Top 5 scientists killed by their experiments

Man owes a great debt to the scientists on this list. All of them died in their pursuit of knowledge. The advances they have all made to science are extraordinary and many of them paved the way for some of man’s greatest discoveries and inventions.

5. Karl Scheele

Died from tasting his discoveries

Scheele was a brilliant pharmaceutical chemist who discovered many chemical elements - the most notable of which were oxygen (though Joseph Priestley published his findings first), molybdenum, tungsten, manganese, and chlorine. He also discovered a process very similar to pasteurization. Scheele had the habit of taste testing his discoveries and, fortunately, managed to survive his taste-test of hydrogen cyanide. But alas, his luck was to run out: he died of symptoms strongly resembling mercury poisoning.

4. Jean-Francois De Rozier

First victim of an air crash

Jean-Francois was a teacher of physics and chemistry. In 1783 he witnessed the world’s first balloon flight which created in him a passion for flight. After assisting in the untethered flight of a sheep, a chicken, and a duck, he took the first manned free flight in a balloon. He travelled at an altitude of 3,000 feet using a hot air balloon. Not stopping there, De Rozier planned a crossing of the English Channel from France to England. Unfortunately it was his last flight; after reaching 1,500 feet in a combined hot air and gas balloon, the balloon deflated, causing him to fall to his death. His fiancee died 8 days later - possibly from suicide.

3. Elizabeth Ascheim

Killed by X-Rays

Elizabeth Fleischman Ascheim married her doctor, Dr Woolf, shortly after her mother died. Because of his medical position, Woolf was very interested in the new discovery of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen - x-rays. His new wife became equally interested and she gave up her job as a bookkeeper to undertake studies in electrical science. Eventually she bought an x-ray machine which she moved in to her husbands office - this was the first x-ray lab in San Francisco. She and her husband spent some years experimenting with the machine - using themselves as subjects. Unfortunately they did not realize the consequences of their lack of protection and Elizabeth died of an extremely widespread and violent cancer. Information on Ascheim is scarce, so I recommend you ﾵread this PDFﾧ on her life.

2. Alexander Bogdanov

Killed himself with blood

Bogdanov was a Russian physician, philosopher, economist, science fiction writer, and revolutionary. In 1924, he began experiments with blood transfusion - most likely in a search for eternal youth. After 11 transfusions (which he performed on himself), he declared that he had suspended his balding, and improved his eyesight. Unfortunately for Bogdanov, the science of transfusion was a young one and Bogdanov was not one to test the health of the blood he was using or the donor. In 1928, Bogdanov took a transfusion of blood infected with malaria and tuberculosis. Consequently he died shortly after.

1. Louis Slotin

Killed himself with an accidental fission reaction

Canadian born Slotin worked on the Manhattan project (the US project to design the first nuclear bomb). In the process of his experimentation he accidentally dropped a sphere of beryllium on to a second sphere causing a prompt critical reaction (the spheres were wrapped around a plutonium core). Other scientists in the room witnessed a “blue glow” of air ionization and felt a “heat wave”. Slotin rushed outside and was sick. He was rushed to hospital and died nine days later. The amount of radiation he was exposed to was equivalent to standing 4800 feet away from an atomic bomb explosion. This accident prompted the end of all hands-on assembly work at Los Alamos.

Questions and tasks:

1. Who should scientist test their inventions on?

2. Science is the priority for the world’s future development. Do you agree?

3. Most inventions made today are useless. What do you think?

4. What are most significant fields for inventions?

5. You can’t become an inventor, it should be in your blood. Do you agree? What qualities should inventors have?

ﾵ ﾧ Vitamin D offers variety of health benefits

A new study conducted to identify possible benefits of vitamin D showed that high levels of the so-called sunshine vitamin reduce heart attacks risk with men. Men with lower levels of vitamin D are about 2.5 times more likely to suffer a heart attack than those who do not have the shortage of the vitamin.

Several recent studies revealed that vitamin D provides a variety of other health benefits. The vitamin protects the body against several types of cancer including colon and breast cancer. Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble prohormones, the two major forms of which are vitamin D2 (or ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (or cholecalciferol). The term vitamin D also refers to metabolites and other analogues of these substances. Vitamin D3 is produced in skin exposed to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B radiation.

Vitamin D plays an important role in the maintenance of organ systems. Vitamin D regulates the calcium and phosphorus levels in the blood by promoting their absorption from food in the intestines, and by promoting re-absorption of calcium in the kidneys. It promotes bone formation and mineralization and is essential in the development of an intact and strong skeleton. However, at very high levels it will promote the resorption of bone. It inhibits parathyroid hormone secretion from the parathyroid gland. Vitamin D affects the immune system by promoting phagocytosis, anti-tumor activity, and immunomodulatory functions.

Vitamin D deficiency can result from inadequate intake coupled with inadequate sunlight exposure, disorders that limit its absorption, conditions that impair conversion of vitamin D into active metabolites, such as liver or kidney disorders, or, rarely, by a number of hereditary disorders. Deficiency results in impaired bone mineralization, and leads to bone softening diseases, rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults, and possibly contributes to osteoporosis. Research has indicated that vitamin D deficiency is linked to colon cancer and more, recently, to breast cancer. Conflicting evidence links vitamin D deficiency to other forms of cancer.

Vitamin D deficiency can result from: inadequate intake coupled with inadequate sunlight exposure, disorders that limit its absorption, conditions that impair conversion of vitamin D into active metabolites, such as liver or kidney disorders, or, rarely, by a number of hereditary disorders. Deficiency results in impaired bone mineralization, and leads to bone softening diseases, rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults, and possibly contributes to osteoporosis.

Questions and tasks:

1. Sun – is it a friend or foe?

2. Previously noble people whitened their skin intentionally, nowadays a craze to have a bronze tan has swept all over the world. Why do you think it has happened?

3. Does a solarium have the same effect on people as the natural sun?

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