| JANUARY 6 - BIRTHS | |
| Rolf M. Zinkernagel | |
(source) |
 Born 6
Jan 1944
Swiss immunologist and pathologist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 because of his relatively early work with colleague Peter Doherty defining the system by which the immune system identifies friend and foe. His work since then has built upon this discovery, revealing how the thymus gland selects only white blood cells that react properly to virus-infected cells and investigating the complex interplay by which viruses and their hosts co-evolve. Zinkernagel has also been a vocal proponent of the promise of biotechnology in his native Switzerland. |
| George Ledyard Stebbins | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1906; died 19 Jan 2000.
American geneticist who was one of the leading evolutionary biologists. Stebbins is considered one of the "architects" of the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930-40s (with Dobzhansky, animal systematist Ernst Mayr, and paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson ) Together, their work was a synthesis of research in cytology, genetics, systematics, paleontology. Stebbins created a modern framework for the study of plant evolution. From the 1940s, he artificially created fertile hybrids having more than twice the basic number of chromosomes (and was the first scientist to do so). This technique had value in both taxonomy and plant breeding. |
| Émile Argand | |
| Born 6
Jan 1879; died 14 Sep 1940.
Swiss geologist who studied the structure of the Alps. He produced a map of the Dent Blanche massif (1908) with a description of his investigation of the strata. In 1915, he coined the term embryotectonics for a new line of research which analyzed the sequential evolution of geological structures back to its origins as a sedimentary terrain.« |
|
| Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1865; died 20 Dec 1934.
Russian archaeologist, ethnographer and linguist, who contributed to the language studies and archaeology of the Caucasus. In the 1930s, his "theory of the staging" (1929) led the archaeology of the USSR. This theory held that it is possible to reconstruct a social and an economical situation in the ancient societies by investigating only material finds on the base of the marxists so called "rise method". In this method the material is investigated by separation of groups which have social and functional meaning, (by these investigations). In his study of the Caucasian, Afro-Asiatic and Basque languages, his nonsensical Japhetic Theory that all languages of the world derived from an original set of four monosyllables: sal, ber, yon, rosh.« |
| Clarence King | |
In a mountain camp (source) |
Born 6
Jan 1842; died 24 Dec 1901.
American geologist and mining engineer who directed the survey of the 40th parallel (1867-78), an intensive study of the mineral resources along the site of the proposed Union Pacific Railroad, recorded in his classic volume, Systematic Geology (1878). This investigative effort included the first discovery of glaciers in the U.S. while studying the extinct volcanoes of Mounts Shasta, Rainier, and Hood. He is credited with introducing the use of contour lines on maps to indicate topographic features. Instrumental in forming the U.S. Geological Survey, he was then appointed its first head (1879-81). He wrote a series of Atlantic Monthly articles on Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872), marking a transition to popularized climbing sport. |
| Heinrich Schliemann | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1822; died 26 Dec 1890.
German archaeologist who excavated sites at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns he associated with Homer's Iliad and Vergil's Aeneid. After a successful business career, Schliemann retired (1863) to pursue his childhood ambition of discovering Homeric Troy. Ignoring scholarly derision, he excavated Hissarlik on the Asia Minor coast of Turkey, finding ruins of nine consecutive cities. The second oldest (Troy II), which he wrongly identified with Homer's city, yielded a hoard that Schliemann romantically called "Priam's Treasure." His spectacular finds in Greece at Mycenae (1874-76), Orchomenos in Boeotia (1880), and Tiryns (1884-85) established him as the discoverer of Mycenaean civilization and the leader in discovery of prehistoric Greece.«  Lost
and Found: The 9,000 Treasures of Troy: Heinrich Schliemann and the Gold
That Got Away, by Caroline Moorehead. |
| Anselme Payen | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1795; died 12 May 1871.
French chemist who made important contributions to industrial chemistry and discovered cellulose, a basic constituent of plant cells. His father's factories produced various chemicals, and refined sugar, so Payen studied science. In 1815, age 20, he was made manager of his father's plant for refining imported crude borax. There, he developed a synthesis for borax from soda and boric acid and in 1820 he created a new industry which could market the synthetic product at one-third the price of the refined natural borax. His father died in 1820, and Payen took over the family business. By 1822, he had found the value of animal charcoal to clarify sugar solutions. In 1833, Payen discovered diastase (the first enzyme to be discovered). |
| Jacques Étienne Montgolfier | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1745; died 2 Aug 1799.
French ballooning pioneer, who with his brother Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, developed the hot-air balloon and conducted the first untethered flights. An initial experiment with a balloon of taffeta filled with hot smoke was given a public demonstration on 5 Jun 1783. This was followed by a flight carrying three animals as passengers on 19 Sep 1783, shown in Paris and witnessed by King Louis XVI. On 21 Nov 1783, their balloon carried the first two men on an untethered flight - the first manned balloon flight. Modifications of the basic Montgolfier design were incorporated in the construction of larger balloons that, in later years, led to exploration of the upper atmosphere. Étienne also developed a process for manufacturing vellum. 
The
Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783-1784,
by Charles Coulston Gillispie. |
| Jacob (Jacques) Bernoulli | |
(source) |
Born 6
Jan 1655; died 16 Aug 1705.
Swiss mathematician who was one of the first to fully utilize differential calculus and introduced the term integral in integral calculus. Jacob Bernoulli's first important contributions were a pamphlet on the parallels of logic and algebra (1685), work on probability in 1685 and geometry in 1687. His geometry result gave a construction to divide any triangle into four equal parts with two perpendicular lines. By 1689 he had published important work on infinite series and published his law of large numbers in probability theory. He published five treatises on infinite series (1682 - 1704). Jacob was intrigued by the logarithmic spiral and requested it be carved on his tombstone. He was the first of the Bernoulli family of mathematicians. |
|
Today in Science History Science Store Browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| JANUARY 6 - DEATHS | |
| Bern Dibner | |
(source) |
 Died
6 Jan 1988 (born 18 Aug 1897)
Ukrainian-American engineer and science historian. Dibner worked as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Realizing the need for improved methods of connecting electrical conductors, in 1924, he founded the Burndy Engineering Company. A few years later, he became interested in the history of Renaissance science. Subsequently, he began collecting books and everything he could find that was related to the history of science. This became a second career as a scholar that would run parallel with his life as a businessman. He wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authorative biographies of many scientific pioneers, including Volta, inventor of the electric battery, and Roentgen, discoverer of the X ray. |
| Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1990 (born 15 Jul 1904)
Soviet physicist who discovered Cherenkov radiation (1934), a faint blue light emitted by electrons passing through a transparent medium when their speed exceeds the speed of light in that medium. Fellow Soviet scientists Igor Y. Tamm and Ilya M. Frank investigated the phenomenon from which the Cherenkov counter was developed. Extensive use of this Cherenkov detector was later made in applications of experimental nuclear and particle physics. For their work, the trio shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics. [Note: The date 15 Jul 1904 Old Style is 28 Jul 1904 New Style] |
| Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1945 (born 12 Mar 1863)
Russian geochemist and mineralogist who was a founder of the specialist sciences of geochemistry and biogeochemistry. He was the first to popularize the concept of the noosphere - the biosphere controlled by the mind of man. Within the last 200 years, humanity has been a powerful geologic force, moving more mass upon the earth than the biosphere. Two of the laws detailed by Vernadsky are that the number and kinds of chemical elements and compounds entering the cycling organization of living matter increase with time, and that as we move toward the present the pace of cycling increases. |
| Georg Cantor | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1918 (born 3 Mar 1845)
Georg (Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp) Cantor was a Russian-German mathematician who created modern set theory and extended it to give the concept of transfinite numbers,with cardinal and ordinal number classes. Although Cantor's earliest work was concerned with Fourier series, his reputation rests upon his contribution to transfinite set theory. He began with the definition of infinite sets proposed by Dedekind in 1872: a set is infinite when it is similar to a proper part of itself. Sets with this property, such as the set of natural numbers are said to be 'denumerable' or 'countable'. His career was repeatedly interrupted after 1884 by mental illness. He died of heart failure in 1918 in a mental institution. |
| Gregor Mendel | |
1862 (source) |
Died
6 Jan 1884 (born 22 July 1822)
Original name (until 1843) Johann Mendel. Austrian pioneer in the study of heredity. He spent his adult life with the Augustinian monastery in Brunn, where as a geneticist, botanist and plant experimenter, he was the first to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism. Over the period 1856-63, Mendel grew and analyzed over 28,000 pea plants. He carefully studied for each their plant height, pod shape, pod color, flower position, seed color, seed shape and flower color. He made two very important generalizations from his pea experiments, known today as the Laws of Heredity. Mendel coined the present day terms in genetics: recessiveness and dominance. |
| Louis Braille | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1852 (born 4 Jan 1809)
French educator who developed a tactile form of printing and writing, known as braille, since widely adopted by the blind. He himself knew blindness from the age four, following an accident while playing with an awl. In 1821, while Braille was at a school for the blind, a soldier named Charles Barbier visited and showed a code system he had invented. The system, called "night writing" had been designed for soldiers in war trenches to silently pass instructions using combinations of twelve raised dots. Young Braille realised how useful this system of raised dots could be. He developed a simpler scheme using six dots. In 1827 the first book in braille was published. Now the blind could also write it for themselves using a simple stylus to make the dots. |
| Fausto D'Elhuyar | |
(source) |
Died 6 Jan 1833 (born 11 Oct 1755)
Spanish chemist and mineralogist who assisted his older brother Juan José in experiments to separate tungsten metal from its wolframite ore (1783). Two years earlier, Swedish chemist Carl Scheele discovered tungstic acid, though did not isolate the elemental form, from a mineral known since about 1758 as tung sten (Swedish, heavy stone; which is now known as scheelite). The Elhuyar brothers, working at the Seminary of Bergara, succeeded in extracting the metal by reducing tungstic acid with charcoal. For the first time, Basque scientists entered the history of science. Each became a directorof a school of mines, but in different countries. Although Juan José discovered tungsten metal, Fausto became better known.« [Image right: wolframite] |
| Jean-Étienne Guettard | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1786 (born 22 Sep 1715)
French geologist and mineralogist who made the first survey to make a geologically map of France and to study the exposed rock strata of the Paris Basin. He was first to identify several fossil species from the Paris area. Noting that certain plants occurred only in association with certain minerals and rocks, he travelled and mapped plant distributions and the occurrence of various minerals and rocks. The publication of his map in 1751 marks the beginning of the science of geology. He recognized erosion by running water, how subterranean water made caves and the battering of cliffs by the seas. He discovered the volcanoes of the Auvergne and the surrounding landscape shaped by past eruptions, cinder layers, old soils and solidified lava. [Image: illustration from Minéralogie du Dauphiné, 1782] |
| Étienne-François Geoffroy | |
(source) |
Died
6 Jan 1731 (born 13 Feb 1672)
French chemist, who was the first to recognize the relative fixed affinities of reagents for one another. He composed tables (1718) listing the relative affinities of different reagents for particular substances, showing how one acid displaces another acid of weaker affinity for a specific base in the salt of that base. (These tables stood for most of the 18th century, until Claude-Louis Berthollet demonstrated that reactions instead depend upon the initial relative quantities of the reactants and physical conditions during the reaction.) Geoffroy considered the quest for the philosopher's stone (a substance capable of transforming base metals into gold) a delusion, but he believed that iron could be formed during the combustion of vegetable matter. |
| JANUARY 6 - EVENTS | |
| International Space Station | |
In 1998, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in orbit
over the southern Pacific Ocean used a robot arm to begin assembly
of the International Space Station. Unity, a module from its cargo
bay was linked up with Zarya, a 22-ton, Russian-built module in
space. |
|
| Synthetic growth hormones | |
|
In 1971, Berkeley chemists announced the first synthetic production of
growth hormones. |
|
| First U.S. adult heart transplant | |
 |
In 1971, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. was performed at
the Stanford Medical Center, Stanford, Calif., by Dr. Norman Shumway. The
54-year-old patient, whose heart had been damaged by virus infection, survived
for 15 days after the surgery. Shumway, an American surgeon, continued
to pioneer in cardiac transplantation. His surgical team went on to perform
many other heart-transplant operations. Later, Shumway also accomplished
open-heart surgery for the transplantation of valves. |
| Phenytoin anti-epileptic drug | |
|
In 1953, Phenytoin
(diphenylhydantoin), an anti-epileptic drug, was approved by the US Food
and Drug Administration. This drug was first synthesized in 1908 by Heinrich
Biltz, a German physician named in 1908. It is now one of the more popular
anti-convulsive medications.« |
|
| Genes photographed | |
|
In 1949, the first photograph of genes was taken at the University of Southern
California by Dr. Daniel Chapin Pease and Dr. Richard Freligh Baker. |
|
| Milk cartons | |
|
In 1929, Sheffield Farms of New York began using wax paper cartons instead
of glass bottles for milk delivery. |
|
| Transatlantic telephone | |
|
In 1927, commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between
New York and London. |
|
| Cracking process | |
|
In 1913, William M. Burton patented a process to "crack" petroleum, converting
oil to produce gasoline. Standard Oil used his method. |
|
| S.O.S. | |
|
In 1904, Marconi Co establishes "CQD" as first international radio distress
signal. It didn't last long. Two years later, "SOS" became the radio distress
signal because it was more convenient - meaning quicker - to send by wireless
radio. |
|
| Zinc extraction | |
|
In 1857, a U.S. patent (#16,362), which was the country's first patent
related to zinc ore was issued to Samuel Wetherill, Bethlehem, Pa. |
|
| Foucault's pendulum result | |
Foucault (source) |
In 1851, the rotation of the Earth was proved experimentally by Leon
Foucault. After weeks of work, he recorded in his journal that he made
this discovery at 2:00 am working with a pendulum in the cellar of the
house he shared with his mother. Using a steel wire 2-m long with a 5-kg
brass bob, he had made a pendulum suspended in a way that freely permitted
it, he found that its plane of oscillation slowly rotated relative to the
ground. This led to using much longer versions of his pendulum. He found
that the angular velocity of the rotation equalled wsinq
where w is the angular velocity of the Earth
rotating on its axis, and q is the latitude
of the site of the pendulum. He demonstrated his discovery on 31
Mar 1851 for Napoleon.« |
| Iron extraction | |
|
In 1844, a U.S. patent (#3,605), which was the country's first patent related
to iron ore was issued to S. Broadmeadow of Woodbridge, NJ, who described
his process to extract malleable iron from iron ore. |
|
| Telegraph | |
|
In 1838, Samuel Morse, with his partner,
Alfred Vail, gave the first public demonstration of their new invention
electric telegraphic system at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown,
NJ.
Lightning
Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, by Kenneth
Silverman. |
|
| Typewriter | |
|
In 1714, the typewriter was patented by Englishman Henry Mill, but he never
succeeded in perfecting his invention and it died with him. It was British
patent number 385, granted "by the grace of Queen Anne." The patent's title
was: An artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing
of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing, whereby
all writing whatever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and
exact as not to be distinguished from print. |
|
