Early Life | Childhood memories | Alfred Russel Wallace
“What makes this deficiency the more curious is that, during the very same period at which I cannot recall the personal appearance of the individuals with whom my life was most closely associated, I can recall all the main features and many of the details of my outdoor, and, to a less degree, of my in- door, surroundings.”
Early Life | Ignaz Semmelweis (1818 -1865) | Book Excerpt
“Defective conventional school education had left his vision clear to see only what was to be seen, and his intellectual faculties free — so that he could think for himself and form independent judgments and logical inductions from the facts of experience.”
Early Life | Alice Hamilton (1869-1970)
“Of science we had not even a smattering, beyond what we could gather from my father's favorite Max Muller. Yet in a way we were trained in habits of scientific approach. We were not allowed to make a statement which could be challenged unless we were prepared to defend it. One of my father's favorite quotations was, "Be ready always to give a reason of the hope that is in you."
Early Life | Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
“In the sister art his talent was equally striking, and as a lad he showed considerable skill in drawing and painting. In later life he used to tell his friends that, had circumstances permitted him to choose his own career, he would have elected to become a painter.”
Early Life | Alfred Russel Wallace ( 1823-1913)
“My two sisters were five and seven years older than John, so that they would have been about thirteen and fifteen, which would appear to me quite grown up; and this makes me think that my recollections must go back to the time when I was just over three, as I quite distinctly remember two, if not three, besides myself, standing on the flat stones and catching lampreys.”
Early Life | Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
“I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird’s nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from a sort of bravado.”
Early Life | Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
“But those who would decorate the early years of Louis Pasteur with wonderful legends would be disappointed: when a little later he attended the daily classes at the Arbois college he belonged merely to the category of good average pupils.”
Early Life | Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
“We know little of his schooling there could, indeed, be little to know and in 1804, at the age of 13, he was engaged as an errand boy at a bookseller's shop in Blandford Street. Newspapers in those days were expensive articles and, except by the very wealthy, were hired, and not bought. One part of Faraday's duties was to take out these papers to the different borrowers, and to collect them when the allotted number of hours had expired.”
Early Life | James Clerk Maxwell | 1831-1879
“In still earlier childhood, when he returned from walking with his nurse, she had generally a lapful of curiosities (sticks, pebbles, grasses, etc.) picked up upon the paths through the wood, which must be stored upon the kitchen dresser till his parents had told him all about each one.”
Early Life | William Ramsay | 1852-1916
“From notes supplied by Miss Flora Mac Vicar and Mrs. McNicol, early friends of the family, we know that young Ramsay had a very happy childhood and youth, though in some respects the circumstances surrounding his life were different from those of other boys.”
Early Life | Eleanor Anne Ormerod | 1828 -1901
“I was born at Sedbury Park, in West Gloucestershire, on a sunny Sunday morning (the nth of May, 1828), being the youngest of the ten children of George and Sarah Ormerod, of Sedbury Park, Gloucestershire, and Tyldesley, Lancashire.”
Early Life | Mary Somerville |1780-1872
“When I was between eight and nine years old, my father came home from sea, and was shocked to find me such a savage. I had not yet been taught to write, and although I amused myself reading the "Arabian Nights/' "Robinson Crusoe," and the " Pilgrim's Progress," I read very badly, and with a strong Scotch accent .
Early Life | Jean-Henri Fabre |1823-1915
“The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back. Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, plowmen, sowers of rye, neat herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters of observation. And yet, in me, the observer, the inquirer into things began to take shape almost in infancy. “
Early Life | Carl Friedrich Gauss |1777-1855
“While still very young Gauss showed rare mental gifts. He learned to read by asking one or another in the home the sound of the letters. His marked aptitude for numbers and his ease and accuracy in mental arithmetic soon attracted the attention of his parents and their friends. He used to say jestingly that he learned to count before he could talk.”
Early Life | Joseph Fourier |1768-1830)
Fourier was born at Auxerre on the 21st of March, 1768. His father, like that of the illustrious geometer Lambert, was a tailor. This circumstance would formerly have occupied a large place in the éloge of our learned colleague; thanks to the progress of enlightened ideas, I may mention the circumstance as a fact of no importance: nobody, in effect, thinks in the present day, nobody even pretends to think, that genius is the privilege of rank or fortune.