Anderson, P.W. (1923– ) — a member of the technical staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and visiting professor of theoretical physics at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, England. He shared the 1977 Nobel Prize with van Vleck and Neville Mott for their fundamental theoretical investigation of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, work related to the properties of semiconductors.

Bronowski, Jacob (1915--1985)

Campbell, Joseph (1904-1987) — mythologist and educator, professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College (1934-72). Famous for his analysis of comparative mythology in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and the four-volume Masks of God (1959--68).

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) — medieval poet, author of The Divine Comedy

Darwin, Charles (1809-1882) — English naturalist who was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and father of physicist George Darwin. He was ship's naturalist aboard the H. M.S. Beagle. The Beagle undertook a five year cruise around the world, beginning December 27, 1831 and ending October 2, 1836. During the course of the voyage, Darwin noticed how species changed along the coast of South America, and especially on the Galápagos Islands. Reflecting on these observations he developed the theory of evolution that bears his name.

Davies, Paul — professor of theoretical physics, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Prolific popularizer of science.

Dewey, John (1859-1952) — professor of philosophy at Columbia University, America’s most influential philosophic force. His ideas about education revolutionized the educational system of the US. Darwin's theory of natural selection had a life-long impact upon Dewey's thought, suggesting the importance of focusing on the interaction between the human organism and its environment when considering questions of psychology and the theory of knowledge.
Among his influential books are Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature (1925), and The Quest for Certainty (1929).

Dobzhansky, Theodosius (1900-1975) — famous Russian-American geneticist who discovered the fruit fly's third chromosome and made a cytological map of it.

Durant, Will (1885-1981) — historian and teacher, his lectures on philosophy were published as The Story of Philosophy (1926). It was a blend of biographical, historical and philosophical material and became an international bestseller. With his wife, Ariel, he wrote over a period of 40 years the famous multivolume Story of Civilization. The 10th volume received the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and the Durants received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

Edman, Irwin (1896-1954) — professor of philosophy at Columbia University from 1920 to 1954 . Renown as an influencial teacher, essayist and poet. He wrote several books, including Four Ways to Philosophy (1937) and Philosopher's Holiday (1938), a collection of informal reminiscences.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) — winner of the Nobel Prize and author of the Theory of Relativity, is generally regarded as one of the world’s most distinguished scientists.

Eudoxus (c. 400 B.C.) — one of the greatest of the ancient mathematicians, surpassed only by Archimedes. He was born in Cnidos, on the Black Sea and studied mathematics and medicine. At the age of 23 he went to Plato's academy in Athens to study philosophy. Some time later he went to Egypt to learn astronomy at Helopolis.In 365 B. C. he returned to Athens and became a colleague of Plato. He died in Cnidos at the age of 53 and was considered the leading mathematician and astronomer of his day. Books V, VI, and XII.Euclid's work on mathematics is thought to be based on Eudoxus' work.

Faust, Clarence H. (1901-1975) — President of the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University also an ordained Evangelical minister

Frankfort, H. and H.A.

France, Anatole

Freud, Sigmund

Golden, Richard (1925- ) — the editor of these pages. High school teacher of the course Science and Philosophy on which this website is based.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1941- 2002) — One of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. Professor of paleontology at Harvard University. Well known beyond his scientific discipline for his many popular and graceful essays in Natural History Magazine which were collected in many best selling books.

Hardin, Garrett (1915- ) — ecologist, educator from the University of California: Santa Barbara. In such books as Nature and Man's Fate (1959) and Exploring New Ethics for Survival (1977) he argued that disease, starvation, and social disorder will result unless human population growth is curbed.

Heilbroner, Robert L.

Hofstadter, Richard (1916-1970) — American historian, major seminal influence in intellectual and political history, taught at Columbia from 1946 until his early death. His doctoral thesis, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944), won the Beveridge Award from the American Historical Society. Both his books The Age of Reform (1955) and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) won Pulitzer Prizes. He wrote a total of 13 books.

Huxley, Julian (1887-1975) — English biologist, the grandson of T H Huxley, professor of zoology and secretary to the Zoological Society of London. He was the first director-general of UNESCO (1946-8), and was knighted in 1958.

Huxley, T. H. (1827-1895) — English biologist who traveled as a ship's surgeon on a voyage to Australia between 1846 and 1850. After reading Origin of Species, he became Darwin's most devoted advocate and popularizer.

Jeans, Sir James (1877-1946) — English mathematician and Astronomer Royal. Author of many widely known books including The Universe Around Us, Astronomy and Cosmology, The Mysterious Universe.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1922-1996) — philosopher, historian of science, originally trained as a physicist, he became interested in the historical development of science and in 1962 published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a study of how scientific theories are formed, judged, and supplanted. It has had wide currency in many areas of contemporary thought. He taught at Harvard, the University of California: Berkeley, Princeton, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

LaPlace, Pierre  (1749-1827) — French physicist and mathematician famous for his advancement of the calculus and his five volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799-1825) summarizing and extending the work of his predecessors.

Laszlo, Ervin

Lindberg, David C.

Lippmann, Walter (1889-1974) — writer, editor, the most influential political commentator of his time, sought after by world leaders and followed by millions of loyal readers. His first book, A Preface to Politics (1913), led to his position as an editor for the influential New Republic. In his book, A Preface to Morals (1929) he stressed the importance disgrace of public "disinterestedness." He won two Pulitzer Prizes.

Mayr, Ernst (1904- ) — one of the most distinguished scholars in evolutionary biology, Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus at Harvard University. His research on avian evolution resulted in his seminal redefining of the term "species" to describe an interbreeding natural population reproductively isolated from other such groups (1940). His philosophical writings emphasized his belief that the future of human evolution depends on education.

Matson, Floyd W.

Mithen, Steven

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662 ) — published advanced work in mathematics at 16. In 1645 he invented the first mechanical calculator to help his father with his work collecting taxes. It resembled a mechanical calculator of the 1940's. He performed a series of experiments on atmospheric pressure and discovered that air pressure decreased with altitude. He concluded that there was a vacuum above the Earth’s atmosphere and argued with other scientists who did not believe a vacuum could exist, including the famous Rene Descartes. In correspondence with Fermat he laid the foundation for the theory of probability. He died at the age of 39.

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1884-1942) — anthropologist, originally from Poland. He went to London in 1910 and became professor at the London School of Economics. In 1938 he went to the USA, where he accepted a post at Yale. He was the pioneer in fieldwork in anthropology.

Murray, Gilbert (1866–1957) — famous classical scholar, professor of Greek at Oxford, translator of Greek drama. Murray was active in the cause of world peace. He was chairman (1923–38) of the League of Nations Union and first president of the general council of the United Nations Association. He also wrote several books about international politics


LEWIS MUMFORD, one of the keenest of the younger American critics, is equally well-known as essayist, social his-torian and architectural authority. Among his books are Sticks. and Stones, The Golden Day and Herman Melville.

JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH is the dramatic editor of the New York Nation. Among his books are Edgar Allan
Poe: A Psychological Study, The Modern Temper and Five Masters.

Randall,Jr., John Herman (1899-1980) — professor of philosophy at Columbia University for almost 50 years. His book The Making of the Modern Mind, first appeared in 1926 and, with revisions, is still in print. It is a vital source of information on the influence of science on culture.

Rogers, Eric M.

Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970) — British philosopher and mathematician. He wrote Principles of Mathematics (1903), and collaborated with A N Whitehead in Principia mathematica (1910--13). In 1916 his pacifism lost him his fellowship at Trinity College (restored in 1944), and in 1918 he served six months in prison. From the 1920s he lived by lecturing and journalism, and became increasingly controversial. He visited the Soviet Union, was professor at Peking (1920-1). The evils of Fascism led him to renounce pacifism in 1939. Later works included An Enquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940) and Human Knowledge (1948). After 1949 he became a champion of nuclear disarmament, and engaged in unprecedented correspondence with several world leaders. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

Sagan, Carl (1934-1996) — American astronomer, author, and popularizer of science and astronomy. He received his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Chicago in 1960. Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. He is perhaps best known for his creation of the popular public television series Cosmos (1980).

Schrodinger, Erwin (1887-1961) — Austrian physicist who invented wave mechanics in 1926. Wave mechanics was an independent formulation of quantum mechanics to Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. Like matrix mechanics, wave mechanics mathematically described the behavior of electrons and atoms. The central equation of wave mechanics, now known as the Schrödinger equation, turned out to be much simpler for physicists to solve in most cases.

Shapley, Harlow (1885-1972) — American astronomer who, in 1918, discovered the galactic distance scale using RR Lyrae and Cepheid variables.

Simpson, George Gaylord

Sperry, Roger

Spinoza, Benedict De (1632--1677)
a.k.a. Baruch Spinoza — A philosopher of Jewish ancestry and up-bringing, who was born and lived all his life in Holland, and wrote in Scholastic Latin. He was expelled from the synagogue with all the curses available, universally detested for his supposed atheism and blasphemy, and lived quietly, publishingly little, and that reluctantly, as a lens-crafter; by all accounts a perfect saint. He was competent as a natural scientist, distinguished in politics and theology (well, not in his own day...), and one of the greatest philosophers ever. He died, much too soon, of lung-disease.

Tattersall, Ian

Woodbridge, Frederick J. E.

Wordsworth , William (1770-1850)