| OCTOBER 13 - BIRTHS | |
| John Griggs Thompson | |
(source) |
 Born 13
Oct 1932
American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his work in group theory, solving (with Walter Feit) one of its thorniest problems, the so-called "odd order" problem. (Group theory is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the study of symmetries - such as the symmetries of a geometric figure, or symmetries that arise in solutions to algebraic equations.) Thompson's proof, with 253 pages of equations, filled an entire issue of the Pacific Journal of Mathematics. It stands out as one of math’s longest and most complex. Thompson also collaborated on the classification of the finite simple groups, the building blocks of more general groups. Group theory has important applications in physics, chemistry and other fields. |
| William Z. Ripley | |
(source) |
Born 13
Oct 1867; died 16 Aug 1941.
William Z(ebina) Ripley was an American economist and anthropologist whose early book The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (1899) directed the attention of American social scientists to the existence of subdivisions of geographic races. He gave broad classifications of the European Caucasians into three local races: the northern (Teutonic) and southern (Mediterranean) populations are probably of extremely ancient origin, but the central (Alpine) group has descended from more recent migrants from Asia. Ripley was trained in civil engineering, though he spent most of his career as professor of political economy. In 1920-23 he drew up for the Interstate Commerce Commission the Ripley Plan for the regional consolidation of U.S. railways.  Railroads,
Rates and Regulations, by William Z. Ripley. |
| Rudolf Virchow | |
 |
Born 13
Oct 1821; died 5 Sep 1902.
German pathologist and statesman who originated the concept that disease arises in the individual cells of a tissue and, with publication of his Cellular Pathology (1858), founded the science of cellular pathology. Virchow also worked on improving sanitary conditions in Berlin, and believed that environmental factors such as poor living conditions could be as much a cause of disease as germs. He also helped develop the science of anthropology in Germany and to make Berlin a European centre of medicine. Virchow encouraged his friend Heinrich Schliemann in his determination to discover the site of Homer's Troy and actually worked on the dig at Hissarlik in 1879. 
Collected
Essays on Public Health & Epidemiology, by Rudolf
Virchow. |
| Sir John William Dawson | |
(source) |
Born 30
Oct 1820; died 20 Nov 1899.
Canadian geologist who made numerous contributions to paleobotany and extended the knowledge of Canadian geology. Dawson was born and raised in Pictou, Nova Scotia, where the many sandstone and coal formations provided fertile ground for his first scientific explorations, which culminated in the publication of Acadian Geology. He made many important discoveries of fossil life, great and small. These included fossil plants, trackways of lowly invertebrates, footprints, skeletons of reptiles and amphibians, millipedes and the earliest land snails. He had an uncanny ability to understand the ancient environments in which rocks had formed and to decipher their correct ages. Dawson's energetically promoted scientific institutions in Canada. |
| Jules Quicherat | |
(EB) |
Born 13
Oct 1814; died 8 Apr 1882.
Jules (-Étienne-Joseph) Quicherat was a French historian and one of the founders of archaeology in France. As a pioneering archaeologist, he was a major force in French scholarship during the 19th century. In 1847, he inaugurated a course of archaeological lectures at the École des Chartes. His students circulated his principles throughout France, recognizing him as the "founder of national archaeology". He wrote on the history of medieval France, and also edited texts of the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc (1841-49). |
| William Brockendon | |
| Born 13
Oct 1787; died 1854.
English writer, painter and inventor. In 1819 a patent was granted to William Brockendon for a diamond wire drawing die. In 1843, he was granted U.K. patent number 9977 for forming tablets: "For the shaping of pills, lozenges and black lead by pressure in a die." Previous practice was to form pills from wetted powders, rolled out rather like pastry, cut to size and then 'balled' by rolling. Also in 1843 he patented an artificial plumbago lead for pencils. He also experimented to make an effective rubber bottle stopper. Brockendon is reputed to have coined the name "vulvanization" for Goodyear's rubber curing process.« |
|
| Peter Barlow | |
(source) |
Born 13
Oct 1776; died 1 Mar 1862
English mathematician and engineer who invented two varieties of achromatic (non-colour-distorting) telescope lenses. In 1819, Barlow began work on the problem of deviation in ship compasses caused by the presence of iron in the hull. For his method of correcting the deviation by juxtaposing the compass with a suitably shaped piece of iron, he was awarded the Copley Medal. In 1822, he built a device which is to be considered one of the first models of an electric motor supplied by continuous current. He also worked on the design of bridges, in particular working (1819-26) with Thomas Telford on the design of the bridge over the Menai Strait, the first major modern suspension bridge. Barlow was active during the period of railway building in Britain. |
|
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| OCTOBER 13 - DEATHS | |
| Bertram N. Brockhouse | |
(source) |
 Died
13 Oct 2003 (born 15 Jul 1918)
Canadian physicist who developed neutron diffraction techniques used for studying the structure and properties of matter for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1994 (with American physicist Clifford G. Shull). By devising instrumentation to measure the energy of neutrons scattered from a solid material, Brockhouse provided insight to its atomic structure. It made possible advances in semiconductor technology. His Triple-Axis Neutron Spectrometer is now widely used not only to investigate atomic structures, but also virus and DNA molecules.« |
| Walter H. Brattain | |
(source) |
Died
13 Oct 1987 (born 10 Feb 1902)
Walter Houser Brattain was an American scientist born in China who, with John Bardeen and William B. Shockley, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for investigating semiconductors (materials of which transistors are made) and for the development of the transistor. At college, he said, he majored in physics and math because they were the only subjects he was good at. He became a solid physicist with a good understanding of theory, but his strength was in physically constructing experiments. Working with the ideas of Shockley and Bardeen, Brattain's hands built the first transistor. Shortly, the transistor replaced the bulkier vacuum tube for many uses and was the forerunner of microminiature electronic parts. |
| A.A. Griffith | |
(source) |
Died
13 Oct 1963 (born 13 June 1893).
Alan Arnold Griffith was a British aeronautical engineer. During the late 1920s, A.A. Griffith and F. Whittle independently made the first practical proposals for the use of gas turbine engines in aircraft. Griffith concentrated on developing an axial flow compressor, and in 1929 he proposed a gas turbine engine driving a propeller, the so called turbo-prop engine. Earlier, in 1917, with G.I.Taylor, he published a pioneering article on the use of soap films in solving torsion problems. In 1920, he published a seminal article on the theory of the brittle fracture. At Rolls Royce (1939-60) he designed turbojet engines, and in the 1950s, vertical take-off aircraft. He developed the remarkable "flying bedstead" which first flew in 1954. |
| OCTOBER 13 - EVENTS | |
| Fermi Accelerator | |
(source) |
In 1985, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, the
first observation
was made of proton-antiproton collisions
by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) with 1.6 TeV center-of-mass
energy. In all, 23 of collisions
were detected
in Oct 1985. The Tevatron, four miles in circumference (originally named
the Energy Doubler), is the world's highest-energy particle accelerator.
Its low-temperature cooling system was the largest ever built when it was
placed in operation in 1983. Its 1,000 superconducting magnets are cooled
by liquid helium to -268 deg C (-450 deg F). Fermilab (originally named
the National Accelerator Laboratory) was commissioned by the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission, in a bill signed by President Johnson on 21 Nov 1967.
21st
Century Complete Guide to Fermilab, four CD set. |
| Ultrasonic alarm | |
(source) |
In 1953, the first U.S. patent for a burglar alarm operated by ultrasonic
sound was issued to Samuel Bagno of New York City (No. 2,655,645)
on a system for movement detection in a confined space by intruders or
fire. It was manufactured as the Alertronic and first sold in Jun 1950.
A sound source produced waves of 19,000 hertz, a frequency too high for
normal human hearing. An intruder could be detected by the alarm by a difference
in frequency of the reflected waves from the moving body (the Doppler effect).
The device would then sound an alarm. |
| Gas mask | |
(source) |
In 1914, Garrett Morgan invented
and patented a gas mask, a breathing device consisting of a canvas hood
placed over the head. A double tube extended from the hood and merged into
a single tube at the back. The open end held a sponge soaked with water
to filter out smoke and to cool incoming air. On 25 Jul 1916, Morgan
made national news for using the gas mask to recover several men trapped
after an explosion in a new waterworks tunnel beneath Lake Erie at Cleveland,
Ohio. After the rescue, Morgan's company received requests from fire departments
around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. The Morgan gas
mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I. One of
Morgan's other inventions was an early traffic signal (patented in 1923).
[Image
right: (source)] |
| Greenwich prime meridian | |
(source) |
In 1884, Greenwich was adopted
as the universal meridian. At the behest of the U.S. President, 41 delegates
from 25 nations
met in Washington, DC, for the International Meridian Conference.
At the Conference several important principles were established: a single
world meridian passing through the principal Transit Instrument at the
Observatory at Greenwich; that all longitude
would be calculated both east and west from this meridian up to 180°;
a universal day; and studies of the decimal system to the division of time
and space. Resolution
2, fixing the Meridian at Greenwich was passed 22-1 (San Domingo voted
against, France & Brazil abstained). Greenwich lies on the River Thames,
a few miles from central London.
Greenwich
Time and Longitude, by Derek Howse. |
| Aerial photograph | |
(source) |
In 1860, the first successful aerial photograph
in the U.S. was taken over Boston by James Wallace Black in a balloon,
The
Queen of the Air with Samuel Archer King as navigator held by a cable
1,200 feet above the city. Eight pictures were exposed, using wet plates
prepared in the balloon as needed. One good photograph resulted - Boston
as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It, which showed an area bounded
by Brattle Street on the north, the harbour on the east, Sumner Street
on the south, and Park Street on the west. (Credit for the first aerial
photograph goes to French author and artist Felix Tournachon who used the
nom de plume Nadar.
He captured the first aerial photo from a balloon tethered over the Bievre
Valley in 1858, though his work is lost.) |
| Zinc production | |
|
In 1853, the Pennsylvania and LeHigh Zinc Company Mill was erected in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. This mill
produced the first commercial zinc, which was obtained
from calamine
ores. Four acres of land
was bought by Samuel Wetherill, of Philadelphia. The Lehigh Zinc Company
was eventually acquired by the New Jersey Zinc Company. |
|
