| JANUARY 29 - BIRTHS | |
| Lewis Urry | |
(source) |
 Born 29
Jan 1927; died 19 Oct 2004.
Lewis Frederick Urry was a Canadian-American chemical engineer who invented the ubiquitous alkaline batteries and, later, lithium batteries. After a few years working in Canada for the company that made Eveready batteries, he was transferred in 1955 to its Cleveland, Ohio, laboratory where he began work on a new battery with better life-span than the carbon-zinc type of the time. He succeeded by using manganese dioxide, an alkaline electrolyte and powdered zinc (which he realized had greater surface area than solid zinc). A patent was filed 9 Oct 1957, issued 15 Nov 1960, No. 2,960,558. Production began in 1959. Alkaline batteries are estimated to be 80% of all dry cell batteries now sold in the world. The Smithsonian Institution displays his prototype alkaline battery. Urry held over 50 patents.« |
| Abdus Salam | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1926; died 21 Nov 1996.
Pakistani nuclear physicist who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow. Each had independently formulated a theory explaining the underlying unity of the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. His hypothetical equations, which demonstrated an underlying relationship between the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force, postulated that the weak force must be transmitted by hitherto-undiscovered particles known as weak vector bosons, or W and Z bosons. Weinberg and Glashow reached a similar conclusion using a different line of reasoning. The existence of the W and Z bosons was eventually verified in 1983 by researchers using particle accelerators at CERN. |
| Piero Leonardi | |
| Born 29
Jan 1908
Italian geologist and prehistorian, known for his research on the stratigraphy and paleontology of the Triassic invertebrates (from 190-225 million years ago) and the Permian vertebrates (from 225-280 million years ago). His works include studies of the tectonics (the movement and deformation of the Earth's surface) and stratigraphy (the description and interpretation of rock successions) of the Dolomite Alps and development of a new theory on their evolution. He also discovered a new Mousterian prehistoric culture, the Bernardinian. |
|
| Allen B. Du Mont | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1901; died 15 Nov 1965.
Allen B(alcom) Du Mont was an American engineer who perfected the first commercially practical cathode-ray tube, which was not only vitally important for much scientific and technical equipment but was the essential component of the modern television receiver. The early cathode ray tubes were imported from Germany at high cost, but they burned out after 25 or 30 hours. In the 1930's, he simplified and improved the production of cathode ray tubes lasting a thousand hours. A financially successful by-product of his television work was the cathode ray oscillograph. After WW II, Du Mont had become the industry's first millionaire, investing also in broadcasting stations. The Du Mont Broadcasting Co. he began in 1955 grew to become Metromedia, Inc. |
| Sydney Chapman | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1888; died 16 Jun 1970.
English mathematician and physicist noted for his research in geophysics. After graduation (1910) he worked at the Greenwich Observatory, but returned to Cambridge upon the outbreak of WW I. Between 1915 and 1917 he completed a series of important papers on thermal diffusion and the fundamentals of gas dynamics. He developed systematic approximations to the Maxwell-Boltzmann formulation for the velocity distribution function for interacting particles under general force laws. During WW II he worked on military operational research and incendiary bomb problems. Chapman's main area of research was geomagnetism, beginning in 1913 and extending to terrestrial and interplanetary magnetism, the ionosphere and the aurora borealis. |
| Alexander Goldenweiser | |
| Born 29
Jan 1880; died 6 Jul 1940.
Alexander (Alexandrovich) Goldenweiser was an Russian-American anthropologist whose analyses of cultural questions ranged widely, encompassing intellectual movements in psychology and psychoanalysis. In particular, he suggested that cultural diffusion is not a mechanical process but, rather, depends in part on the receptiveness of cultures to proffered traits. Goldenweiser did very little field work in anthropology - less than ten months on six trips to the Iroquois on the Grand River reservation in Ontario (1911-13) - and is said to have disliked it. He was, however, a stimulating and versatile popular lecturer. Theory and methodology were his major concern, with folk psychology, religion and magic, and social organization in the forefront of his topical interests. |
|
| Alfred Church Lane | |
| Born 29
Jan 1863; died 15 Apr 1948.
U.S. geologist and educator who, as chairman of committee on measurement of geologic time of the National Research Council (1922-46), originated, promoted, and directed research on the determination of the age of the Earth. He was petrographer, assistant state geologist, and state geologist for the Michigan State Geological Survey from 1889 to 1909. |
|
| Lawrence Hargrave | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1850; died 6 Jul 1915.
Australian aeronautical pioneer best known for his invention of the box kite. Hargrave "flew" on 12 Nov 1894, by attaching himself to a huge four kite construction attached to the ground by piano wire. Due to their abilities to carry heavy payloads, steady flight, and capacity for high altitude flight, these kites have had many industrial and military uses in the past. Box kites were used until the 1930's to carry meteorological equipment for high altitude weather studies and by the Royal Air Force as sea rescue equipment to deliver radio aerials. Hargrave also made important studies of wing surfaces and worked with rotary engines and gliders. |
| Edward Williams Morley | |
c. 1887 |
Born 29
Jan 1838; died 24 Feb 1923.
American chemist who is best known for his collaboration with the physicist A.A. Michelson in an attempt to measure the relative motion of the Earth through a hypothetical ether (1887). He also studied the variations of atmospheric oxygen content. He specialized in accurate quantitative measurements, such as those of the vapour tension of mercury, thermal expansion of gases, or the combining weights of hydrogen and oxygen. Morley assisted Michelson in the latter's persuit of measurements of the greatest possible accuracy to detect a difference in the speed of light through an omnipresent ether. Yet the ether could not be detected and the physicists had seriously to consider that the ether did not exist, even questioning much orthodox physical theory. |
| William Ferrel | |
 |
Born 29
Jan 1817; died 18 Sep 1891.
American meteorologist was an important contributor to the understanding of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. He was able to show the interrelation of the various forces upon the Earth 's surface, such as gravity, rotation and friction. Ferrel was first to mathematically demonstrate the influence of the Earth's rotation on the presence of high and low pressure belts encircling the Earth, and on the deflection of air and water currents. The latter was a derivative of the effect theorized by Gustave de Coriolis in 1835, and became known as Ferrel's law. Ferrel also considered the effect that the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon might have on the Earth's rotation and concluded (without proof, but correctly) that the Earth's axis wobbles a bit. |
| Ernst Eduard Kummer | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1810; died 14 May 1893.
German mathematician whose introduction of ideal numbers, which are defined as a special subgroup of a ring, extended the fundamental theorem of arithmetic to complex number fields. He worked on Function theory, and extended Gauss's work on hypergeometric series, giving developments that are useful in the theory of differential equations. He was the first to compute the monodromy groups of these series. Later. Kummer devoted himself to the study of the ray systems, but treated these geometrical problems algebraically. He also discovered the fourth order surface based on the singular surface of the quadratic line complex. This Kummer surface has 16 isolated conical double points and 16 singular tangent planes. |
| Emanuel Swedenborg | |
(source) |
Born 29
Jan 1688; died 29 Mar 1772.
Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian. While young, he studied mathematics and the natural sciences in England and Europe. From Swedenborg's inventive and mechanical genius came his method of finding terrestrial longitude by the Moon, new methods of constructing docks and even tentative suggestions for the submarine and the airplane. Back in Sweden, he started (1715) that country's first scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus. His book on algebra was the first in the Swedish language, and in 1721 he published a work on chemistry and physics. Swedenborg devoted 30 years to improving Sweden's metal-mining industries, while still publishing on cosmology, corpuscular philosophy, mathematics, and human sensory perceptions.  The
Generative Organs, Considered Anatomically, Physically and Philosophically,
by Emanuel Swedenborg. |
| Richard Lower | |
(source) |
Born 1621;
died 17 Jan 1691.
English physician famous for his anatomical work on the brain and nerves, carried out as the assistant of Thomas Willis in Oxford in the early 1660s, and for his own anatomical and physiological investigation of the structure and action of the heart, on which he published in 1669. Lower made the first recorded experimental transfusions of blood between dogs. Lower performed the first transfusion of blood into a human in England (the first ever was done in Paris) at the Royal Society. A man described as an "eccentric scholar", Arthur Coga, was persuaded to receive a transfusion of sheep’s blood. The experiment was deemed successful. One of the aims of this experiment had been to see what qualities might be transmitted through transfused blood. |
|
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| JANUARY 29 - DEATHS | |
| Fritz Haber | |
(source) |
 Died
29 Jan 1934 (born 9 Dec 1868)
German physical chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1918) for his development of a method of synthesizing ammonia (1909) directly from nitrogen and hydrogen. This led to commercial large-scale production of nitrogen fertilizer.With the expertise of Carl Bosch, a chemist working at the Badische Anilin- und Soda- Fabrik (BASF), obstacles which hindered the large-scale adoption of the process were overcome and the Haber-Bosch process was born. The Haber-Bosch high pressure process followed in the 1920s. Haber was also responsible for introducing poison gases for chemical warfare in WW I. Being a Jew, he left Germany in 1933 to go into exile in Britain, working in Cambridge at the Cavendish Laboratory. 
"Fritz
Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew: A Biography" by
Dietrich Stoltzenberg |
| Dunkinfield Henry Scott | |
| Died
29 Jan 1934 (born 28 Nov 1854)
English paleobotanist and leading authority of his time on the structure of fossil plants. |
|
| Sir William Withey Gull | |
July 1881 (source) |
Died
29 Jan 1890 (born 31 Dec 1816)
(1st Baronet) leading English physician of his time, lecturer and physician at Guy's Hospital, London, and an outstanding clinical teacher. In 1862, Gull described clinical signs of syringomyelia. In 1874, Gull recognized and described the disease known as Gull's disease - myxoedema with the atrophy of the thyroid gland - which he regarded correctly as the adult form of cretinism. The term Anorexia Nervosa, first originated with Gull in 1874, meaning a "nervous loss of appetite," for the condition first described by the physician, Richard Morton (1689). He believed in minimal use of drugs ("The road to a clinic goes through the pathologic museum and not through the apothecary's shop"). |
| Seth Thomas | |
(source) |
Died
29 Jan 1859 (born 19 Aug 1785)
American clock manufacturer who was one of the pioneers in the mass production of clocks. After working with Eli Terry and Silas Hoadley in firm of Terry, Thomas & Hoadley, which manufactured clocks by mass production methods (1807), Thomas founded a clock factory of his own at Plymouth Hollow, Conn. (1812). He was not an inventive genius, but he was an excellent mechanic and a keen business man. Two years later he paid Terry for the rights to manufacture the latter's popular shelf clock. Shortly, he was selling as many clocks as Terry. As his business developed Thomas built a mill for rolling brass and making wire at Plymouth Hollow, and operated it in conjunction with the clock factory. Finally, he organized the Seth Thomas Clock Co. (1853). |
| William Cranch Bond | |
(source) |
Died
29 Jan 1859 (born 9 Sep 1789)
American astronomer who, with his son, George Phillips Bond (1825-65), discovered Hyperion, the eighth satellite of Saturn, and an inner ring called Ring C, or the Crepe Ring. While W.C. Bond was a young clockmaker in Boston, he spent his free time in the amateur observatory he built in part of his home. In 1815 he was sent by Harvard College to Europe to visit existing observatories and gather data preliminary to the building of an observatory at Harvard. In 1839 the observatory was founded. He supervised its construction, then became its first director. Together with his son he developed the chronograph for automatically recording the position of stars. They also took some of the first recognizable photographs of celestial objects. Image: The Harvard College Observatory's 15-inch telescope known as "The Great Refractor", installed 1846. |
| JANUARY 29 - EVENTS | |
| Cigarettes admitted dangerous | |
(source) |
In 1998, for the first time, a top tobacco company executive acknowledged
the health risk of tobacco products under oath to Congress. This testimony
by Steven Goldstone, RJR Nabisco chairman and CEO, came at a hearing where
industry leaders pushed Congress to enact a $368.5 billion deal giving
them partial immunity from future lawsuits. As recently as 1994, seven
tobacco industry executives had stood before the House Commerce Committee
and sworn nicotine is not addictive. |
| Family lung operation | |
(source) |
In 1993, a daughter received lung material from both her mother and father
to treat the effects of cystic fibrosis. This operation, performed in Los
Angeles by Dr. Starnes at USC University Hospital, was the first in the
world double-lobar living related transplant. Transplantation from a living,
related family member is beneficial because it provides an immediate donor
source and reduces the likelihood of rejection. |
| Ozone and aerosol sprays | |
 |
In 1978, Sweden became the first nation to curb aerosol sprays to halt
the destruction of the ozone layer. |
| Artificial kidney | |
|
In 1960, an artificial kidney that operates without human monitoring was
announced. |
|
| DDT | |
 |
In 1958, The Boston Herald printed a letter
from Olga Owens Huckins attacking DDT pesticide
as dangerous. Huckins was a friend of Rachel Carson, and also sent a personal
letter to her, which together prompted the writing of Carson's book Silent
Spring, an early call for modern environmentalism. Carson collected
research and data. She concluded that organo-pesticides built up in crops
and sprayed crops, transferred to birds and other animals and was responsible
for the poisoning of the surrounding fauna. Silent Spring asked
important questions about balancing industrial
and agricultural needs, progress, the protection of the environment and
the quality of life. Carson's skilled writing awakened the conscience of
America. |
| Ice cream cone | |
(source) |
In 1924, the first U.S. patent for an ice cream cone rolling machine was
issued to its inventor, Carl R. Taylor of Cleveland, Ohio, in which it
was described as a "machine for forming thin, freshly baked wafers while
still hot into cone shaped containers" for ice-cream. Multiple dies were
designed on a turntable, such that when formed, the cone had time to cool
and harden before rotating into position for release. The whole machine
was to be set up beside a batter baking machine which provides the supply
of the hot, flat wafers (No. 1,481,813). Image:
detail of one die from the series set around the machines's turntable. |
| Granville T. Woods patent | |
(source) |
In 1901, the prolific black American inventor, Granville
T. Woods, received one of his patents related to the operation of an
electric railway (No. 667,110). It applied to the kind of electric trains
which take their power from conductors in the road-bed. For practical purposes,
the current is fed only at the time that the train has its contact makers
engaged with the conductors. The current flow is controlled by electro-magnetic
switches along the line of way. Woods had previously designed and patented
a suitable device for this purpose, but this patent improved upon that
design. He assigned it to the General Electric Co. of New York.
Black
Inventors in the Age of Segregation, by Rayvon Fouche |
| Radiation treatment | |
1895 (source) |
In 1896, Émil H. Grubbe, a Chicago researcher, became the first
known to administer x-ray radiation treatment for the recurrent breast
cancer of a fifty-five-year-old woman. X-rays had been discovered the previous
year in Germany. Grubbe tried
radiation as a tool against cancer after he suffered a radiation burn while
experimenting with X-rays. His experiment didn't cure the woman's cancer,
but others in the late 1890s who applied X-rays to various cancers - especially
skin cancer - not only relieved cancer pain but actually cured some, which
encouraged continued use and study of the X-rays. Grubbe did not publish
his work until several years later, and his claims
of priority as the first to use radiation treatment were widely doubted. |
| First patent for gasoline engine vehicle | |
 |
In 1886, Karl Benz applied for a patent for his Benz Patent Motorwagen,
a three-wheeler vehicle with a gasoline engine. This patent specification,
DRP-37435, is recognized today as the birth
certificate of the internal-combustion, gasoline-powered automobile. The
two-stroke engine had four horizontally-opposed pistons. He had finished
the work on the vehicle the previous month, 31 Jan 1885. Sales to the public
began in July. |
