: William Ferrel, a self-taught 19th-century American farmer, used a pitchfork to carve equations into a barn door to explain why hurricanes move in circles and how heat flows from the equator to the poles.
: Reclusive genius Oliver Heaviside predicted a "mirror in the sky"—a layer of electrically charged metal that allows radio signals to bounce around the globe, a discovery that would later aid in the rescue of the Titanic. The Human Side of Discovery An Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other M...
: Renaissance scientist Evangelista Torricelli, a disciple of Galileo, was the first to realize we live "submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air". To illustrate its mass, the air filling a space like Carnegie Hall weighs approximately 70,000 pounds . : William Ferrel