ERNEST JOHNSTONE, who has died aged 86, was a much-liked northern industrialist, one of four brothers who built up Johnstone’s Paints into a major UK-wide manufacturer. It was Ernest who…

George Daniels’ mission as a horologist was to redesign the mechanical watch to compete and in the long term outperform the quartz electronic watch. He was passionate about every detail…

Edward Jenner, creator of the world’s first vaccine, is said to have saved more lives through his work than anyone else. In the 18th century smallpox was widespread, killing eight…

Many people know Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) as the Lady of the Lamp in the Crimean War and founder of the world’s first secular nursing college at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London.…

The English photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) became world famous with large-format images of Yosemite Valley in the 1860s, but it was his work in moving image and projection that has…

Flying and engineering were passions from an early age for Frank Whittle, who was admitted to the RAF at the second attempt and did so well as an engineering apprentice…

The only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace described her approach to mathematics as “poetical science” and herself as an “analyst (and metaphysician)”. She worked alongside her…

Michael Faraday (1791-1867)“One of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time” Today’s digital revolution owes much to Michael Faraday’s 1821 development of a motor using electromagnetic rotation, which led to…

Asked about his slogan “I miss my pre-internet brain” in an interview with the FT, the artist Douglas Coupland observed: “I have been rewired in the last 10 or 15…

The sound of Celia Stothard fills the room at 19 Cleaver Street in Kennington, transporting me to years precociously spent in the company, via my parents’ gramophone, of French chansonniers…