32
Giovanni Schiaparelli ...
He wrote in 1877 about his telescopic observations of Mars. He described some features using the Italian word canali. English translation would be channels. But the term was mistranslated as English canals, which was taken to mean they were artificial constructions. This led to much controversy about whether Mars was inhabited!
28
The first metric theory of gravitation, in which the effects of gravitation are treated entirely in terms of the geometry of curved spacetime, was published by Finnish physicist Gunnar Nordström in 1913. Einstein published his own theory of general relativity in 1915.
The measurement of the deflection of light passing close to the Sun during the solar ...
7
Airborne Contagion and Air Hygiene by William Firth Wells was one of the earliest works on disease transmission through air. There was research in there showing that droplets in general will tend to stay airborne the longest if they are around 100 microns in size. There was also a specific study included which showed that tuberculosis in particular is ...
5
Among the early proponents of space travel, a Ukrainian engineer Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk should be mentioned. In 1925 he published his book Conquest of Interplanetary Space with theoretical justification of space travel. His research could not continue since he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spoviet authorities. But his book made an influence of the ...
5
From the Russian Wikipedia article (my translation): Perhaps the first person
who pointed to the possibility of using rockets for travel in space was W. Leitch. In 1861 he wrote an article "A Journey Through Space" which was published in 1862 in his book "God’s Glory in the Heavens".
In 1881, Kibaltchich, while imprisoned [for ...
4
It was Hilbert's way to generalize spectral theory to infinite dimensional operators when he discovered continuous spectrum in 1906. Hilbert used bilinear forms when writing integrals, and the more recognizable operator version was introduced by Riesz in Les systemes d'equations lineaires a une infinite d'inconnues (1913), see Dieudonne, History of ...
2
The 1916 publication in Annalen der Physik, 49, 769–822, also published separately in Leipzig, see e.g. Sauer, Albert Einstein's 1916 Review Article on General Relativity:
"The first comprehensive overview of the final version of the general theory of relativity was published by Einstein in 1916 after several expositions of preliminary versions and ...
2
The first person that I know of was the mathematician and physicist William Clifford who, on reading the Habilitationsschrift of Riemann and, almost forty years before Einstein developed general relativity, hypothesised that not only all motion was due to the curvature of space but so was matter.
This is amazingly prescient considering that Einstein only ...
2
Paxos Algorithm by Leslie Lamport comes to my mind.
I submitted the paper to TOCS in 1990. All three referees said that
the paper was mildly interesting, though not very important, but that
all the Paxos stuff had to be removed. I was quite annoyed at how
humorless everyone working in the field seemed to be, so I did nothing
with the paper.
See paper [...
2
I think that the problem is that people think that $F=ma$ is a law (and needs a proof) while it is a definition of $F$ and $m$, so does not require a proof.
2
It's very doubtful that the engraving/diagram had anything to do with Newton.
"The system of the world" was a posthumous publication from 1728-9 onwards. It was derived (with a little editorial amendment including a new title) from a manuscript of 1685 of Newton's (written out by his secretary/amanuensis but bearing corrections in Newton's hand). ...
2
The first main point to make in answer is : beware Newton myths -- there are far too many of them, and people have made money and (flaky) reputations fabricating catchpenny fake history about Newton.
The 'apple' story has been plenty embroidered over time. But there is a source, a notebook handwritten by Newton's friend William Stukeley. It was written ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible