| JANUARY 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Francis R. "Joe" Boyd | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Jan 1926; died 12 Jan 2004.
American geologist whose studies on the origins of volcanic rocks contributed to the understanding of the formation of the Earth. In Yellowstone National Park, he discovered that the volcanic eruptions that formed Yellowstone Plateau produced rocks of an unusual type, called welded tuff. In the 1960s, he helped develop the Boyd-English device, a piston-cylinder laboratory apparatus to simulate the pressure exerted on minerals deep within the Earth. Able to create a synthetic diamond, it also helps scientists determine the nature of minerals in the various rock layers of the Earth. He was a leading authority on the mantle root of the 3.5-billion-year-old Kaapvaal craton (the kernel on which a continent grows) rock in southern Africa. |
| Polykarp Kusch | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1911; died 20 Mar 1993.
German-American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1955 for his accurate determination that the magnetic moment of the electron is greater than its theoretical value. This he deduced from researching the hyperfine structure of the energy levels in certain elements, and in 1947 found a discrepancy of about 0.1% between the observed value and that predicted by theory. Although minute, this anomaly was of great significance to theories of the interactions of electrons and electromagnetic radiation, now known as quantum electrodynamics. (He shared the prize with Willis E. Lamb, Jr. who performed independent but related experiments at Columbia University on the hyperfine structure of the hydrogen atom.) |
| Max Gluckman | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1911; died 13 Apr 1975.
(Herman) Max Gluckman was a South African social anthropologist who pioneered the study of traditional African legal systems. His research stressed social conflict and mechanisms for conflict resolution while studying urbanization and social change in colonial Africa. He did extensive research among the tribes of Central and South Africa (1936-47) including studies of Ila, Tonga and Lamba tribes. Examining feud and conflict, he considered their relation to cultural change in Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955). He was openly anti-colonial and engaged directly with social conflicts and cultural contradictions of colonialism, with racism, urbanization and labor migration. |
| Alexander King | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1909; died 28 Feb 2007
Scottish chemist who pioneered in environmental awareness, warning of the dangers to the environment from extensive industrial development. He co-commissioned the 1972 Limits to Growth report, which initiated international attention to environmental concerns. It is still one of the world's best-selling books on the environment. After directing scientific research as part of the war effort in WW II, he turned to the application of science for the improvement of life. In particular, he was chief scientist at the department of scientific and industrial research (1950-56), working to help British factories become more productive. After the publication of Limits to Growth, he cofounded the Club of Rome, an think tank focussed on how to establish sustainable development. He was that group's president 1984-90.« |
| Hans Selye | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1907; died 16 Oct 1982.
Hans Hugo Bruno Selye was an Austrian-born Canadian endocrinologist known for his studies of the effects of stress on the human body. Selye first detected the effects of stress in 1936 when he injected ovarian hormones into the glandular system of laboratory rats. The hormone stimulated the outer tissue of the adrenal glands of the rats, caused deterioration of the thymus gland, and produced ulcers and finally death. He further determined that these effects could be produced by administering virtually any toxic substance, by physical injury, or by environmental stress. In humans, Selye demonstrated that a stress induced breakdown of the hormonal system could lead to conditions, such as heart disease and high blood pressure, that he called "diseases of adaptation." |
| Ancel Keys | |
(source) |
Born 26 Jan 1904; died 20 Nov 2004.
American nutritionist and epidemiologist who was the first to identify the role of saturated fats in causing heart disease. In 1935, he studied the physiological effects of altitude, which he conducted in the Andes. At the onset of WW II, he designed the lightweight yet nutritious K ration used by American paratroops. The hard biscuits, dry sausage, hard candy and chocolate it contained were items he originally selected at a Minneapolis grocery store, and the ration was named with his initial. In 1947, he began a decade of study of 283 local businessmen. From its results, he determined that saturated fat chiefly determined blood cholesterol levels, and linked smoking, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol with heart attacks.«[K-ration Supper(source)]  The
Benevolent Bean, by Ancel Keys, Margaret Keys |
| Roy Chapman Andrews | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1884; died 11 Mar 1960.
American naturalist, explorer, and author, who spent his entire career at the American Museum of Natural History. He led many important scientific expeditions with financial support through his public lectures and books, particularly in central Asia and eastern Asia. On his 1925 central Asian expedition, the first known dinosaur eggs were discovered, also: a skull and parts of Baluchitherium, the largest known land mammal; extensive deposits of fossil mammals and reptiles previously unknown; evidence of prehistoric human life; and geological strata previously unexplored. During his career he was not known as an influential scientist, yet Andrews was the museum promoter, creating immense excitement and successfully advancing research there. |
| Edward Sapir | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1884; died 4 Feb 1939.
American linguist and anthropologist, one of the foremost of his time, who is most widely known for his contributions to the study of North American Indian languages. A founder of ethnolinguistics, which considers the relationship of culture to language, he was also a principal developer of the American (descriptive) school of structural linquistics. Even more than the facts of the fields he studied, Sapir was interested in the more abstract connections between personality, verbal expression and socially determined behaviour. |
| Rufus Henry Gilbert | |
1861 (source) |
Born 26
Jan 1832; died 10 Jul 1885.
U.S. surgeon and inventor who played a major role in the development of rapid transit in New York City. After serving as a surgeon in the Federal Army in the Civil War, he became interested in rapid transit as a means of freeing people from living in the unhealthful, crowded tenements in the centres of large cities. Gilbert obtained two patents in 1870 on a pneumatic-tube system, and he incorporated the Gilbert Electric Railway Company on 17 Jun 1872, to build elevated lines in New York City. The cars were to be propelled by air pressure from pneumatic tubes mounted on the elevated structure. A financial depression delayed construction until 1876, and forced adoption of a conventional track with trains drawn by steam locomotives, which opened 6 Jun 1878. |
| Heinrich Anton de Bary | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1831; died 19 Jan 1888.
German botanist, a founder of modern mycology and plant pathology for his research into the roles of fungi and other agents in causing plant diseases. He determined the life cycles of many fungi, for which he developed a classification that has been retained in large part by modern mycologists. Among the first to study host-parasite interactions, and ways in which fungi penetrate host tissues, in 1853, he asserted that fungi cause rust and smut diseases of plants. In 1865 he proved that the life cycle of wheat rust involves two hosts, wheat and barberry. De Bary was the first to show (1866) that lichens consist of a fungus and an alga in intimate association. He coined the term symbiosis (1879) to mean a mutually beneficial partnership between two organisms. |
| Joseph Rogers Brown | |
(source) |
Born 26
Jan 1810; died 23 Jul 1876.
American inventor and manufacturer who made numerous advances in the field of fine measurement and machine-tool production. He perfected and produced a highly accurate linear dividing engine in 1850, and in the succeeding two years he developed a vernier caliper reading to thousandths of an inch and also applied vernier methods to the protractor. Brown's micrometer caliper, widely used in industry, appeared in 1867. He also invented a precision gear cutter in 1855 to produce clock gears, a universal milling machine in 1862, and, perhaps his finest innovation, a universal grinding machine (patented in 1877), in which articles were hardened first and then ground, thereby increasing accuracy and eliminating waste. Cofounded J.R. Brown & Sharpe in 1853. [Image: Brown's universal milling machine] |
|
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| JANUARY 26 - DEATHS | |
| Lewis Mumford | |
 Died
26 Jan 1990 (born 19 Oct 1895)
American architectural critic, urban planner, and historian who analyzed the effects of technology and urbanization on human societies throughout history. |
|
| Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1943 (born 25 Nov 1887)
Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov was a Russian plant geneticist who established 400 research institutes and made expeditions throughout the world (1916-33), leading Russian plant hunters on the first attempt to "cover the globe" in search of wild plants and primitive cultivators. He brought back a huge collection of plants samples for experiments in plant breeding in order to improve the productivity of cereal grains, as well as some other types of crops.Trofim Lysenko, the official Soviet biology spokesman, denounced Vavilov's Mendelevian genetics as counter to the dogmas of communism. He was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned at a concentration camp at Saratov, where he spent his final years. He died there of malnutrition. |
| Albert Sauveur | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1939 (born 21 Jun 1863)
Belgian-born American metallurgist whose microscopic and photomicroscopic studies of metal structures make him one of the founders of physical metallurgy. In 1891 he began working with the South Chicago works of the Illinois Steel Company where, to follow his ideas, he was provided with a microscope and a room to work in. "This small beginning," Sauveur later wrote, "marked the introduction of metallography into the iron and steel industry of the United States." He is best known for his research on the hardening of steel (1893) that "the properties of steel rails were largely dependent on the dimensions of their microscopical constituents or grain sizes, and that in turn these dimensions resulted chiefly from the finishing temperatures." |
| William Wrigley, Jr. | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1932 (born 30 Sep 1861)
American salesman and manufacturer whose Wrigley's chewing gum company became the largest producer and distributor of chewing gum in the world. He left his father's soap factory in 1891 when he moved to Chicago. There his uncle supplied seed money on the condition Wrigley take a cousin as partner, and they started manufacturing soap, baking powder, and later, chewing gum. When the gum became very popular, they dropped the other products. In 1899 he introduced spearmint gum, which lagged in sales until a major advertising campaign in 1907; within a year spearmint gum sales increased tenfold. In 1911, he bought Zeno Manufacturing Company, previously contracted to make his gum, and the William Wrigley, Jr., Company was founded. |
| Sir James Mackenzie | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1925 (born 12 Apr 1853)
Scottish cardiologist, pioneer in the study of cardiac arrhythmias. He was first to make simultaneous records of the arterial and venous pulses to evaluate the condition of the heart, a procedure that laid the foundation for much future research. Mackenzie also drew attention to the question of the heart's capacity for work, paving the way for the study of the energetics of the heart muscle. His work was particularly important in distinguishing atrial fibrillation and in treating this common condition with digitalis. In 1892, he built a machine for detecting and recording physiological activity, such as pulse rate and blood pressure, since known as a polygraph, and later used as a lie detector. |
| Ewald Hering | |
(source -- inset) |
Died
26 Jan 1918 (born 5 Aug 1834)
(Karl) Ewald (Konstantin) Hering was a German physiologist and psychologist whose chief work concerned the physiology of colour perception. He taught at several universities. Hering challenged the colour-vision theory of Hermann von Helmholtz. Visual sensations, according to Hering’s view, were due to three colour receptors responding in an "opponent" fashion in colour-pairs (white/black, yellow/blue, and red/green) to take account of the after-images of colours. Helmholtz had advocated the three fibre, three color theory (red, green and blue). Hering also is known for a classic optical illusion. [Image: Hering (inset) with his colour-blindness apparatus] |
| Arthur Cayley | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1895 (born 16 Aug 1821)
English mathematician who played a leading role in founding the modern British school of pure mathematics. He trained first as a lawyer, and from 1849, spent 14 years at the bar, during which time he maintained an interest in mathematics and published about 250 mathematical papers. In 1863, Cayley followed his passion and commenced a new career as professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge and during his tenure published 900 papers and notes covering nearly every aspect of modern mathematics. The legacy of his work in n-dimensional geometry was later applied in physics to the study of the space-time continuum. His work on matrices served as a foundation for quantum mechanics developed by Werner Heisenberg in 1925.« |
| Nikolaus August Otto | |
 |
Died
26 Jan 1891 (born 10 Jun 1832)
German engineer who developed the four-stroke internal-combustion engine, which offered the first practical alternative to the steam engine as a power source. A French engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, formulated the basic design for the four-stroke internal combustion engine and patented it in 1862, but never built a working model. In 1876, Otto used principles from Beau de Rochas and others to construct the prototype of today's automobile engines, often called the Otto-cycle engine. He sold thousands of copies before Beau de Rochas sued him and invalidated Otto's patent. But light, efficient Otto-cycle engines largely enabled the creation of automobiles, powerboats, motorcycles and even airplanes. |
| Edward Davy | |
| Died
26 Jan 1885 (born 16 June 1806)
Physician, chemist, and inventor who devised the electromagnetic repeater for relaying telegraphic signals and invented an electrochemical telegraph (1838). After studying medicine and beginning a career as a chemist, he became interested in telegraphy. He immigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1838 where he indulged his interest, ultimately inventing the electromagnetic repeater which made wireless telegraphy possible. |
|
| Ernst Heinrich Weber | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1878 (born 24 Jun 1795)
German anatomist and physiologist whose fundamental studies of the sense of touch introduced a concept, important to psychology and sensory physiology, that of the "just-noticeable difference", the smallest difference perceivable between two similar stimuli. With his brother Eduard Friedrich Weber (1806-71) he discovered the inhibitory power of the vagus nerve (1845). With another brother, W. E. Weber, he made studies of acoustics and wave motion. He formuled Weber’s law: that the increase in stimulus necessary to produce an increase in sensation is not fixed but depends on the strength of the preceding stimulus. |
| Edward Jenner | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1823 (born 17 May 1749)
English surgeon and discoverer of vaccination for smallpox. There was a common story among farmers that if a person contracted a relatively mild and harmless disease of cattle called cowpox, immunity to smallpox would result. On May 14, 1796 he removed the fluid of a cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy, proving the theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin word vacca, meaning cow, and vaccinia, meaning cowpox. Jenner also introduced the word virus. |
| Pierre-Daniel Huet | |
| Died
26 Jan 1721 (born 8 Feb 1630)
French scholar, antiquary, scientist, and bishop whose incisive skepticism, particularly as embodied in his cogent attacks on René Descartes, greatly influenced contemporary philosophers. Huet wrote a number of philosophical works that asserted the fallibility of human reason in addition to scientific work in the fields of astronomy, anatomy, and mathematics. |
|
| Henry Briggs | |
(source) |
Died
26 Jan 1630 (born Feb 1561)
English mathematician who, having invented the common (Briggsian) logarithms, actively popularized them and is largely responsible for scientists' acceptance of logarithms throughout Europe. He is also credited with developing the modern method of long division. Briggs consulted with John Napier in 1616. Whereas Napier's introduction of "natural" logarithms (1614) used the base e (2.71828...), Briggs used base 10. By 1624, Briggs calculated logarithm tables to 14 decimal places. These tables vastly simplified the long and tedious calculations made by mathematicians, astronomers, and other scientists. Briggs was professor of astronomy at Oxford from 1619. Whereas astrology was widely accepted by learned men, including Napier, Briggs strongly opposed it.« [Image: Title page of Arithmetica Logarithmica, 1624] |
| JANUARY 26 - EVENTS | |
| Concorde | |
(source) |
In 1976, the Concorde
supersonic passenger jet airplane (SST) began commercial flights
on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes. Because of its great cost,
it was developed as a project between Britain and France, under an international
treaty rather than a commercial agreement between companies. A draft treaty
was signed on 28 Nov 1962. Concorde had a cruise speed of Mach 2.04 and
a cruise altitude of 60,000 feet (17,700 metres). It had a delta wing configuration,
and was the first civil airliner to be equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire
flight control system. Regular flights
to the US did not start for another three years as American aviation authorities
were not willing to allow the plane to land at their airports. The Concorde's
final commercial flight was on 23 Oct 2003.« |
| Cyclotron | |
|
In 1932, the US Patent Office recieved a patent application for the cyclotron
by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a "Method and Apparatus for the Acceleration
of Ions." It was issued on 20 Feb 1934, assigned to the Research Corporation
of New York (No. 1,948,384). By 1939, this atom-smashing instrument won
the Nobel Prize for its inventor. |
|
| Hydroplane | |
(source) |
In 1911, Glenn Curtiss piloted
the first hydroplane flight
at North Island, San Diego, California, with a successful take-off from
water and landing on water. rose six feet and flew about two or three hundred
yards. The airplane Flying Fish had pontoons in place of wheels.
The rear pontoon was 6-ft wide and 5-ft long. The front one was narrower.
He had made his first flight on his 30th birthday, 21 May 1908, in White
Wing, a design of the Aerial Experiment Association, the group led
by Alexander Graham Bell. Curtiss began building his own aircraft. He pioneered
the design of the floatplane and the flying boat. Curtiss established
an aviation school on North Island in San Diego Bay, Dec 1910. On 17 Feb
1911, He demonstrated
the first hydroplane flight to a ship, the USS Pennsylvania.«
[Image:
Detail from a postcard photgraph, which is dated 25 Feb 1911, although
other sources give 26 Feb 1911 as the date of the first hydraplane flight.]
Glenn
Curtiss, Pioneer of Flight, by Cecil R. Roseberry. |
| Largest diamond | |
 |
In 1905, the world's largest gem-quality diamond was discovered in
the Premier mine in Transvaal (a British crown colony that later became
part of South Africa). It weighed 3,106 carats, or about 1-1/3 pounds,
and was named the Cullinan
Diamond in honor of Sir Thomas Cullinan,
owner of the mining company. The Transvall Government purchased the diamond
and presented it to the British monarch, King Edward VII, on his 66th birthday.
When the rough diamond was cut,
it produced nine large stones and nearly 100 smaller ones. All of these
stones were flawless. Now part of the British crown jewels, the largest
cut gem, named the Great Star of Africa, was set in the English sceptre;
the second largest was added to the gems in the imperial state crown. |
| Benz auto patent | |
|
In 1886, Karl Benz patented the first auto
powered by an internal combustion engine. The first public test-drive took
place on 3 July 1886 in and around Mannheim. The engine had one cylinder
with a 91.4 mm bore, 150 mm stroke and a 984 cc displacement. Its output
at 400 rpm was 0.7 kW (0.9 hp), producing a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph). |
|
| Dental drill patent | |
(source) |
In 1875, George F. Green of Kalamazoo, Michigan, patented the electric
dental drill for sawing, filing, dressing and polishing teeth, described
as an "electromagnetic dental tool" on patent #159,028. Image:
part of patent drawing of first electric dental drill. |
| Thoreau | |
(source) |
In 1848, Henry David Thoreau delivered his first draft of his best-known
work Civil Disobedience to his publisher. This book was one written
during the famous two years (1845-7) he spent living on Walden Pond, during
which time he was jailed one night for refusing to pay a poll tax meant
to support America's war in Mexico. His essay on this experience was first
published as Resistance to Civil Government, but later known as
On
the Duty of Civil Disobedience, which in its call for passive resistance
to unjust laws was to inspire Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Though
his writings did not sell well during his lifetime, he is now recognized
for his essays on conservation. His first book of essays was Natural
History of Massachusetts (1842). |
| Canadian earthquake | |
|
In 1700, an earthquake, the most intense Canada has ever seen, hit the
sea floor off the British Columbia coast. Long before Europeans first landed
on Vancouver Island, native legend tells of a great disaster. The sea rose
in a heaving wave, and landslides buried a sleeping village. Myth was resolved
with science in 2003 by government research. Earthquakes of that intensity
cause tidal waves, and Japanese written history tells of a massive tsunami
striking fishing villages the next day along the coast of Honshu, killing
hundreds. Coupled with geological evidence of the level 9 quake, the connection
was clear. Mythology and seismology came together to validate history. |
|
| Newton's "Lion claw" | |
(source) |
In 1697, Isaac Newton received and solved
Jean Bernoulli's brachistochrone problem. The swiss mathematician Bernouilli
had challenged
his colleagues to solve it within six months. Newton not only solved the
problem before going to bed that same night, but in doing so, invented
a new branch of mathematics called the calculus of variations. He had resolved
the issue of specifying the curve connecting two points displayed from
each other laterally, along which a body, acted upon only by gravity, would
fall in the shortest time. Newton, age 55, sent the solution to be published,
at his request, anonymously. But the brilliant originality of the
work betrayed his identity, for when Bernoulli saw the solution he commented,
"We recognize the lion by his claw." |
