Early life Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount House. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side, both from the Darwin — Wedgwood family, a prominent English family which supported the Unitarian church. His mother died when he was only eight. He went t

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He is best known for demonstrating how to prevent milk and wine from going sour, which came to be called pasteurization. His experiments confirmed the germ theory of disease, and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He became one of the founders of bacteriology, the other major figure being Robert Koch. He also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the asymmetry of crystals. Early life Louis J. Pasteur was born in Dole in the Jura region of France and grew up

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Life Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Freiberg (Pr(íbor), Moravia, in the Austrian Empire (now belonging to the Czech Republic). In 1877, at the age of 21, he abbreviated his given name to "Sigmund." Although he was the first-born of three brothers and five sisters among his mother's children, Sigmund had older half-brothers from his father's previous marriage. His family had limited finances and lived in a crowded apartment, but his parents made every effor

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Born to a wealthy family in Paris, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier inherited a large fortune when his mother died. He attended the College Mazarin from 1754 to 1761, studying chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics. His education was filled with the ideals of the French Enlightenment of the time, and he felt fascination for Maquois's dictionary. His devotion and passion for chemistry was largely influenced by Étienne Condillac, a prominent French scholar of the 18th century. His first chemical p

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Childhood and education (1571–1594) Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 at the Imperial Free City of Weil der Stadt (now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, 30 km west of Stuttgart's center). His grandfather had been Lord Mayor of that town, but by the time Johannes was born, the Kepler family fortunes were in decline. His father earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died

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Biography Copernicus was born in 1473. When he was ten years old, his father, a wealthy businessman, copper trader, and respected citizen of Torun', died. Little is known of Copernicus' mother, Barbara Watzenrode, who appears to have predeceased her husband. Copernicus' maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, a church canon and later Prince-Bishop governor of the Archbishopric of Warmia, reared him and his three siblings after the death of his father. His uncle's position helped Copernicus in t

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Early life and education Maxwell was born at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the only child of Edinburgh lawyer John Clerk. By the age of three, Maxwell had developed an innate sense of inquisitiveness about the world. Everything that moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question: "What's the go o' that" Maxwell's early education was provided by his Christian mother and included studying the Bible. Most of his early childhood was spent at the family estate Glenlair near

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Life Bernard was born in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche-sur-Saône. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyon, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a druggist's shop. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, Arthur de Bretagne. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris, armed with this play

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