1. Benjamin Franklin
(B. Jan. 17, 1706 – D. April 17, 1790)
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston,
Massachusetts. He was the fifteenth child of Josiah
Franklin, a candle maker and a skilful mechanic,
and AbiahFolger (Josiah’s second wife). He received
his primary education from Boston Latin School. At
the age of ten he left school because of the poor
financial conditions of his family and continued his
education through voracious reading. When he was
twelve was apprenticed to his older brother James,
a printer who taught him the printing trade.
Franklin always wanted to be independent and
hated being ordered about so he ran away to
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was seventeen.
There he established his own printing office in
partnership with Hugh Meredith in 1728.
At the age of eighty-four, he died and was buried at Christ Church Burial Ground in
Philadelphia.
Franklin was a true philosopher who was interested in all facets of the natural world. He
learned through his own experimentation and his conversation with those who shared his
interests.
Life as a Scientist:
Benjamin Franklin was an extraordinary scientist and inventor. His creations that received a
lot of recognition include: lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused
with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. He
began his inventions on electricity and was the first person to discover the principle of
conservation of charge. He also conducted his famous kite experiment, in which he flew a kite
with the wire attached to a key during a thunderstorm. From this experiment he further
established that laboratory-produced static electricity was similar to a previously unexplained
and frightening natural phenomenon.
Franklin was among the very few scientists who greatly supported the Christian Huygens’
wave theory of light. This theory was later proved to be true after experiments performed by
other scientists in the 18th century. He noted the behaviour of winds and he found out storms
do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This concept gained a great
significance in meteorology.
Franklin also conducted his experiments on the non-conduction of ice which received a great
acceptance by other popular scientists such as Michael Faraday.

2. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
(14 June 1736 – 23 August 1806)
Born in Angoulême, France to a wealthy family,
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was the son of Henri
Coulomb, an inspector of the Royal Fields in
Montpellier. The family soon moved to Paris, where
Coulomb studied mathematics at the famous Collège
des Quatre-Nations. A few years later in 1759, he was
enrolled at the military school of Mézières. He
graduated from Ecole du Génie at Mézières in 1761.
Coulomb worked in the West Indies as a military
engineer for almost nine years. When he came back to
France, he was quite ill. During the French Revolution,
Coulomb lived in his estate at Blois, where he mostly
carried out scientific research. He was made an
inspector of public instruction in 1802.
Coulomb died in Paris. He was 70 years old.
Contributions and Achievements:
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb formulated his law as a consequence of his efforts to study the
law of electrical repulsions put forward by English scientist Joseph Priestley. In the process,
he devised sensitive apparatus to evaluate the electrical forces related to the Priestley’s law.
Coulomb issued out his theories in 1785–89.
He also developed the inverse square law of attraction and repulsion of unlike and like magnetic
poles. This laid out the foundation for the mathematical theory of magnetic forces formulated
by French mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson. Coulomb extensively worked on friction of
machinery, the elasticity of metal and silk fibres and windmills. The coulomb, SI unit of electric
charge, was named after him.

3. Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio
Anastasio Volta
(18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827)
Volta was raised in a strict Catholic family. He got his
early education from a Jesuit school. He was adored by
his teachers who thought Volta had all the abilities to
become a good Jesuit priest.
Volta was very keen about studying electricity which
was in its earliest stages at the time. He envisioned
that there is a net neutral condition in a body in which
all electrical attractions are neutralized. This effect
could be transformed by some external source which later changes the relative configuration of
the particles. Volta believed that in such an electrically unstable state, the body gets electrically
charged.
He retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago; Lombardy, Italy (now called “Camnago Volta”).
He diedat the age of 82.
Contributions and Achievements
With this rather weak concept of an electrically charged body, Volta experimented extensively
to study electrical induction. He was successful in creating some devices that were able to store
electric charge. Subsequently, he gained fame and received grants to visit other countries. He
also saw other famous scientists around this time. Volta accepted a teaching job at the
University of Pavia where he stayed for about forty years.
Influenced by the efforts of Dc Saussure, Volta developed an interest in atmospheric electricity.
He made certain modifications to the electrical instruments made by the Swiss geologist,
making them more refined and precise. He came up with methods to measure the so-called
“electrical tension”, later named as the volt.
Volta modified another instrument called the eudiometer, which measured the volume and
composition of gases. He was successful in finding out that ordinary air contains about 21% of
oxygen. The modified version of the instrument also helped Lavoisier on his legendary work
regarding the composition of water. Volta found out that the inflammable gas which creates
bubbles in marshes was methane, which is now used as a fuel.
Volta initially rejected the Galvani’s idea of animal electricity. When he carried out the
experiment himself, he was amazed that the same effect, momentary electric current, which was
discovered by Galvani, can be achieved using metals and not dead frogs. Volta made it clear
that electric currents could be generated by appropriately connecting metals or wires. Using
zinc and copper wires and saline solutions, Volta successfully constructed the first electric
battery, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important breakthroughs in the
history of science and mankind.

4. Georg Simon Ohm
(16 March 1789 – 6 July 1854)
Born in 1789 in the university town of
Erlangen, Bavaria, his younger Martin
Ohm also became a famous
mathematician. Georg Ohm studied
mathematics and physics at Erlangen
University. For economic reasons, he had
to do some teaching jobs while studying,
which he found quite bothering.
Georg Ohm was made a foreign member
of the Royal Society in 1842, and a full
member of the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences and Humanities in 1845.Ohm died, he was 65 years old.
Contributions and Achievements:
When higher degrees of political instability were observed in the early 1800s were seen in
Bavaria as the struggle against Napoleon rose, Ohm chose to leave native Bavaria in 1817 for
Cologne, where he attained a Readership at the university. Ohm started passionately working
on the conductivity of metals and the behaviour of electrical circuits. So much that he quit
teaching in Cologne and got settled in his brother’s house in Berlin.
After extensive research, he wrote “Die galvanischeKette, mathematischbearbeitet”, which
formulated the relationship between voltages (potential), current and resistance in an electrical
circuit:
I = EIR
After initial criticism, most particularly by Hegel, the noted creator of German Idealism, who
rejected the authenticity of the experimental approach of Ohm, the “glory” finally came in 1841
when the Royal Society of London honoured him with the Copley Medal for his extraordinary
efforts. Several German scholars, including an adviser to the State on the development of
telegraphy, also recognized Ohm’s work a few months later.
The pertinence of Ohm’s Law to electrolytes and thermoelectric junctions and metallic
conductors, was demonstrated recognized soon enough. The law still remains the most widely
used and appreciated of all the rules related to the behaviour of electrical circuits.

5. Dr. Gregorio Y. Zara
(March 8, 1902 - October 15, 1978)
Gregorio Zara born in Lipa City, Batangas, is one of
the best known scientists from the Philippines. In 1926,
Gregorio Zara graduated from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science
degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 1927, he received
his Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from
the University of Michigan. In 1930, he graduated with
a Doctorate of Physics from Sorbonne University. On
September 30, 1954 Gregorio Zara's alcohol-fuelled
airplane engine was successfully tested and flown at the
Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Contributions and Achievements
invented the two-way television telephone or videophone (1955) patented as a "photo
phone signal separator network
discovered the physical law of electrical kinetic resistance called the Zara effect (around
1930)
invented an airplane engine that ran on plain alcohol as fuel (1952)
improved methods of producing solar energy including creating new designs for a solar
water heater (SolarSorber), a sun stove, and a solar battery (1960s)
invented a propeller-cutting machine (1952)
designed a microscope with a collapsible stage
helped design the robot Marex X-10
Presidential Diploma of Merit
Distinguished Service Medal (1959) for his pioneering works and achievements in solar
energy research, aeronautics and television.
Presidential Gold Medal and Diploma of Honor for Science and Research (1966)
Cultural Heritage Award for Science Education and Aero Engineering (1966)

6. AgapitoFlores(September 28, 1897 - 1943)
Agapito Flores was born in Guiguinto, Bulacan, Philippines. He worked as an apprentice in a
machine shop and later moved to Tondo, Manila where he trained at a vocational school to
become an electrician.
It has been reported that Agapito Flores received a French patent for a fluorescent bulb and
that the General Electric Company bought Flores' patent rights and manufactured and sold his
fluorescent bulb (making millions from it). However, all the inventors named above and more
predate Agapito Flores' possible work on any fluorescent bulb.
According to Dr. Benito Vergara of the Philippine Science Heritage Center, "As far as I could
learn, a certain Flores presented the idea of fluorescent light to Manuel Quezon when he
became president. At that time, General Electric Co. had already presented the fluorescent light
to the public."
Contributions and Achievements
Many Filipinos acknowledge Agapito Flores as the inventor of the fluorescent lamp, which is
the most widely used source of lighting in the world today. The fluorescent lamp reportedly
got its name from Flores. Written articles about Flores said he was born in Bantayan Island in
Cebu. The fluorescent lamp, however, was not invented in a particular year. It was the product
of 79 years of the development of the lighting method that began with the invention of the
electric light bulb by Thomas Edison.
Among the other inventors who claimed credit for developing the fluorescent lamp were
French physicist A. E. Becquerel (1867), Nikola Tesla, Albert Hall (1927), Mark Winsor and
Edmund Germer. French inventor Andre Claude was recognized for developing the fluorescent
tubular lighting systems. Yet, he was not officially recognized as the inventor of fluorescent
lamp. It was reported that the General Electric and Westinghouse obtained Claude's patent
rights and developed the fluorescent lamp that we know today.
According to Filipino scientists, fluorescent lamp was not named after Flores. The term

7. fluorescence first cropped up as early as 1852 when English mathematician-physicist George
Gabriel Stokes discovered a luminous material called "fluorspar", which he coined with
"escence". The National Academy of Science and Technology also dismissed Flores being the
inventor of fluorescent lamp as a myth. "No scientific report, no valid statement, no rigorous
documents can be used to credit Flores for the discovery of the fluorescent lamp. We have tried
to correct this misconception, but the media (for one) and our textbooks (for another) keep
using the Flores example," a Filipino scientist wrote in her column at the Philippine Daily
Inquirer.
The fluorescent lamps were introduced into the U.S. market in 1938. Still, Filipinos recognize
Agapito Flores as the inventor of the product that illuminated the world.

8. Portfolio
In
Physics
Submitted by : Carlo G. Nidoy
Submitted to: Mrs: Ruiz