H. J. L. Struycken was a Dutch otolaryngologist, phonetician, and acoustician. After studying medicine in Groningen, in 1893 he started working at the Voorburg psychiatric hospital near Vught, where he attempted to distinguish psychiatric conditions from neurological speech disorders. His interest in phonetics and acoustics took Struycken to France and Germany, to visit clinics and approach instrument makers who could produce tuning forks for him to use in his clinical research.

Jules Antoine Lissajous was a high-school teacher, then held prestigious administrative posts in the education system of various parts of France. He had trained in physics, and defended his dissertation on vibratory phenomena in 1850.

Chladni was a physicist whose work focused on experimental acoustics. He invented the “Chladni figure” and various instruments. Until his death, he continued to travel and present his inventions and findings to a wide audience.

A scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone.

Picture: CC0 | Wikimedia

Georg von Békésy was a Hungarian-American biophysicist who worked on physiology of hearing.

After studying chemistry in Bern, in 1923 Békésy was awarded a PhD in physics at the University of Budapest. He entered the service of the Hungarian Post Office, where he worked at the research laboratory on problems of long-distance telephone transmission.