My Science School

Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, better known as Leo Tolstoy, was born on September 9, 1828. His ideas on non-violence had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Read on to learn more about him...

Early life

Born on his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province of Russia, Tolstoy belonged to an affluent family. Unfortunately, he lost his parents at a young age and lived with different relatives over the years.

At 16, Tolstoy began studying law and Oriental languages at Kazan University, but since he was home-schooled, he struggled to cope. Frustrated, he dropped out of the university and started looking for a non-academic career.

Sowing the seeds

Intent on taking up farming, Tolstoy moved to the family's estate and began managing serfs and farmhands. Though he enjoyed the toil, he had to give up farming as he wanted to return to Moscow, which he missed. On his brothers insistence, he joined the Russian Army. Tolstoy fought in the Crimean War, between Russia, and Britain and France. The violence and bloodshed he witnessed during the war scarred him for life. He left the Army as soon as the war ended.

A new religion

Seeking solace in religion, he tried to evolve his own views on religion wherein he rejected the authority of the church and promoted ahimsa or non-violence. He believed in leading a morally and physically ascetic life. His followers moved onto the authors estate to be near him and came to be known as Tolstayans. Many of these communes are operational even today.

Among those influenced by Tolstoy's social beliefs were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi established a co-operative colony named after Tolstoy in South Africa and corresponded with the author, crediting him with his own spiritual and philosophical evolution, particularly with regard to Tolstoy's teachings on peaceful non-resistance to evil.

Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, a few months after embarking on a pilgrimage with his daughter.

OH REALLY?

A Bombay High Court judge asked an accused civil rights activist to explain why he had a copy of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" at home. The comment has drawn criticism from people across the world.

Tolstoy maintained a journal throughout his life in which he kept a detailed record of all his activities. In the diary, he jotted down a list of rules he aspired to live by. This included sleeping by 10 p.m. and waking up by 5 a.m. with no more than a two-hour nap in the afternoon: eating moderately and avoiding sweets.

While fighting in the Army, Tolstoy wrote: "Childhood", an autobiographical novel, followed by "Boyhood" and "Youth" His other works include "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection", "Family Happiness" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

Did you know?

Tolstoy's wife helped him in finishing "War and Peace" on time. After completing the first draft in 1865, Tolstoy kept revising it over and over again. His wife, Sophia, patiently wrote out each version by hand sometimes she even used a magnifying glass to decipher his scribbles. Over the next seven years, she rewrote the complete manuscript at least eight times.

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It took over a month for Erno Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik's Cube, to solve it. A Hungarian architect, Rubik created the cube in 1974 as a working model to help his students understand 3-D objects. As of November 2018, the world record for solving the puzzle stands at 3.47 seconds, and it was achieved by Yusheng Du of China. More than 350 million cubes have been sold across the world till January 2009.

Rubik’s Cube consists of 26 small cubes that rotate on a central axis; nine coloured cube faces, in three rows of three each, form each side of the cube. When the cube is twisted out of its original arrangement, the player must then return it to the original configuration, one among 43 quintillion possible ones.

The son of a poet mother and a glider-manufacturer father, Rubik studied sculpture at the Technical University in Budapest and architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design, also in Budapest. While a professor of design at the academy, he pursued his hobby of building geometric models. One of these was a prototype of his cube, made of 27 wooden blocks; it took Rubik a month to solve the problem of the cube. It proved a useful tool for teaching algebraic group theory, and in late 1977 Konsumex, Hungary’s state trading company, began marketing it. By 1980 Rubik’s Cube was marketed throughout the world, and over 100 million authorized units, with an estimated 50 million unauthorized imitations, were sold, mostly during its subsequent three years of popularity. Approximately 50 books were published describing how to solve the puzzle of Rubik’s Cube. Following his cube’s popularity, Rubik opened a studio to develop designs in 1984; among its products was another popular puzzle toy, Rubik’s Magic.

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Alice Augusta Ball was an African American chemist who developed an injectable oil extract, the first successful treatment for leprosy. It was used until the 1940s. However, she did not get credit for her discovery for nearly 90 years. Some attribute this to gender and racial discrimination.

Ball was born in 1892, in Washington, to James Presley, a newspaper editor, and Laura Louise, a photographer. After graduating from Seattle High School in 1910, Ball earned her bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Washington, and her master's degree from the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawaii), in 1915. Alice Ball was the first woman and first African American to receive a master's degree from the University of Hawaii and the first woman chemistry professor at the university.

In her postgraduate research career at the University of Hawaii, Ball investigated the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava - a herbal plant grown in the Pacific islands) for her master's thesis.

Impressed with her work, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, a doctor at the Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii that treated patients with leprosy, reached out to Ball to isolate the active chemical compounds in chaulmoogra oil. Chaulmoogra oil had previously been used in the treatment of leprosy with mixed results and severe side effects. An ideal treatment, Dr. Hollmann thought, would be a solution made from the active components of the oil that could be injected without side effects.

In less than a year, Ball developed a technique that would allow the oil from chaulmoogra tree seeds to become injectable and absorbable by the body. She was just 23 years then. Her newly developed technique involved isolating ethyl ester compounds from the fatty acids of the chaulmoogra oil. This isolation technique, later known as the Ball Method, was the only pain-free treatment for leprosy available for over thirty years until sulfone drugs were introduced. Unfortunately, Ball died in 1916, at the young age of 24, before publishing her findings. The president of the College of Hawaii, Dr. Arthur Dean, continued and published Ball's research without giving her credit for the discovery. Dean even called the treatment. "Dean Method." Ball's name might have been completely forgotten but thanks to Dr. Hollmann, who in a 1922 medical journal credited Ball for creating the chaulmoogra solution and referred to it as the "Ball Method."

Even so, Ball remained largely forgotten until 2000, when the University of Hawaii placed a bronze plaque in front of a chaulmoogra tree on campus to honour Ball's discovery. In 2007, the University of Hawaii posthumously awarded her with the Regents Medal of Distinction.

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In 1908, Thomas Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, sent samples of tea leaves in small silken bags to customers. Many of them thought the bags were supposed to be directly immersed in hot water to make tea. They liked what they drank and began to ask for more. And the tea bag became popular.

Tea bags are commonly made of filter paper or food-grade plastic, or occasionally of silk cotton or silk. The tea bag performs the same function as a tea infuser. Tea bags can be used multiple times until there is no extraction left. Some tea bags have an attached piece of string with a paper label at the top that assists in removing the bag, while also displaying the brand or variety of tea.

raditionally, tea bags have been square or rectangular in shape. They are usually made of filter paper, a blend of wood and vegetable fibers related to paper found in milk and coffee filters. The latter is bleached pulp abaca hemp, a plantation banana plant grown for its fiber, mostly in the Philippines and Colombia. Some bags have a heat-sealable thermoplastic such as PVC or polypropylene as a component fiber on the inner tea bag surface, making them not fully biodegradable. Some newer paper tea bags are made in a circular shape.

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Elizabeth II, in full Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, officially Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, (born April 21, 1926, London, England), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952. In 2015 she surpassed Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

Elizabeth was the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. As the child of a younger son of King George V, the young Elizabeth had little prospect of acceding to the throne until her uncle, Edward VIII (afterward duke of Windsor), abdicated in her father’s favour on December 11, 1936, at which time her father became King George VI and she became heir presumptive. The princess’s education was supervised by her mother, who entrusted her daughters to a governess, Marion Crawford; the princess was also grounded in history by C.H.K. Marten, afterward provost of Eton College, and had instruction from visiting teachers in music and languages. During World War II she and her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, perforce spent much of their time safely away from the London blitz and separated from their parents, living mostly at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, and Windsor Castle.

Early in 1947 Princess Elizabeth went with the king and queen to South Africa. After her return there was an announcement of her betrothal to her distant cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten of the Royal Navy, formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. The marriage took place in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947. On the eve of the wedding her father, the king, conferred upon the bridegroom the titles of duke of Edinburgh, earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. They took residence at Clarence House in London. Their first child, Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), was born November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace.

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Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.

In 1997 Roy published her debut novel, The God of Small Things to wide acclaim. The semiautobiographical work departed from the conventional plots and light prose that had been typical among best-sellers. Composed in a lyrical language about South Asian themes and characters in a narrative that wandered through time, Roy’s novel became the biggest-selling book by a nonexpatriate Indian author and won the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Roy’s subsequent literary output largely consisted of politically oriented nonfiction, much of it aimed at addressing the problems faced by her homeland in the age of global capitalism. Among her publications were Power Politics (2001), The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002), War Talk (2003), Public Power in the Age of Empire (2004), Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (2009), Broken Republic: Three Essays (2011), and Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014). In 2017 Roy published The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, her first novel in 20 years. The work blends personal stories with topical issues as it uses a large cast of characters, including a transgender woman and a resistance fighter in Kashmir, to explore contemporary India.

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Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Educated at home by her mother, Christie began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse during World War I. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot, her eccentric and egotistic Belgian detective; Poirot reappeared in about 25 novels and many short stories before returning to Styles, where, in Curtain (1975), he died. The elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple, her other principal detective figure, first appeared in Murder at the Vicarage (1930). Christie’s first major recognition came with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which was followed by some 75 novels that usually made best-seller lists and were serialized in popular magazines in England and the United States.

Christie’s plays included The Mousetrap (1952), which set a world record for the longest continuous run at one theatre (8,862 performances—more than 21 years—at the Ambassadors Theatre, London) before moving in 1974 to St Martin’s Theatre, where it continued without a break until the COVID-19 pandemic closed theatres in 2020, by which time it had surpassed 28,200 performances; and Witness for the Prosecution (1953), which, like many of her works, was adapted into a successful film (1957).

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Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. 

Emily Brontë’s work on Wuthering Heights cannot be dated, and she may well have spent a long time on this intense, solidly imagined novel. It is distinguished from other novels of the period by its dramatic and poetic presentation, its abstention from all comment by the author, and its unusual structure. It recounts in the retrospective narrative of an onlooker, which in turn includes shorter narratives, the impact of the waif Heathcliff on the two families of Earnshaw and Linton in a remote Yorkshire district at the end of the 18th century. Embittered by abuse and by the marriage of Cathy Earnshaw—who shares his stormy nature and whom he loves—to the gentle and prosperous Edgar Linton, Heathcliff plans a revenge on both families, extending into the second generation. Cathy’s death in childbirth fails to set him free from his love-hate relationship with her, and the obsessive haunting persists until his death; the marriage of the surviving heirs of Earnshaw and Linton restores peace.

Sharing her sisters’ dry humour and Charlotte’s violent imagination, Emily diverges from them in making no use of the events of her own life and showing no preoccupation with a spinster’s state or a governess’s position. Working, like them, within a confined scene and with a small group of characters, she constructs an action, based on profound and primitive energies of love and hate, which proceeds logically and economically, making no use of such coincidences as Charlotte relies on, requiring no rich romantic similes or rhetorical patterns, and confining the superb dialogue to what is immediately relevant to the subject. The sombre power of the book and the elements of brutality in the characters affronted some 19th-century opinion. Its supposed masculine quality was adduced to support the claim, based on the memories of her brother Branwell’s friends long after his death, that he was author or part author of it. While it is not possible to clear up all the minor puzzles, neither the external nor the internal evidence offered is substantial enough to weigh against Charlotte’s plain statement that Emily was the author.

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Pride and Prejudice, romantic novel by Jane Austen, published anonymously in three volumes in 1813. A classic of English literature, written with incisive wit and superb character delineation, it centres on the burgeoning relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner. Upon publication, Pride and Prejudice was well received by critics and readers. The first edition sold out within the first year, and it never went out of print.

The work, which Austen initially titled First Impressions, is the second of four novels that Austen published during her lifetime. Although Pride and Prejudice has been criticized for its lack of historical context (it is likely set either during the French Revolution [1787–99] or the Napoleonic Wars [1799–1815]), the existence of its characters in a social bubble that is rarely penetrated by events beyond it is an accurate portrayal of the enclosed social world in which Austen lived. She depicted that world, in all its own narrow pride and prejudice, with unswerving accuracy and satire. At the same time, she placed at its centre, as both its prime actor and most perceptive critic, a character so well conceived and rendered that the reader cannot but be gripped by her story and wish for its happy denouement. In the end, Austen’s novel has remained popular largely because of Elizabeth—who was reportedly Austen’s own favourite among all her heroines—and because of the enduring appeal to men and women alike of a well-told and potentially happily ending love story.

Pride and Prejudice inspired various stage, film, and television productions. Notable adaptations included the 1940 film with Greer Garson as Elizabeth and Laurence Olivier as Darcy, the 1995 TV miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and the 2005 movie featuring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. 

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Frankenstein, the novel written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is often hailed as the first novel in the science fiction genre.

On March 11, 1818 Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus was published for the first time. Written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who was merely 21 at that time, the novel is often hailed as the first novel in the science fiction genre. Much like how it was for women writing in other genres, it was not an easy task for Shelly. The first edition was published anonymously and there is an interesting story behind writing the novel.

In 1816, Mary Shelley along with her husband, poet Percy were visiting Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. It was rented by Lord Byron and John Polidori. The story goes that one evening, as suggested by Byron, all of them wrote their own ghost story. “I busied myself to think of a story – a story to rival those which had excited me to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror – one to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beating of the heart,” Mary wrote in the 1831 edition of the novel.

Needless to say she succeeded in producing what she had set out for. The tale of a scientist who decided to play God but then disgusted with his creation abandoned him has achieved an iconic status over the years. However, even though Mary Shelley started the genre, so as to say, it was still a struggle for women to make a mark in this field. Even after all these years, there remains only a handful of female writers who have managed to carve a niche for themselves. On the author’s birth anniversary, we bring to you names of some other female authors who have lent their words to the science fiction genre to make it more enriching.

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Jagadish Chandra Bose was a polymath whose two major works came from two distinct fields of science electromagnetism and plant physiology. He was considered the first modem and experimental scientist of India.

J.C. Bose was born in 1858 in Bengal Presidency (which is now a place in Bangladesh). Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College. Calcutta, and went on to do Natural Science from Cambridge University. He conducted researches with the English physical scientist Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India in 1885. He found himself a join at the Presidency College, Calcutta, on a temporary basis, where he was subjected to racial discrimination. Later he was made permanent and was given a dingy laboratory to conduct his experiments in. Colonial British did not encourage original research by Indians.

Inventions in wireless waves

Working from here, Bose followed up on German physicist Heinrich Hertzs discovery of electromagnetic waves. Bose came up with the Millimetre Waves, the shortest radiowaves of 5mm. In 1895, Bose demonstrated wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves to the public in Calcutta. And the world started taking notice of this modern scientist from India. In 1899, Bose came up with another development the iron-mercury-iron coherer, a primitive form of radio signal detector, and presented it at the Royal Society, London. Years later Marconi transmitted radio waves across the Atlantic using Bose's coherer. Bose also has the distinction of using a semiconductor junction to detect radio waves for the first time.

Plants have feelings too

From electromagnetic waves, Jagdish Chandra Bose's attention turned to plant biology. In 1901, he showed that plants are also sensitive to and temperature. Bose demonstrated how poison could create human-like suffering in plants using an instrument he developed-crescograph. He had a plant dipped up to its stem in a vessel containing a poisonous bromide solution. When the crescograph with the plant was plugged in. people could view how the lighted spot on a screen showed the movements of the plant which beat, vibrated and stopped, corresponding to the plant's suffering and death.

Legacy

Bose founded a research institute - Bose Institute in Calcutta in 1971. The same year, he was knighted by the British government. In 2009, on his 150th birth anniversary, Bose was honoured as one of the Fathers of Radio Science.

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The Hillarys are the "first family" of Himalayan mountaineering with two generations of Everest climbers. When Peter Hillary, son of adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary, who, with mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest, climbed Everest in 1990, he and his father became the first father-son duo to achieve the feat. Peter has achieved two summits of Everest, an 84-day trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, and completed the Seven Summits, reaching the top of the highest mountains on all seven continents.

In 1960, Hillary organised the 1960–61 Silver Hut expedition,[60] with Griffith Pugh; and Pugh showed that Mount Everest could be climbed without oxygen, with a long period of acclimatisation by living at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) for six months. An assault on Makalu, the world's fifth-highest mountain, was unsuccessful. Hillary was with the expedition for five months, although it lasted for ten.

The expedition also searched for the fabled abominable snowman. No evidence of Yetis was found, instead footprints and tracks were proven to be from other causes. During the expedition, Hillary travelled to remote temples which contained "Yeti scalps"; however after bringing back three relics, two were shown to be from bears and one from a goat antelope. Hillary said after the expedition: "The yeti is not a strange, superhuman creature as has been imagined. We have found rational explanations for most yeti phenomena".

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