Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

popular name: Albert Einstein

date_of_death: April 18, 1955

age: 76

cause_of_death: Internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Albert Einstein was a renown German-born theoretical physicist, and regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein is known widely for developing the theory of relativity, and contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics. His mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2 has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

popular name: Christa McAuliffe

date_of_death: January 28, 1986

age: 37

cause_of_death: Space shuttle accident

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Christa McAuliffe was an American teacher and astronaut from Concord, New Hampshire, who was killed on the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L where she was serving as a payload specialist. On January 28, 1986, McAuliffe boarded Challenger with the other six crew members of STS-51-L. Seventy-three seconds into its flight at an altitude of 48,000 ft (14.630 km), the shuttle broke apart, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members. According to NASA, it was in part because of the excitement over her presence on the shuttle that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation. Many schoolchildren were viewing the launch live, and media coverage of the accident was extensive.

popular name: Eugene Wigner

date_of_death: January 1, 1995

age: 92

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner was a Hungarian theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He obtained American citizenship in 1937, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles". Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, particularly the theory of symmetry in physics. Along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigner's theorem is a cornerstone in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.