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‘published between 1617 and 1621 by Robert Fludd, an occult philosopher, physician, mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, Utriusque Cosmi observes the history of the worlds — the microcosm of the universe and the microcosm of life here on Earth. he suggested that prior to the former being created, there was a nothingness, a pre-universe. Fludd’s darkness has no bounds. he wrote ‘Et sic in infinitum’, which means ‘so to infinity’, on all four edges of a square. Fludd believed in three generative principles: darkness, light and water, from which emerged the element that constituted matter. his image of nothingness is both revolutionary and prescient.’

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female ‘computers’ who worked at the Harvard college observatory in 1918. group includes Henrietta Swan Leavitt (sixth from left) and Annie Jump Cannon  (third from right). in the 1800s the Harvard observatory began photographing the skies, in particular stars and their spectral characteristics, using a technique that captured the images on glass plates. using complicated calculations, the women classified the stars, determined their brightness, and even discovered new stars, nebulae, and novae. many of their findings led to important discoveries about the universe, and their work helped clear obstacles for women in science.

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Los Alamos Project   |   Security badges

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Los Alamos Project Main Gate

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R O B E R T  O P P E N H E I M E R

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photograph: Henri Cartier-Bresson            

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R O B E R T  O P P E N H E I M E R

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photograph: Philippe Halsman

'at the Institute for advanced study in princeton, dr j robert oppenheimer jumped for me, the arm outstretched and the hand extended toward the ceiling. ‘what do you read in my jump?’ he asked,’ wrote halsman. ‘your hand pointed upward,’ i hazarded, ‘maybe you were trying to show a new direction, a new objective.’ but the theoretical physicist denied any symbolism. ‘no,’ said dr oppenheimer, laughing, ‘i was simply reaching.’

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W O L F G A N G  P A U L I

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‘he spent the following summer—1931—traveling across the united states, to pasadena, chicago, ann arbor, and new york, lecturing on his new particle. oppenheimer and sommerfeld were among his traveling companions. prohibition was in force at the time, forbidding the sale of alcohol, which pauli found exceedingly trying. ann arbor, however, was close to the canadian border and there was plenty of opportunity for smuggling. he wrote to peierls, “in spite of the opportunity for swimming here I suffer much from the great heat. but under ‘dryness’ I don’t suffer at all.”  indeed he did not. by now he was drinking to excess. at a dinner party in ann arbor he fell down an entire flight of stairs. “i broke my shoulder and now must lie in bed until my bones are whole again—very tedious,” he wrote. he kept the real reason for his handicap a secret. sommerfeld called it an inverse ‘pauli effect’. later pauli commented jokingly that it was the only time in his life he had ever raised his hand in a ‘heil hitler’ salute.’

[ p. 119, Arthur I. Miller, 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession ]

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W O L F G A N G  P A U L I

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photograph: Flury, St. Moritz      

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W O L F G A N G  P A U L I

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photograph: Roy Glauber

‘prepared to photograph pauli kicking the ball into the lake, as he had done earlier, I stood to one side, carefully aiming the camera at him. pauli had decided that my camera was his next target. he indeed kicked the ball, and I managed to snap the shutter just before the camera hit me squarely in the face.’

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D O R O T H Y  H O D G K I N  

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‘ at the sir john leman school in beccles, england, dorothy crowfoot hodgkin and her friend norah pusey, were the only two  girls in the chemistry class. they had to petition to take chemistry  rather than ‘domestic science’ with the other girls. ‘

in 1964 she won the nobel prize in chemistry.

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H E N R Y  M O S E L E Y

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‘ moseley never witnessed the success of his discovery, because he was killed in the early years of WWI, shot through the head in 1915 by a turkish soldier during the battle of gallipoli. he was 27 years old. it is generally believed that had moseley lived just one more year, he would almost certainly have been awarded a nobel prize in 1916 for his discovery of the physical basis of atomic number. the nobel prize in physics in 1916 was not awarded at all. ‘

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N I E L S  B O H R ’ S  L A S T  B L A C K B O A R D  D R A W I N G

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‘ when einstein died, his greatest rival bohr found for him words of moving admiration. when a few years later bohr in turn died, someone took a photograph of the blackboard in his study. there’s a drawing on it. a drawing of the ‘light-filled box’ in einstein’s thought experiment. ’

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A L B E R T  E I N S T E I N ‘ S  O F F I C E

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photographed by ralph morse, hours after his death.

‘ einstein died at the princeton hospital. so I headed there first. but it was chaos journalists, photographers, onlookers. so I headed over to einstein’s office at the institute for advanced studies. on the way, I stopped and bought a case of scotch. I knew people might be reluctant to talk, but most people are happy to accept a bottle of booze, instead of money, in exchange for their help. so I get to the building, find the superintendent, give him a fifth of scotch and like that, he opens up the office. ‘

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D I M I T R I  M E N D E L E E V  i n  1 8 9 7

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E R W I N  S C H R Ö D I N G E R

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P I E R R E  a n d  M A R I E  C U R I E 

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for their honeymoon, the Curies took a bicycle tour around the coastal area of North Western France. 

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N I E L S  B O H R  a n d  M A X  P L A N C K 

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‘ they were central figures in the development of quantum theory. Planck proposed in 1900 that radiation is emitted in discrete packets (quanta). Bohr's 1913 model of the hydrogen atom used quantized energy levels for electrons orbiting the nucleus. Bohr received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922, as Planck had in 1918. ‘