| JANUARY 22 - BIRTHS | |
| Lev Davidovich Landau | |
(source) |
 Born 22
Jan 1908; died 1 Apr 1968.
Soviet physicist who worked in such fields as low-temperature physics, atomic and nuclear physics, and solid-state, stellar-energy, and plasma physics. Several physics terms bear his name. He was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physics for his theory to explain the peculiar superfluid behaviour of liquid helium at very low temperature (2.18 K). Landau's further contributions are partly reflected in such terms as Landau diamagnetism and Landau levels in solid-state physics, Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau energy spectrum in low-temperature physics, or Landau cuts in high-energy physics.  What
Is Relativity? by Lev Davidovich Landau. |
| Frigyes Riesz | |
(source) |
Born 22
Jan 1880; died 28 Feb 1956.
Hungarian mathematician and pioneer of functional analysis, which has found important applications to mathematical physics. His theorem, now called the Riesz-Fischer theorem, which he proved in 1907, is fundamental in the Fourier analysis of Hilbert space. It was the mathematical basis for proving that matrix mechanics and wave mechanics were equivalent. This is of fundamental importance in early quantum theory. His book Leçon's d'analyse fonctionnelle (written jointly with his student B Szökefalvi-Nagy) is one of the most readable accounts of functional analysis ever written. Beyond any mere abstraction for the sake of a structure theory, he was always turning back to the applications in some concrete and substantial situation. |
| Leonard Eugene Dickson | |
(source) |
Born 22
Jan 1874; died 17 Jan 1954.
American mathematician who made important contributions to the theory of numbers and the theory of groups. He published 18 books including Linear groups with an exposition of the Galois field theory. The 3-volume History of the Theory of Numbers (1919-23) is another famous work still much consulted today. |
| Louis Paschen | |
| Born 22
Jan 1865; died 25 Feb 1947.
Louis Carl Heinrich Friedrich Paschen was a German physicist who was probably the most skillful experimental spectroscopist of his time. In 1895, he studied the spectrum of the newly discovered terrestrial element, helium. It matched identically the solar helium discovered by Janssen and Lockyer. In 1908, he discovered a new series of lines in the hydrogen spectrum, known as the Paschen series. |
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| Albert Neisser | |
(source) |
Born 22
Jan 1855; died 30 Jul 1916
Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser was a German physician who specialized in dermatology and venereal diseases. He discovered gonococcus (1879), the small bacterium that causes gonorrhea. In Norway, he examined patients afflicted with leprosy and demonstrated the existence of the bacillus causing the disease (1879). He was the first to make the connection clear between it and the disease. In his studies of syphilis, he failed to find a successful innoculation against the disease, and may even have spread it instead. |
| André-Marie Ampère | |
(source) |
Born 22
Jan 1775; died 10 Jun 1836.
French mathematician and physicist who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism. His interests included mathematics, metaphysics, physics and chemistry. In mathematics he worked on partial differential equations. Ampère made significant contributions to chemistry. In 1811 he suggested that an anhydrous acid prepared two years earlier was a compound of hydrogen with an unknown element, analogous to chlorine, for which he suggested the name fluorine. He produced a classification of elements in 1816. Ampère also worked on the wave theory of light. By the early 1820's, Ampère was working on a combined theory of electricity and magnetism, after hearing about Oersted's experiments. |
| Pierre Gassendi | |
(source) |
Born 22
Jan 1592; died 24 Oct 1655.
French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher who revived Epicureanism as a substitute for Aristotelianism, attempting in the process to reconcile Atomism's mechanistic explanation of nature with Christian belief in immortality, free will, an infinite God, and creation. Johannes Kepler had predicted a transit of Mercury would occur in 1631. Gassendi used a Galilean telescope to observed the transit, by projecting the sun's image on a screen of paper. He wrote on astronomy, his own astronomical observations and on falling bodies. |
| Francis Bacon | |
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Born 22
Jan 1561; died 9 Apr 1626.
English philosopher, whose book Advancement of Learning (1605) was partially responsible for the founding of the scientific Royal Society. The book presented the value of logic and experimentation rather than the prevailing pursuit of mystical analogies between man and the cosmos, or the search for magical powers over natural processes, as in alchemy and the concoction of elixirs and panaceas. Bacon had the conviction that the human mind is fitted for knowledge of nature and must derive it from observation, not from abstract reasoning. He recognized mathematics as an auxiliary to natural science. Thus Bacon proposed the Novum Organum, a "new tool" for the rational mind - inductive reasoning - known as the scientific method. 
 Novum
Organum: With Other Parts of the Great Instauration, by
Francis Bacon, Peter Urbach (Editor), John |
|
Today in Science History Science Store Browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| JANUARY 22 - DEATHS | |
| Irving B. Kahn | |
(source) |
 Died
22 Jan 1994 (born 30 Sep 1917)
Inventor of the teleprompter. and headed the TelePrompTer company. In the mid 50's, Kahn designed and built what was perhaps the first remotely controlled, multi-image, rear projection system in the world for the U.S. Army’s facility in Huntsville, Ala., to make persuasive presentations to visiting Congressmen. With five images (one large, 3¼ by 4 slide or film image in the center flanked smaller slides at each side) and random access it could search and select among 500 slides. TelePrompTer also made many technological contributions to the early cable TV industry. In 1961, Kahn and Hub Schlafley demonstrated Key TV, an early pay TV concept, by showing the second Patterson vs. Johansson heavyweight fight, essentially giving birth to pay-per-view. |
| Edmund Brisco Ford | |
| Died
22 Jan 1988 (born 23 Apr 1901)
British geneticist who made substantial contributions to the genetics of natural selection and defined and developed the science of ecological genetics. |
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| Elvin Charles Stakman | |
| Died
22 Jan 1979 (born 17 May 1885)
pioneering American plant pathologist and educator who established the methods for identifying and combatting diseases of wheat and other important food crops. |
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| Albert Wallace Hull | |
(source) |
Died
22 Jan 1966 (born 19 Apr 1880)
American physicist who independently discovered the powder method of X-ray analysis of crystals (1917), which permits the study of crystalline materials in a finely divided microcrystalline, or powder, state. His first work was on electron tubes, X-ray crystallography, and (during WW II) piezoelectricity. In the 1920's, he studied noise measurements in diodes and triodes. In the 1930's, he also took interest in metallurgy and glass science. His best-known work was done after the war, especially his classic paper on the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the motion of electrons between coaxial cylinders. He also invented the magnetron (1921) and the thyratron (1927), and other electron tubes with wide application as components in electronic circuits. |
| Harald August Bohr | |
| Died
22 Jan 1951 (born 22 Apr 1887)
Danish mathematician who devised a theory that concerned generalizations of functions with periodic properties, the theory of almost periodic functions. His brother was noted physicist Niels Bohr. |
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| David Hughes | |
(source) |
Died 22 Jan 1900 (born 16 May 1831)
Anglo-American inventor of the carbon microphone, which was a significant contribution to telephony. His family emigrated to the U.S. when he was age seven. In 1850 he became professor of music at St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, Ky. Five years later, after he resigned, he took out a U.S. patent for the first telegraph system printing the text at the sending and at the receiving end, thus doing away with a special alphabetic code as required with the Morse telegraph. It was produced before the typewriter was even invented. Also, Hughes's loose-contact microphone, invented in 1878, was the forerunner of the various carbon microphones now in use. He also invented the induction balance and worked with the theory of magnetism.« [Image right: Hughes telegraph] |
| Sir Joseph Whitworth | |
(source) |
Died
22 Jan 1887 (born 21 Dec 1803)
(Baronet) English mechanical engineer, who pioneered precision measurement. He held many patents for machine tools, textile and knitting machinery, and road-sweeping machines. He originated a scraping technique to make a true plane surface (1825). He advocated using the decimal system. In 1841, his standard screw threads were adopted by the Woolwich Arsenal. By 1851 Whitworth's machine tools were internationally known for their accuracy and quality, as well as his screw cutting lathes, his planing, drilling, slotting, and shaping machines, and his millionth-part measuring machine. He also did pioneering work in ordnance, creating a method for casting ductile steel to replace hard steel, which is subject to fracture.« Sir
Joseph Whitworth: The World's Best Mechanician, by Norman
Atkinson. |
| Johann Friedrich Blumenbach | |
(source) |
Died
22 Jan 1840 (born 11 May 1752)
German physiologist and comparative anatomist, frequently called the father of physical anthropology, who proposed one of the earliest classifications of the races of mankind. He divided humanity into five races: Caucasian, Ethiopian, American, Mongolian, and Malay. Blumenbach coined the term Caucasian (derived from the residents of Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains) to describe the white race; and the term Mongolian. Blumenbach was a pioneer collector of human crania and was among the first to place comparative anatomy on a completely scientific basis. His book Collectionis Suae Craniorum Diversarum Gentium Illustratae Decades (1790-1828) contains the results of his observations of the skulls of different races. |
| John Blenkinsop | |
Inset: cog wheel (source) |
Died
22 Jan 1831 (born 1783)
English inventor, designer of the first practical and successful railway locomotive. Blenkinsop wanted to find a way of reducing the cost of transporting coal from the Middleton Colliery, Yorkshire, to the nearby town of Leeds. In 1811, he joined forces with engineer Matthew Murray to produce a two-cylinder, geared steam locomotive that utilized a tooth-rack rail system of propulsion. They had rejected the idea that a steam locomotive with smooth wheels on a smooth rail would have sufficient adhesion to propel itself and a load. The Salamanca locomotive, with its cog-toothed driving wheels, first appeared in public on 24 Jun 1812. Four Blenkinsop engines (built 1812-13) hauled coal over cast-iron rails until 1830. |
| Horace Bénédict de Saussure | |
(source) |
Died
22 Jan 1799 (born 17 Feb 1740)
Swiss physicist, geologist, and early Alpine explorer. He made an extensive study of the structure of the Alps, described in the four volumes of Voyages dans les Alpes (1779-96). His theory was neptunian, but with uniformitarian overtones. The word geology was introduced into scientific nomenclature by Saussure with the publication of the first volume. Saussure developed what was probably the first electrometer (1766), used to measure electric potential. He also developed an improved hygrometer to measure atmospheric humidity (1783), the first to use human hair for the purpose. |
| Johann Gottlob Lehmann | |
(source) |
Died
22 Jan 1767 (born 4 Aug 1719)
German geologist noted for fundamental work in stratigraphy (comparing sequences of layers in beds of sedimentary rocks) and who published the first geologic profile in 1756. He developed categories describing the origin of mountains. ("Primitive" mountains lack strata; "secondary" mountains have sedimentary formations with abundant fossils.) He analyzed an orange-red mineral from a mine in the Ural Mountains and recognized that it contained lead, but missed identifying a new element - chromium - that it contained. (The mineral was crocoite, a lead chromate (PbCrO4) from which Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin later isolated chromium in 1798). Lehmann died accidentally when a retort containing arsenic burst upon heating.« [Image: from Lehmann's Versuch einer Geschichte von Flözgebirgen (1756)] |
| JANUARY 22 - EVENTS | |
| Space debris hits person on Earth | |
(source) |
In 1997, American Lottie Williams was reportedly the first human to be
struck by a remnant of a space vehicle after re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
At 3 a.m., while walking in a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she saw a light
pass over her head. "It looked like a meteor," she said. Minutes later,
she was hit on the shoulder by a six-inch piece of blackened metallic material.
The debris that struck Ms. Williams has not been examined to confirm its
origin, but a used Delta II rocket, launched nine months earlier, had crashed
into the Earth's atmosphere half an hour earlier. NASA scientists believe
that Williams was hit by a part of it, making her the only person in the
world known to have been hit by man-made space debris. |
| Sakharov arrested | |
 |
In 1980, Soviet dissident physicist Dr. Andrei Sakharov was arrested, stripped
of his honors and exiled to Gorky from Moscow. |
| Uranium fission | |
 |
In 1939, the uranium atom was split for the first time using the cyclotron
at Columbia University
in New York City. Thus began the Manhattan Project, leading to the construction
of the atom bomb. The project was subsequently moved inland to the University
of Chicago to protect the research from any possible German bombing of
New York. (Also the weight of the apparatus was so great that the floor
was in danger of collapsing!) The cyclotron that performed the first-ever
fission experiment was designed and built by John Dunning (who became Dean
of the Engineering School, 1950-69). In 1965, the cyclotron was taken to
the Smithsonian Institute. The original invention
of the first cyclotron was by physicist Ernest Lawrence. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1907, Thomas A. Edison was issued a patent for an "Apparatus for Grinding
and Separating Fine Materials" (No. 841,677). |
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