Some observations on cake by various historical scientists. Many of them are kinda obvious, but I particularly like the ones "by" Mendel and Leonardo.
There are half a dozen people on the list who I've never heard of, but I bet Susan knows who they are. Perhaps she will enlighten us, thereby saving me a few mouse clicks in the encyclopedia.
“Maurice Halle”? Google doesn’t know who he is, either; there was one reference to a French anarchist in the late 1800s, but that may have been a typo since there was just the one.
My first thought was of “Morris Halle” (of Sound Pattern of English fame with Chomsky), but even as a certifi(ed|able) linguist, I don’t get that one.
Apparently Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, and not the author of Hoyle’s Book of Games as was my first thought! But this bio says he’s also written some SF.
I actually like Hoyle’s astronomy novels (like The Black Cloud), but I have to pretend I’m a man to be able to read it without my stomach turning queasy. It’s almost as if women didn’t actually exist in his world — so strange.
I think I read a short-story collection of Hoyle’s once, and rather liked it. The scientists on the list who I didn’t recognize (but whom I’ve now looked up) were:
William Herschel (“Probably the most famous astronomer of the 18th century,” says one web page)
Dmitri Mendeleev (I should’ve known this one; he was the creator of the Periodic Table)
Maurice Halle (I assumed from context that he was co-writer on a bunch of papers, but I don’t know)
William Harvey (discoverer of the human circulatory system)
Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin, “born to a Scottish sheep-farming family in 1881.”)
Wait, I thought Swanwick created the Periodic Table. . . . 🙂