GalileoItalian scientist and scholar Galileo made pioneering observations that laid the foundation for

modern physics and astronomy.

SynopsisBorn on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy, Galileo Galilei was a mathematics professor who made pioneering observations of nature with long-lasting implications for the study of physics. He also constructed a telescope and supported the Copernican theory, which supports a sun-centered solar system. Galileo was accused twice of heresy by the church for his beliefs, and wrote books on his ideas. He died in Arcetri, Italy, on January 8, 1642.Early LifeGalileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa in the Duchy of Florence, Italy. He was the first of six children born to Vincenzo Galilei, a well-known musician and music theorist, and Giulia Ammannati. In 1574, the family moved to Florence, where Galileo started his formal education at the Camaldolese monastery in Vallombrosa.In 1583, Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. Armed with high intelligence and talent, he soon became fascinated with many subjects, particularly mathematics and physics.

While at Pisa, Galileo was exposed to the Aristotelian view of the world, then the leading scientific authority and the only one sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. At first, Galileo supported this view, like any other intellectual of his time, and was on track to be a university professor. However, due to financial difficulties, Galileo left the university in 1585 before earning his degree.Academic CareerGalileo continued to study mathematics, supporting himself with minor teaching positions. During this time he began his two-decade study on objects in motion and published The Little Balance, describing the hydrostatic principles of weighing small quantities, which brought him some fame. This gained him a teaching post at the University of Pisa, in 1589. There Galileo conducted his fabled experiments with falling objects and produced his manuscript Du Motu (On Motion), a departure from Aristotelian views about motion and falling objects. Galileo developed an arrogance about his work, and his strident criticisms of Aristotle left him isolated among his colleagues. In 1592, his contract with the University of Pisa was not renewed.Galileo quickly found a new position at the University of Padua, teaching geometry, mechanics and astronomy. The appointment was fortunate, for his father had died in 1591, leaving Galileo entrusted with the care of his younger brother Michelagnolo. During his 18-year tenure at Padua, he gave entertaining lectures and attracted large crowds of followers, further increasing his fame and his sense of mission.Controversial FindingsIn 1604, Galileo published The Operations of the Geometrical and Military Compass, revealing his skills with experiments and practical technological applications. He also constructed a hydrostatic balance for measuring small objects. These developments brought him additional income and more recognition. That same year, Galileo refined his theories on motion and falling objects, and developed the universal law of acceleration, which all objects in the universe obeyed. Galileo began to express openly his support of the Copernican theory that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. This challenged the doctrine of Aristotle and the established order set by the Catholic Church.In July 1609, Galileo learned about a simple telescope built by Dutch eyeglass makers, and he soon developed one of his own. In August, he demonstrated it to some Venetian merchants, who saw its value for spotting ships and gave Galileo salary to manufacture several of them. However, Galileo’s ambition pushed him to go further, and in the fall of 1609 he made the fateful decision to turn his telescope toward the heavens. In March 1610, he published a small booklet, The Starry Messenger, revealing his discoveries that the moon was not flat and smooth, but a sphere with mountains and craters. He found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun. He also discovered Jupiter had revolving moons, which didn’t revolve around the earth.Soon Galileo began mounting a body of evidence that supported Copernican theory and contradicted Aristotle and Church doctrine. In 1612, he published his Discourse on Bodies in Water, refuting the Aristotelian explanation of why objects float in water, saying that it wasn’t because of their flat shape, but instead the weight of the object in relation to the water it displaced. In 1613, he published his observations of sunspots, which further refuted Aristotelian doctrine that the sun was perfect. That same year, Galileo wrote a letter to a student to explain how Copernican theory did not contradict Biblical passages, stating that scripture was written from an earthly perspective and implied that science provided a different, more accurate perspective. The letter was made public and Church Inquisition consultants pronounced

Copernican theory heretical. In 1616, Galileo was ordered not to “hold, teach, or defend in any manner” the Copernican theory regarding the motion of the earth. Galileo obeyed the order for seven years, partly to make life easier and partly because he was a devoted Catholic.In 1623, a friend of Galileo, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, was selected as Pope Urban VIII. He allowed Galileo to pursue his work on astronomy and even encouraged him to publish it, on condition it be objective and not advocate Copernican theory. In 1632, Galileo published the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a discussion among three people: one who supports Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the universe, one who argues against it, and one who is impartial. Though Galileo claimed Dialogues was neutral, it was clearly not. The advocate of Aristotelian belief comes across as the simpleton, getting caught in his own arguments.Reaction by the ChurchChurch reaction against the book was swift, and Galileo was summoned to Rome. The Inquisition proceedings lasted from September 1632 to July 1633. During most of this time, Galileo was treated with respect and never imprisoned. However, in a final attempt to break him, Galileo was threatened with torture, and he finally admitted he had supported Copernican theory, but privately held that his statements were correct. He was convicted of heresy and spent his remaining years under house arrest. Though ordered not to have any visitors nor have any of his works printed outside of Italy, he ignored both. In 1634, a French translation of his study of forces and their effects on matter was published, and a year later, copies of the Dialogue were published in Holland. While under house arrest, Galileo wrote Two New Sciences, a summary of his life’s work on the science of motion and strength of materials. It was printed in Holland in 1638. By this time, he had become blind and in ill health.Death and LegacyGalileo died in Arcetri, near Florence, Italy, on January 8, 1642, after suffering from a fever and heart palpitations. But in time, the Church couldn’t deny the truth in science. In 1758, it lifted the ban on most works supporting Copernican theory, and by 1835 dropped its opposition to heliocentrism altogether.In the 20th century, several popes acknowledged the great work of Galileo, and in 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret about how the Galileo affair was handled. Galileo's contribution to our understanding of the universe was significant not only in his discoveries, but in the methods he developed and the use of mathematics to prove them. He played a major role in the scientific revolution and, deservedly so, earned the moniker "The Father of Modern Science."Personal LifeIn 1600, Galileo met Marina Gamba, a Venetian woman, who bore him three children out of wedlock: daughters Virginia and Livia, and son Vincenzo. He never married Marina, possibly due to financial worries and possibly fearing his illegitimate children would threaten his social standing. He worried the two girls would never marry well, and when they were older, had them enter a convent. In 1616, at the San Mateo Convent, Virginia changed her name to Maria Celeste and Livia became Sister Arcangela, when they became nuns. Maria Celeste remained in contact and supported her father through letters until her death. No letters from Arcangela survive. His son’s birth was eventually legitimized and he became a successful musician.

Christian DopplerChristian Doppler was an Austrian mathematician and physicist best known for articulating a principle known as the 'Doppler effect.'

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SynopsisChristian Doppler was born in Salzburg, Austria, on November 29, 1803. He taught mathematics and physics at the university level while conducting his own research. Doppler is best known for articulating an influential principle known as the "Doppler effect" in an 1842 paper. He was often ill and died while convalescing in Venice, Italy, on March 17, 1853.

Early LifeChristian Andreas Doppler was born on November 29, 1803, in Salzburg, Austria. His lack of physical strength kept Doppler from joining his father in his stonemasonry business. Doppler studied philosophy in Salzburg, and mathematics and physics at the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Vienna.

Academic CareerIn 1835, Christian Doppler accepted an academic position at what is now Czech Technical University. He published widely, but was known as a harsh instructor who was not popular among his students. He married Mathild Sturm, a native of Strasburg, in 1836. They would have five children over the course of their marriage.In 1842, Doppler gave a presentation called "Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne" ("On the colored light of the double stars and certain other stars of the heavens") at the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences. The paper theorized that since the pitch of sound from a moving source varies for a stationary observer, the color of the light from a star should alter according to the star's velocity relative to Earth. This principle came to be known as the "Doppler effect." The Doppler effect has been used to support the Big Bang Theory and is often referenced in weather forecasting, radar and navigation.Doppler left Prague in 1847 and accepted a professorship in mathematics, physics and mechanics at the Academy of Mines and Forests in the Slovakian town of Banska Stiavnica. When revolution broke out in the region in 1848, Doppler was forced to return to Vienna.In 1850, Doppler was appointed head of the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna. One of his students there was Gregor Mendel, known for his tremendous

contributions to the field of genetics, who did not impress Doppler at the time. Another member of faculty, Franz Unger, served as a mentor to Mendel.

DeathDoppler did not live long after his return to Vienna. He contracted tuberculosis, which made speech difficult and forced him to take a leave of absence in 1852. He traveled to Italy in search of a warmer climate during his convalescence.Christian Doppler died of pulmonary disease on March 17, 1853, in Venice, Italy. He is buried inside the Venetian island cemetery of San Michele.

Marie Curie

Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize.

SynopsisBorn Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the further development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.

Early LifeMaria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children, following siblings Zosia, Józef, Bronya and Hela. As a child Curie took after her father, Wladyslaw, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 10, Curie lost her mother, Bronislawa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.

For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.

Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo. The pair married on July 26, 1895.

DiscoveriesMarie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another. At first, they worked on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen.

Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the wordradioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn't slow down.

Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Science CelebrityMarie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.

Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

“The use of the X-rays during the war saved the lives of many wounded men; it also

saved many from long suffering and lasting infirmity.” -- Marie Curie

Final Days and LegacyAll of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.

SynopsisMathematician Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, France. In the 1640s he invented the Pascaline, an early calculator, and further validated Evangelista Torricelli's theory concerning the cause of barometrical variations. In the 1650s, Pascal laid the foundation of probability theory with Pierre de Fermat and published the theological work Les Provinciales, a groundbreaking series of letters that defended his Jansenist faith. Pascal is also widely known for his body of notes posthumously released as the Pensées. He died in Paris on August 19, 1662.

Background and Early LifeInventor, mathematician, physicist and theological writer Blaise Pascal, born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, was the third of four children and only son to Etienne and Antoinette Pascal. His mother passed away when Blaise was just a toddler and he became exceptionally close to his two sisters Gilberte and Jacqueline. His father, Etienne, was a tax collector and talented mathematician.Etienne moved the family to Paris in 1631. He had decided to educate Blaise—a child prodigy—at home so he could design an unorthodox curriculum and make sure that Blaise was able to express his own innate curiosity. It's also believed that Blaise may have been educated at home due to issues around his health. Ironically, Etienne omitted mathematics from his son's early curriculum out of concern that Blaise would become so fascinated with geometry that he wouldn’t be able to focus on classical subjects.The beginning of Blaise’s education was geared toward languages, especially Latin and Greek. Even so, Etienne's plan backfired: The fact that mathematics was a forbidden topic made the subject even more interesting to the inquisitive boy, who at the age of 12 began exploring geometry on his own. He made up his own terminology, not having learned official mathematical terms, and quickly managed to work out that the sum of a triangle's angles are equal to two right angles.

Mystic Hexagram and Religious ConversionEtienne was impressed. In answer to Blaise's unswerving fascination, his father permitted him to read the works of ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. Etienne also allowed Blaise to accompany him to meetings at Mersenne's Academy in Paris. It was there, at age 16, that Blaise

presented a number of his early theorems, including his Mystic Hexagram, to some of the premier mathematical thinkers of the time.After a bit of political tumult, the Pascal family drew up stakes once again in 1640. They moved to Rouen, France, where Blaise's father had been appointed the previous year to collect taxes. In 1640, Pascal also published his first written work, Essay on Conic Sections. The writings constituted an important leap forward in projective geometry, which involved transferring a 3-D object onto a 2-D field.In 1646, Etienne was seriously injured in a fall that resulted in a broken hip, rendering him housebound. The accident created a shift in the family's religious beliefs, as the Pascals had never fully embraced local Jesuit ideas. After Etienne's accident, he received medical visits from two brothers who were also followers of Jansenism, a particular denomination within the Catholic Church. Their influence, presumably coupled with trauma over Etienne's health, led the family to convert. Blaise became devoutly religious and sister Jacqueline eventually becoming a Jansenist nun. 

Inventions and DiscoveriesIn 1642, inspired by the idea of making his father's job of calculating taxes easier, Blaise Pascal started work on a calculator dubbed the Pascaline. (German polymath William Schickard had developed and manufactured an earlier version of the calculator in 1623.) The Pascaline was a numerical wheel calculator with movable dials, each representing a numerical digit. The invention, however, was not without its glitches: There was a discrepancy between the calculator's design and the structure of French currency at the time. Pascal continued to work on improving the device, with 50 prototypes produced by 1652, but the Pascaline was never a big seller.In 1648, Pascal starting writing more of his theorems in The Generation of Conic Sections, but he pushed the work aside until the following decade.At the end of the 1640s, Pascal temporarily focused his experiments on the physical sciences. Following in Evangelista Torricelli’s footsteps, Pascal experimented with how atmospheric pressure could be estimated in terms of weight. In 1648, by having his brother-in-law take readings of the barometric pressure at various altitudes on a mountain (Pascal was too poor of health to make the trek himself), he validated Torricelli's theory concerning the cause of barometrical variations.In the 1650s, Pascal set about trying to create a perpetual motion machine, the purpose of which was to produce more energy than it used. In the process, he stumbled upon an accidental invention and in 1655 Pascal's roulette machine was born. Aptly, he derived its name from the French word for "little wheel."Overlapping his work on the roulette machine was Pascal's correspondence with mathematical theorist Pierre de Fermat, which began in 1654. Through their letters discussing gambling and Pascal's own experiments, he found that there is a fixed likelihood of a particular outcome when it comes to the roll of the dice. This discovery was the basis of the mathematical theory of probability, with Pascal's writings on the subject published posthumously.Although the specific dates are uncertain, Pascal also reportedly invented a primitive form of the wristwatch. It was an informal invention to say the least: The mathematician was known to strap his pocket watch to his wrist with a piece of string, presumably for the sake of convenience while tinkering with other inventions.

Noted Literary WorksAntoine Arnauld was a Sorbonne theologian who defended Jansenist beliefs, and thus found his position under fire from papal doctrine and university faculty. Pascal wrote a series of pseudonymous open letters from 1656-57 that ultimately came to be known as Les Provinciales. The writings defended Arnauld and critiqued Jesuit beliefs while exhibiting a groundbreaking style, relying on relatively tight, sharp prose with irony and satire.Starting in 1657, Pascal had also begun to write notes that would be posthumously organized and published as the Pensées, going into great detail about the contours of the thinker's position on his faith. The Pensées is an extensive work with assertions that might be considered controversial to some in contemporary times. The most oft cited portion of the collection is Pascal's famed "Wager," in which he states that it is more advantageous for religious skeptics to embrace a belief in God as they ultimately have more to lose if a higher power is revealed after death. 

Death and LegacyPascal, a complex personality, was described by biographer Donald Adamson as "precocious, stubbornly persevering, a perfectionist, pugnacious to the point of bullying ruthlessness yet seeking to be meek and humble." Pascal had struggled with insomnia and a digestive disorder from the time he was a teen, and as such he was known to have suffered greatly from pain throughout his life. Over the years, Pascal’s constant work took a further toll on his already fragile health. Pascal died of a malignant stomach tumor at his sister Gilberte's home in Paris on August 19, 1662. By then, the tumor had metastasized in his brain. He was 39 years old. 

Pascal's inventions and discoveries have been instrumental to developments in the fields of geometry, physics and computer science, influencing 17th-century visionaries like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton. During the 20th century, the Pascal (Pa) unit was named after the thinker in honor of his contributions to the understanding of atmospheric pressure and how it could be estimated in terms of weight. In the late 1960s, Swiss computer scientist Nicklaus Wirth invented a computer language and insisted on naming it after Pascal. This was Wirth's way of memorializing Pascal's invention of the Pascaline, one of the earliest forms of the modern computer. 

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of the Founding Fathers who drafted the Declaration of

Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

SynopsisBorn in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and he negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. A printer and writer known for his wit and wisdom, Franklin was a polymath who publishedPoor Richard’s Almanack, invented bifocal glasses and organized the first successful American lending library. 

Early LifeBenjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston in what was then known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, English-born soap and candle maker Josiah Franklin, had seven children with first wife, Anne Child, and 10 more with second wife, Abiah Folger. Ben was his 15th child and youngest son. 

Ben learned to read at an early age, and despite his success at the Boston Latin School, he stopped his formal schooling at 10 to work full-time in his cash-strapped father’s candle and soap shop. Dipping wax and cutting wicks didn’t fire the young boy’s imagination, however. Perhaps to dissuade him from going to sea as one of his brothers had done, Josiah apprenticed Ben at 12 to his brother James at his print shop. 

Although James mistreated and frequently beat his younger brother, Ben learned a great deal about newspaper publishing and adopted a similar brand of subversive politics under the printer’s tutelage. When James refused to publish any of his brother’s writing, 16-year-old Ben adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood, and “her” 14 imaginative and witty letters delighted readers of his brother’s newspaper, The New England Courant. James grew angry, however, when he learned that his apprentice had penned the letters. Tired of his brother’s “harsh and tyrannical” behavior, Ben fled Boston in 1723 although he had three years remaining on a legally binding contract with his master. He escaped to New York before settling in Philadelphia, which became his home base for the rest of his life. 

Franklin found work with another printer in Philadelphia and lodged at the home of John Read, where he met and courted his landlord’s daughter Deborah. Encouraged by Pennsylvania Governor William Keith to set up his own print shop, Franklin left for London in 1724 to purchase supplies from stationers, booksellers and printers. When the teenager arrived in England, however, he felt duped when Keith’s letters of introduction never arrived as promised. Although forced to find work at London’s print shops, Franklin took full advantage of the city’s pleasures—attending theater performances, mingling with the populace in coffee houses and continuing his lifelong passion for reading. A self-taught swimmer who crafted his own wooden flippers, Franklin performed long-distance swims on the Thames River. (In 1968, he was inducted as an honorary member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.) 

In 1725 Franklin published his first pamphlet, "A Dissertation upon Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain," which argued that humans lack free will and, thus, are not morally responsible for their actions. (Franklin later repudiated this thought and burned all but one copy of the pamphlet still in his possession.)

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to find that Deborah Read had married in the interim, only to be abandoned by her husband just months after the wedding. In the next few years he held varied jobs such as bookkeeper, shopkeeper and currency cutter. He returned to a familiar trade in 1728 when he printed paper currency in New Jersey before partnering with a friend to open his own print shop in Philadelphia that published government pamphlets and books. In

1730 Franklin was named the official printer of Pennsylvania. By that time, he had formed the “Junto,” a social and self-improvement study group for young men that met every Friday to debate morality, philosophy and politics. When Junto members sought to expand their reading choices, Franklin helped to incorporate America’s first subscription library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, in 1731. 

Prominent CitizenIn 1729 Franklin published another pamphlet, "A Modest Enquiry into The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency," which advocated for an increase in the money supply to stimulate the economy. With the cash Franklin earned from his money-related treatise, he was able to purchase The Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper from a former boss. Under his ownership, the struggling newspaper was transformed into the most widely read paper in the colonies and became one of the first to turn a profit. He had less luck in 1732 when he launched the first German-language newspaper in the colonies, the short-lived Philadelphische Zeitung. 

After the future Founding Father rekindled his romance with Deborah Read, he took her as his common-law wife in 1730. Around that time, Franklin fathered a son, William, out of wedlock who was taken in by the couple. The pair’s first son, Francis, was born in 1732, but he died four years later of smallpox. The couple’s only daughter, Sarah, was born in 1743.

Franklin’s prominence and success grew during the 1730s, especially with the publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack at the end of 1732. In addition to weather forecasts, astronomical information and poetry, the almanac—which Franklin published for 25 consecutive years—included proverbs and Franklin’s witty maxims such as “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” and “He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.”

Franklin amassed real estate and businesses and organized the volunteer Union Fire Company to counteract dangerous fire hazards in Philadelphia. He joined the Freemasons in 1731 and was eventually elected grand master of the Masons of Pennsylvania.

The 1740s saw Franklin expanding into entrepreneurship with invention of the Franklin stove, which provided more heat with less fuel, and also into scientific pursuits. His 1743 pamphlet "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge" underscored his interests and served as the founding document of the American Philosophical Society, the first scientific society in the colonies. 

By 1748, the 42-year-old Franklin had become one of the richest men in Pennsylvania. He turned his printing business over to a partner to give him more time to conduct scientific experiments. He moved into a new house in 1748 and acquired the first of his slaves to work in the new home and in the print shop. Franklin’s views on slavery evolved over the following decades to the point that he considered the institution inherently evil, and thus, he freed his slaves in the 1760s.

He became a soldier in the Pennsylvania militia at the age of 42, but his abiding interest in electricity was ignited at this time, too. His investigations into electrical phenomena were complied into “Experiments and Observations on Electricity,” published in England in 1751. He conducted the famous kite-and-key experiment in 1752 to demonstrate that lighting was electricity. He invented the lightning rod and coined new electricity-related terms that are still part of the lexicon, such as battery, charge, conductor and electrify. 

A prolific inventor, Franklin developed bifocals that could be used for both distance and reading. He is credited with inventing the first rocking chair, flexible catheter and American penny. He even devised a new “scheme” for the alphabet that proposed to eliminate the letters C, J, Q, W, X and Y as redundant.

Franklin’s inventions took on a musical bent as well. In 1761 he commenced development of the armonica, a musical instrument composed of spinning glass bowls on a shaft. Both Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart   composed music for the strange instrument.

His self-education earned him honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, England’s Oxford University and Scotland’s University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In 1749, Franklin wrote a pamphlet relating to the education of youth in Pennsylvania that resulted in the establishment of the Academy of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania. 

Public ServiceFranklin became a member of Philadelphia’s city council in 1748 and a justice of the peace the following year. In 1751 Franklin was elected a Philadelphia alderman and a representative to the Pennsylvania Assembly, a position to which he was re-elected annually until 1764. Two years later, he accepted a royal appointment as deputy postmaster general of North America. 

When the French and Indian War began in 1754, Franklin called on the colonies to band together for their common defense, which he dramatized inThe Pennsylvania Gazette with a cartoon of a snake cut into sections with the caption “Join or Die.” He represented Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress, which adopted his proposal to create a unified government for the 13 colonies. Franklin’s “Plan of Union,” however, failed to be ratified by the colonies. 

In 1757 he was appointed by the Pennsylvania Assembly to serve as the colony’s agent in England. Franklin sailed to London to negotiate a long-standing dispute with the proprietors of the colony, the Penn family, taking William and his two slaves but leaving behind Deborah and Sarah. He spent most of the next two decades in London, where he was drawn to the high society and intellectual salons of the cosmopolitan city. 

After Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, he toured the colonies to inspect its post offices and William took office as New Jersey’s royal governor, a position his father arranged through his political connections in the British government. After Franklin lost his seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1764, he returned to London as the colony’s agent without Deborah, who refused to leave Philadelphia. It would be the last time the couple saw each other. Franklin would not return home before Deborah passed away in 1774 from a stroke at the age of 66.

He returned to London at a tense time in the relations between Great Britain and the American colonies. Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act in March 1765 imposed a highly unpopular tax on all printed materials for commercial and legal use in the colonies. Since Franklin purchased stamps for his printing business and nominated a friend as the Pennsylvania stamp distributor, some colonists thought Franklin implicitly supported the new tax, and rioters in Philadelphia even threatened his house. Franklin’s passionate denunciation of the tax in testimony before Parliament, however, contributed to the Stamp Act’s repeal in 1766. 

Two years later he penned a pamphlet, “Causes of the American Discontents before 1768,” and he soon became an agent for Massachusetts, Georgia and New Jersey as well. Franklin fanned the flames of revolution by sending the inflammatory private letters of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, which called for the restriction of the rights of colonists, to America where they caused a firestorm after their publication by Boston newspapers. In the wake of the scandal, Franklin was removed as deputy postmaster general, and he returned to North America in 1775 as a devotee of the patriot cause. 

Always intellectually curious, Franklin began to speculate on his return trip across the Atlantic Ocean about why the westbound trip always took longer, and his measurements of ocean temperatures led to his discovery of the existence of the Gulf Stream, the knowledge of which served to cut two weeks off the previous sailing time from Europe to North America.  

In 1775, Franklin was elected to the Second Continental Congress and appointed the first postmaster general for the colonies. And in 1776, he was appointed commissioner to Canada and was one of five men to draft the Declaration of Independence. Franklin’s support for the patriot cause put him at odds with his Loyalist son. When the New Jersey militia stripped William Franklin of his post as royal governor and imprisoned him, his father chose not to intercede on his behalf. After voting for independence, Franklin was elected commissioner to France and set sail to negotiate a treaty for the country’s military and financial support. 

Later YearsMuch has been made of Franklin’s years in Paris, chiefly his romantic life, as essentially the first U.S. ambassador to France. After Deborah’s death, Franklin had a rich romantic life in his nine years abroad. At the age of 74, he even proposed marriage to a widow named Madame Helvetius, but she rejected him.

Franklin was embraced in France as much, if not more, for his wit and intellectual standing in the scientific community as for his status as a political appointee from a fledging country. His reputation facilitated respect and entrees into closed communities, including that of King Louis XVI. And it was his adept diplomacy that led to the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War. 

After almost a decade in France, Franklin returned to the United States in 1785. He was elected in 1787 to represent Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention, which drafted and ratified the new U.S. Constitution. The oldest delegate at the age of 81, Franklin initially supported proportional representation in Congress, but he fashioned the Great Compromise that resulted in proportional representation in the House of Representatives and equal representation by state in the Senate. 

Franklin helped found the Society for Political Inquiries, dedicated to improving knowledge of government, in 1787. He also became more vociferous in his opposition to slavery. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, wrote many tracts urging the abolition of slavery and petitioned the U.S. Congress in 1790 to end slavery and the slave trade.

Death and LegacyBenjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the home of his daughter, Sarah Bache. He was 84, suffered from gout and had complained of ailments for some time, completing the final codicil to his will a little more than a year and a half prior to his death. He bequeathed most of his estate to Sarah and very little to William, whose opposition to the patriot cause still stung him. He also donated money that funded scholarships, schools and museums in Boston and Philadelphia. 

Franklin had actually written his epitaph when he was 22: “The body of B. Franklin, Printer (Like the Cover of an Old Book Its Contents torn Out And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding) Lies Here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be Lost; For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More In a New and More Elegant Edition Revised and Corrected By the Author.” In the end, however, the stone on the grave he shared with his wife in the cemetery of Philadelphia’s Christ Church reads simply, “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790.”

The image of Benjamin Franklin that has come down through history, along with the likeness on the $100 bill, is something of a caricature—a bald man in a frock coat holding a kite string with a key attached. But the scope of things he applied himself to was so broad it seems a shame. Founding universities and libraries, the post office, shaping the foreign policy of the fledgling United States, drafting the Declaration of Independence, publishing newspapers, warming us with the Franklin stove, pioneering advances in science, letting us see with bifocals and lighting our way with electricity—all from a man who never finished school but shaped his life through abundant reading and experience, a strong moral compass and an unflagging commitment to civic duty. Franklin illumined corners of American life that still have the lingering glow of his

attention. He was a true polymath and entrepreneur, which is no doubt why he is often called the “First American.”