Famous Scientists Quiz
Kepler, Curie, Darwin, Einstein, Tesla, Hawking: 15 questions on the minds that rewrote the rules.
Which physicist developed the theory of general relativity, published in 1915?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Albert Einstein
Einstein's general theory of relativity, completed in 1915, describes gravity as the curving of space and time by mass, and it famously predicted that starlight would bend around the Sun.
Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize was awarded not for relativity but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
Which astronomer worked out that planets move around the Sun in ellipses rather than perfect circles?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion in 1609, using Tycho Brahe's painstaking observations of Mars to show that orbits are ellipses with the Sun at one focus.
Kepler also wrote Somnium, a story about a voyage to the Moon that some critics call the first work of science fiction.
Which naturalist wrote On the Origin of Species, published in 1859?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 after more than twenty years of gathering evidence, much of it from his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle.
Darwin rushed the book into print after Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at the same idea of natural selection in 1858.
Who was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for research on radioactivity and then won the 1911 Chemistry prize outright for discovering radium and polonium, becoming the first double laureate.
Curie's notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes at the French national library in Paris.
Which astronomer discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei turned his improved telescope on Jupiter in January 1610 and spotted four moons orbiting the planet, powerful evidence that not everything circled the Earth.
Those four moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are still known collectively as the Galilean moons.
Which scientist discovered penicillin after noticing mould killing bacteria in a dish in 1928?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming returned from holiday in September 1928 to find a Penicillium mould had killed the staphylococcus bacteria around it on a culture plate at St Mary's Hospital in London.
Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who turned penicillin into a usable drug during the Second World War.
Which physicist wrote the bestselling book A Brief History of Time?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking published A Brief History of Time in 1988, and it went on to sell more than 10 million copies while explaining black holes and the Big Bang to general readers.
Hawking was told at 21 that he had only a few years to live with motor neurone disease, yet he worked for more than five decades afterwards.
The SI unit of magnetic flux density is named after which inventor?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Nikola Tesla
The tesla, adopted in 1960, honours Nikola Tesla, whose alternating current motors and transformers underpin the electricity grid that still powers homes around the world.
Tesla's alternating current system beat Edison's direct current in the so-called War of the Currents of the late 1880s.
Which scientist developed the first rabies vaccine and used it on a bitten boy in 1885?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur treated nine-year-old Joseph Meister with his new rabies vaccine in July 1885 after the boy was badly bitten by a rabid dog, and the child survived.
Pasteur also gave his name to pasteurisation, the gentle heating process that keeps milk, wine and beer from spoiling.
Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image known as Photo 51 revealed the structure of which molecule?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
DNA
Photo 51, taken in Franklin's lab at King's College London in 1952, showed the X shaped diffraction pattern of a helix, and it was key evidence for the double helix model of DNA.
Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at just 37, four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded for the DNA structure.
Which primatologist began her famous study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream in Tanzania in 1960?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe Stream in July 1960 and soon observed chimpanzees making and using tools to fish for termites, overturning the idea that only humans made tools.
Goodall had no university degree when she started, but she later earned a PhD from Cambridge on the strength of her fieldwork.
Which astronomer showed in 1929 that distant galaxies are moving away from us, proving the universe is expanding?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble used the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson to show that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes, a relationship now called Hubble's law.
Hubble was a talented athlete who boxed and ran track, and he studied law as a Rhodes Scholar before turning to astronomy.
Who discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831, the principle behind electric generators?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday showed in 1831 that moving a magnet through a coil of wire produces an electric current, the discovery that makes generators and transformers possible.
Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice with almost no formal schooling before becoming one of the most influential experimental scientists in history.
Which naturalist created the two part Latin naming system used for all living species?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, formalised binomial nomenclature in the 1750s, giving every species a two word name made of its genus and species, such as Homo sapiens for humans or Panthera leo for the lion.
Linnaeus named thousands of plants and animals himself, and his own name survives in the Latinised form he adopted after being ennobled.
Which physicist helped discover nuclear fission but was left out of the 1944 Nobel Prize, and later had element 109 named after her?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner worked out the physics of nuclear fission with her nephew Otto Frisch in 1938, but only her longtime collaborator Otto Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Meitnerium, element 109, was named in her honour in 1997, while the name hahnium, once proposed for element 105, was never officially adopted.
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All Science quizzes →About the Famous Scientists Quiz
Marie Curie remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Johannes Kepler showed in 1609 that the planets move in ellipses, and Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018, which happened to be Albert Einstein's birthday. The history of science is full of details like these, and the people behind the breakthroughs are every bit as fascinating as the discoveries themselves.
These 15 questions cover the household names, from Galileo and Darwin to Tesla and Pasteur, then dig into a few scientists who deserve to be better known, including Rosalind Franklin and Lise Meitner. It suits anyone who enjoyed science at school, loves a good biography, or wants to sharpen up before the next pub quiz.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Who is considered the most famous scientist of all time?
Albert Einstein is usually the first name people reach for, thanks to relativity and E equals mc squared, with Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin close behind.
Which scientist won two Nobel Prizes in different fields?
Marie Curie won the Physics prize in 1903 and the Chemistry prize in 1911, and she is still the only person honoured in two separate sciences.
How hard is this famous scientists quiz?
It is a medium level quiz. The first questions are classic school facts, while the final few test deeper knowledge of twentieth-century physics and biology.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which physicist developed the theory of general relativity, published in 1915?
Albert Einstein Einstein's general theory of relativity, completed in 1915, describes gravity as the curving of space and time by mass, and it famously predicted that starlight would bend around the Sun. Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize was awarded not for relativity but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. - Which astronomer worked out that planets move around the Sun in ellipses rather than perfect circles?
Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion in 1609, using Tycho Brahe's painstaking observations of Mars to show that orbits are ellipses with the Sun at one focus. Kepler also wrote Somnium, a story about a voyage to the Moon that some critics call the first work of science fiction. - Which naturalist wrote On the Origin of Species, published in 1859?
Charles Darwin Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 after more than twenty years of gathering evidence, much of it from his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle. Darwin rushed the book into print after Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at the same idea of natural selection in 1858. - Who was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes?
Marie Curie Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for research on radioactivity and then won the 1911 Chemistry prize outright for discovering radium and polonium, becoming the first double laureate. Curie's notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes at the French national library in Paris. - Which astronomer discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610?
Galileo Galilei Galileo Galilei turned his improved telescope on Jupiter in January 1610 and spotted four moons orbiting the planet, powerful evidence that not everything circled the Earth. Those four moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are still known collectively as the Galilean moons. - Which scientist discovered penicillin after noticing mould killing bacteria in a dish in 1928?
Alexander Fleming Alexander Fleming returned from holiday in September 1928 to find a Penicillium mould had killed the staphylococcus bacteria around it on a culture plate at St Mary's Hospital in London. Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who turned penicillin into a usable drug during the Second World War. - Which physicist wrote the bestselling book A Brief History of Time?
Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking published A Brief History of Time in 1988, and it went on to sell more than 10 million copies while explaining black holes and the Big Bang to general readers. Hawking was told at 21 that he had only a few years to live with motor neurone disease, yet he worked for more than five decades afterwards. - The SI unit of magnetic flux density is named after which inventor?
Nikola Tesla The tesla, adopted in 1960, honours Nikola Tesla, whose alternating current motors and transformers underpin the electricity grid that still powers homes around the world. Tesla's alternating current system beat Edison's direct current in the so-called War of the Currents of the late 1880s. - Which scientist developed the first rabies vaccine and used it on a bitten boy in 1885?
Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur treated nine-year-old Joseph Meister with his new rabies vaccine in July 1885 after the boy was badly bitten by a rabid dog, and the child survived. Pasteur also gave his name to pasteurisation, the gentle heating process that keeps milk, wine and beer from spoiling. - Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image known as Photo 51 revealed the structure of which molecule?
DNA Photo 51, taken in Franklin's lab at King's College London in 1952, showed the X shaped diffraction pattern of a helix, and it was key evidence for the double helix model of DNA. Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at just 37, four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded for the DNA structure. - Which primatologist began her famous study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream in Tanzania in 1960?
Jane Goodall Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe Stream in July 1960 and soon observed chimpanzees making and using tools to fish for termites, overturning the idea that only humans made tools. Goodall had no university degree when she started, but she later earned a PhD from Cambridge on the strength of her fieldwork. - Which astronomer showed in 1929 that distant galaxies are moving away from us, proving the universe is expanding?
Edwin Hubble Edwin Hubble used the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson to show that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes, a relationship now called Hubble's law. Hubble was a talented athlete who boxed and ran track, and he studied law as a Rhodes Scholar before turning to astronomy. - Who discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831, the principle behind electric generators?
Michael Faraday Michael Faraday showed in 1831 that moving a magnet through a coil of wire produces an electric current, the discovery that makes generators and transformers possible. Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice with almost no formal schooling before becoming one of the most influential experimental scientists in history. - Which naturalist created the two part Latin naming system used for all living species?
Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, formalised binomial nomenclature in the 1750s, giving every species a two word name made of its genus and species, such as Homo sapiens for humans or Panthera leo for the lion. Linnaeus named thousands of plants and animals himself, and his own name survives in the Latinised form he adopted after being ennobled. - Which physicist helped discover nuclear fission but was left out of the 1944 Nobel Prize, and later had element 109 named after her?
Lise Meitner Lise Meitner worked out the physics of nuclear fission with her nephew Otto Frisch in 1938, but only her longtime collaborator Otto Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Meitnerium, element 109, was named in her honour in 1997, while the name hahnium, once proposed for element 105, was never officially adopted.
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