A History of Modern Science Told in Biopics
*** Please note that this list is still under construction***
***Suggestions are welcome***
***It has become clear to me that I am not going to be able to find biopics for every scientist I want to mention. Therefore I am going to mention them anyway and simply precede their entries with As Yet Unmade [scientist's name] Biopic ***
GALILEO 1564 - 1642, Italy. Galileo Galilei is among the first modern scientists because he took a practical, experimental and mathematical approach to the acquisition of knowlege. In astronomy he supported the sun-centered model of the solar system and used the newly developed telescope to discover that Jupiter has moons (important not least because it showed that not all heavenly bodies orbit the Earth). In physics his experiments resulted in a statement of what was later to be called the First Law of Motion. The Church forced him to say that the sun-centered model was not literally true but was merely a way of accounting for observations. In 1992 a Papal commission found that Galileo had been wrongly treated by the Church and issued a formal apology. [Movie released 1975]
JOHANNES KEPLER 1571 - 1630, Germany. [Movie released 1974]
CARTESIUS 1596 - 1650, France and Sweden. French part-time soldier Rene Descartes made major contributions to philosophy and scientific (practical) mathematics. He invented coordinate (or algebraic) geometry, from which it was a short step to the calculus. All his life Descartes was pleased to sleep late in a warm room, until Queen Christina of Sweden hired him to teach her philosophy. Christina insisted on early morning lessons in a chill Descartes was unused to. He quickly caught pneumonia and died. [Movie released 1974]
NEWTON - A TALE OF TWO ISAACS 1643 - 1727, England. The title of 'Most Influential Modern Scientist' undoubtedly belongs to Sir Isaac Newton. His theory of mechanics explained mechanical motion throughout the universe, and provided the mathematics (the Calculus) for all calculations explaining or predicting such motion. Without Newton there could not have been an Einstein. [Movie released 1997]
THE DARWIN ADVENTURE 1809 - 1882. Charles Darwin... [Movie released 1972] [Alternative movie: Evolution, TV 2002]
As Yet Unmade Gregor Mendel Biopic 1822 - 1884, Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas, Brno, Moravia. Gregor was a monk who had charge of the Abbey's vegetable gardens. He had some scientific training and knew the importance of keeping experimental results in mathematical form. His experiments were in cross breeding of pea plants. In 1866 he published his paper "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" in a local natural history journal where it was promptly forgotten for several decades. In 1900, three biologists working independently rediscovered Mendel's paper and cited it as explaining their own findings. Mendel had discovered what came to be known as 'genetics', and now stands beside Darwin as a major contributor to modern biology.
THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR 1822 - 1895, France. Pasteur virtually invented modern medicine by developing the Germ Theory of Disease. [Movie released 1935]
As Yet Unmade James Clerk Maxwell Biopic 1831 - 1879, Scotland and England. Maxwell, a Scot, was the most influential physicist to work after Newton and before Einstein. His extremely important achievement was to provide the mathematical support for the theory of the electromagnetic spectrum. Einstein explicitly admitted that his theory of relativity would have been impossible without Maxwell's work. [It really is a scandal, and surprising, that no Maxwell biopic has been made. And not only because of the huge enabling influence his work had on electrical technology. He was a child prodigy and quite a colorful character. He was noted for working late into the night. When he arrived at Cambridge to take up an academic position and was told that there was a compulsory church service at 6:00 AM every morning, he replied, "Aye, I suppose I could stay up that late."]
THE STORY OF ALFRED NOBEL 1833 - 1896, Sweden and Italy. Nobel was an explosives chemist who invented both dynamite and the more powerful 'blasting gelatin', from which he made a great deal of money. In 1888 a French newspaper published a mistaken report of his death and an obituary which was critical of him for profiting from inventions that had been used in war to kill people. When Nobel heard of this he decided to ensure he would leave a positive legacy. He established the Nobel Prizes, which have rewarded scientists, artists and contributors to peace. [Movie (short) released 1939]
MARIE CURIE 1867 - 1934, Poland and France. Marie Curie is one of only two scientists (the other being Linus Pauling) to have won two Nobel Prizes in two different fields, and is the only woman to have won two Nobels. In 1903 she became the first woman to win a Nobel (in physics, shared with her husband Pierre and Henri Becquerel). She and Pierre had spent years laboriously separating the radioactive element radium from its ore. In 1911 she was awarded her second Nobel, in chemistry, for her part in the discovery of radium and polonium and for research in the properties of those elements. She died of leukemia, very probably because of her chronic exposure to abnormal levels of radioactivity. In 1935 her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel in chemistry. [Movie released 1943]
INSIGNIFICANCE 1879 - 1955, Germany, Switzerland, the United States. Albert Einstein ... [Movie released 1985]
COPENHAGEN 1901 - 1976, Germany and Denmark. Werner Karl Heisenberg established the field of quantum mechanics, which refines Einstein's physics just as Einstein's refines Newton's. A foundational principle of quantum mechanics is the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that the nature of scientific observation is such that for certain pairs of observable variables, such as the position and momentum of a sub-atomic particle, it is only possible to assign a precise value to one, not to both. [TV movie released 2002]
LIFE STORY 1951 to 1953, Britain and the U.S. The structure of the DNA molecule is modeled by Francis Crick and James D.Watson , with contributory work by Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Linus Pauling and Max Delbruck. [TV movie released 1987]
