The Disappearing Spoon Characters

An influential American scientist and founder of the UC Berkeley chemistry department, which played a huge role in the history of the periodic table and is often considered the best chemistry department in the world.

Bardeen developed a germanium amplifier alongside Walter Brattain in 1947 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

Brattain developed a germanium amplifier alongside John Bardeen in 1947 and was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

An electrical engineer and physicist who attempted to build a silicon amplifier. On learning about Bardeen and Brattain’s germanium amplifier, he (successfully) made it look as if he also deserved credit for the invention and was co-awarded the Nobel Prize with them in 1956.

An electrical engineer from Kansas who built the first integrated circuit, thereby revolutionizing electronic technology.

A German scientist who didn’t actually invent the Bunsen burner, but rather improved the existing model. Bunsen was left half-blind by an explosion that happened in his lab. He used a spectroscope in order to advance early understanding of the elements.

A Russian scientist who developed the first version of the periodic table. An eccentric person, Mendeleev was eventually fired from his professorship for being an anarchist.

A French scientist who discovered gallium.

A teenage German alchemist who, at the turn of the 18th century, was arrested by King Augustus of Poland and ordered to help Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus develop a technique for making porcelain. The two succeeded.

Von Tschirnhaus worked for King Augustus of Poland at the task of making a porcelain recipe.

A Swedish-Finnish scientist who discovered six of the 14 lanthanides in the periodic table.

Patterson used radioactive dating to give the first accurate estimate of the age of Earth while he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1950s.

An American physicist who—along with his son Walter—developed the asteroid theory about why the dinosaurs died.

A geologist who developed the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction along with his father, Luis.

Muller theorized that the sun has a twin star, Nemesis, that influences events in the solar system.

A Nebraskan banker who owned the mining rights to the only source of molybdenum in the world. He was pressured by Max Schott to sell the rights for a low price.

An employee of a mining company in Frankfurt who successfully pressured Otis King and the workers at the Colorado molybdenum line to turn their supply over to his company.

A scientist based at the University of Manchester who discovered a mathematical relation between the atomic number of an element, the number of protons in its nucleus, and the wavelength of the X-rays created when a beam of electrons strikes the nucleus.

Edwin McMillan worked with Emilio Segrè trying to find element 93. After Segrè mistakenly concluded that their experiment was unsuccessful, McMillan persevered on his own and he ended up being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1957.

A Polish scientist who helped to turn the Monte Carlo method used in the Manhattan Project into the basis for the modern use of computational calculations as a research tool.

The inventor of the cobalt bomb, an especially brutal and horrifying nuclear weapon.

A Nobel-prize winning UC Berkeley professor who was a team leader on the Manhattan Project. He collaborated with Al Ghiorso, and together they discovered more elements than any other individual or team of scientists, filling out much of the periodic table.

The Japanese scientist who realized that the “itai-itai” illness was being caused by rice fields soaking up toxic cadmium from a nearby mine.

A British serial killer who poisoned people using thallium.

A German scientist who helped discover the “handedness” model of biomolecules along with Louis Pasteur. Domagk saved the life of his daughter, Hildegard, who fell ill from an infection after injuring herself with a sewing needle.

A French scientist who discovered the “handedness” model of biomolecules along with Gerhard Domagk. His research also led to the development of antibiotics and the pasteurization method of killing harmful bacteria in milk.

An American chemist whose research formed the origin of drug synthesis. His work on L-dopa, an amino acid similar to the neurotransmitter dopamine, revolutionized the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

A Swedish scientist who accidentally discovered that the flesh of mammal bonds with titanium, paving the way for the use of titanium in prosthetics.

A Danish physicist who made significant contributions to the fields of atomic structure and quantum theory. People were so impressed by Bohr’s work that there were rumors he had prophetic abilities. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

A Polish chemist who discovered brevium (which was subsequently renamed protactinium). Fajans narrowly missed winning the 1924 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for reasons that remain unclear.

An Irish gold prospector who found a source of gold in Australia, nicknamed “Hannan’s Find.”

An 18th-century English physicist and astronomer who is one of the most influential scientists in history. Newton developed the laws of motion and gravitation that were eventually overturned by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

An Italian Jewish writer and chemist who survived incarceration in Auschwitz concentration camp. He wrote about his experiences in several highly influential texts, including a book called The Periodic Table.

An American chemist who devised a way to separate aluminum from oxygen at the age of only 23. He made a fortune from mass-producing aluminum.

A Hungarian artist, designer, and professor at the Bauhaus,. Moholy-Nagy invented the theory of forced versus artificial obsolescence.

An American electrochemist once considered to be one of the greatest scientists in history, who was disgraced when it was revealed that his and Martin Fleischmann’s claim to have discovered cold fusion was based on deliberate misrepresentation of their results.

A British chemist who falsely claimed, along with B. Stanley Pons, to have discovered cold fusion. He was subsequently disgraced.

A German mechanical engineer and physicist who accidentally discovered X-ray imaging.

A British explorer who led what he hoped was the first team to travel to the South Pole. Upon reaching the Pole, not only did Scott realize the Norwegians had got there first, but he and his team died trying to make the return journey.

A German Jewish theoretical physicist who is considered one of the greatest scientists of all time. He invented the theory of relativity.

A German theoretical physicist who is one of the most important figures in the development of quantum mechanics. His uncertainty principle is, as Kean points out, widely misunderstood among the public.

An Indian theoretical physicist who helped discover Bose-Einstein Condensate along with Albert Einstein.

An American physicist who helped found the field of bubble science.

Lord Kelvin, whose given name was William Thomson, worked with Ernest Rutherford and was a pioneer in the field of bubble science.

A scientist and professor at UCLA who also worked in the field of bubble science and discovered an important connection between the nonreactive quality of noble gases and sonoluminescence.

A Soviet scientist who studied the only known natural nuclear fission reactor and controversially argued that alpha, one of the most important fundamental constants in physics, might be gradually changing.

An astrophysicist who developed the Drake Equation, a calculation that shows that it is likely that there are 10 alien “sociable civilizations” in our galaxy alone.

A hugely influential American theoretical physicist.

An American chemist married to fellow scientist Maria Goeppert-Mayer.

Fritz Haber’s wife, who begged him to stop his involvement in developing chemical weapons. She failed to do so and ended up killing herself.

A technician who worked with Glenn Seaborg to discover a record number of elements.

An Italian scientist who worked with Segrè to find element 43.

Linus Pauling’s son, who was a graduate student at the University of Cambridge at the time the shape of DNA was discovered.

A graduate student at the University of Cambridge who discovered the double helix shape of DNA.

A graduate student at the University of Cambridge who discovered the double helix shape of DNA along with James Watson.

An American scientist who developed the cyclotron, an “atom smasher” that could be used to produce a large number of radioactive elements at once.

The scientist who originally discovered DNA in 1869.

An English scientist at the University of Cambridge whose research was central to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA.

James Watson and Francis Crick’s advisor at the University of Cambridge.

The daughter of Gerhard Domagk.

A scientist and the husband of Marie Curie, with whom he collaborated. Pierre was killed in a street carriage accident in 1906.

Daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie. Irène was also a scientist and, like her mother, she died of leukemia caused by radiation exposure.

An American scientist and author known for the saying, “We are all star stuff,” which reflects the fact that all matter on Earth is comprised from the same chemical elements as stars and other planetary bodies.

King of Poland between 1694-1733.

A 14-century Italian merchant and explorer who travelled to Asia and brought back goods to Europeans, such as porcelain.

The dictator of Portugal between 1932-1968.

A Cuban communist revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba between 1965-2011.

A former KGB agent who defected to the UK and was poisoned to death there with the element polonium.

A sixteenth-century aristocrat and astronomer whose nose was cut off in a drunken duel. He commissioned a replacement nose made from either silver or copper.

A libertarian candidate for the U.S. senate who ingested silver over fears Y2K would make it impossible to access antibiotics. The element turned his skin blue.

An American lawyer and politician; the son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Leader of the Nazi party and Chancellor of Germany between 1934-1945.

Leader of the anticolonial movement in India, who among other activities organized the Salt March of 1930 in protest against the British colonial government’s salt tax.

A major British philosopher who was famous for, among other things, presenting philosophical arguments in favor of atheism.

Von Goethe is considered by many to be the greatest German writer in history. He also dabbled in science, although he had no skill in it.

An American businessman and inventor of the Parker 51 pen.

An American writer fascinated by science and technology.

An American poet widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His life was blighted by severe bipolar disorder until he was able to start taking the element lithium as treatment.

Wilhelm Röntgen’s wife.