Amateur researcher
As amateur researchers used to describe people in scientific disciplines as amateurs - d. H. alongside their job or in retirement - are active. This activity is usually free of charge and takes place predominantly in specialist associations . Typical examples of this are amateur astronomy and caving .
As a rule, amateur researchers have not completed a relevant university degree, but have familiarized themselves with the subject out of pure interest - often as autodidacts . With the appropriate talent and success, such persons often became scientists , technicians or inventors recognized in the specialist world .
Some internationally known amateur researchers
- Charles Goodyear , American inventor of heat-resistant rubber and hard rubber , (but not founder of the US tire company Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company )
- Percival Lowell , American planetary explorer ( Mars , Venus , Transneptune ), founder of the Lowell Observatory ( Flagstaff , USA)
- Gregor Mendel , Austrian priest and assistant teacher, founder of heredity
- Ernest Solvay , Belgian chemist, Solvay process for making soda, co-founder of the Solvay group
- Konstantin Ziolkowski , Russian school teacher, pioneer of space travel , theory of aerostatics and the step rocket
Other well-known autodidacts in science and technology
- Tobias Mayer - from orphanage to cartography, lunar orbit theory and university mathematician
- Nicolaus Reimers , German swineherd, later land surveyor and court astronomer
- Peter Andreas Hansen , German watchmaker and measurement assistant, methods of triangulation and astrometry
- Ivan Petrovich Kulibin , Russian watchmaker, theory of bridge building
- Benjamin Robins , British military engineer, founder of ballistics
- James Croll , Scottish tea merchant, amateur geologist, Milanković Cycles of the Ice Ages
- Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel , German astronomer