Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. A man walked through the pillars of the Lyceum, reading the message that had been handed to him. His scholarly face did not bear witness to the emotions that were raging inside him. In his hand was a letter; it said, "Dear friend, with the death of your patron Alexander, there is peril in Athens for you. Your enemies will inflame the populace against you. Remember how unjustly Socrates was accused and brought to death. You must flee from Athens ..."
Who was this great scientist?
2. One of the greatest philosophers of Rome, Eudemos, was mysteriously ill with a fever. The greatest physicians of Rome had tried, without success, to heal him. He was close to death, when a young upstart physician arrived in Rome. When asked which of the many physicians' sects he belonged to, he answered, "I belong to no sect, and regard as slaves those who accept as final the teachings of Hippocrates or anyone else."
Who was this man, who revolutionised medicine?
3. A young professor of astronomy was lecturing to a group of enthusiatic students. He was continuing with his exposition of the Ptolemaic theory, when a student asked, "Learned professor, did not the great Pythagoras dispute Ptolemy, saying that it is not the earth that is the center of the universe, but the sun?" The professor was about to give his stock answer that Aristotle had refuted Pythagoras' claim that Man, the crowning glory of the universe, must logically be located at its center, when he suddenly found that he no longer truly believed what he was teaching. He abruptly dismissed the class and left.
Who was this man, who would in the future, turn the world of astronomy on its head with his revolutionary thoughts?
4. The crowd gathered at the dock openly ridiculed the young upstart who called himself a scientist. How could a mortal man lift a ship weighing thousands of pounds? King Hieron stepped towards the ship and the crowd fell silent. The King pulled on a rope. "Pull harder, Your Majesty", urged the young scientist standing by his side, who would in the future, change the world of physics for all time. The King grasped the rope and pulled. As if by magic, the stern of the ship rose out of the sea. A roar of acclaim rose, and the King turned to congratulate the young man standing by his side. "You have indeed triumphed again. It is true, the wonders of science are without limit."
Who was this young man?
5. Tension mounted in the mind of the young Flemish medical student as he listened to the monotonous reading of an ancient and worn treatise on the anatomy of the body. He watched in frustration as inept barber-surgeons hacked away at the corpse with their unskilled hands. Finally, he could take no more, and with a fearful look at the professor, he elbowed his way forward and pushed the assistants aside. To the amazement of all, he then proceeded to separate and expose each organ and tissue with a skill that no one there had ever seen before. The professor at the University of Paris was dumbfounded at the brashness of this young man. But he, Jacobus Sylvius, was forced to allow the student to continue the dissection. Thus was born a feud that would ultimately prevent the young student from pursuing his greatest love, anatomy. Who was this student?
6. In the early part of the seventeenth century, in a middle class home in France, a young twelve year old boy, was busy working with mathematical diagrams, trying desperately to prove that the sum of the angles of a triangle was two right angles. As the young boy had not yet been introduced to geometry, he had created his own names for straight lines and circles, calling them "bars" and "rounds". Who was this young boy, destined to change the world of physics with his experiments on fluids?
7. In a small town near Bologna in Italy, a young man sat reading Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". He was deeply touched by the story as it reflected his own life. His family had been for an age feuding with the Sbaragalias, a neighbouring family. After a lifetime of work in the field of medicine, for which he is now immortalised forever, when he returned home, he found his villa ransacked, his instruments burnt, and his life's work destroyed by those very same rivals whose touch he had not been able to escape even in far off Messina. He died at last in the Vatican, the personal physician of Pope Innocent XII, a man persecuted in life, but at last able to find peace in death.
Who is this man, who with his microscope forever changed the field of biology with his keen observations?
8. It was 1780. A leading French scientist rejected an application for membership to the French Academie des Sciences by Jean Paul Marat. Little did he know that this would prove his doom.
"The Republic does not need scientists", said the Chief Justice of the French Revolution. Marat had denounced that very same scientist as a "champion of tyrants and a pupil of scoundrels." He was arrested, charges were trumped up against him and he was executed by guillotine in 1794. So ended the life of a great scientist.
Who was this man?
9. The slender young lady with light curly hair and bright eyes, fidgeted restlessly in the fourth-class section of the train, as around her rough labourers and peasant women jostled and pushed. For five years, Marja Sklodowska had struggled and waited to make her way from Warsaw to Paris. Nothing could discourage her now. She sat back, and dreamed of Paris. Little did she know that due to her stay in Paris, she would become the most famous scientist in the field of radioactivity ever.
By what name is Marja Sklodowska better known?
10. The young man walked quietly into the outer office of the famous Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. Soon the door opened, and he was ushered into the inner office. The Academy would be honoured if he would accept a full professorship. It was a wonderful offer. Yet, who could blame the young man if his mind lept back to his first application as a student, when he was rejected for failing to pass his entrance examinations.
Who was this man, who in the meantime has come to personify pure genius?
Source: Author
Shrivats
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