Curated playlist
Fluid dynamicists
- Leonardo da VinciLeonardo da Vinci wrote most of his notes in mirror-image cursive, right to left.
- James Prescott JouleJames Joule used a falling weight to spin a paddle wheel in water. The rising temperature showed work turning into heat.
- Leonhard EulerLeonhard Euler kept producing math after going almost totally blind. In 1775 he wrote about one paper a week.
- Johann BernoulliJohann Bernoulli went to university to study medicine, not mathematics. His father wanted him in the spice trade.
- Isaac NewtonIsaac Newton was born so small, he said, that he could have fit inside a quart mug.
- John von NeumannJohn von Neumann's father asked Theodore von Kármán to talk his son out of mathematics.
- ArchimedesArchimedes' lost writings turned up beneath a 13th-century book of prayers. The parchment held seven of his works.
- Evgeny LifshitzEvgeny Lifshitz was only the second person to pass Lev Landau's Theoretical Minimum exam. Just 43 people ever did.
- Lev LandauPhysicist Lev Landau was jailed in 1938 over a leaflet comparing Stalinism to Nazism. A letter to Stalin freed him.
- Ernst MachEinstein called Ernst Mach a precursor of general relativity, yet Mach apparently rejected the theory.