision from the NCERT Science textbooks for Classes 6 to 10 and standard sources. Space missions, awards and records change, so check official sources for recent facts. Found a mistake? Tell us.