Scientist: Did you mean...?

A replica of the calculating machine made in 1642 by the French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Made of brass and 28 cm in length. (Science Museum, London)

A 16th century CE illustration showing the famed Persian astronomer and scientist Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274 CE) in his observatory at Maragha, then part of the Mongol Ilkhanate. (British Library, London)

An engraving portrait of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), the Anglo-Irish chemist, physicist, and experimental philosopher. In the background is the scientist's celebrated air pump.

An 18th-century portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour of Gabrielle Émilie, Marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), the French scientist and translator. (Château de Breteuil, France)

X-rays were discovered in 1895 by German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923). This is an early X-ray, taken in 1897, of a 30-year-old woman who was fully dressed when the X-ray was taken. Image from p.180 of The American...

A detail of a chart showing lines of magnetic compass variation made in 1702 by the English scientist and cartographer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Halley hoped the chart would aid navigation but the variations in magnetism...

A photograph of the Italian scientist Enrico Fermi who contributed to the Manhattan Project and the development of an atomic bomb during the Second World War (1939-45). Los Alamos National Laboratory

An image captured in 1986 of Halley's Comet, named after the English scientist and cartographer Edmond Halley (1656-1742) who accurately predicted its orbit in relation to Earth.

A c. 1690 oil-on-canvas portrait of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. (Palace of Versailles)

A portrait of Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-88 CE), a Jesuit scholar and scientist who spread European ideas in China. (National Library, Paris)