A lot of news these days comes from, or is about, Twitter. Entertainment magazines and shows seem to be entirely dependant on celebrity Tweets, like those fish that feed on the random things that fall out of a sharks mouth.

It's not all random utterances and spats though. Time magazine recently ran an article about the most intelligent celebrities on Twitter. And those of us in the science field are regularly encouraged to Tweet about our research.

But what if these two approaches were combined? What if famous scientists were on Twitter, at the time of their greatest discoveries? Obviously the vast majority of celebrated scientific discoveries occurred before Twitter even existed. But this is the internet, where nothing is impossible!

(Explanatory links in the titles, for those not familiar with the references)

Pythagoras on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Andreas Vesalius on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Tycho Brahe on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Rosalind Franklin on Twitter. Photograph: /Dean Burnett Photograph: Dean Burnett

Charles Darwin on Twitter. Photograph: /Dean Burnett Photograph: Dean Burnett

Thomas Edison on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Erwin Schrodinger on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Jonas Salk on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Phineas Gage on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Florence Nightingale on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Ivan Pavlov on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Alan Turing on Twitter. Photograph: Dean Burnett

Dean Burnett is, quite obviously, on Twitter, @garwboy