Romania is not as well known as other European countries yet, even from the shadows, bright minds were born here to change the world. We have made a list with only few of the great names without whom history could have had a completely different turn. For this, we have chosen the most important fields in the evolution of humanity.
MEDICINE
Nicolae Paulescu (first photo), a professor of psychology at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, is the one who discovered for the first time in 1921, insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas that controls the level of the sugar glucose in the blood. Insulin permits cells to use glucose for energy. Paulescu is one that has demonstrated efficacy in reducing hyperglycemia and this substance to use insulin to treat diabetes. His discovery has saved millions of lives.
George Emil Palade (second photo) – The Romanian-born American, described as “the most influential cell biologist ever”, received, along with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve, the Nobel Prize for “their discoveries in regards to the structural and functional organization of the cell”.
“Palade was for the cell biology field the equivalent of Einstein in physics” – Günter Blobel.
Emil Palade discovered the role and functions of mitochondria (the “energy factories of the cell”) and noticed small granules inside the human cell, composed of ribonucleic acid and proteins. Initially called Palade particles, the granules were later renamed ribosome, and are now well known as the sites of protein synthesis.
TECHNOLOGY
Stefan Odobleja (1902-1978) is the creator of psycho cybernetics and the father of generalized cybernetics.
Cybernetics is the retrospective control theory. It takes as its domain the design or discovery and application of principles of regulation and communication. Cybernetics treats not things but ways of behaving. It does not ask “what is this thing?” but “what does it do?” and “what can it do?”
Odobleja`s work is very important as it had been used and applied in many scientific fields. His remarkable and amazing value was discussed and acknowledged all over the world with statements like: “You have a golden man, he deserves a golden statue”.
Founded in 1990, Softwin is a software company based in Bucharest, Romania. And if you’ve heard the name before, yet you cannot recall where, it is the producer of the BitDefender anti-virus engine/ Internet security software suites. Florin Talpeş (third photo) and Bogdan Dumitru are the two men behind the Bitdefender empire, the Romanian product that secures the digital data of over 500 million users from tens of countries.
MECHANICS
- Jet Engine
In 1910 at the Aeronautical Salon exhibition in Paris, Henri Coanda (1886 – 1972) showed the plane he created that looked unusual for that time as it did not have a propeller. The machine had two wings and one double room, a span of 10.3 m, 12.5 m long, weighing 420 kg and the propulsion force of 220 kg. Jet engine, invented and built for the first time by Henri Coanda was composed of a piston engine, four-cylinder, water cooled and develops 50 horsepower at 1,000 rpm.
- Ejection seat
Anastase Dragomir (1896-1966) was a distinguished Romanian inventor, most famous for his “catapultable cockpit” patent as an early form of ejection seat, an idea that saved hundreds of lives throughout the years. This invention was “a new system of parachuting from the apparatus for air locomotion, each passenger having his own parachute that allows, in critical moments, the detaching of the whole ensemble from the plane, so the parachute along with the passenger installed in the seat go through a opening in the floor”.
- Propeller machine gun synchronization and more
During the First World War, when the British air fleet was inferior to the German places, George Constantinescu (forth photo) invented a device that synchronized airplane machine gun with the propeller. He is also the creator of the theory of sonics, a new branch of continuum mechanics, in which he described the transmission of mechanical energy through vibrations. And if you like to drive your car for the automatic gear that is also possible because George Constantinescu invented the automatic gear.