9.3

Listening. 9 .3. Read and listen to the texts about famous scientists and their achievements.

Thomas Edison, 1847 -1931, was a great inventor. He was interested in electric light and power.

He also worked on telecommunications. He is famous for the invention of the phonograph

and the electric light bulb. But he also made many other devices. For example,

he invented an automatic telegraph repeater in 1864. In 1874 he formed a

research laboratory. He conducted his experiments in this lab. He began working

on an electrical system and invented the electric light bulb in 1879. He also made

the kinetograph, the first movie camera. Edward Jenner, 1749 -1823, was a British

doctor. He is famous for his research on the smallpox disease and for his discovery of the

smallpox vaccine. In the 18th century, smallpox was a very dangerous and deadly

disease. Jenner developed a vaccine in 1798. In fact, this was the first vaccine in the world.

Then he tested it on an eight -year -old boy and he succeeded. More than 100 ,000 people across

the world had smallpox vaccinations before the year 1800. Later, vaccination campaigns

in the 19th and the 20th centuries destroyed smallpox virus completely.

Mary Curie, 1867 -1934, was a Polish -French physicist and chemist. She is famous for her

research on radioactivity and her theory of radioactivity. She is the first person to receive two Nobel

prizes and to the first woman professor. In 1903, Mary Curie won and shared a Nobel

Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre and French scientist Henri Becquerel for their

achievements on radioactivity. In 1911, she won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her own discovery

of two new elements, Polonium and Radium. She established a laboratory at the University

of Paris in 1909 and in 1932 she established the Radium Institute in Poland.