Explorer
Columbus Monument in Madeira ( Funchal )
A discoverer is generally used to describe people who observe something that exists independently and make this knowledge available to an indefinite public (e.g. a culture) as a discovery . There can be several discoverers of the same phenomenon, as the following well-known example makes clear:
- Around 28,000 BC, Paleo-Indians first discovered a way in which the colonization of America became possible. All of the groups who immigrated afterwards had to find new paths independently again and again.
- Around 1000 AD, Vikings discovered America ( Vinland ) under the leadership of Leif Eriksson . Knowledge of this discovery was probably limited to a small group.
- Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 . This is true even if he was not the first person to step on American soil.
- In 1504, Amerigo Vespucci published the discovery that the areas discovered by Columbus are not islands off the east coast of Asia, but are an independent continent .
Further examples of the broad meaning of the word discoverer :
- around 250 BC Archimedes of Syracuse discovered the principle named after him . Galileo Galilei and Blaise Pascal also contributed to its current general version .
- In 1569 the humanist Wiguläus Hundt discovered a manuscript of the Nibelungenlied at Prunn Castle in the Altmühltal - today called the Prunner Codex .
- In 1770 James Cook discovered Australia. Strictly speaking, Cook only completed the discovery of Australia; Abel Tasman and others had brought some knowledge of the continent to Europe before him.
- 1772 discovered Carl Wilhelm Scheele the oxygen . At the same time and independently of him, Joseph Priestley also discovered the element.
- 1784 discovered Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to premaxillae (intermaxillary, incisive bone) of man.
- In 1826 Georg Simon Ohm discovered the electrical engineering law named after him .
- In 1846 Johann Gottfried Galle discovered the planet Neptune . The existence of the planet had been predicted from other observations.
- In 1870 Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy . He digs it up at the place Homer indicated.
- In 1880 Alphonse Laveran discovered the causative agent of malaria . The disease was already in the 5th century BC. Described in detail by Hippocrates of Kos .
- In 1911 Roald Amundsen discovered the South Pole . He was the first person on the pole. Its existence and location were known.
- In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation .
- In 1985, an American-French expedition discovered the wreck of the Titanic .
See also
literature
- Dietmar Henze: Encyclopedia of the explorers and explorers of the earth , Akad. Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, Graz 1978-2004. New edition expanded by a 6th volume: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN
978-353-42388-9-7
- Isaac Asimov : 500,000 years of inventions and discoveries. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 1996.
Web links
Wiktionary: Discoverer - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Explorer - collection of images, videos and audio files
- Travelers and Explorers (University of Hollywood) - rich list of trips and discoveries