| OCTOBER 6 - BIRTHS | |
| Thor Heyerdahl | |
(source) |
 Born 6
Oct 1914; died 18 Apr 2002.
Norweigan ethnologist and adventurer who organized and led the famous Kon-Tiki (28 Apr 1947) and Ra (1969-70) transoceanic scientific expeditions. Both expeditions were intended to prove the possibility of ancient transoceanic contacts between distant civilizations and cultures. The Kon Tiki voyage from Peru to Polynesia was a 101-day, 4,300-mile drifting voyage on the 40-sq.ft. raft, a replica of pre-Inca vessels. He wished to show that Polynesia's first settlers could have come from South America. Few scholars at the time, and almost none today, endorsed the idea. They discount the Heyerdahl hypothesis largely on linguistic, genetic and cultural grounds, all of which point to the settlers having come from the west, not the east.  Kon-Tiki:
Across the Pacific in a Raft, by Thor Heyerdahl. |
| Ernest Walton | |
(source) |
Born 6
Oct 1903; died 25 Jun 1995.
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was an Irish physicist, who was corecipient, with Sir John Douglas Cockcroft of England, of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics for the development of the first nuclear particle accelerator, known as the Cockcroft-Walton generator. The accelerator was built in a disused room in the Cavendish Laboratory, and supplied with several hundred kilovolts from a voltage multiplier circuit designed and built by Cockroft and Walton. On 14 Apr 1932 Walton turned the proton beam on to a lithium target. Despite all the odds against them, they succeeded in being the first to split the atom, and Walton was the first to see the reaction taking place. They identified the disintegration products as alpha particles (helium nuclei). |
| Florence Seibert | |
 |
Born 6
Oct 1897; died 23 Aug 1991
American scientist who developed the protein substance used for the tuberculosis skin test, and contributed to safety measures for intravenous drug therapy. In the early 1920s, she discovered that the sudden fevers that sometimes occurred during intravenous injections were caused by bacteria in the distilled water used to make the protein solutions. She invented a distillation apparatus designed to prevent such contamination. In 1941, her improved TB skin test became the standard test in the U.S. and a year later was adopted by the World Health Organization. It is still in use today. Her later research involved the study of bacteria associated with certain cancers. |
| Meghnad N. Saha | |
| Born 6
Oct 1893; died 16 Feb 1956.
Indian astrophysicist noted for his development in 1920 of the thermal ionization equation, which, in the form perfected by the British astrophysicist Edward A. Milne, has remained fundamental in all work on stellar atmospheres. This equation has been widely applied to the interpretation of stellar spectra, which are characteristic of the chemical composition of the light source. |
|
| Reginald Fessenden | |
(source) |
Born 6
Oct 1866; died 22 Jul 1932.
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was a Canadian inventor and engineer with 300 patents. He broadcast the first program of voice and music. In 1893, Fessenden moved to Pittsburgh as the head of electrical engineering at the university, Fessenden read of Marconi's work and began experimenting himself. Marconi could only transmit Morse code. But Fessenden's goal was to transmit the human voice and music. He invented the "continuous wave": sound superimposed onto a radio wave for transmission. A radio receiver extracts the signal so the listener with the original sound. Fessenden made the first long-range transmissions of voice on Christmas Eve 1906 from a station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, heard hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. |
| Baron Shaughnessy | |
| Born 6
Oct 1853; died 10 Dec 1923
Thomas George Shaughnessy, 1st Baron Shaughnessy (of Montreal and Ashford) was a Canadian railway magnate |
|
| George Westinghouse | |
1884 (source) |
Born 6
Oct 1846; died 12 Mar 1914
American inventor and industrialist who founded his own company to manufacturer his invention, the air brake. The son of a New York agricultural machinery maker, he began at age 21 to work on a new tool he invented to guide derailed train cars back onto the track. Before his death 46 years later, produced safer rail transportation, steam turbines, gas lighting and heating, and electricity. He founded not only namesakes Westinghouse Air Brake and Westinghouse Electric, but also Union Switch & Signal and the forerunners to Duquesne Light, Equitable Gas and Rockwell International. He was also chiefly responsible for the adoption of alternating current for electric power transmission in the United States, and held 400 patents. 
A
Life of George Westinghouse, by Henry G. Prout |
| Richard Dedekind | |
| Born 6
Oct 1831; died 12 Feb 1916
(Julius Wilhelm) Richard Dedekind was a German mathematician who developed a major redefinition of irrational numbers in terms of arithmetic concepts. Although not fully recognized in his lifetime, his treatment of the ideas of the infinite and of what constitutes a real number continues to influence modern mathematics. Essays
on the Theory of Numbers by Richard Dedekind, Wooster
W. Beman (Translator) |
|
| B. F. Isherwood | |
| Born 6
Oct 1822; died 19 Jun 1915
B(enjamin) F(ranklin) Isherwood was a U.S. naval engineer who, during the American Civil War, greatly augmented the U.S. Navy's steam-powered fleet. |
|
| François Magendie | |
(source) |
Born 6
Oct 1783; died 7 Oct 1855.
French experimental physiologist who was the first to prove the functional difference of the spinal nerves. His pioneer studies of the effects of drugs on various parts of the body led to the scientific introduction into medical practice of such compounds as strychnine and morphine. Magendie with Johannes Peter Müller are the founders of the modern science experimental physiology. Magendie proved Charles Bell's theory on the motor function of anterior roots and the sensory function of dorsal roots of spinal nerves ("the Bell-Magendie law"). He also introduced the effects and uses of morphine, emetine, quinine, strychnine, and other alkaloids, for which he is sometimes called the founder of experimental pharmacology. |
| Jesse Ramsden | |
(source) |
Born 6
Oct 1735; died 5 Nov 1800.
British pioneer in the design of precision tools. At 23, Ramsden chose to apprentice to a maker of mathematical instruments. By age 27 he had his own business in London and was known as the most skilful designer of mathematical, astronomical, surveyingand navigationalinstruments in the 18th Century. He is best known for the design of a telescope and microscope eyepiece (ocular) still commonly used today and bearing his name. The French scientist N. Cassegrain proposed a design of a reflecting telescope in 1672, but Ramsden, however, 100 years later, who found that this design reduces blurring of the image caused by the sphericity of the lenses or mirrors. He also built lathes, barometers, manometers and assay balances. |
| Nevil Maskelyne | |
(source) |
Born 6
Oct 1732; died 9 Feb 1811.
British astronomer noted for his contribution to the science of navigation. In 1761 the Royal Society sent Maskelyne to the island of St Helena to make accurate measurements of a transit of Venus. This in turn gives the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and the scale of the solar system. During the voyage he also experimented with the lunar position method of determining longitude. In 1764 he went on a voyage to Barbados to carry out trials of Harrison's timepiece, followed by appointment as Astronomer Royal (1765). In 1774, he carried out an experiment on a Scottish mountain with the use of a plumb line to determine the Earth's density. He found it was approximately 4.5 times that of water. Nevil
Maskelyne: The Seaman's Astronomer, by Derek Howse. |
| John Caius | |
| Born 6
Oct 1510; died 29 Jul 1573
Prominent humanist and physician whose classic account of the English sweating sickness is considered one of the earliest histories of an epidemic. |
|
|
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| OCTOBER 6 - DEATHS | |
| George Gaylord Simpson | |
(source) |
 Died
6 Oct 1984 (born 16 June 1902)
U.S. paleontologist known for his contributions to evolutionary theory and to the understanding of intercontinental migrations of animal species in past geological times. Simpson specialized in early fossil mammals, leading expeditions on four continents and discovering in 1953 the 50-million-year old fossil skulls of dawn horses in Colorado. He helped develop the modern biological theory of evolution, drawing on paleontology, genetics, ecology, and natural selection to show that evolution occurs as a result of natural selection operating in response to shifting environmental conditions. He spent most of his career as a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History. |
| W(ill) K(eith) Kellogg | |
| Died
6 Oct 1951 (born 7 Apr 1860)
American industrialist and philanthropist who founded (1906) the W.K. Kellogg Company to manufacture cereal products as breakfast foods. His cereals have found widespread use throughout the United States. |
|
| Otto Meyerhof | |
(search) |
Died
6 Oct 1951 (born 12 Apr 1884)
Otto Fritz Meyerhof was a German biochemist and corecipient, with Archibald V. Hill, of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research on the chemical reactions of metabolism in muscle. In 1940 he emigrated to America. Meyerhof demonstrated that the production of lactic acid in muscle tissue, formed as a result of glycogen breakdown, was effected without the consumption of oxygen (i.e., anaerobically). The lactic acid was reconverted to glycogen through oxidation by molecular oxygen, during muscle rest. This line of research was continued by Gustav Embden and Carl and Gerty Cori who worked out in greater detail the steps by which glycogen is converted to lactic acid - the Embden-Meyerhof pathway. |
| Ferdinand Paul Wilhelm Richthofen | |
| Died
6 Oct 1905 (born 5 May 1833)
(Baron) German geographer and geologist who produced a major work on China and contributed to the development of geographical methodology. He also helped establish the science of geomorphology, the branch of geology that deals with land and submarine relief features. |
|
| Benjamin Peirce | |
(source) |
Died
6 Oct 1880 (born 4 Apr 1809)
American astronomer, mathematician and educator who computed the general perturbations of the planets Uranus and Neptune. He was Harvard's Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics for nearly 40 years, and was largely responsible for introducing mathematics as a subject for research in American institutions. He is known especially for his contributions to analytic mechanics and linear associative algebra, but he is also remembered for his early work in astronomy and for playing a role in the discovery of Neptune. |
| Bernard-Germain-Étienne Lacépède | |
(source) |
Died
6 Oct 1825 (born 26 Dec 1756)
(Bernard-Germain-) Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de (count of) Lacépède, was a French naturalist interested in herpetology and ichthyology. Buffon secured him a position at the Jardin du Roi (later the Jardin des Plantes) and invited him to continue his work Histoire Naturelle in animal classification. To supplement Buffon's work, Lacépède published several volumes which dealt with the oviparous quadrupeds (1788), reptiles (1789), fishes (1798-1803), and whales (1804). After the French Revolution, he became a politician, which activity prevented him making any further contribution of importance to science.« |
| William Withering | |
(source) |
Died
6 Oct 1799 (born 17 Mar 1741)
English physician who made a classic study of the medicinal use of digitalis. From his interest in botany, he paid attention to folk remedies used by herb-gatherers, including the foxglove. The leaf extract was efficacious in use for certain cases of "dropsy" (oedema, caused by heart failure). He determined the doses safe to use, and published a careful report of his findings in An Account of the Foxglove (1785). His report gave good case histories, including failures as well as successes. Thus he added digitalis as a very useful drug for physicians to use to steady and strengthen heart action. He was also a mineralogist, and witherite (barium carbonate) is named after him. He suffered greatly for years from chest disease, probably tuberculosis. |
| OCTOBER 6 - EVENTS | |
| Prions | |
 |
In 1997, American biology professor Stanley
B. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering "prions,"
described as "an entirely new genre of disease-causing agents." |
| New planet | |
|
In 1995, the first discovery of a planet around a star similar to the sun
was announced (about 160 times the mass of the Earth around the star 51
Pegasus). |
|
| Oral polio vaccine | |
(source) |
In 1956, Dr. Albert Sabin developed the
oral Polio vaccine. |
| Etch-A-Sketch | |
|
In 1908, the Ohio Art company, makers of Etch-A-Sketch, was founded
by Henry Simon Winzeler. |
|
| Radio patent | |
|
In 1914, a U.S. patent was issued to Edwin
H. Armstrong for a "Wireless Receiving System" which described his
famous regenerative, or feed-back, circuit (No. 1,113,149). This invention
started Armstrong's career of innovation. He went on to become a
pioneer in FM radio broadasting.« |
|
| Cream Of Wheat | |
|
In 1893, Cream Of Wheat, a hot cereal, was created by millers in North
Dakota. During the economic depression of that year, the Diamond Mill of
Grand Forks was looking to revive their business.. The head miller,
Thomas S. Amidon, convinced the partners (Emery Mapes, George Bull, and
George Clifford, Sr.) to try making a porridge product using farina. George
Clifford’s brother, Fred Sr., came up with the name Cream of Wheat because
the product was so white. Four years later to the then thriving milling
city of Minneapolis, where it was produced for a century. |
|
| Aero-engine | |
|
In 1880, Colonel Beaumont's air-engine
for propelling railway carriages was successfully tried at Woowich (a little
steam is used). His system largely employed in various ways by Paris Compressed
Air company was described to the British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne
(Sep 1889).[*
p.30] |
|
| Nickel plating | |
|
In 1868, a patent for nickel plating was awarded to inventor William H.
Remington of Boston. |
|
| Mineral water | |
|
In 1790, Jacob Schweppe showed his process for making artificial mineral
water. |
|
| Self-winding clock | |
|
In 1783, the self-winding clock was patented by Benjamin Hanks. |
|
