Abelard, Peter
The Scholastic thinker who had an affair with Heloise
Famous Brainiacs
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Adams, Henry
The author of The Education of Henry Adams -
Andreessen, Marc
Creator of the Netscape web browser -
Aquinas, Thomas
Medieval Catholic scholar who wrote Summa Theologica -
Archimedes
The ancient Greek mathematician who said "Eureka!" -
Aristotle
The ancient Greek philosopher who wrote Ethics -
Asimov, Isaac
Writer of popular science and author of I, Robot -
Avogadro, Amedeo
The guy they named Avogadro's Number after -
Babbage, Charles
The inventor of the Difference Engine -
Bancroft, Edward
Double agent of the Revolutionary War -
Banneker, Benjamin
The African-American scientist who helped survey Washington, D.C. -
Bentham, Jeremy
The father of Utilitarianism -
Bernanke, Ben
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, 2006- -
Berners-Lee, Tim
Inventor of the World Wide Web -
Bohr, Niels
Danish atomic physicist who won 1922's Nobel Prize -
Boisselier, Brigitte
Scientific Director of Clonaid, a human cloning service -
Boole, George
Developer of Boolean algebra -
Boyle, Robert
17th century chemist who came up with Boyle's law -
Brahe, Tycho
Denmark's hottest stargazer -
Brin, Sergey
The co-founder of Google -
Bunsen, Robert
The spectrometer inventor with the gas burner name -
Burbank, Luther
Creator of the Burbank potato -
Carlyle, Thomas
Author of Heroes and Hero-Worship -
Carpenter, Scott
The astronaut who also lived on Sealab -
Carroll, Lewis
The author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -
Carter, Howard
The discoverer of King Tut's tomb -
Carver, George Washington
America's great peanut innovator -
Chu, Steven
Secretary of Energy under Barack Obama -
Confucius
Chinese sage -
Copernicus, Nicolas
Astronomer known for figuring out that the sun is the center of our solar system -
Cornelius, Dr.
The good chimp in The Planet of the Apes -
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves
Underwater explorer and filmmaker -
Crick, Francis
Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA -
Curie, Marie
Discoverer of radium and polonium -
Curie, Pierre
The scientist husband of Marie Curie -
Dalton, John
The weather pioneer who advocated atomic theory -
Daly, Mary
The feminist professor who battled Boston College -
Darwin, Charles
The naturalist who came up with the theory of evolution -
Da Vinci, Leonardo
Painter of the Mona Lisa -
Davy, Sir Humphry
The chemist known as the father of electrolysis -
de Branges, Louis
The deep thinker who proved the Bieberbach Conjecture in 1984 -
Derrida, Jacques
French philosopher whose deconstructionist books included 'Writing and Difference' -
Descartes, René
The philosopher who said "I think, therefore I am" -
Dewey, John
Pragmatist educator of the early 20th century -
Doppler, Christian
Discoverer of what's called the Doppler Effect -
Douglas, David
The Scottish botanist whose 19th centry exploits led to the Douglas-fir -
Edgerton, Harold
The professor who made strobe photography popular -
Einstein, Albert
Creator of the theory of relativity -
Emeagwali, Philip
Nigerian-born supercomputing expert -
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
A founder of Transcendentalism -
Engels, Friedrich
Karl Marx's collaborator and editor -
Euclid
Alexandrian mathematician and father of geometry -
Faraday, Michael
Inventor of the first dynamo -
Fayyad, Salam
The Palestinian finance minister who became emergency prime minister -
Fermi, Enrico
Italian-American pioneer in nuclear fission -
Feynman, Richard
The Nobel-winning author of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman -
Fibonacci, Leonardo
The guy who brought the Hindu-Arabic number system to Europe -
Fleming, Alexander
The bacteriologist who discovered penicillin -
Foucault, Michel
The French philosopher who wrote This is Not a Pipe -
Franklin, Rosalind
The woman whose crystal studies showed the structure of DNA -
Fuchs, Klaus
The physicist who gave secrets to the Soviets in WWII -
Fuller, Buckminster
the inventor of the geodesic dome -
Galfridus Monemutensis
The 12th century author of 'Historia Regum Britanniae' -
Galileo
The inventor of the astronomical telescope -
Garfield, Eugene
Founder of the Institute for Scientific Information -
Ghazali, Al-
Medieval Islamic philosopher and theologian -
Gilbert, William
The guy who figured out magnetism and electricity -
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
The German dramatist known for Faust -
Goodall, Jane
Chimpanzee expert and conservationist -
Greenspan, Alan
Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 1987-2006 -
Gödel, Kurt
The Austrian mathematician known for his Incompleteness Theorem -
Haber, Fritz
The German chemist who made fertilizer and poison gas in World War I -
Halley, Edmond
Discoverer of Halley's Comet -
Hanna, Jack
Zoologist host of TV's Animal Adventures -
Hawking, Stephen
The author of A Brief History of Time -
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Metaphysical philosopher who came up with the idea of the dialectic -
Heidegger, Martin
The modern philosopher who wrote 1927's 'Being and Time' -
Heraclitus
Greek philosopher who said all is in constant flux -
Herodotus
Ancient author of The Histories -
Heyerdahl, Thor
Leader of the Kon-Tiki and Ra Expeditions -
Higgs, Peter Ware
The Nobel-winning physicist behind the Higgs boson -
Hooke, Robert
The author of 1665's Micrographia -
Hubble, Edwin
The astronomer the Hubble space telescope is named after -
Hume, David
Scottish skeptic who wrote A Treatise of Human Nature -
Jobs, Steve
The co-founder of Apple computers -
Jones, Indiana
The whip-cracking archaeologist of Raiders of the Lost Ark -
Josephus
Jewish historian of the 1st century -
Kant, Immanuel
German philosopher who wrote Critique of Pure Reason -
Kepler, Johannes
The astronomer who explained planetary motion -
Keynes, John Maynard
The British economist who created macroeconomics -
Khayyam, Omar
The author of The Rubaiyat -
Kierkegaard, Søren
The mordant Danish philosopher called 'the father of existentialism' -
Kinsey, Alfred
Author of The Kinsey Report on sexuality -
Lao Tzu
Legendary founder of Taoism -
Lavoisier, Antoine
French chemist who proved the law of conservation of mass -
Lawrence, Ernest O.
Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the cyclotron -
Leakey, Mary
The archaeologist who discovered early human fossils in Olduvai Gorge, Africa -
Lee, Wen Ho
U.S. scientist falsely accused of being a Chinese spy -
Lehrer, Tom
Composer of the satirical tune "The Vatican Rag" -
Leibniz, Gottfried
The mathematician who said God created the best of all possible worlds -
Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph
The mathematician who predicted the existence of Neptune -
Linnaeus, Carl
The botanist who was the "father of taxonomy" -
Locke, John
Author of Essay Concerning Human Understanding -
Mach, Ernst
The guy mach speed is named for -
Machiavelli, Niccolo
Author of The Prince -
Maimonides, Moses
Medieval Jewish philosopher who wrote "Guide of the Perplexed" -
Marx, Karl
Founder of modern communism -
Mawson, Douglas
Australian explorer of the Antarctic -
Maxwell, James Clerk
The physicist who came up with the theory of electromagnetism -
Mayer, Marissa
The early Google employee who became CEO of Yahoo in 2012 -
McClintock, Barbara
The genetics scientist who learned from maize -
Mead, Margaret
The anthropologist author of Coming of Age in Samoa -
Mendeleev, Dmitri
The chemist who created the periodic table of elements -
Mendel, Gregor
The founding father of modern genetics -
Messier, Charles
French comet hunter who first catalogued nebulae -
Mill, John Stuart
The author of 1859's On Liberty -
Murdoch, Iris
Alzheimer's stricken author of The Sea, The Sea -
Narin, Francis
Scientometrics pioneer who started CHI Research -
Nash, John
The mathematician depicted in A Beautiful Mind -
Newton, Sir Isaac
The genius who explained gravity -
Nietzsche, Friedrich
The 19th century German who said "God is dead" -
Oppenheimer, J. Robert
The physicist who directed the Manhattan Project -
Page, Larry
The co-founder of Google -
Pascal, Blaise
17th century mathematical genius -
Pasteur, Louis
Renowned inventor of pasteurization -
Pauling, Linus
Vitamin C advocate and two-time winner of the Nobel Prize -
Pavlov, Ivan
Author of Conditioned Reflexes (1926) -
Piketty, Thomas
The author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century -
Planck, Max
The German physicist who originated quantum theory -
Plato
The ancient philosopher who wrote The Republic -
Plutarch
Author of Plutarch's Lives -
Priestley, Joseph
The Englishman credited with discovering oxygen -
Pythagoras
The guy they named the Pythagorean Theorem after -
Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford
Founder of Singapore -
Rand, Ayn
The author of The Fountainhead and leader of Objectivism movement -
Richter, Charles F.
The seismologist who created the earthquake scale -
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Author of The Social Contract -
Russell, Bertrand
The deep-thinking co-author of Principia Mathematica -
Rutherford, Ernest
The New Zealand physicist who split the atom -
Salk, Jonas
Developer of the polio vaccine -
Sarte, Jean-Paul
The existentialist author of Being and Nothingness -
Schrödinger, Erwin
Creator of the Schrödinger's Cat paradox -
Servetus, Michael
The 16th century heretic who also explained pulmonary circulation -
Shultz, George
United States Secretary of State, 1982-89 -
Smith, Adam
The author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations -
Smithson, James
The man whose money founded the Smithsonian Institution -
Socrates
The great Greek philosopher who drank hemlock -
St. Anselm
Archbishop of Canterbury, England, 1093-1109 -
Strauss-Kahn, Dominique
The IMF director accused of sexual assault in 2011 -
Summers, Lawrence H.
Director of the U.S. National Economic Council, 2009-present -
Swammerdam, Jan
The 17th-century Dutch microscopist who studied insects -
Tacitus
Ancient Roman historian -
Teller, Edward
"The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb" -
Theophrastus
Ancient Greek who began the study of plants -
Tolstoy, Leo
Author of War and Peace -
Torvalds, Linus
The guy who wrote the kernel for the Linux Operating System -
Trismegistus, Hermes
The ancient mage behind the 'Corpus Hermeticum' -
Tuchman, Barbara
Author of The Guns of August -
Turing, Alan
The famous British pioneer of computers and artificial intelligence -
Van Allen, James
Cosmic ray expert who found the Van Allen radiation belts -
Vesalius, Andreas
16th-century Belgian anatomist who wrote The Structure of the Human Body -
Vinge, Vernor
Hugo-winning author of A Fire Upon the Deep -
Volta, Alessandro
The Italian who built the first battery -
Von Braun, Wernher
Ex-Nazi rocket scientist and father of the U.S. space program -
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Darwin's contemporary who came up with natural selection -
Watson, James
Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA -
Whitehead, Alfred North
Mathematician who turned to metaphysics and religion -
William of Ockham
Medieval thinker responsible for the principle of Ockham's Razor -
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
The Austrian-English philosopher who wrote Tractatus and Investigations -
Woodson, Carter G.
The "Father of Black History" -
Wozniak, Steve
The co-founder of Apple Computers who wasn't Steve Jobs -
Yellen, Janet
President Biden's Secretary of the Treasury -
Yunus, Muhammad
The Nobel Prize-winning "banker to the poor" -
Zinn, Howard
Boat-rocking U.S. historian -
Zoroaster
The founder of Zoroastrianism