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Many of us remember our childhood with nostalgia. it was a beautiful, carefree time. But not all children devote all their free time to games and entertainment. Some are working hard and making real discoveries that can help millions of people around the world.
10 Blaise Pascal
He lived only 39 years, but left a noticeable mark, because. known to the whole world as a mathematician, physicist, and in the second half of his life as a writer and philosopher.
His unique abilities manifested themselves very early. The boy’s father did not want to teach him mathematics ahead of time, moreover, he forbade him to study it. But Blaise himself was able to figure out a lot of things. Without even knowing the names of the figures, he proved Euclid’s 32nd theorem.
Then his father allowed him to read mathematical books. At the age of 11, the boy conducted several experiments and wrote a Treatise on Sounds. At the age of 16, having studied the works of Desargues, he improved his ideas, was able to publish his first printed work, “Experiment on Conic Sections”, and Pascal’s theorem was also there. It became a classical theorem of projective geometry.
He also invented the prototype of the first calculator in 1642, at the age of 18.
9. Venice Burney
It was she who gave the name to the planet Pluto. It was discovered in 1930, after which they began to think about what name to come up with for a new celestial body. At this time, the girl was 11 years old.
Grandfather Bernie worked as a librarian at Oxford University and was interested in this issue. He told his granddaughter that scientists had discovered a new planet and asked her what she would call it. The girl replied that the planet is very far away, and it is cold, so the most appropriate name for it is “Pluto”.
That was the name of the god of the underworld. Venetia’s grandfather, having met Professor of Astronomy Herbert Hall Turner, recounted to him a conversation with his granddaughter, and he promised to offer this name to the employees of the Lowell Observatory, who made this discovery.
After 1,5 months, the new name of the planet was approved and made public. Happy grandfather gave his granddaughter 5 pounds. Venice grew up, worked as a school teacher all her life, died at the age of 90.
8. George Nissen
He made his main discovery at the age of 16. In 1930 he was a student at the gymnastic school. Then he came up with the idea to create a device for training acrobats, which he called “jumping installation”.
Nissen in the garage connected the canvas and elastic bands to the metal structure. Later, George improved his invention, and then founded a company with his friend. They made and sold trampolines. Now they are used in professional sports, for training cosmonauts and pilots, in the entertainment industry, etc.
7. Jack Andraka
Now he is 22 years old, he is a scientist, studying cancer. At the age of 16, he came up with a new method for diagnosing pancreatic cancer. He became interested in the subject after the death of a close family friend at age 14.
He studied scientific publications on this issue, after which he turned to 200 different scientists with a request to provide him with a laboratory for experiments. Only one responded, Anirban Maitr.
Jack worked in the lab for 7 months after school and on weekends. He was able to make a tester that detects the presence of the mesothelin protein in the blood. It appears at an early stage of the disease.
6. Milton Sirota
American mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938 decided to take a walk in the park with his nephews. He talked with them on various topics and said that there is a number with 100 zeros, but so far they have not come up with a name for it. Nine-year-old Milton suggested calling it “googol”, and the number equal to ten to the power of googol – googolplex. These names stuck to them.
5. Louis Braille
He was the son of a shoemaker in a small French town. At the age of 3, Louis was injured with a saddlery knife and due to inflammation began to go blind, and at the age of 5 he was completely blind.
His parents found a music teacher for him, he studied the alphabet at a local school, and at the age of 10 he entered an institute for the blind. There he learned about the existence of the “night alphabet”, which was used by the military to transmit information at night.
Louis decided to create his own dotted font and in 1824, at the age of 15, he came up with the very Braille that is still used throughout the world by visually impaired or blind people.
4. Krtin Nithyanandam
A schoolboy from the English city of Epsom at the age of 15 was able to develop a test that allows you to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease 10 years before the first symptoms appear. Prior to this, the diagnosis could only be made based on cognitive tests.
The teenager said that he chose this topic, because. interested in neuroscience. He believes that this disease is the biggest problem of the 21st century. Of course, the test will not cure the disease, but early diagnosis will help both the patient and his relatives to prepare for the upcoming test.
3. Ann Makosinski
When this young Canadian was only 15 years old, she became famous all over the world. The girl came up with a flashlight that does not run on batteries, but uses human heat as a power source.
She decided to design her flashlight using her knowledge of physics. Ann showed her circuit to her parents, the electronics engineers, and they confirmed that it was a breakthrough. It remains only to improve the circuit in order to reduce the cost of the flashlight.
2. Boyan Slat
Now this young inventor is 24 years old. At the age of 16, he was vacationing in Greece and drew attention to the fact that there is a lot of plastic garbage in the sea. While thinking about his high school graduation project, he created a garbage collection device that works with the help of ocean currents.
. This project was noticed, it deserved a prestigious prize. But Bojan decided not to stop there and is now working to bring his ideas to life. He created a fund that has already raised over $30 million. Boyan expects to rid the Pacific Ocean of garbage in 5 years. The first results should appear by 2020.
1. Clara Leisen
This 10-year-old girl was able to come up with a new substance. Her teacher Kenneth Beer gave the children a wooden constructor and asked them to create new molecules.
The structure that Clara, a 5th grade student, put together interested Kenneth. He sent a picture of the layout to Professor Robert Zollner. The scientist began to browse the computer database and found only one similar substance, such a molecule had not been mentioned anywhere before. If you recreate it, you should get a very interesting substance, a new type of explosive, tertranitratoxycarbon.