William Wordsworth: His Life, Works and Influence

Oliver Goldsmith. His life and works

Leonhard Euler: His Life, the Man, and His Works

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary (on April 15, 2007) of Euler’s birth, an attempt is made to bring Euler’s genius to the attention of a broad segment of the educated public. The three stations of his life—Basel, St. Petersburg, and Berlin—are sketched and the principal works identified in more or less chronological order. To convey a flavor of his work and its impact on modern science, ...

William Stewart Halsted: his life and contributions to surgery.

William Stewart Halsted was a pioneer of surgery in the USA and made many wide-ranging contributions, including the surgical treatment of breast cancer. He changed the training of surgeons from a disorganised apprenticeship to the residency training programmes used today. Halsted's research developed a better understanding of surgically amenable disease and a multitude of new techniques and ope...

William Henry: His Achievements and His Law

Henry is a well-known name to all students of physical chemistry. Despite physical handicaps resulting from a childhood accident, he went on to a brilliant career in chemistry and medicine. The extensive and careful measurements that he made of the solubility of gases have given us the law that carries his name. Not many are familiar with his work on the steam sterilization of fabrics and other...

Humphry Davy: his life, works, and contribution to anesthesiology.

H ISTORY offers us a tool to avoid the condemnation George Santayana (1863–1952) envisioned for those who forget the past. In studying the history of anesthesia, and in particular the singular events that brought anesthesia into the consciousness of the world in Boston in 1845 and 1846, we find much to admire, but even more that we might hope not to repeat. The first public demonstrations of an...