Scientist of the Day

Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande, a French astronomer and mathematician, was born on July 11, 1721.   Lalande wrote a number of books on...

Max Perutz, an Austrian/British molecular biologist, was born May 19, 1914, in Vienna.

Robert Berks, an American sculptor, died May 16, 2011, at the age of 89. He is best known for his monumental portrait bronzes; a large bust of John...

Clarence Edward Dutton, an American geologist and writer, was born in Connecticut on May 15, 1841. He attended Yale College, served in the Civil...

Lars Fredrik Nilson, a Swedish chemist, died May 14, 1899, just shy of his 59th birthday. Nilson was professor of chemistry at Uppsala, later...

Gérard Paul Deshayes, a French paleontologist, was born May 13, 1795.  In the early 1820s, Deshayes began collecting fossil mollusks from the...

Lincoln Ellsworth, an American polar explorer, was born May 12, 1880, in Chicago.

Gregor Reisch, a German monk, died on May 9, 1525, at the age of about 58.

Adèle Dumont d'Urville, the daughter of a French watchmaker named Pépin, died May 8, 1842, in a dramatic demise detailed below.

Amiel Weeks Whipple, a U.S. Army officer and engineer, died May 7, 1863, having been born on Oct. 21, 1817, in Greenwich, Mass.  

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, a French civil engineer, was born Dec. 15, 1832.

Ferdinand von Richthofen, a German geographer, was born May 5, 1833, in Carlsruhe, in what was then Prussian Silesia.