Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy trans-Neptunian objects. It was the first such object to be discovered. It is the largest and second-most massive known dwarf planet in the S...

Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 30, 1974 by the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE; director: Maurice Taieb, co-directors: Donald Johanson and Yves C...

The Löwenmensch figurine or Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel is a very early prehistoric sculpture that was discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave in 1939. The lion-headed figurine, alternately called (by its German names) Lö...

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its...

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site located 2,430 metres (8,000 ft) above sea level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamb...

The Right Honourable William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, GCVO, OM, PC, PRS was a Scottish-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer, an outstanding leader in the physical sciences of the 19th century. Kelvin is known especially for his work...

Jozef Israëls was a Dutch painter, and "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteenth century". He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to...

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances and disproved the theory of vitalism[citatio...

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the...

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the...

Eadweard Muybridge is often called the father of the motion picture because of his photographic studies of animal motion. He began his career as a landscape photographer, and always considered himself more an artist than a scientist, altho...

Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and monarch of other states in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from 2 December 1848 to his death. From 1 May 1850 to 24 August 1866 he was also President of the German...

Eduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for discovering two of the Earth's major now-lost geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed 1861) and the Tethys Ocean. Sue...

Friedrich Leopold August Weismann was a German evolutionary biologist. Ernst Mayr ranked him the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charles Darwin. Weismann became the Director of the Zoological Institute a...

Ernst Haeckel was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms...