Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland was a Norwegian scientist. He is best remembered as the person who first elucidated the nature of the Aurora borealis. In order to fund his research on the aurorae, he invented the electromagnetic cannon and...

The Wright brothers, Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled...

Louis Blériot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft when he crossed the English Channel, receiving a prize of 1000 British pounds for doin...

Alberto Santos-Dumont was an early pioneer of aviation. He was born and died in Brazil. Heir of a prosperous coffee producer family, Santos-Dumont dedicated himself to science studies in Paris. Santos-Dumont designed, built, and flew the...

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radio telegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physic...

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He discovered the antibiotic substance lysozyme and isolated the antibiotic substance penicillin from the fungus Penicillium notatum, for which he shared a Nobel Prize. The...

Duke Kahanamoku, known as the "Big Kahuna," was an Olympic champion swimmer who is generally credited with having invented the modern sport of surfing. He was the first person to be inducted into both the Swimming Hall of Fame and the Surfi...

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" house/car, ephemeraliz...

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is among the persons who are often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan...

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, social philosopher, and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. Skinner invented the operan...

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business tycoon, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world. As a maverick film tycoon, Hughes gained prominence...

Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. Flowers's first contact with the wartime...

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss scientist best known for having been the first to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann authored more than 100 scientific articles and wrote a number...

Edwin Herbert Land was a American scientist, inventor, and industrialist. While studying physics at Harvard in the 1920s he became interested in the polarization of light. He developed a new polarizing material, which he called Polaroid, an...

Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender was an American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, or "Fender" for short. He left the company in the late 1960s, and later founded two other musical instrument companies, Mu...