This surgeon paved the way for transplanting the organs!!!

Alexis Carrel (28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. He faced constant media attacks towards the end of his life over his alleged involvement with the Nazis.

A prominent Nobel Prize laureate in 1912, Alexis Carrel was also elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he had become an agnostic by the time he became a university student. He was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery. Alexis Carrel was also a member of learned societies in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast, Princeton University, California, New York, Brown University and Columbia University.

In 1902 he witnessed the miraculous cure of Marie Bailly at Lourdes, made famous in part because she named Carrel as a witness of her cure. After the fame surrounding the event, Carrel could not obtain a hospital appointment because of the pervasive anticlericalism in the French university system at the time. 

In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head, and Carrel was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for these efforts.

In 1906 he joined the newly formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career. In the 1930s, Carrel and Charles Lindbergh became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law's heart, damaged by rheumatic fever, could be repaired. 

When Lindbergh saw the crudeness of Carrel's machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel's ideals after his death.

Carrel was a young surgeon in 1894 when the French president Sadi Carnot was assassinated with a knife. His large abdominal veins had been severed, and surgeons who treated the president felt that such veins were too large to be successfully reconnected. This left a deep impression on Carrel, and he set about developing new techniques for suturing blood vessels. 

The technique of "triangulation", which was inspired by sewing lessons he took from an embroideress, is still used today. Julius Comroe wrote: "Between 1901 and 1910, Alexis Carrel, using experimental animals, performed every feat and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today." He had great success in reconnecting arteries and veins, and performing surgical grafts, and this led to his Nobel Prize in 1912.

During World War I (1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel–Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine (Dakin's solution) which, preceding the development of antibiotics, was a major medical advance in the care of traumatic wounds. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Carrel co-authored a book with famed pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, The Culture of Organs, and worked with Lindbergh in the mid-1930s to create the "perfusion pump," which allowed living organs to exist outside the body during surgery. The advance is said to have been a crucial step in the development of open-heart surgery and organ transplants, and to have laid the groundwork for the artificial heart, which became a reality decades later. 

Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh's role to gain media attention, but other sources say Lindbergh played an important role in developing the device. Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine on June 13, 1938.

Carrel was also interested in the phenomenon of senescence, or aging. He claimed incorrectly that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early 20th century. Carrel started an experiment on January 17, 1912 where he placed tissue cultured from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design. 

He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention. Carrel's experiment was never successfully replicated, and in the 1960s Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead proposed that differentiated cells can undergo only a limited number of divisions before dying. This is known as the Hayflick limit, and is now a pillar of biology.

It is not certain how Carrel obtained his anomalous results. Leonard Hayflick suggests that the daily feeding of nutrient was continually introducing new living cells to the alleged immortal culture. J. A. Witkowski has argued that, while "immortal" strains of visibly mutated cells have been obtained by other experimenters, a more likely explanation is deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel's knowledge.

This unfortunate wealthy wanderer made a virtual mark in United states by huge donations and studied Tabasheer from India

James Smithson(1765 – 27 June 1829) was an English chemist and mineralogist. He was the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson was the illegitimate child of the 1st Duke of Northumberland, and was born secretly in Paris, as James Lewis Macie. Eventually he was naturalized in England and he attended college, studying chemistry and mineralogy. At the age of twenty-two, he changed his surname from Macie to Smithson, his father's surname. Smithson traveled extensively throughout Europe publishing papers about his findings. Smithson became the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; however he never visited the United States.

Smithson was nomadic in his lifestyle, traveling throughout Europe. As a student, in 1784, he participated in a geological expedition with Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, William Thornton and Paolo Andreani of Scotland and the Hebrides. He was in Paris during the French Revolution.

Smithson's research work was eclectic. He studied subjects ranging from coffee making to the use of calamine in making brass, which would eventually be called smithsonite. He also studied the chemistry of human tears, snake venom and other natural occurrences. Smithson would publish twenty-seven papers. He was nominated to the Royal Society of London. Smithson socialized and worked with scientists Joseph Priestley, Sir Joseph Banks, Antoine Lavoisier, and Richard Kirwan.

His first paper was presented at the Royal Society on July 7, 1791, "An Account of Some Chemical Experiments on Tabasheer." Tabasheer is a substance used in traditional Indian medicine and derived from material collected insides bamboo culms. The samples that Macie analyzed had been sent by Patrick Russell, physician-naturalist in India. 

In 1802 he read his second paper, "A Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," at the Royal Society. In the paper, Smithson challenges the idea that the mineral calamine is an oxide of zinc. His discoveries made calamine a "true mineral." He explored and examined Kirkdale Cave and published about his findings in 1824. His findings successfully challenged previous beliefs that the fossils within the formations at the cave were from the Great Flood. Smithson is credited with first using the word "silicates".

Smithson died in Genoa, Italy on June 27, 1829. He was buried in Sampierdarena in a Protestant cemetery. It was not until 1835 that the United States government was informed about the bequest. A committee was organized and the Smithsonian Institution was founded. Smithson's estate was sent to the United States, accompanied by Richard Rush. The estate arrived as gold sovereigns in eleven boxes. Smithson's personal items, scientific notes, minerals, and library also traveled with Rush. This final amount totaled $54,165.38.

Tabasheer or Banslochan, also spelt as Tabachir or Tabashir, is a translucent white substance, composed mainly of silica and water with traces of lime and potash, obtained from the nodal joints of some species of bamboo. It is part of the pharmacology of the traditional Ayurvedic and Unani systems of medicine of the Indian subcontinent. It is also an ingredient in many traditional Chinese medicines.

Tabasheer is referred to as Tvaksheera in Sanskrit, which means bark milk. Other Sanskrit-derived names have been applied to tabasheer as well, including bamboo sugar (vans-sharkar), bamboo camphor (vans karpoor) and bamboo manna. It is called Tian Zhu Huang in Mandarin, which means "heavenly bamboo yellow."

Tabasheer is claimed to provide a variety of health benefits. It is variously regarded as an antipyretic, antispasmodic,antiparalytic, restorative and aphrodisiac. Tabasheer that has a blueish tint (usually called neel or neelkanth) is considered superior to tabasheer that has the "more plain" yellow or white color. Not all bamboo stems contain tabasheer. Likely candidates are found by shaking bamboo stems, which can make the mineralized tabasheer inside produce a rattling sound. These stems are split open to extract the tabasheer.

Although a part of the ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine, it has been postulated that the use of tabasheer originated in the Adivasi aboriginal tribes of India. Tabasheer was extensively exported from India for thousands of years, including through Arab traders during the medieval period. The town of Thane, close to the west coast of India, was famous as a clearing center for tabasheer in the twelfth century CE. It was called σάκχαρον in the writings of Pedanius Dioscorides, aGreek pharmacologist who practiced in Rome in the time of Nero.

This fellow discovered COBALT in ancient times!!!

Georg Brandt (26 June 1694 – 29 April 1768) was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered cobalt (c.1735). He was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times.

Brandt was born in Riddarhyttan, Skinnskatteberg parish, Västmanland to Jurgen Brandt, a mineowner and pharmacist, and Katarina Ysing. He was professor of chemistry at Uppsala University, and died in Stockholm. He was able to show that cobalt was the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt. He died on April 29, 1768 of prostate cancer.

About 1741 he wrote: "As there are six kinds of metals, so I have also shown with reliable experiments... that there are also six kinds of half-metals: a new half-metal, namely Cobalt regulus in addition to Mercury, Bismuth, Zinc, and the reguluses of Antimony andArsenic". He gave six ways to distinguish bismuth and cobalt which were typically found in the same ores:

1. Bismuth fractures while Cobalt is more like a true metal.
2. In fusing, they do not mingle but attach about as an almond and its stone.
3. The regulus of Cobalt fuses with flint and fixed alkali giving a blue glass known as zaffera, sasre, or smalt. Bismuth does not.
4. Bismuth melts easily and if kept melted, calcinates forming a yellow powder.
5. Bismuth amalgamates with Mercury; the regulus of Cobalt does not at all.
6. Bismuth dissolved in nitric acid and with aqua regia and gives a white precipitate when put in pure water. The regulus of Cobalt needs alkalies to precipitate, and then forms dark or black precipitates.

Finding out about electricity in human body in that era was astounding!!!

Carlo Matteucci (June 21, 1811 - June 25, 1868) was an Italian physicist and neurophysiologist who was a pioneer in the study of bioelectricity. Carlo Matteucci was born at Forlì, in the province of Romagna, to Vincenzo Matteucci, a physician, and Chiara Folfi. He studied mathematics at the University of Bologna from 1825 to 1828, receiving his doctorate in 1829. From 1829 to 1831 he studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris, France. 

Upon returning to Italy, Matteucci studied at Bologna (1832), Florence, Ravenna (1837) and Pisa. He established himself as the head of the laboratory of the Hospital of Ravenna and became a professor of physics at the local college. In 1840, by recommendation of François Arago (1786–1853), his teacher at the École Polytechnique, to the Grand-Duke ofTuscany, Matteucci accepted a post of professor of physics at the University of Pisa.

Instigated by the work of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) on bioelectricity, Matteucci began in 1830 a series of experiments which he pursued until his death in 1865. Using a sensitive galvanometer of Leopoldo Nobili, he was able to prove that injured excitable biological tissues generated direct electrical currents, and that they could be summed up by adding elements in series, like in Alessandro Volta’s (1745-1827) electric pile. 

Thus, Mateucci was able to develop what he called a "rheoscopic frog", by using the cutnerve of a frog’s leg and its attached muscle as a kind of sensitive electricity detector. His work in bioelectricity influenced directly the research developed by Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), a student of the great German biologist Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858) in Berlin, who tried the duplicate Matteucci’s experiments and ended up discovering the nerve's action potential. 

In 1844, for these studies, Matteucci was awarded with the Copley medal by the Royal Society. From 1847 he took an active part in politics, and in 1860 was chosen an Italian senator, at the same time becoming inspector-general of the Italian telegraph lines. Two years later he was appointed Minister of Education. Matteucci died in Ardenza, near Livorno, in 1868.

This AUSTRIAN wandered & discovered the cosmic rays!!!

Victor Francis Hess (24 June 1883 – 17 December 1964) was an Austrian-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics, who discovered cosmic rays. Born to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt, in Waldstein Castle, near Peggau in Styria, Austria on 24 June 1883. He attended secondary school at Graz Gymnasium from 1893 to 1901.

From 1901 to 1905 Hess was an undergraduate student at the University of Graz, and continued postgraduate studies in physics until he received his PhD there in 1910. He worked as Assistant under Stefan Meyer at the Institute for Radium Research, Viennese Academy of Sciences, from 1910 to 1920. In 1920 he married Marie Bertha Warner Breisky.

Hess took a leave of absence in 1921 and traveled to the United States, working at the US Radium Corporation, in New Jersey, and as Consulting Physicist for the US Bureau of Mines, in Washington DC. In 1923, he returned to the University of Graz, and was appointed the Ordinary Professor of Experimental Physics in 1925. The University of Innsbruck appointed him Professor, and Director Institute of Radiology, in 1931.

Hess relocated to the United States with his Jewish wife in 1938, in order to escape Nazi persecution. The same year Fordham University appointed him Professor of Physics, and he later became a naturalized United States citizen in 1944.  In 1946 he wrote on the topic of the relationship between science and religion in his article "My Faith", in which he explained why he believed in God. He retired from Fordham University in 1958 and he died on 17 December 1964, in Mount Vernon, New York from Parkinson's disease.

Between 1911 and 1913, Hess undertook the work that won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936. For many years, scientists had been puzzled by the levels of ionizing radiation measured in the atmosphere. The assumption at the time was that the radiation would decrease as the distance from the earth, the source of the radiation, increased. 

The electroscopes previously used gave an approximate measurement of the radiation, but indicated that higher in the atmosphere the level of radiation may actually be more than that on the ground. Hess approached this mystery first by greatly increasing the precision of the measuring equipment, and then by personally taking the equipment aloft in a balloon. He systematically measured the radiation at altitudes up to 5.3 km during 1911-12. The daring flights were made both at day and during the night, at significant risk to himself.

The result of Hess's meticulous work was published in the Proceedings of the Viennese Academy of Sciences, and showed the level of radiation decreased up to an altitude of about 1 km, but above that the level increased considerably, with the radiation detected at 5 km about twice that at sea level. 

His conclusion was that there was radiation penetrating the atmosphere from outer space, and his discovery was confirmed by Robert Andrews Millikan in 1925, who gave the radiation the name "cosmic rays". Hess's discovery opened the door to many new discoveries in particle and nuclear physics. In particular, both the positron and the muon were first discovered in cosmic rays by Carl David Anderson. Hess and Anderson shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.

This AUSTRIAN wandered & discovered the cosmic rays!!!

Victor Francis Hess (24 June 1883 – 17 December 1964) was an Austrian-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics, who discovered cosmic rays. Born to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt, in Waldstein Castle, near Peggau in Styria, Austria on 24 June 1883. He attended secondary school at Graz Gymnasium from 1893 to 1901.

From 1901 to 1905 Hess was an undergraduate student at the University of Graz, and continued postgraduate studies in physics until he received his PhD there in 1910. He worked as Assistant under Stefan Meyer at the Institute for Radium Research, Viennese Academy of Sciences, from 1910 to 1920. In 1920 he married Marie Bertha Warner Breisky.

Hess took a leave of absence in 1921 and traveled to the United States, working at the US Radium Corporation, in New Jersey, and as Consulting Physicist for the US Bureau of Mines, in Washington DC. In 1923, he returned to the University of Graz, and was appointed the Ordinary Professor of Experimental Physics in 1925. The University of Innsbruck appointed him Professor, and Director Institute of Radiology, in 1931.

Hess relocated to the United States with his Jewish wife in 1938, in order to escape Nazi persecution. The same year Fordham University appointed him Professor of Physics, and he later became a naturalized United States citizen in 1944.  In 1946 he wrote on the topic of the relationship between science and religion in his article "My Faith", in which he explained why he believed in God. He retired from Fordham University in 1958 and he died on 17 December 1964, in Mount Vernon, New York from Parkinson's disease.

Between 1911 and 1913, Hess undertook the work that won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936. For many years, scientists had been puzzled by the levels of ionizing radiation measured in the atmosphere. The assumption at the time was that the radiation would decrease as the distance from the earth, the source of the radiation, increased. 

The electroscopes previously used gave an approximate measurement of the radiation, but indicated that higher in the atmosphere the level of radiation may actually be more than that on the ground. Hess approached this mystery first by greatly increasing the precision of the measuring equipment, and then by personally taking the equipment aloft in a balloon. He systematically measured the radiation at altitudes up to 5.3 km during 1911-12. The daring flights were made both at day and during the night, at significant risk to himself.

The result of Hess's meticulous work was published in the Proceedings of the Viennese Academy of Sciences, and showed the level of radiation decreased up to an altitude of about 1 km, but above that the level increased considerably, with the radiation detected at 5 km about twice that at sea level. 

His conclusion was that there was radiation penetrating the atmosphere from outer space, and his discovery was confirmed by Robert Andrews Millikan in 1925, who gave the radiation the name "cosmic rays". Hess's discovery opened the door to many new discoveries in particle and nuclear physics. In particular, both the positron and the muon were first discovered in cosmic rays by Carl David Anderson. Hess and Anderson shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.

This gifted virologist gave away normal practice to work for a bigger cause and developed POLIO vaccines despite difficulties!!!

Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents. Although they had little formal education, his parents were determined to see their children succeed. While attending New York University School of Medicine, Salk stood out from his peers, not just because of his academic prowess, but because he went into medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician.

As a child, Salk did not show any interest in medicine or science in general. He said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement "As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that."

At his mother's urging, he put aside aspirations of becoming a lawyer, and instead concentrated on classes necessary for admission to medical school. However, according to Oshinsky, the facilities at City College of New York were "barely second rate." There were no research laboratories. The library was inadequate. The faculty contained few noted scholars. 

"What made the place special," he writes, "was the student body that had fought so hard to get there ... driven by their parents... From these ranks, of the 1930s and 1940s, emerged a wealth of intellectual talent, including more Nobel Prize winners—eight—and PhD recipients than any other public college except the University of California at Berkeley." Salk entered City College at the age of 15, a "common age for a freshman who had skipped multiple grades along the way."

During Salk's years at the New York University School of Medicine, he stood out from his peers, according to Bookchin, "not just because of his continued academic prowess—he was Alpha Omega Alpha, the Phi Beta Kappa Society of medical education—but because he had decided he did not want to practice medicine." Instead, he became absorbed in research, even taking a year off to study biochemistry. 

He later focused more of his studies on bacteriology which had replaced medicine as his primary interest. He said his desire was to help humankind in general rather than single patients. And as Oshinsky writes, "it was the laboratory work, in particular, that gave new direction to his life."

Until 1957, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States. Annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague," said historian Bill O'Neal. 

"Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS documentary, "Apart from the atomic bomb, America's greatest fear was polio." As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was the world's most recognized victim of the disease and founded the organization, the March of Dimes Foundation, that would fund the development of a vaccine.

In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. 

The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O'Neill, "the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers." Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial. 

When news of the vaccine's success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker," and the day "almost became a national holiday." His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When he was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV. His personal papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library.