BASAVANNA

Basava (Kannada: ಬಸವ) (also known as Bhakti Bhandari Basavanna (Kannada: ಬಸವಣಣ)

or Basaveshwara (Kannada: ಬಸವವವೇಶಶ್ವರ), (1134–1196)) was a philosopher, Statesman and a

social reformer from present-day Karnataka, India. Basava fought against the inhuman
practice of caste system, which discriminated people based on their birth, and certain rituals
in Hinduism. He spread social awareness through his poetry, popularly known as Vachanaas.
These are rational and progressive social thoughts coupled with established perception of
God in Hindu society.

Basava spread social awareness through his poetry known as Vachanaas. These are rational
and progressive social thoughts coupled with established perception of God in Hindu society.
"Brahminical thought" interpret the Vachanaas as essence of Vedic knowledge while
attempting to explain the social revolution, Basava was able to bring in. But this theory,
however, fails to explain why other well known religious leaders like Shankaracharya and
Madhwacharya, who were very well acquainted with Vedic knowledge did not address the
issues, that Basava did in later part of the history in 12th century. Basava, like Gautama
Buddha, did not preach people the intricate aspects of spirituality; but, he taught people how
to live happily in a rational social order later came to be known as Sharana movement.

Basavanna(Basaveshwara) is called Vishwaguru due to the fact that he is the first ever to
know the practicality of transcending to Godliness and demonstrated the technique of
becoming God through around 800 Sharanas. Basavanna is Vishwaguru due to the fact that
only he universalised the concept of path of becoming God through four levels of divinity that
exists in one'sown own body- Unmanifest Chaitanya(Guru), Manifest Chaitanya-
Shakti(Linga), Consciousness of the manifest chaitanya-shakti in Prana( Jangama), and the
Individual consciousness(Jeevatma/Mind). Basavanna taught Sharanas the technique of
transcending mind with ones own prana through a process of Ishtalinga , Pranalinga and
Bhavalinga saadhana and confirmed the world that anybody in the world , irrespective of
caste, creed, merit, nationality, etc., can transcend and become God by being in unioin with
Prana. So far only he is the only person on record to demonstrate the feasible path of
transcedence to a very common man. His followers in 12th centuray became Sharanas just
by following his technique of being with prana and evloving through. One can witness his
ability to understand spirituality as it is , and practice the specifics to the extent that about

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800 sharanas wrote their experiences which converged into what is detailed by ancient texts -
Vedas, Upansiahads, Darshanas, Geetha, Puranas in terms of the devata conscious
elemenents in the Body iteself. Having understood the spirituality and its apt
application,Basavanna is just more than what anybody and everybody understands as.

He himselef declared that he is playing only the elder brothers role and that is how the name
Basavanna (Basava ANNA). He is popularly called as Bhakti Bhandari (Champion of
Devotion). People also called him as a "Kranti Yogi" as he made the revalution in dharma.
His teachings and preachings which are universal, go beyond all boundaries of belief
systems. He was a great humanitarian and preached a new way of life wherein the divine
experience being the center of life regardless of gender, belief, tradition, religion, caste or
social status. The key aspect of his preaching is monotheistic concept of God.[1]

A true visionary with ideas ahead of his time; he envisioned a society that flourished
enriching one and all. He was a great mystic of his time and originated a literary revolution
through his literary creation called Vachana Sahitya in Kannada Language which are
derived from the Upanishads and Vedanta. He was a mystic by temperament, an idealist by
choice, a statesman by profession: as he was the Prime Minister of the Southern Kalachuri
Empire in South India, a man of letters by taste, a humanist by sympathy, and a social
reformer by conviction. Many great yogis and mystics of his time joined his movement
enriching it with the essence of divine experience in the form of Vachanas.

Early life

It is believed that Lord Basava was born into a Shaiva Brahmin called madarasa and
Madalambike family residing in a small town, Basavana Bagewadi in Bijapur district of
northern Karnataka state, India in 1134 AD. Basava, said to have grown up in an orthodox
Hindu religious household and rejected many practices in Vedic society based on some of the
religious Scriptures called Agamas, Shastras, and Puranas in Sanskrit language.

He left Bagewadi and spent the next 12 years studying Sangameshwara, the then-Shaivite
school of learning at Kudala sangama. There, he conversed with scholars and developed his
spiritual and religious views in association with his societal understanding. Játavéda Muni,
also known as Eeshánya Guru, was his guru. Basavanna invented Ishtalinga. He was driven
by his realisation; in one of his Vachanas he says Arrive Guru, which means one's own

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awareness is his/her teacher. Many contemporary Vachanakaras (people who have scripted
Vachanas) have described him as Swayankrita Sahaja, which means self-made.

Basava Purana, a 13th-century Telugu biographical epic poem, written by Palkuriki

Somanatha, and its detailed Kannada version, written by Bhima Kavi in 1369 CE are scared
texts in Lingayatism.

Religious Developments

Basavanna used Ishtalinga (image/linga of god in one's body) to eradicate untouchability,

establish equality among all human beings and a means to attain spiritual enlightenment.
Ishtalinga is very much different from Sthavaralinga and Charalinga. Ishtalinga is the
universal symbol of God. Sthavaralinga represents Shiva in Dhyana Mudra. Charalinga is a
miniaturized form of Sthavaralinga.

Guru Basavanna started his career as an accountant at Mangalaveda in the court of

Kalachuri king Bijjala, a feudatory of the Kalyani Chalukya. When Bijjala acquired the
power at Basavakalyana, by overpowering Tailapa IV (the grandson of Vikramaditya VI, the
great Chalukya king), Basavanna also went to Kalyana. With his honesty, hard work and
visionary mission, Basava rose to the position of Prime Minister in the court of king Bijjala,
who ruled from 1162—1167 at Kalyana (presently renamed Basavakalyana). There, he
established the Anubhava Mantapa, a spiritual parliament, which attracted many saints from
throughout the India. He believed in the principle Káyakavé Kailása (Work puts you on the
path to heaven, Work is Heaven). It was at this time that the Vachanas, simple and easy-to-
understand poetic writings which contained essential teachings, were written.

Basava created much controversy by actively ignoring the societal rules associated with the
caste system, which he wished to abolish. By allowing untouchables to have lunch at his
residence and praising the historic marriage of a Brahmin woman and an untouchable man,
Basava caused orthodox members of King Bijjala's court to go to the king with such stories,
some true and some false.

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Chalukya dynasty

The Chalukya dynasty was an Indian royal dynasty that ruled large parts of southern and
central India between the 6th and the 12th centuries. During this period, they ruled as three
related yet individual dynasties. The earliest dynasty, known as the "Badami Chalukyas",
ruled from Vatapi (modern Badami) from the middle of the 6th century. The Badami
Chalukyas began to assert their independence at the decline of the Kadamba kingdom of
Banavasi and rapidly rose to prominence during the reign of Pulakesi II. After the death of
Pulakesi II, the Eastern Chalukyas became an independent kingdom in the eastern Deccan.
They ruled from Vengi until about the 11th century. In the western Deccan, the rise of the
Rashtrakutas in the middle of the 8th century eclipsed the Chalukyas of Badami before being
revived by their descendants, the Western Chalukyas, in the late 10th century. These Western
Chalukyas ruled from Kalyani (modern Basavakalyan) until the end of the 12th century.

The rule of the Chalukyas marks an important milestone in the history of South India and a
golden age in the history of Karnataka. The political atmosphere in South India shifted from
smaller kingdoms to large empires with the ascendancy of Badami Chalukyas. For the first
time, a South Indian kingdom took control and consolidated the entire region between the
Kaveri and the Narmada rivers. The rise of this empire saw the birth of efficient
administration, overseas trade and commerce and the development of new style of
architecture called "Chalukyan architecture". Kannada literature, which had enjoyed royal
support in the 9th century Rashtrakuta court found eager patronage from the Western
Chalukyas in the Jain and Veerashaiva traditions. The 11th century saw the birth of Telugu
literature under the patronage of the Eastern Chalukyas.

Origins
Natives of Karnataka

While opinions vary regarding the early origins of the Chalukyas, the consensus is that the
founders of the empire at Badami were native to the modern Karnataka region. According to
one theory, the Chalukya were descendants of the "Seleukia" tribe of Iraq and that their
conflict with the Pallava of Kanchi was, but a continuation of the conflict between ancient
Seleukia and "Parthians", the proposed ancestors of Pallavas. However, this theory has been
rejected as it seeks to build lineages based simply on similar sounding clan names.

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Another theory, that they were descendants of a 2nd century chieftain called Kandachaliki
Remmanaka, a feudatory of the Andhra Ikshvaku (from an Ikshvaku inscription of 2nd
century) was put forward. But this has failed to explain the difference in lineage. The
Kandachaliki feudatory call themselves Vashisthiputras of the Hiranyakagotra. The
Chalukyas, however, address themselves as Harithiputras of Manavyasagotra in their
inscriptions, which is the same lineage as their early overlords, the Kadambas of Banavasi.
This makes them descendants of the Kadambas. The Chalukyas took control of the territory
formerly ruled by the Kadambas.

A later record of Eastern Chalukyas mentions the northern origin theory and claims one
ruler of Ayodhya came south, defeated the Pallavas and married a Pallava princess. She had
a child called Vijayaditya who is claimed to be the Pulakesi I's father. However, there are
Badami Chalukya inscriptions that confirm Jayasimha was Pulakesi I's grandfather and
Ranaranga, his father. It was a popular practice in the 11th century to link South Indian royal
family lineage to a Northern kingdom. The Badami Chalukya records themselves are silent
with regards to the Ayodhya origin.

While the northern origin theory has been dismissed by many historians, the epigraphist K V
Ramesh has suggested that an earlier southern migration is a distinct possibility which needs
examination. According to him, the complete absence of any inscriptional reference of their
family connections to Ayodhya, and their subsequent Kannadiga identity may have been due
to their earlier migration into present day Karnataka region where they achieved success as
chieftains and kings. Hence, the place of origin of their ancestors may have been of no
significance to the kings of the empire who may have considered themselves natives of the
Kannada speaking region. The writing of 12th century Kashmiri poet Bilhana suggests the
Chalukya family belonged to the Shudra caste while other sources claim they were
Kshatriyas.

The Badami Chalukya inscriptions are in Kannada and Sanskrit. Their inscriptions call them
Karnatas and their names use indigenous Kannada titles such as Priyagallam and
Noduttagelvom. The names of some Chalukya princes end with the pure Kannada term arasa
(meaning "king" or "chief"). The Rashtrakuta inscriptions call the Chalukyas of Badami
Karnatabala ("Power of Karnata"). It has been proposed that the word "Chalukya"
originated from Salki or Chalki which is a Kannada word for an agricultural implement.

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Historians such as D R Bhandarkar and Hoernle hold the view that Chalukyas were one of
the ruling clans of Gurjaras (or Gujjars), citing the name change of Lata province to
Gurjaratra during the reign.Bhandarkar explains that If the chalukyas had not been Gurjars,
it is inconceivable how that province could have named Gurjaratra (country ruled or
protected by Gurjars) when it was up-till their advent known as Lata.However scholars such
as D. P. Dikshit argues that Chalukyas ruled over that part of country formerly known as
Lata and taken as Gurjaratra or Gujarat didn't imply the Chalukyas didn't make any change
in the nomenclature because of their close association with the region. Dr.V. A. Smith and A.
M. T. Jackson also endorsed the view that Chalukyas were branch of famous Gurjars(or
Gujjars).

Historical sources

Inscriptions are the main source of information about the Badami Chalukya history. Among
them, the Badami cave inscriptions of Mangalesa (578), Kappe Arabhatta record of c. 700,
Peddavaduguru inscription of Pulakesi II, the Kanchi Kailasanatha Temple inscription and
Pattadakal Virupaksha Temple inscription of Vikramaditya II (all in Kannada language)
provide more evidence of the Chalukya language. The Badami cliff inscription of Pulakesi I
(543), the Mahakuta Pillar inscription of Mangalesa (595) and the Aihole inscription of
Pulakesi II (634) are examples of important Sanskrit inscriptions written in old Kannada
script. The reign of the Chalukyas saw the arrival of Kannada as the predominant language
of inscriptions along with Sanskrit, in areas of the Indian peninsula outside what is known as
Tamilaham (Tamil country). Several coins of the Badami Chalukyas with Kannada legends
have been found. All this indicates that Kannada language flourished during this period.

Travelogues of contemporary foreign travellers have provided useful information about the
Chalukyan empire. The Chinese traveller Hsüan-tsang (Xuanzang) had visited the court of
Pulakesi II. At the time of this visit, as mentioned in the Aihole record, Pulakesi II had
divided his empire into three Maharashtrakas or great provinces comprising 99,000 villages
each. This empire possibly covered present day Karnataka, Maharashtra and coastal
Konkan. Hsüan-tsang, impressed with the governance of the empire observed that the
benefits of king's efficient administration was felt far and wide. Later, Persian emperor
Khosrau II exchanged ambassadors with Pulakesi II.

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Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS[1] (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a
British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited with discovering electrons and isotopes,
and inventing the mass spectrometer. Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics
for the discovery of the electron and for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.

Biography

Joseph John Thomson was born in 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. His mother,
Emma Swindells, came from a local textile family. His father, Joseph James Thomson, ran an
antiquarian bookshop founded by a great-grandfather from Scotland (hence the Scottish
spelling of his surname). He had a brother two years younger than he, Frederick Vernon
Thomson.[2]

His early education took place in small private schools where he demonstrated great talent
and interest in science. In 1870 he was admitted to Owens College. Being only 14 years old
at the time, he was unusually young. His parents planned to enroll him as an apprentice
engineer to Sharp-Stewart & Co., a locomotive manufacturer, but these plans were cut short
when his father died in 1873.[2] He moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. In 1880,
he obtained his BA in mathematics (Second Wrangler and 2nd Smith's prize) and MA (with
Adams Prize) in 1883.[3] In 1884 he became Cavendish Professor of Physics. One of his
students was Ernest Rutherford, who would later succeed him in the post. In 1890 he married
Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of Sir George Edward Paget, KCB, a physician and then
Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He had one son, George Paget Thomson, and one
daughter, Joan Paget Thomson, with her. One of Thomson's greatest contributions to modern
science was in his role as a highly gifted teacher, as seven of his research assistants and his
aforementioned son won Nobel Prizes in physics. His son won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for
proving the wavelike properties of electrons.

He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1906, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical
and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases." He was knighted
in 1908 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1912. In 1914 he gave the Romanes Lecture
in Oxford on "The atomic theory". In 1918 he became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he remained until his death. He died on August 30, 1940 and was buried in
Westminster Abbey, close to Sir Isaac Newton.

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Thomson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society [1] on 12 June 1884 and was subsequently
President of the Royal Society from 1915 to 1920.

Career

Discovery of the electron

Several scientists, such as William Prout and Norman Lockyer, had suggested that atoms
were built up from a more fundamental unit, but they envisioned this unit to be the size of the
smallest atom, hydrogen. Thomson, in 1897, was the first to suggest that the fundamental unit
was over 1000 times smaller than an atom, suggesting the subatomic particles now known as
electrons. Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode
rays. Thomson made his suggestion on 30 April 1897 following his discovery that Lenard
rays could travel much further through air than expected for an atom-sized particle. [4] He
estimated the mass of cathode rays by measuring the heat generated when the rays hit a
thermal junction and comparing this with the magnetic deflection of the rays. His
experiments suggested not only that cathode rays were over 1000 times lighter than the
hydrogen atom, but also that their mass was the same whatever type of atom they came from.
He concluded that the rays were composed of very light, negatively charged particles which
were a universal building block of atoms. He called the particles "corpuscles", but later
scientists preferred the name electron which had been suggested by George Johnstone Stoney
in 1894, prior to Thomson's actual discovery.

In April 1897 Thomson had only early indications that the cathode rays could be deflected
electrically (previous investigators such as Heinrich Hertz had thought they could not be). A
month after Thomson's announcement of the corpuscle he found that he could deflect the rays
reliably by electric fields if he evacuated the discharge tubes to very low pressures. By
comparing the deflection of a beam of cathode rays by electric and magnetic fields he was
then able to get more robust measurements of the mass to charge ratio that confirmed his
previous estimates. This became the classic means of measuring the charge and mass of the
electron.

Thomson believed that the corpuscles emerged from the atoms of the trace gas inside his
cathode ray tubes. He thus concluded that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were
their building blocks.

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Niels Henrik David Bohr (Danish pronunciation: [ˈnels ˈboɐ̯ˀ]; 7 October 1885 – 18 November
1962)[1] was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding
atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in
1922.[2] He developed the model of the atom with the nucleus at the center and electrons in
orbit around it, which he compared to the planets orbiting the sun. He worked on the idea in
quantum mechanics that electrons move from one energy level to another in discrete steps,
not continuously. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the
century at his institute in Copenhagen. He was part of the British team of physicists working
on the Manhattan Project. Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, and one of their sons,
Aage Bohr, was also a physicist and in 1975 also received the Nobel Prize.

Biography

Early years

Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885. His father, Christian Bohr, was professor
of physiology at the University of Copenhagen (it is his name which is given to the Bohr shift
or Bohr effect), while his mother, Ellen Adler Bohr, came from a wealthy Jewish family
prominent in Danish banking and parliamentary circles (in 1891, Bohr was baptized a
Lutheran, his father's religion).[3] Despite having a religious background, he later resigned
his membership from the Lutheran Church[4] and became an atheist.[5][6][7] His brother was
Harald Bohr, a mathematician and Olympic footballer who played on the Danish national
team. Niels Bohr was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played a number
of matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub, with Niels in goal.[8][9]

In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University, initially studying

philosophy and mathematics. In 1905, prompted by a gold medal competition sponsored by
the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, he conducted a series of experiments to
examine the properties of surface tension, using his father's laboratory in the university,
familiar to him from assisting there since childhood. His essay won the prize, and it was this
success that prompted Bohr's decision to abandon philosophy and adopt physics. [10] He
continued as a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen, under the physicist
Christian Christiansen, receiving his doctorate in 1911.

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As a post-doctoral student, Bohr first conducted experiments under J. J. Thomson, of Trinity
College, Cambridge and Cavendish Laboratory. In 1912 he met and later joined Ernest
Rutherford at Victoria University of Manchester, where on and off he spent four fruitful years
in association with the older physics professor and became part of the 'Nuclear Family'
which included scientists such as William Lawrence Bragg, James Chadwick and Hans
Geiger. In 1916, Bohr returned permanently to the University of Copenhagen, where he was
appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics, a position created especially for him. In 1918
he began efforts to establish the University Institute of Theoretical Physics, which he later
directed.

Earlier in 1910 Bohr had met Margrethe Nørlund, sister of the mathematician Niels Erik
Nørlund.[11] They were married in Copenhagen in 1912.[12] Of their six sons, the oldest died in
a boating accident and another died from childhood meningitis. The others went on to lead
successful lives, including Aage Bohr, who became a very successful physicist and, like his
father, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1975. His other sons were Hans Henrik, a
physician, Erik, a chemical engineer, and Ernest, a lawyer.

Physics

In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics "for his services in the investigation of
the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them." [13] The award recognized
his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics.

While at Manchester University, Bohr had adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max
Planck's quantum theory and so obtained a model of atomic structure which, with later
improvements – mainly as a result of Heisenberg's concepts – remains valid to this day. Bohr
published his model of atomic structure in 1913.[14] Here he introduced the theory of electrons
traveling in orbits around the atom's nucleus, the chemical properties of each element being
largely determined by the number of electrons in the outer orbits of its atoms. [15] Bohr also
introduced the idea that an electron could drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, in
the process emitting a photon (light quantum) of discrete energy. This became a basis for
quantum theory.

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Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto,[1] Count of Quaregna
and Cerreto (9 August 1776, Turin, Piedmont – 9 July 1856) was an Italian savant. He is
most noted for his contributions to molecular theory, including what is known as Avogadro's
law. In tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other
particles) in 1 mole of a substance, 6.02214179(30)×10 23, is known as the Avogadro
constant.

Biography
Amedeo Carlo Avogadro was born in Turin, Italy in 1776 to a noble family of Piedmont,
Italy.

He graduated in ecclesiastical law at the early age of 20 and began to practice. Soon after,
he dedicated himself to physics and mathematics (then called positive philosophy), and in
1809 started teaching them at a liceo (high school) in Vercelli, where his family had property.

In 1811, he published an article with the title Essai d'une manière de déterminer les masses
relatives des molécules élémentaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles elles
entrent dans ces combinaisons ("Essay on Determining the Relative Masses of the
Elementary Molecules of Bodies and the Proportions by Which They Enter These
Combinations"), which contains Avogadro's hypothesis. Avogadro submitted this essay to a
French journal, Jean-Claude Delamétherie's Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d'Histoire
naturelle (Journal of Physics, Chemistry and Natural History) so it was written in French,
not Italian. (Note: France effectively controlled northern Italy from 1796 to 1814.)

In 1820, he became professor of physics at the University of Turin. After the downfall of the
French Emperor Napoléon in 1815, Piedmont again came under the control of the King of
Piedmont-Sardinia, ruling from Turin.

Avogrado was active in the revolutionary movements of 1821 against King Victor Emmanuel
I. As a result, he lost his chair in 1823 (or, as the university officially declared, it was "very
glad to allow this interesting scientist to take a rest from heavy teaching duties, in order to be
able to give better attention to his researches").[2]

11
Eventually, King Charles Albert granted a Constitution (Statuto Albertino) in 1848. Well
before this, Avogadro had been recalled to the university in Turin in 1833, where he taught
for another twenty years.

Little is known about Avogadro's private life, which appears to have been sober and
religious. He married Felicita Mazzé and had six children.

Avogadro held posts dealing with statistics, meteorology, and weights and measures (he
introduced the metric system into Piedmont) and was a member of the Royal Superior
Council on Public Instruction.

In honor of Avogadro's contributions to molecular theory, the number of molecules in one

mole was named Avogadro's number, NA or "Avogadro's constant". It is approximately
6.0221415 × 1023. Avogadro's number is used to compute the results of chemical reactions. It
allows chemists to determine amounts of substances produced in a given reaction to a great
degree of accuracy.

Johann Josef Loschmidt first calculated the value of Avogadro's number, often referred to as
the Loschmidt number in German-speaking countries (Loschmidt constant now has another
meaning).

Avogadro's Law states that the relationship between the masses of the same volume of
different gases (at the same temperature and pressure) corresponds to the relationship
between their respective molecular weights. Hence, the relative molecular mass of a gas can
be calculated from the mass of sample of known volume.

Avogadro developed this hypothesis after Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac had published in 1808
his law on volumes (and combining gases). The greatest problem Avogadro had to resolve
was the confusion at that time regarding atoms and molecules. One of his most important
contributions was clearly distinguishing one from the other, stating that gases are composed
of molecules, and these molecules are composed of atoms. For instance, John Dalton did not
consider this possibility. Avogadro did not actually use the word "atom" as the words "atom"
and "molecule" were used almost without difference. He believed that there were three kinds
of "molecules," including an "elementary molecule" (our "atom"). Also, more attention was
given to the definition of mass, as distinguished from weight.

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John Dalton FRS (6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, meteorologist
and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic
theory, and his research into colour blindness (sometimes referred to as Daltonism, in his
honour).

Early life
John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, Cumberland,
England. The son of a weaver, he joined his older brother Jonathan at age 15 in running a
Quaker school in nearby Kendal. Around 1790 Dalton seems to have considered taking up
law or medicine, but his projects were not met with encouragement from his relatives –
Dissenters were barred from attending or teaching at English universities – and he remained
at Kendal until, in the spring of 1793, he moved to Manchester. Mainly through John Gough,
a blind philosopher and polymath to whose informal instruction he owed much of his
scientific knowledge, Dalton was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy
at the "New College" in Manchester, a dissenting academy. He remained in that position until
1800, when the college's worsening financial situation led him to resign his post and begin a
new career in Manchester as a private tutor for mathematics and natural philosophy.

Dalton's early life was highly influenced by a prominent Eaglesfield Quaker named Elihu
Robinson,[1] a competent meteorologist and instrument maker, who got him interested in
problems of mathematics and meteorology. During his years in Kendal, Dalton contributed
solutions of problems and questions on various subjects to the Gentlemen's and Ladies'
Diaries, and in 1787 he began to keep a meteorological diary in which, during the
succeeding 57 years, he entered more than 200,000 observations.[2] He also rediscovered
George Hadley's theory of atmospheric circulation (now known as the Hadley cell) around
this time.[3] Dalton's first publication was Meteorological Observations and Essays (1793),
which contained the seeds of several of his later discoveries. However, in spite of the
originality of his treatment, little attention was paid to them by other scholars. A second work
by Dalton, Elements of English Grammar, was published in 1801.

Color blindness

In 1794, shortly after his arrival in Manchester, Dalton was elected a member of the
Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, the "Lit & Phil", and a few weeks later he

13
communicated his first paper on "Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours", in
which he postulated that shortage in colour perception was caused by discoloration of the
liquid medium of the eyeball. In fact, a shortage of colour perception in some people had not
even been formally described or officially noticed until Dalton wrote about his own. Since
both he and his brother were colour blind, he recognized that this condition must be
hereditary.[4]

Although Dalton's theory lost credence in his own lifetime, the thorough and methodical
nature of his research into his own visual problem was so broadly recognized that Daltonism
became a common term for colour blindness. [5] Examination of his preserved eyeball in 1995
demonstrated that Dalton actually had a less common kind of colour blindness,
deuteroanopia, in which medium wavelength sensitive cones are missing (rather than
functioning with a mutated form of their pigment, as in the most common type of colour
blindness, deuteroanomaly).[4] Besides the blue and purple of the spectrum he was able to
recognize only one colour, yellow, or, as he says in his paper,

that part of the image which others call red appears to me little more than a shade or defect
of light. After that the orange, yellow and green seem one colour which descends pretty
uniformly from an intense to a rare yellow, making what I should call different shades of
yellow

This paper was followed by many others on diverse topics on rain and dew and the origin of
springs, on heat, the colour of the sky, steam, the auxiliary verbs and participles of the
English language and the reflection and refraction of light.

Atomic theory

In 1800, Dalton became a secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,
and in the following year he orally presented an important series of papers, entitled
"Experimental Essays" on the constitution of mixed gases; on the pressure of steam and other
vapours at different temperatures, both in a vacuum and in air; on evaporation; and on the
thermal expansion of gases. These four essays were published in the Memoirs of the Lit &
Phil in 1802.

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Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS (30 August 1871 – 19
October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as
the father of nuclear physics. He is considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael
Faraday (1791–1867).

In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity
involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and
named alpha and beta radiation, proving that the former was essentially helium ions. This
work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the
elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".

Rutherford performed his most famous work after he had moved to the Victoria University of
Manchester in the UK in 1907 and was already a Nobel laureate. In 1911, although he could
not prove that it was positive or negative; he theorized that atoms have their charge
concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the
atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil
experiment. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction
between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton. [7]
This led to the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by
two students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932. After
his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the
United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element
rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.

Biography
Early life and education

Ernest Rutherford was the son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha
Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England. [8] James had emigrated to New
Zealand from Perth, Scotland, "to raise a little flax and a lot of children". Ernest was born at
Spring Grove (now Brightwater), near Nelson, New Zealand. His first name was mistakenly
spelled Earnest when his birth was registered.[9]

15
He studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at
Canterbury College, University of New Zealand where he was president of the debating
society, among other things. After gaining his BA, MA and BSc, and doing two years of
research at the forefront of electrical technology, in 1895 Rutherford travelled to England for
postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (1895–1898), [10]
and he briefly held the world record for the distance over which electromagnetic waves could
be detected.

"Cambridge’s rules did not allow Rutherford to advance because of his youth" [11] so in 1898
Rutherford was appointed to succeed Hugh Longbourne Callendar in the chair of Macdonald
Professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he did the work that
gained him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. In 1900 he gained a DSc from the
University of New Zealand. Also in 1900 he married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1945);
they had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married Ralph Fowler. In 1907
Rutherford moved to Britain to take the chair of physics at the University of Manchester.

Later years and honours

He was knighted in 1914. In 1916 he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. In 1919 he
returned to the Cavendish as Director. Under him, Nobel Prizes were awarded to James
Chadwick for discovering the neutron (in 1932), John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton for an
experiment which was to be known as splitting the atom using a particle accelerator, and
Edward Appleton for demonstrating the existence of the ionosphere. He was admitted to the
Order of Merit in 1925 and raised to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson, in 1931,
[12]
a title that became extinct upon his unexpected death in 1937.

For some time beforehand, Rutherford had a small hernia, which he had neglected to have
fixed, and it became strangulated, causing him to be violently ill. Despite an emergency
operation in London, he died four days afterwards of what physicians termed "intestinal
paralysis." He was given the high honor of burial in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton
and other illustrious British scientists.

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