25 Questions That Will Test Your Science Knowledge

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

The ribosome functions in the expression of the genetic code from nucleic acid into protein, in a process called translation. Ribosomes do this by catalyzing the assembly of individual amino acids into polypeptide chains; this involves binding a messenger RNA and then using this as a template to join together the correct sequence of amino acids. This reaction uses adapters called transfer RNA molecules, which read the sequence of the messenger RNA and are attached to the amino acids.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was a French noble prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology. He stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass, recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), abolished the phlogiston theory, helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature.

As one of twenty-eight French tax collectors and a powerful figure in the unpopular Ferme Générale, Lavoisier was branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by French Revolutionists in 1794. Lavoisier had also intervened on behalf of a number of foreign-born scientists including mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, granting them exception to a mandate stripping all foreigners of possessions and freedom. Lavoisier was tried, convicted, and guillotined on 8 May in Paris, at the age of 50.

The first commercial mass spectrometer (patent 2341551) was developed by Consolidated Engineering Corporation. The CEC was a chemical instrument manufacturer from 1937 to 1960 when it became a subsidiary of Bell and Howell Corp.

Cellular respiration is the set of the metabolic reactions and processes that take place in organisms' cells to convert biochemical energy from nutrients into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and then release waste products. The reactions involved in respiration are catabolic reactions that involve the oxidation of one molecule and the reduction of another.

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. During the early years of the HGP, the Wellcome Trust (U.K.) became a major partner; additional contributions came from Japan, France, Germany, China, and others.

Bacteriophage φX174 was the first DNA-based genome to be sequenced. This work was completed by Fred Sanger and his team in 1977.

An electron capture detector (ECD) is a device for detecting atoms and molecules in a gas through the attachment of

electrons via electron capture ionization. The device was invented in 1957 by Dr. James E. Lovelock and is used in gas

chromatography to detect trace amounts of chemical compounds in a sample.

Since 1950, Pittcon is the world’s annual premier Conference and Exposition on laboratory science. It is organized by The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a Pennsylvania not-for-profit educational corporation which is comprised of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh (SSP) and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP).

Leroy Hood is an American biologist. He won the 2003 Lemelson-MIT Prize for inventing "four instruments that have unlocked much of the mystery of human biology" by helping decode the genome. Hood also won the 2002 Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology, and the 1987 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. His inventions include the automated DNA sequencer and an automated tool for synthesizing DNA. Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology.

Andrew Zachary Fire was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). This research was conducted at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and published in 1998.

William Bateson was a British geneticist, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he eventually became Master. He was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity and biological inheritance, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is still best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, were “the data we actually used” to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA. Furthermore, unpublished drafts of her papers (written as she was arranging to leave the unsupportive research situation at King's College London) show that she had indeed determined the overall B-form of the DNA helix. However, her work was published third, in the series of three DNA Nature articles, led by the paper of Watson and Crick which only vaguely acknowledged her evidence in support of their hypothesis.

Colin Pitchfork (born 1961, Bristol, England) was the first criminal convicted for murder based on DNA fingerprinting evidence and the first to be caught as a result of mass screening. Pitchfork raped and murdered two girls in Narborough, on November 21, 1983, and on July 31, 1986. He was arrested on September 19, 1987, and sentenced to life imprisonment on January 22, 1988 after admitting both murders.

BASF SE (FWB: BAS, LSE: BFA) is a German chemical company and the largest chemical company in the world. BASF originally stood for Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (Baden Aniline and Soda Factory). Today, the four letters are a registered trademark and the company is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and Zurich Stock Exchange. The company delisted its ADR from the New York Stock Exchange in September 2007.

George Wells Beadle was an American scientist in the field of genetics, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Nobel laureate who with Edward Lawrie Tatum discovered the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells.

Beadle and Tatum's key experiments involved exposing the bread mold Neurospora crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. In a series of experiments, they showed that these mutations caused changes in specific enzymes involved in metabolic pathways. These experiments led them to propose a direct link between genes and enzymatic reactions, known as the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis.

In 1974, Hewlett-Packard introduced the first handheld programmable scientific electronic calculator.

Maurice H. F. Wilkins, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA by Dr. James D. Watson and Dr. Francis H. C. Crick. Dr. Wilkins was one of a group of wartime physicists, including Dr. Crick, who decided to pursue careers in biology after World War II. Dr. Wilkins chose as his problem the physical structure of DNA, the hereditary material, which he proposed to unravel by X-ray crystallography, then a young technique.

Formed May 10, 1950, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $6.02 billion (fiscal year 2008), NSF funds approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing.

Oxygen is the most common element in the human body, making up almost 63% of the average human.

A temperature of 13 C is required in order for ethanol and gasoline to become completely miscible in all proportions.

William Lawrence Bragg was an English physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 with his father Sir

William Henry Bragg. At 25, William Lawrence Bragg is the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize.

In 1983, the first genetically engineered organism, a tobacco plant designed to be resistant to certain herbicides, was grown in Wisconson.

Glenn Theodore Seaborg was an American scientist who won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements," contributed to the discovery and isolation of ten elements, developed the actinoids concept and was the first to propose the actinoids series which led to the current arrangement of the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Seaborg was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements: plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and element 106, which was named seaborgium in his honor while he was still living. He also developed more than 100 atomic isotopes, and is credited with important contributions to the separation of the isotope of uranium used in the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.