| OCTOBER 15 - BIRTHS | |
| Peter C. Doherty | |
(source) |
 Born 15
Oct 1940
Australian immunologist and pathologist who, with Swiss-born Rolf Zinkernagel, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for their project at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, Australia (1973-5). Using mice, they studied how the immune system's T-lymphocytes, recognize virus-infected cells from healthy cells. The "killer T-cells," in a test tube killed cells infected by a virus, and worked only against a specific virus in a specific mouse and could not be transferred to a different animal. Such discoveries have a wide impact on the study of diseases such as rheumatic conditions, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. He was the seventh Australian Nobelist, and the first who was a veterinarian. |
| Seymour Benzer | |
(source) |
Born 15
Oct 1921
U.S. molecular biologist who developed (1955) a method for determining the detailed structure of viral genes and coined the term cistron (1957) to denote functional subunits of genes. He also did much to elucidate the nature of genetic anomalies, called nonsense mutations, in terms of the nucleotide sequence of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. In the 1 Nov 1997 issue of Current Biology, Benzer and Kyung-Tai Min describe two mutant types of fruitfly with signs of brain degeneration that might be useful for studying Creutzfeld-Jacob disease or other human brain degenerative disorders. The "spongecake" mutant has holes that appear in the brain as degeneration sets in, holes similar to spongiform encephalopathies, like CJ or mad cow disease.  Time,
Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior,
by Jonathan Weiner. |
| Torbjörn Oskar Caspersson | |
 |
Born 15
Oct 1910
Swedish cytologist and geneticist who initiated use of the ultraviolet microscope to determine the nucleic acid content of cellular structures such as the nucleus and nucleolus. Caspersson researched fundamental aspects of cytogenetics, with a special emphasis on precise spectroscopic measurements. Long before the race for the double helix had begun, Caspersson promoted the genetic significance of nucleic acids (late 1930's-40's). Combining his knowledge of cell biology and biochemistry with accurate spectroscopic observations of nucleic acids in living cells, Caspersson concluded that nucleic acids were somehow involved in protein synthesis, an unorthodox view at a time when protein chemistry dominated the chemical approach to heredity. |
| C. P. Snow | |
(EB) |
Born 15
Oct 1905; died 1 Jul 1980.
Baron C(harles) P(ercy) Snow was a British former physicist, turned novelist and government administrator. In 1959, C.P. Snow gave a controversial lecture called The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution claiming there were two cultures - the literary intellectuals and the scientists, who didn't understand each other and didn't trust each other. The split was not new; Snow noted that in the 1930s, literary theorists had begun to use the word "intellectual" to refer only to themselves. He illustrated this gap by asking a group of literary intellectuals to tell him about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which he called the scientific equivalent of `Have you read a work of Shakespeare?'" Since then, debate about this polarization has continued. |
| Chester R. Longwell | |
(source) |
Born 15
Oct 1887; died 15 Dec 1975.
Chester R(ay) Longwell was an American geologist, whose field work made him an authority on the geology of southern Nevada. He conducted a geological survey of the entire Boulder reservoir flood area now covered by Lake Mead, in 1934, to record the formations and structures, which would be covered by the lake. Later, he mapped the floor of the Davis Dam reservoir. His structural and mapping surveys in the western states included Arizona and the Black Hills. In the east, he studied the Triassic zone of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Longwell held an interest in geotectonics - the worldwide patterns of development - and periodically contributed to the debate of Wegener's continental drift.« |
| Marie Stopes | |
(source) |
Born 15
Oct 1880; died 2 Oct 1958.
Scottish scientist, educator and birth control advocate was born in Edinburgh. She was awarded a doctorate at Munich, Germany, for her work on fossilised plants (1902). As a young girl she said she would spend the first 20 years of her life in science, the second 20 in social projects, and the final 20 years writing poetry - and she did just that. She made her name through her writing and campaigning on family planning services. Her work resulted in provision of the UK's first family planning clinic which opened in Holloway, north London, without publicity on 17 March 1921, offering a free service to married women. Its aim was two-fold, first to reach the poor and give them access to birth control, secondly to gather scientific data about contraception. |
| Asaph Hall | |
Phobos (source) |
Born 15
Oct 1829; died 22 Nov 1907.
American astronomer, discovered and named the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, and calculated their orbits. Born in Goshen, Conn. and apprenticed as a carpenter at age 16, he had a passion for geometry and algebra. Hall obtained a position at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. in 1857 and became an expert computer of orbits. In August 1862, he joined the staff of the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. where he made his discoveries, in mid- Aug 1877, using the Observatory's 26-inch "Great Equatorial" refracting telescope, then the largest of its kind in the world. He worked there for 30 years until 1891.He was followed by his son, Asaph Hall, Jr., who worked at the Observatory at various times between 1882 - 1929. |
| Evangelista Torricelli | |
(source) |
Born 15
Oct 1608; died 25 Oct 1647
Born in Faenza, Italy, Torricelli was an Italian physicist and mathematician who invented the barometer and whose work in geometry aided in the eventual development of integral calculus. Inspired by Galileo's writings, he wrote a treatise on mechanics, De Motu ("Concerning Movement"), which impressed Galileo. He also developed techniques for producing telescope lenses. The barometer experiment using "quicksilver" filling a tube then inverted into a dish of mercury, carried out in Spring 1644, made Torricelli's name famous. The Italian scientists merit was, above all, to admit that the effective cause of the resistance presented by nature to the creation of a vacuum (in the inverted tube above the mercury) was probably due to the weight of air. |
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| OCTOBER 15 - DEATHS | |
| Konrad Bloch | |
(source) |
 Died
15 Oct 2000 (born 21 Jan 1912)
Konrad (Emil) Bloch was a German-born American biochemist who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Feodor Lynen for their discoveries concerning the natural synthesis of cholesterol and of fatty acids. Bloch identified the chemical process by which the body turns acetic acid into cholesterol. He discovered the point at which it is possible to regulate the amount of cholesterol the body produces. He discovered that high levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream cause fatty deposits on the inner walls of arteries, which may lead to constricted blood flow and increase the chances of blood clotting and heart attack. |
| Herbert Henry Dow | |
(source) |
Died
15 Oct 1930 (born 26 Feb 1866)
Chemist, industrialist, a pioneer in U.S. chemical industry who founded the Dow Chemical Company. He was one of the creators of the modern American chemical industry and such diverse inventions as electric light carbons, steam and internal combustion engines, automatic furnace controls, and water seals, though most of his inventions were chemical in nature. As a young man Dow entered the rudimentary chemical industry of the 1890s by inventing an entirely new method of extracting bromine from the prehistoric brine trapped underground at Midland, Mich. His first patent was issued in 1889. By 1933 he had over 90 patents. He is best known for his work in halogen chemistry, particularly the production of bromine and chlorine. Herbert
H. Dow: Pioneer in creative chemistry, by Murray Campbell. |
| Theodor Heinrich Boveri | |
(source) |
Died
15 Oct 1915 (born 12 Oct 1862)
German cytologist whose work with roundworm eggs proved that chromosomes are separate, continuous entities within the nucleus of a cell. He emphasized that they were organized structures, and he made it clear that certain chromosomes were responsible for certain characteristics. Around 1887, Boveri discovered a small structure that connects the chromosomes during cell division. Boveri called it the centrosome and demonstrated it provided the division centers for the dividing egg cell and all its offspring. Boveri was prone to bouts of depression and suffered numerous physical breakdowns. His health got progressively worse following the onset of World War I, and he died at the age of 53. |
| Sir Daniel Gooch | |
(source) |
Died
15 Oct 1889 (born 24 Aug 1816)
English, laid the first successful transatlantic cables. Sir Daniel Gooch was an English railway pioneer and inventor who was trained in George Stephenson & Edward Pease's works at Newcastle upon Tyne. He was locomotive superintendent of Great Western Railway for 27 years, where as Brunel's right-hand man, he designed the best broad-gauge engines and invented "the suspended link motion with the shifting radius link" in 1843. Gooch also experimented with a dynamometer carriage. In 1864 he resigned to concentrate on developing telegraphic communication. Sir Daniel Gooch and his son Charles, were the engineers who laid the first Atlantic Cable from the steamship The Great Eastern. Daniel became member of Parliment. |
| Carl Mosander | |
(source) |
Died
15 Oct 1858 (born 10 Sep 1797)
Swedish chemist and mineralologist; whose work revealed the existence of numerous rare-earth elements with closely similar chemical properties. In 1839 he discovered lanthanum (La) which is used as a component of misch metal (used for making lighter flints) and rare-earth compounds containing lanthanum are extensively used in carbon lighting applications, especially by the motion picture industry for studio lighting and projection. He discovered other rare earth metals: erbium (Er) in 1842 and terbium (Tb) in 1843. Erbium oxide is rose-pink, and it is used to make pink glass and pink potter's glaze. Terbium oxide has potential as an activator for green phosphors used in colour televisions tubes. [Image: Lanthanum ore.] |
| John Morgan | |
 |
Died
15 Oct 1789 (born 10 June 1735)
American pioneer of U.S. medical education, surgeon general of the Continental armies during the U.S. War of Independence, and founder of the United States' first medical school - the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in 1765. He joined the faculty and wrote his influential Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America (1765). In 1775, after the American Revolution had started, Congress appointed him medical director of the hospitals and chief physician of the colonial army. Morgan insisted upon such high standards and reforms in the medical department that his subordinates rebelled and forced him from office. He was later exonerated by George Washington, but never completely recovered, dying in poverty ten years later. |
| Andreas Vesalius | |
(source) |
Died
15 Oct 1564 (born 31 Dec 1514)
Flemish anatomist who, as a university teacher insisted on conducting detailed dissections on human cadavers personally. His De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body) of 1543 marked a real departure from the work of the 2nd-century anatomist Galen, and provided detailed and accessible information against which future anatomists could compare their observations. Vesalius was the teacher of Gabriel Fallopius, who was in turn tutor to Hieronymous Fabricius, who then taught William Harvey. This lineage supervised the most dramatic reassessment of the anatomy and function of the human body that had occurred for centuries — and can be said to have started the modern science of medicine. |
| OCTOBER 15 - EVENTS | |
| First Chinese astronaut | |
In 2003, China became the third nation to send a man into space. Lieutenant
Colonel Yang Liwei, 38, was launched on a Long March CZ-2F rocket in the
Shenzhou-5 spacecraft at 9 am local time (1 am GMT). He completed
14 Earth orbits during a 21-hour flight which ended with a parachute-assisted
landing in the on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China. The
Shenzhou spacecraft was based on the three-seat Russian Soyuz capsule,
but with extensive modifications. The country began planning manned spaceflight
in 1992. Russia began providing advice on technology and astronaut training
in 1995. The first of four unmanned test flights of a Shenzhou craft (took
place in Nov 1999. The name Shenzhou translates as "divine vessel." |
|
| Killer bees | |
 |
In 1990, on October 15th, the killer
bees reach the southern tip of Texas, in the city of Hidalgo. Texas
was the first U.S. state to be invaded. Because of their more intense
defensive swarming behavior, such non-native bees earned the name "killer
bee" in the media. Arizona was the second state to be invaded, less than
three years after this species spread north into Texas from Mexico. Since
the fifties, the bees had extended their range northward through Central
America. Their original source was from cross-breeding with tropical African
bees imported into Brazil for experimental work.  |
| Radio paging service | |
|
In 1950, the first American radio paging service, Aircall of New York City,
sent the first page to a doctor who was on a golf course 25 miles away.
Subscribers carried a six-ounce pocket radio receiver and could hear their
call numbers repeated in numerical sequence on the air at least once per
minute within a 30-mile radius. |
|
| Zeppelin | |
(source) |
In 1928, the airship LZ127 Graf Zeppelin, christened on the 8th July 1928,
landed in New Jersey after its first transatlantic crossing from Germany.
It was 775 feet long and 100 feet high and had a crusing speed of 73 mph.
The Naval Air Station Lakehurst, located in Lakehurst, New Jersey, was
the western terminus for the commercial transatlantic flights of the German
dirigibles Graf Zeppelin and also the Hindenburg. The Graf Zeppelin was
a very successful airship whose success was eclipsed by the Hindenburg
disaster in 1937. |
| Boston Symphony Hall opened | |
(source) |
In 1900, the Boston
Symphony Hall was opened with an inaugural gala led by music director
Wilhelm Gericke. The architects engaged Wallace Clement Sabine, a young
assistant professor of physics at Harvard, to help them achieve the best
sound quality for the hall, making it the first auditorium designed according
to scientific acoustical principles. The sparse use of sound-muffling textiles
provides for better resonance throughout the hall. It is 61 feet high,
75 feet wide and 124 feet long from the lower back wall to the front of
the stage. With the exception of the wooden floors, the hall is built of
brick, steel, and plaster. Still regarded as one of the world's finest
concert halls, it is the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the
Boston Pops. |
| Edison Electric Light Co. | |
1912 (source) |
In 1878, Thomas Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company in
N.Y. City with a syndicate of leading financiers, including J.P. Morgan
and the Vanderbilts, who advanced him $30,000 for research and development.
Edison proposed to connect his lights in a parallel circuit by subdividing
the current, so that, unlike arc lights, which were connected in
a series circuit, the failure of one light bulb would not cause a whole
circuit to fail. He patented his electricity distribution system in 1880.
The first investor-owned electric utility, Pearl Street Station, New York
City, (1882) provided service for the 400 lamps of 85 customers. This company
and its technological heritage became a part of General Electric
in 1892. |
| Charles Darwin | |
(source) |
In 1827, Charles Darwin was accepted
into Christ's College at Cambridge,
but did not start until winter term because he needed to catch up on some
of his studies. A grandson of Erasmus Darwin of Lichfield, and of Josiah
Wedgwood, he had entered
the University of Edinburgh in 1825 to study medicine, intending to follow
his father Robert's career as a doctor. However, Darwin found himself unenthusiastic
about his studies, including that of geology. Disappointing his family
that he gave up on a medical career, he left Edinburgh without graduating
in April 1827. His scholastic achievements at Cambridge were unremarkable,
but after graduation, Darwin was recommended by his botany professor to
be a naturalist to sail on HM Sloop Beagle.
 From
So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, by
Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson. |
| First balloon ascent | |
(source) |
In 1783, Frenchman Jean Pilâtre de Rozier (1754-1785) makes a tethered,
captive-balloon ascent, in the gardens of La Muette. The Montgolfier-made
balloon,
Aerostat
Reveillon, carrying Pilâtre, first man to leave the earth, rose
to the end of its 250- ft tether. It stayed aloft for15 minutes, then landed
safely nearby. On 21 Nov 1783, untethered, Pilâtre and Marquis d'Arlande
made the first manned free flight, across Paris. On 15 Jun 1785, Pilâtre
attempt the first east-to-west crossing of the English Channel with a hybrid
balloon combining lift from both hydrogen and hot air. Within minutes of
launch, the craft exploded, and plunged to the rocks on the coast of Wimereux.
Neither Pilâtre nor his co-pilot, Romain, survived the crash. |
