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Curated playlist

Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

  • Charles DarwinCharles Darwin likened confessing his theory to confessing a murder. He told botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1844.
  • Peter Hedström (sociologist)Sociologist Peter Hedström argues social patterns need explaining by the mechanisms underneath them.
  • Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus exposed a mayor's prized seven-headed hydra as a fake. He and his student had to flee Hamburg in a hurry.
  • Joseph-Louis LagrangeAt seventeen, mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange read a paper by Edmond Halley and was seized by mathematics.
  • Robert KochRobert Koch announced the cause of tuberculosis in 1882, and hardly anyone reacted.
  • Claude Louis BertholletClaude Louis Berthollet argued for decades against every other leading chemist, and was partly right.
  • Leonhard EulerLeonhard Euler kept producing math after going almost totally blind. In 1775 he wrote about one paper a week.
  • Thomas EdisonThomas Edison clamped his teeth into a piano to hear it. He was deaf in one ear and barely heard from the other.
  • Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley isolated oxygen but never accepted what it meant.
  • Erik Gustaf GeijerA poem called The Viking helped Swedes see their ancestors as heroes. Geijer printed it in Iduna's first issue.
  • Marc Isambard BrunelWithin 15 weeks of its opening, one million people had walked through the Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel ever built under a river. Its builder was Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, a French-British engineer best known for the work he did in…
  • Lord KelvinIn 1845, at the University of Cambridge, an examiner named Robert Leslie Ellis is said to have sized up a graduating student. He reportedly told a fellow examiner, "You and I are just about fit to mend his pens." The student was William…
  • Carl Friedrich GaussAt nineteen, Carl Friedrich Gauss proved a 17-sided polygon could be drawn with just a compass and straightedge.
  • Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt climbed Chimborazo in 1802, gasping and bleeding from his gums.
  • Charles XIV JohnBernadotte threw his epaulettes on the ground to stop his retreating soldiers. They picked them up and counter-attacked.
  • Humphry DavyIn 1799, chemist Humphry Davy breathed sixteen quarts of laughing gas for nearly seven minutes.
  • Max BornMax Born won his 1954 Nobel Prize for work he finished nearly three decades earlier.
  • Dmitri MendeleevDmitri Mendeleev missed a Nobel Prize in 1906 by a single vote. The Swedish academy chose Henri Moissan instead.
  • Michael FaradayMichael Faraday turned down a knighthood to stay plain Mr Faraday. He also twice declined to lead the Royal Society.
  • Joseph FourierJoseph Fourier's heat research led to the first scientific proposal of the greenhouse effect.
  • Svante ArrheniusSvante Arrhenius nearly failed his doctorate, then won a Nobel Prize for it.
  • Thomas TelfordThomas Telford sealed the iron joints of his Pontcysyllte Aqueduct with boiling sugar and lead.
  • Pierre-Simon LaplaceJupiter and Saturn seemed to be drifting off course until Laplace solved it. Newton, Euler and Lagrange had all failed.
  • Viktor RydbergA single 1862 book kept Viktor Rydberg out of the Swedish Academy for fifteen years. It denied that Christ was divine.
  • James Samuel ColemanJames Coleman was arrested at a whites-only amusement park outside Baltimore with his family and a Black family.
  • Jean-Baptiste SayNapoleon's government removed economist Jean-Baptiste Say from office in 1804. He then built a cotton mill instead.
  • Esaias TegnérEsaias Tegnér became a bishop without much interest in religion. The Swedish poet was poor and wanted to leave Lund.
  • Alfred NobelAlfred Nobel, a maker of explosives, left 94% of his total assets to fund prizes for humankind.
  • Louis de BroglieCould matter behave like a wave, as light can behave like a particle? Louis de Broglie asked this in 1924.
  • Mikhail LomonosovMikhail Lomonosov sealed metals in glass vessels in 1756 and found their mass did not change.
  • Theodosius DobzhanskyTheodosius Dobzhansky went from collecting butterflies in Kiev to writing a landmark book on evolution.
  • Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar sailed from India to England in 1930, and on that first sea voyage he worked out a number that would outlive him. The number was 1.44. It is the greatest mass, counted in suns, that a white dwarf star can have. A…

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