Darwinism

the theory of evolution devised by the British naturalist, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), in order to explain the great variety of plants and animals which exist on Earth. He arrived at his theories as a result of a five year voyage around the world (the voyage of the Beagle) and when he returned to England in 1859, he published a scientific paper with the title Origin of Species. Darwin proposed that some individuals in a species are more successful than others and hence better adapted to their environment. They are more likely to reproduce successfully and some of the characteristics which enable them to do so are inherited by their offspring. Hence these characteristics eventually become more widespread within a species. Gradually, new species can emerge that will adapt to new environments. Old species, which are no longer suited to the surrounding environment, will eventually die out.

Taken from Dictionary of Science

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Darwinism is a term used for various movements or concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or evolution, including ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin. The meaning of Darwinism has changed over time, and varies depending on who is using the term. In the United States, Darwinism is often used by creationists as a pejorative term but in the United Kingdom the term has no negative connotations, being freely used as a short hand for evolutionary theory.

The term was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in April 1860, and was used to describe evolutionary concepts, including earlier concepts such as Malthusianism and Spencerism. In the late 19th century it came to mean the concept that natural selection was the sole mechanism of evolution, in contrast to Lamarckism, then around 1900 it was eclipsed by Mendelism until the modern evolutionary synthesis unified Darwin's and Gregor Mendel's ideas. As modern evolutionary theory has developed, the term has been associated at times with specific ideas.

While the term has remained in use amongst scientific authors, it is increasingly regarded as an inappropriate description of modern evolutionary theory. For example, Darwin was unfamiliar with the work of Gregor Mendel, having as a result only a vague and inaccurate understanding of heredity, and knew nothing of genetic drift.

Taken from Wikipedia

Fahrenheit

(F) a temperature scale, devised by the German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736), that set the freezing point of water at 32º and the boiling point at 212º. Fahrenheit temperatures can be converted to CELSIUS by the equation F = 1.8C + 32.

Taken from Dictionary of Science

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Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). Today, the temperature scale has been replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries. It is still in use for non-scientific purposes in the United States and a few other nations, such as Belize.

Taken from Wikipedia

Dalton's atomic theory

a milestone in the development of chemistry devised by the English chemist and physicist John Dalton (1766-1844). He put forward the theory that all matter is made up of particles (atoms), which are identical throughout one element or substance, and that chemical reaction occurs through the attraction between atoms.

Taken from Dictionary of Science

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It was in the early 1800s that John Dalton, an observer of weather and discoverer of color blindness among other things, came up with his atomic theory. Let's set the stage for Dalton's work. Less than twenty years earlier, in the 1780's, Lavoisier ushered in a new chemical era by making careful quantitative measurements which allowed the compositions of compounds to be determined with accuracy. By 1799 enough data had been accumulated for Proust to establish the Law of Constant Composition ( also called the Law of Definite Proportions). In 1803 Dalton noted that oxygen and carbon combined to make two compounds. Of course, each had its own particular weight ratio of oxygen to carbon (1.33:1 and 2.66:1), but also, for the same amount of carbon, one had exactly twice as much oxygen as the other. This led him to propose the Law of Simple Multiple Proportions, which was later verified by the Swedish chemist Berzelius. In an attempt to explain how and why elements would combine with one another in fixed ratios and sometimes also in multiples of those ratios, Dalton formulated his atomic theory.

Taken from Clackamas Community College Website