Today I will give the list of the top sixteen scientists and mathematicians that we are studying in class. I try to pick a variety of different scientists that I think are relevant to the content. A new scientist is introduced every Monday. We still have sixteen to go for the rest of the year so your favorite may be missing.

Here is my list in the order presented to class this year:

1. Albert Einstein
2. Marie Curie
3. Bernhard Riemann
4. Emmy Noether
5. Thomas Edison
6. Rosalind Franklin
7. Carl Friedrich Gauss
8. Gregor Mendel
9. Galileo Galilei
10. Rachael Carson
11. G.H. Hardy
12. Srinivasa Ramanujan
13. Leonhard Euler
14. Archimedes
15. Robert Hooke
16. Sylvia Earl

On the worksheet given to the student, I usually give the name of the scientist, month and day born, year born and one or two short accomplishments. We then put the year born into the Peg system and link the date to the Peg word.

During the school year, I introduce an important scientist or mathematician almost every week. I believe it’s important to study the history of science and math as it puts the science content in perspective. I also try to give an equal amount of male and female scientists so all of my students may find a role model. Usually, I give the name of the scientist, a few items of what they did and the date and year of their birth. We memorize the year using the Peg system. I always give the birthday because it’s interesting to see the reaction of the students when they discover they share the same birthday as Einstein–pi day 3-14 , or Sylvia Earle, August 30th.

The Lesson Plan

Since we now have studied sixteen scientists, I came up with a new lesson plan that includes writing about the scientists and using the sweet sixteen NCAA college basketball format. First, we list all sixteen scientists on the Scientist16 sheet. The student then flips a coin to decide who moves to the next bracket. I’m sure you could find other ways to move the scientists to the next bracket. Students continue to do this until there is only one scientist left. The final scientist may or may not be the person that the student feels is truly the most outstanding, but their assignment is to write a report defending this scientist as the most influential in our society over the other fifteen scientists.

Discussion

This assignment may be a challenge as some of the scientists and mathematicians may not be as influential as Einstein, Curie or Edison. The goal is to get students to think about what is important and to develop their writing. The student should research the winning scientist to discover if any other important information is useful to help write the paper. For an 8th grade class, I specify that the paper should be a minimum of 250 words. For the 7th grade I specify one well developed paragraph of five to eight sentences. You can modify this based on the grade level and time needed to grade. Next time, I’ll give you the list of scientists and mathematicians that I use in my class. Are any of your favorites on the list? Till next time…