Q 01/05

Which scientist alone has won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry?

A) Dorothy Hodgkin

B) Marie Curie

C) Maria Goeppert Mayer

D) Gerty Cori

Answer · why

B) Marie Curie

Marie Curie left notebooks so radioactive that they are kept in lead-lined boxes, and anyone consulting them must wear protective clothing.

Q 02/05

Which physicist's Nobel Prize cited the photoelectric effect rather than his theory of relativity?

A) Hendrik Lorentz

B) Paul Dirac

C) Albert Einstein

D) Wolfgang Pauli

Answer · why

C) Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein had already promised the prize money to his ex-wife Mileva Marić in their divorce settlement, two years before he won it.

Q 03/05

Which Principia author spent his last decades at the Royal Mint prosecuting counterfeiters?

A) Isaac Newton

B) Robert Boyle

C) Edmond Halley

D) Christopher Wren

Answer · why

A) Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton gathered evidence disguised as a bar-room regular and successfully prosecuted 28 coiners, including William Chaloner, who was hanged.

Q 04/05

Which naturalist rushed to publish once Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay with the same idea?

A) Thomas Huxley

B) Charles Lyell

C) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

D) Charles Darwin

Answer · why

D) Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin and Wallace had their papers read jointly to the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858, while Darwin was attending his son's funeral.

Q 05/05

Which astronomer did the Inquisition find 'vehemently suspect of heresy' and keep under house arrest?

A) Giordano Bruno

B) Galileo Galilei

C) Giovanni Cassini

D) Evangelista Torricelli

Answer · why

B) Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was rehabilitated only in 1992, when Pope John Paul II admitted that the theologians of the day had been in error.