Danielle - Biography

Francis Galton: Short biography of his last years

Francis Galton was a member of the Royal Society family and since his youth he was considered a prodigy child. In his family there were many scientists, among them Charles Darwin, who was his cousin.

Galton was a scientist of the XIX century that wrote more than 340 paper and several books. His studies were relevant for several scientific areas, such as meteorology, geography and statistic. However he devoted the last years of his life to eugeny, which contributed to the knowledge of human genetic years later.

Eugeny was one of the first studies that allowed to understand the physical and intellectual variability of human species. That theory is connected with the heredity, because the human features are shared by related, mainly parents and children and siblings. Heredity is essential for genetics fundaments.

In spite of the areas that Galton worked, the eugeny was really relevant for Genetics, which is based in the phenotype and genotype association. Therefore, knowing the variability of human characteristics, as described by Galton, could induce the geneticist to study the chromosomal variability. Then Galton was and is very important to science.

I chose to write about Galton because he was a great scientist and brought important contributions to genetics, making evident the biological variability. Genetic has allowed us to identify the cause of different diseases as well as several species that were morphologically classified as one unique species previously.

Anderson - Biography

Bruno C. Mota, or how to make a smart kid?

What is a star made of? What is the distance of the moon from Earth?... those types of questions were made by a little Luiza every night before going to bed, looking through the window. I want to marry an astronaut to go to Mars, she was used to say. Nice times... little Luiza became Lula, she went to the university and obviously, as it always happens, she never studied to answer the questions she used to ask when she was a child; sky was not the most important stuff on her life. By that time, questions like boyfriends and those kinds of relationships were the most important thing on her life, that is why she decided to make an experiment to date her nerd classmate, Paulo.

Paulo grew up in a normal family, with parents and siblings, he was always a smart guy and of course at the university, he was not going to change, he was still the smartest guy in class.

Lula and Paulo became boy and girlfriend for a while, until a really awful accident happened, Luiza was waiting for a paulinho... “Oh my god! how am I going to tell to Paulo?” was her question after knowing that she was pregnant... at the end, she wrote a note to Paulo, saying “I have something important to say to you, come to my house tonight.” When Paulo arrived, he noticed it was all dark; but when he opened the door he saw the faint light of the candles and Lula sat on the table with food around her. “Baby, something happened after that night we spent together, after the party of the university, I am not the same after that, I mean one plus one now is three, do you get it?” said Lula, and Paulo answers “we must to get married, we are on the 80’s and at this times people get married after that kind of accidents, we are not going to be the exception.”

Finally, on July 27th, 1983, in São Paulo, Brazil, little Bruno was born; a 6.5-pound baby with brown eyes and hair. His parents were very happy to have him in their lives. Since his first years, Bruno was really bright and alert, he was a quick learner, everything seemed so easy for him that his parents always felt proud. He began to grow and the questions about space became more and more making crazy his parents who didn’t fully understand anything about the sky, stars, planets. Lula and Paulo as really smart people decided to answer all their son’s questions by buying books and toys about astronomy including spaceships, astronauts figures and also an amateur telescope, which at the end became his best friend at nights.

As any different kid decided to study something that people use to say that is boring, Physics, and it was not enough, he continued with a master degree on Astrophysics. At the end, all of that study served for something: it answered the questions his mom used to ask when she was little Luiza.

Now Bruno is considered one of the best scientists around the world regarding the sky. He is so young to know too much about stars, but there is an explanation, he has never been to a party, he spent all of his time studying and every night looking at the stars’ position, he did not have time to go to parties on Friday night. He was called to be part the directory of the national observatory of Chile, “La Silla”, now he must be at USP studying his PhD about the sky, to continue being one of the best in his research area. Maybe someday he will try to make the same experiment his mother did with his father... to have a family... but something is certain, he will be nominated for the Nobel Prize soon.

Rodrigo - Inventions

One of the most important inventions of the 20th century was the internet, that was invented in the 60's by the U.S.A. military. It was during the cold war, witch divided the world in two parts: one capitalist, the Americans and other socialist, the Russians. The Americans were afraid of an imminent attack by the russians at their information base, and because of this, after much research, the internet was invented.

The internet changed the way we live, currently almost everyone is connected almost all the time. The number and the speed that the information comes to us is almost unbelievable. With the internet we can do a lot of things in the comfort of our home. With the social networks like facebook, myspace, orkut, we find a lot of old friends, we make new friends, we are always in contact with our friends and family. With the webcam and programs like skype we can see and speak with everyone, everywhere.

Of course not everything is perfect in the internet's world. The internet, like anything, has a limit for use it. Some people get addicted and forget how to live in the reality. Nowadays we often send an email to people that are in the other side of the aisle instead of go there and talk face to face with the person . Another problem is the sedentary, more and more the internet facilitates our lives and because of this we do not have to leave our homes to do anything, everything you want, you can ask by the internet and comes home, without you leaving your chair.

So, in my opinion the internet revolutionized the world, after its invention the life style of all people has changed, and like every invention, the internet should be used for the good of the people, and with no exaggeration.

Marcelo - Inventions

The Phone

Many people say "Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone", but it is not true, who invented the telephone was Antonio Meucci in 1860. Meucci was Italian. He invented it because he needed to talk to his wife, who was sick and she always stood upstairs in their house.

The main benefit of the phone is to talk with other people in real time, even if the person is in the other side of the world, and talk by the phone is cheap.

The downside is that people talk a lot on the phone and they don't visit their friends and family, so people became more impersonal.

In my opinion, the phone helps a lot, the benefits are better than the downsides, but I think that the internet is going to replace the phone, the internet is easier to use and cheaper too.

Braulio - Biography

Gregori Perelman and Millenium Prize.

Grigory Yakoslevich Perelman was born on June 13, 1966 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His father’s name is Yakov and his mother’s name is Lubov. They are a Jewish

family. Perelman has been learning mathematics since 1975, when his talent was appearing.

The Poincaré conjecture, proposed by great French mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1904, was the most famous open problem in Mathematics. The problem is,

roughly speaking, about characterization of the three dimensional sphere. In 1999, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the Millennium Prize Problems, in other words, US$1,000,000 prize for the proof of any of the seven conjectures. Only the Poincaré conjecture has been solved in 2002 by Grigori Perelman, that declined the award.

In May 2006, a mathematician committee voted to award Perelman a Field Medal for his work. The Field Medal is the highest award in mathematics, like Nobel Prize in Science. However, Perelman declined the prize again. He was the first person to decline these prestigious prizes. In Perelman words:

“I’m not interested in money or fame”. “Everybody understood that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed”.

The last news about him is that he is unemployed, living with his mother in a small house in Petersburg. Nowadays, Perelman is known to be the most intelligent and weirdest person of the World.

Flávia - Biography

Marie Curie

She was born in the capital of Poland in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. When she was young, she moved to Paris with the financial help of her sister.

She graduated in first position in Mathematics and Physics at University of Paris in Sorbonne. She was the first woman to teach at this prestigious school.

She married the professor of Physics Pierre Curie in 1895 and then adopted the name of Marie Curie, and before her marriage she was called Maria Sklokowska.

In 1896, Henri Becquerel encouraged her to study the radiation emission of uranium salts. With her husband, Marie began to study the materials that produced the radiation, looking for new material with the hypothesis that it should exist in certain minerals. Indeed, in 1898 they deduced that explanation: there were certainly some components that would release more energy than uranium, then on December 26, 1898, Marie Curie announced the discovery of this new substance to the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

With Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, she received the Nobel Prize of the Physics in 1903, in recognition of extraordinary services obtained in their investigations of the radiation phenomena, three years after they identified the radioactive elements polonium and radium. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize.

Pierre was appointed professor at the University of Paris in Sorbonne in 1904 and he began researching for x-rays.

In 1906, she succeeded her husband in the chair of General Physics at the University, after he died.

In 1911, she received the Nobel Prize of Chemistry. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given her in the same year that the Academy of Sciences in Paris rejected her as a partner.

She was the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different fields. The only other person was Linus Pauling, but Marie Curie was the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in science.

Marie Curie died of leukemia in 1934, surely because of the massive exposure to radiation during their work. In 1995 her remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris, becoming the first woman to be buried at this site.

In my opinion, she was a person who left her mark on science, even in an age so full of prejudice and sexist. She showed the world that women are as able as men to perform a scientific function. Many other women do not even have a chance to study, or have the opportunity to take a scientific position. I'm sure that our planet has lost a lot because there has been prejudice in science.

Silvia - Inventions

Composition: An important invention. (final version)

I used to think that the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell but after a little research, we can see that many scientists dispute the credit for this invention. But as usual the Americans Elisa Gray and A. Graham Bell have become the best known.

The telephone emerged from the creation of the electrical telegraph. Though the early researches of the telegraph were from the fourteenth century, in the seventeenth century many scientists in many countries were searching for other ways of sending multiple telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different modulated audio frequencies for each message and these efforts led directly to the invention of the telephone, or 'the speaking telegraph'.

The invention of the telephone made people closer at a time when transports had not been developed yet. At the beginning, they were heavy and the sound was not so clear. In the course of time, they became much lighter and achieved a better performance.

The disadvantage of the telephone is that it needs wires to connect people. That’s why nowadays we may have much more cell phones than telephones. Another disadvantage is that it is not so secure. If somebody wants, he can hear our conversation without our awareness.

I chose to tell you about the telephone because in my opinion it can be considered one of the most important invention in the whole telecommunication development process.