History of Science
The First Scientist in History
Galileo Galilei: Father of modern science
The term ‘scientist’ was used for the first time in 1834 by William Whewell, a renowned philosopher of science at Cambridge University. He used this word to refer to people who observed and studied their natural and physical surroundings.
Even though the word was coined very recently, history witnessed numerous famous scientists before the 1800s — Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, which came much before the 19th century and have contributed significantly towards scientific discoveries. Thus, scientists even before knew what a ‘scientist’ does, according to the dictionary. However, when exactly did we first have scientists like the ones we have now is uncertain.
If we rewind to ancient Greek society, the infamous Thales of Miletus gave some exciting theories on cosmology between 626 to 548 B.C. Yet, no discovery of his has been officially recorded. Also, he was more of a thinker like Euclid and Ptolemy and hypothesized most of his theories. Yet, there are no records of these great brains performing experiments to confirm their theories.
The development of modern science happened even before the Renaissance period by the Arabs. Science took its form in the…
