Wrong is Actually Right Trivia Quiz

Answer: William Harvey

William Harvey (1578-1657) described his theory of the body's systemic blood circulation with the heart as the central pump in his 1628 book "De Motu Cordis." The book received much criticism from his peers as it went against Galen's theories, which were still the accepted beliefs of the time.

Galen of Pergamon (Aelius Galenus) was a brilliant Roman physician from the beginning of the second century (AD 129-200). His belief was that the liver was the source of venous blood and it was quite separate from the arterial circulation, except for where they met in the ventricles and blood then passed through invisible pores.

Although Harvey was ostracised from the scientific community he was well known among high society through an advantageous marriage which led to him being the royal physician for both King James I and Charles I.

Brent "Boomer" Harvey is an Australian rules footballer, Steve Harvey an American entertainer and Adam Harvey is an Australian country music singer.

Answer: Georg Ohm

Georg Ohm (1789-1854) was born in Bavaria and was mostly self taught in his fields of science and mathematics. He proposed his, now famous, law in 1827 to a lukewarm reception.

His work was later recognised in both England and America, receiving the Copley Medal (awarded for excellence in any branch of Science) in 1841 from the Royal Society of London. He finally received official recognition in Germany in 1852 when he was appointed to the chair of physics at Munich University. The 'ohm' became the official unit of resistance in 1881.

Ohms Law (V = IR): "Electric current is proportional to voltage and inversely proportional to resistance."

Boyle's Law deals with thermodynamics, Pascal's with hydrodynamics and Coulomb's law is involved with electromagnetism.

Answer: Robert Goddard

From an early age Robert Goddard (1882-1945) was fascinated by flying, and by his early twenties he understood enough physics to understand the theory of flight. His young age meant others were already beginning to make achievements in powered flight so he began to look even higher and began his work on getting man into space.

He launched his first prototype of a liquid fueled rocket in 1915 and other flights, although only reaching a few hundred metres, made him realise that the principle worked. In 1919 he published a book "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" in which he added his belief that it would be possible to escape the earth's gravitation and to send a rocket to the moon.

Part of the "New York Times" editorial stated that "Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action and reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react-to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high school."

Goddard launched his first liquid fueled rocket on the 16th of March 1926 and launched a further 33 between then and 1941 - his highest recorded height was 2.6 km.

On 17th July 1969, the day after the Apollo 11 launch, "The New York Times" printed a short article headed "A Correction". Forty-nine years after its initial article it ended with the paragraph: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."

Linus Pauling was a founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, Max Planck originated quantum theory and Alexander Fleming was a biologist best known for his discovery of penicillin.

Answer: Josiah Nott

Josiah Clark Nott (1804-1873) was an American physician, working in Alabama, who was the first scientist to state that yellow fever was caused by an insect vector and not miasma as the belief had been for centuries.

Miasma was thought to be a poisonous vapour that was filled with particles of rotting matter and contaminated water. All major diseases that passed through those areas with poor hygiene and foul air were believed to be passed from it. The name 'malaria' itself comes from Italian meaning 'bad air'.

Yellow Fever was a huge problem in the American South at this time and Nott (who lost four of his own children to it) published an 1848 paper stating that certain insects (including mosquitoes) were the probable cause of both yellow fever and malaria. Physicians at the time considered his ideas ridiculous and it was totally ignored for another 33 years when Dr Carlos Finlay began to conduct experiments in Cuba. It would then be another 19 years (until 1900) when it was finally proven and accepted by the medical and scientific communities.

Sir Isaac Newton is best known for his laws of motion and gravity, Wilhelm Röntgen was famous for his discovery of X-Rays and Einstein's theory of relativity created a revolution in physics.

Answer: Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish astronomer, mathematician, physician and Catholic cleric whose early work (before 1514) already showed his belief that the Sun was the centre of the universe. Not wishing to draw the wrath of the Church upon himself he kept his theories a secret for 30 years before publishing his book "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres" in 1543 - just before his death.

Both the Protestant and Catholic Churches denounced his book but no official action was taken against it for over sixty years and the appearance of Galileo.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who not only believed Copernicus' theory but went one step further to prove it. He was ordered by the Church in 1616 to abandon these beliefs (which he agreed to at the time) but was later taken to Rome to stand trial for heresy at the age of 70. He was threatened with torture, placed under house arrest for the rest of his life and his published works banned.

Francis Harry Compton Crick and James Dewey Watson are both noted molecular biologists who discovered the structure of DNA. Dimitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist famous for creating the periodic table of elements.

Answer: Continental Drift

Alfred Lothar Wegener (1880 - 1930) was a German geophysicist and meteorologist. He was a pioneer in polar research but his radical theory of continental drift, which turned out to be correct, led to his name becoming famous in a field he was not a specialist in.

His theory of the supercontinent Pangaea, in 1903, was not dissimilar to others who had commented on the shapes of the continents 'fitting' each other but Wegener went further by looking for evidence and explanations. He found it in the coal seams of the continents on either side of the Atlantic matching up and similar animal species across the world.

He was unsure of the exact mechanics but he believed that the oceanic crusts were spreading out from the mid-ocean ridges, a fact which was true but which he couldn't prove. The experts attacked him from all angles, and Wegener returned to his first love - the polar regions, where he died in a tragic accident in 1930.

Twenty three years later Samuel Carey developed the theory of plate tectonics which finally explained the mechanism that Wegener had believed in.

Crick and Watson were the DNA boys, Natural Selection was the work of Charles Darwin and Einstein brought us the Theory of Relativity.

Answer: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Stanley Benjamin Prusiner (1942 - present) is an American neurologist and biochemist. He became interested in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) while working in neurology and looking after a patient dying with it. At this stage it was believed to be caused by some form of slow virus although the body's immune system did not respond to it. Prusiner was aware that a disease in sheep, known as scrapie, was extremely similar and he began to study both diseases.

All that he could find that could be transmitting the diseases were proteins. He finally published a paper in 1982 in which he suggested a new type of infectious agent due to protein misfolding. He called this a 'prion' - from 'proteinaceous' and 'infectious.' This was not accepted by the other researchers and scientists of the time who were highly critical of any type of infection that did not include a bacteria, virus or fungi.

Then came the 1986 diagnosis of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) and the following epidemic in the UK. With the resulting transmitted CJD in humans who had eaten the contaminated meat a huge sum of money became available for research and by the 1990s people had begun to accept that Prusiner had been right which led to his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997.

Polio vaccines began in the 1950s, effective treatment for leprosy was available in the 1940s and TB finally met its match in 1946 with the advent of streptomycin.

Answer: Black Holes

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) was an Indian born astrophysicist who developed a theory that beyond a certain critical mass a star would collapse into a black hole. He calculated this exact limit in 1930 while on his journey from India to England to do graduate studies at Cambridge University. (This is now called the Chandrasekhar limit).

After another five years of research he presented his theory at the Royal Astronomical Society of London. While many of the astronomers appreciated Chandra's work and agreed that his fundamental use of quantum mechanics was correct they were loathe to support him as the idea was viciously ridiculed by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington.

Eddington was an older, renowned and highly respected astrophysicist whose own theories contradicted Chandra's. The scientific community followed his lead and Chandra's credibility was lost.

Answer: France

Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright are famous for inventing and building the first aeroplane, and for making that first famous powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Only five people witnessed the original flight and newspapers refused to run the story saying it was too short to be of any importance. When stories were run they were all detrimental and ridiculed the brothers - "The Scientific American Magazine" actually referred to them as "The Lying Brothers."

They then spent the next five years improving their aircraft and increasing their air time. With no response from the US they agreed to a contract with a French company. On the 8 August 1908 Wilbur made a short flight at the Hunaudières horse track near Le Mans and spent the next few days demonstrating the capabilities of his machine and flying skill.

Thousands of the French public flocked to the track to watch the flights and the Wright Brothers became an 'overnight' sensation around the world. Georges Besançonthe, editor of "L'Aérophile", regarding the flight and the brothers wrote: "... have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly ..."

Answer: Christian Doppler

Christian Andreas Doppler (1803-1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist known for his work with light and sound waves and how they are affected by the motion of both the source and the detector, known today as the "Doppler Effect".

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865) was a Hungarian physician who recognised that puerperal fever killed three times as many mothers in doctors' obstetrics wards as those run by midwives. Mortality rates at this time were 10-35%; he published his findings that hand washing reduced this rate to less than 1%. Although known as the 'saviour of mothers' he was ridiculed and ostracised by the rest of the medical community until after his death when Louis Pastuer proved his theory.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist best known for his germ theory of disease. He founded the field of medical microbiology which led to understanding in both the cause and prevention of diseases. He created the first vaccines for both rabies and anthrax but is perhaps best remembered by the general public for his 'pasteurisation' process where he found a way to treat milk to stop it causing illnesses.

Sir Joseph Lister (1827-1912) was a British surgeon, working in Glasgow, who was the pioneer in antiseptic surgery. He realised that sterilised surgical instruments and sterile wounds drastically reduced post operative infections and mortality. He introduced carbolic acid into the operating rooms which is still used today as Phenol.