| JANUARY 7 - BIRTHS | |
| John E(rnest) Walker | |
|
(source) |
 Born 7
Jan 1941
British chemist who won a share of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997 for his pioneering work on how the enzyme ATP synthase catalyses the formation of the "high-energy" compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP). These molecules of ATP function as a carrier of energy in all living organisms, whether simple bacteria, fungus or plant life, or higher animals and humans. ATP takes in the chemical energy released when nutrients are metabolized, and carries that energy to the various reactions that require energy. Such reactions include cell-building, the contraction of muscle fibers, or nerve signals. (Corecipients of the Noble Prize were Paul D. Boyer for related work with ATP, and Jens C. Skou who researched separately.) |
| Gerald Malcolm Durrell | |
(source) |
Born 7
Jan 1925; died 30 Jan 1995.
British conservation biologist and prolific author whose life work was the preservation of endangered animal species. The five years of his youth spent on the sub-tropical Greek island of Corfu yielded much material for his book My Family And Other Animals. After WW II, he joined Whipsnade Zoo in England as a keeper. In 1958, he established a wildlife preserve on the Channel Island of Jersey where he conducted scientific research, implementing new ways of raising and breeding rare animals. From his captive-breeding programs for endangered creatures he wished to return these animals back into the wild.«  My
Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell. |
| Sir Alastair Pilkington | |
| Born 7
Jan 1920; died 5 May 1995.
Sir Lionel Alexander Bethune Pilkington was a British industrialist and inventor of the float glass process. |
|
| Émile Borel | |
(source) |
Born 7
Jan 1871; died 3 Feb 1956.
(Félix-Édouard-Justin-) Émile Borel was a French mathematician who (with René Baire and Henri Lebesgue), was among the pioneers of measure theory and its application to probability theory. In one of his books on probability, he proposed the thought experiment that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard will - with absolute certainty - eventually type every book in France's Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library). This is now popularly known as the infinite monkey theorem. He was first to develop (1899) a systematic theory for a divergent series. He also published (1921-27) a number of research papers on game theory and became the first to define games of strategy. Space
and Time, by Emile Borel. |
| Johann Philipp Reis | |
(source) |
Born 7 Jan 1834; died 14 Jan 1874.
German physicist whose invention of an early telephone preceded Bell's work. After years of experimentation, Reis was ready to present his device to Frankfurt's Physics Association (Der Physikalische Verein) on 26 Oct 1861. He gave a lecture titled "Telephony Using Galvanic Current" ("Das Telefonieren durch galvanischen Strom"). During this, the first public demonstration of the successful conversion of electrical into auditory waves, verses of a song were transmitted from the lecture room to a hospital room over a 300-ft away. Reis coined the word "telephone" for his device. |
| Sir Sandford Fleming | |
(source) |
Born 7
Jan 1827; died 22 Jul 1915.
Scottish surveyor and leading railway engineer who divided the world into time zones. He emigrated at age 17 years to Quebec, Canada, on 24 Apr 1845, as a surveyor. Later he became one of the foremost railway engineers of his time. While in charge of the initial survey for the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first Canadian railway to span the continent, he realized the problems of coordinating such a long railway. This lead him to the idea of time zones, which contribution to the adoption of the present system of time zones earned him the title of "Father of Standard Time." Fleming also designed the first Canadian postage stamp. Issued in 1851, it cost three pennies and depicted the beaver, now the national animal of Canada. |
| Stephen Groombridge | |
(source) |
Born 7
Jan 1755; died 30 Mar 1832.
English astronomer, who compiled the Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars (corrected edition published 1838), often known as the Groombridge Catalog. For ten years, from 1806, he made observations using a transit circle, followed by another 10 years adjusting the data to correct for refraction, instrument error and clock error. In 1827, he was struck with a "severe attack of paralysis" from which he never fully recovered, and his work was continued by others. An edition of the catalog published posthumously in 1833 was withdrawn because it contained errors which were corrected and issued again in 1838. [Image: GroombridgeTransit Circle, London, 1806] |
| Johann Christian Fabricius | |
(source) |
Born 7
Jan 1745; died 3 Mar 1808.
Danish entomologist who was one of the great entomologists of the 18th century. After studying with Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, Fabricius travelled widely in Europe to see insect collections and produced many publications describing all the new species that he saw. He named and classified some 10,000 species of insects. The system of classification of insects he developed was based on mouth structure (instead of wing). He offered theories, progressive for his time, suggesting that hybridization could produce produce new species or varieties, and that environmental adaptation could influence changes in anatomical structure or function. |
|
Today in Science History Science Store Browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| JANUARY 7 - DEATHS | |
| Oswald Garrison "Mike" Villard Jr. | |
(source) |
 Died
7 Jan 2004 (born 17 Sep 1916)
American electronics engineer who developed over-the-horizon radar (a way to detect objects out of direct sight by bouncing radar off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer in the upper atmosphere) so radar could peer around the Earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away. His interest in electricity began with a copy of Harper's Electricity Book for Boys. At age 12, he put together a radio from a kit. During WW II, he researched countermeasures to protect Allied forces against enemy radio and radar devices. He made pioneering studies of radar jamming. In 1947, he designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, such as a telephone conversation. |
| Jerome L. Murray | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1998 (born 20 Aug 1912)
American inventor of the peristaltic pump that made open-heart surgery possible. It met the need to pump blood without damaging the cells through a method of expansion and contraction that imitates the way that peristalsis moves the contents of the digestive tract. In addition, the pump was adapted for kidney dialysis and for food processing (to pump soup into cans without crushing the peas or the celery). He decided to invent the airplane boarding ramp when on a day in 1951 at the Miami International Airport he saw passengers having to walk in the rain to the terminal. In all, he held 75 patents including a television antenna rotator, electric carving knife, high-speed dentist drill, power car seat and an audible pressure cooker. [Image: Peristaltic pump showing tubing and rotor that moves blood.] |
| Richard Hamming | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1998 (born 11 Feb 1915)
Richard Wesley Hamming was an American mathematician who devised computer Hamming codes - error-detecting and correcting codes (1947). These add one or more bits to the transmission of blocks of data, used for a parity check, so that errors can be corrected automatically. By making a resend of bad data unnecessary, efficiency improved for modems, compact disks and satellite communications. He also worked on programming languages, numerical analysis and the Hamming spectral window (used to smooth data before Fourier analysis is carried out). He taught at University of Louisville, then during WW II worked (1945) on computers with the Manhattan Project creating the atomic bomb. From 1946, he spent 30 years with Bell Telephone Labs, eventually becoming head of computing science research.«  |
| Vladimir Prelog | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1998 (born 23 Jul 1906)
Yugoslavian-born Swiss chemist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John W. Cornforth for his work on the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. Stereochemistry is the study of the three-dimensional arrangements of atoms within molecules. He authored systematic naming rules for molecules and their mirror-image version, that is, which configuration will be referred to as "dextra" and which will be the "levo" (right or left). Also, by X-ray diffraction, he elucidated the structure of several antibiotics. |
| Seton Howard Frederick Lloyd | |
| Died
7 Jan 1996 (born 30 May 1902)
British archaeologist who led a number of digs in Iraq and Turkey and was the first director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey. |
|
| George Washington Crile | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1943 (born 11 Nov 1864)
American surgeon who was one of the first to study the significance of surgical shock. His interest began when a close friend was injured in a streetcar accident and died in profound shock after the amputation of both legs. Crile conducted research experiments on animals and noted the relationship between shock, blood pressure, and the onset of death. He saw that striving to prevent shock was of great importance. He recognized the importance of monitoring blood pressure in surgical patients and helped popularize the use of the sphygmomanometer. In 1906 he performed the first successful human to human blood transfusion at St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland. He was the principal founder of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.« George
Crile, an Autobiography, by George Washington Crile. |
| Alfred Kastler | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1984 (born 3 May 1902)
French physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1966 for his discovery and development of methods for observing Hertzian resonances within atoms. This research facilitated the greater understanding of the structure of the atom by studying the radiations that atoms emit when excitated by light and radio waves. He developed a method called "optical pumping" which caused atoms in a sample substance to enter higher energy states. This idea was an important predecessor to the development of masers and the lasers which utilized the light energy that was reemitted when excited atoms released the extra energy obtained from optical pumping. |
| Sir Arthur Keith | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1955 (born 5 Feb 1866)
Scottish anatomist and physical anthropologist who specialized in the study of fossil humans and who reconstructed early hominid forms, notably fossils from Europe and North Africa. After graduating from university (1888), he travelled as a physician on a gold mining trip to Siam. There, he dissected monkeys and became interested in racial types. In 1892, he returned to Britain and studied anatomy. In 1915, he published The Antiquity of Man, an anatomical survey of all important human fossil remains, at which time he believed that moderns humans are as old as extinct forms of humans. In 1931, New Discoveries was published in which he admitted that modern humans probably arose from types already separate in the early Pleistocene. |
| Nikola Tesla | |
 |
Died
7 Jan 1943 (born 9/10 Jul 1856)
Serbian-American inventor and researcher (born on the stroke of midnight) who designed and built the first alternating current induction motor in 1883. He emigrated to the United States in 1884. Having discovered the benefits of a rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery, he expanded its use in dynamos, transformers, and motors. Because alternating current could be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current, George Westinghouse bought patents from Tesla the system when he built the power station at Niagara Falls to provide electricity power the city of Buffalo, NY.« Wizard:
The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius,
by Marc Seifer |
| Sir Alfred Ewing | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1935 (born 27 Mar 1855)
Sir (James) Alfred Ewing was the British physicist who discovered and named hysteresis (1890), the resistance of magnetic materials to change in magnetic force. Ewing was born and educated in Dundee and studied engineering on a scholarship at Edinburgh University. He helped Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin in a cable laying project. In 1878 he became professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics at Tokyo University, where he devised instruments for measuring earthquakes. In 1903 he moved to the Admiralty as head of education and training, where during WW I, he and his staff took on the task of deciphering coded messages. |
| Sophia Jex-Blake | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1912 (born 21 Jan 1840)
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake was a British physician though whose determined efforts Parliament passed legislation to give women the right to have access to a medical education. She had spent years in her own attempt to enrol in a Scottish medical school. Eventually, she held a license at age 37 and opened a private practice in Scotland the following year. She was the country's first female doctor. She succeeded in having a medical school for women opened in London (1874) and a few years later, she established one in Edinburgh (1886). She made it possible for women to enter the medical profession to practice medicine and surgery.« |
| Josef Stefan | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1893 (born 24 Mar 1835)
Austrian physicist who proposed a law of radiation (1879) stating that the amount of energy radiated per second from a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. (A black body is a theoretical object that absorbs all radiation that falls on it.) This law is known as Stefan's law or the Stefan-Bolzmann law. He also studied electricity, the kinetic theory of gases and hydrodynamics. |
| Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke | |
(source) |
Died
7 Jan 1892 (born 6 June 1819)
German physiologist who helped to introduce physical and chemical methods into medical research. He taught in Vienna (1849-90) where his school for physiologists gained an international reputation. The range of his physiological interests was vast, as shown in his Lectures in Physiology (1873-4). He discovered the ciliary muscle named for him, and his Anatomical Description of the Human Eye (1847) has become the standard histological work for contemporary oculists. He also did work on luminescence, blood coagulation, microscopy and cells. As a student, Sigmund Freud began research work on the central nervous system, guided by Ernst von Brücke (1876), and qualified as doctor of medicine in 1881. |
| JANUARY 7 - EVENTS | |
| Transatlantic telephone | |
In 1927, commercial telephone service (using radio) began
between New York and London. |
|
| Thermal cracking patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1913, a U.S. patent for the thermal cracking of crude oil was issued
to William Merriam Burton (No.1,049,667).
A crude petroleum mixture of various hydrocarbons can be separated into
several groups of constituents by physical means, commonly distillation.
His thermal cracking process used high heat and high pressure to chemically
break longer molecules of less volatile components into smaller molecules,
more than doubling the yield of gasoline which was much needed to fuel
the motor industry. In its first 15 years of use the process saved more
than 1 billion barrels of crude oil. In 1937 the invention of catalytic
cracking superceded the Burton process, but it remains in wide use.« |
| Daguerre photographic system | |
|
In 1839, Louis Daguerre made the first announcement
of his photographic system at the Académie des Sciences in Paris,
though details were not presented until 19 Aug 1839 when the process was
announced publicly. By that time, the French government had bought the
rights to the process from him, and then made them freely available to
the world. However, this process had also been patented in England and
Wales on 14 Aug 1839 - only five days previously.« |
|
| Cross-Channel balloon flight | |
 |
In 1785, Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard
and American physician and scientist
John Jeffries made the first air crossing of the English Channel from England
to France in a hot-air balloon - the first international flight. This was
the second of two balloon flights
Jeffries financed. To accompany him, Jeffries chose Blanchard for his prior
experience in balloon flight. The voyage across the Channel was successful,
though not without difficulty, because to maintain height they were forced
to jettison everthing in the basket, including rope and most of their clothes.
Their previous flight took place on 30 Nov 1784, in London, for the purpose
of taking scientific and meteorological measurements. [Image:
Blanchard (L) and Jeffries (R).] |
| First typewriter patent | |
In 1714, the world's first patent for a "Machine for Transcribing Letters"
was granted in England by Queen Anne to Henry Mill (1683?-1771), a waterworks
engineer with the New River Company. The patent (No. 395) described the
invention as "an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing
of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever
may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished
from print; that the said machine... may be of great use in settlements
and publick recors, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any
other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."*
There is no remaining record that he actually built the machine.«  |
|
| Moon craters | |
(source) |
In 1610, Galileo dated his first letter
describing telescopic observations in which he saw the moon's cratered
surface
using his twenty-powered spyglass. He wrote, "... it is seen that the Moon
is most evidently not at all of an even, smooth, and regular surface, as
a great many people believe of it and of the other heavenly bodies, but
on the contrary it is rough and unequal. In short it is shown to be such
that sane reasoning cannot conclude otherwise than that it is full of prominences
and cavities similar, but much larger, to the mountains and valleys spread
over the Earth's surface." Galileo went on to describe the phenomena in
considerable detail, rehearsing, as it were, the observations and conclusions
he was to publish more elaborately a few months later in
Sidereus Nuncius.
[Image:
picture of the ragged moon from Sidereus Nuncius.] |
