| OCTOBER 22 - BIRTHS | |
| Karl Jansky | |
(source) |
 Born 22
Oct 1905; died 14 Feb 1950.
Karl Guthe Jansky was an American electrical engineer who discovered cosmic radio emissions in 1932. At Bell Laboratories in NJ, Jansky was tracking down the crackling static noises that plagued overseas telephone reception. He found certain radio waves came from a specific region on the sky every 23 hours and 56 minutes, from the direction of Sagittarius toward the center of the Milky Way. In the publication of his results, he suggested that the radio emission was somehow connected to the Milky Way and that it originated not from stars but from ionized interstellar gas. At the age of 26, Jansky had made a historic discovery - that celestial bodies could emit radio waves as well as light waves. |
| George Beadle | |
(source) |
Born 22
Oct 1903; died 9 Jun 1989.
George Wells Beadle was an American geneticist who helped found biochemical genetics when he showed that genes affect heredity genes act by regulating definite chemical events. He shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg. Beadle and Tatum succeeded in demonstrating that the body substances are synthesized in the individual cell step by step in long chains of chemical reactions, and that genes control these processes by individually regulating definite steps in the synthesis chain. This regulation takes place through formation by the gene of special enzymes.  George
Beadle... The Emergence of Genetics in the 20th Century, by
Paul Berg, Maxine Singer |
| Frank Harold Spedding | |
(source) |
Born 22
Oct 1902; died 15 Dec 1984.
American chemist who, during the 1940s and '50s, developed processes for reducing individual rare-earth elements to the metallic state at low cost, thereby making these substances available to industry at reasonable prices. Earlier, upon the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939, the U.S. government asked leading scientists to join in the development of nuclear energy. In 1942, Iowa State College's Frank H. Spedding, an expert in the chemistry of rare earths, agreed to set up the Ames portion of the Manhattan Project, resulting in an easy and inexpensive procedure to produce high quality uranium. Between 1942 and 1945, almost two million pounds of uranium was processed on campus, in the old Popcorn Laboratory. |
| Charles Glen King | |
vitamin C |
Born 22
Oct 1896; died 24 Jan 1988.
Biochemist who discovered vitamin C, an aid in the prevention of scurvy and malnutrition. After five years of painstaking research extracting components from lemon juice, in 1932, King isolated vitamin C. Its structure was quickly determined and it was synthesized by scientists such as Haworth and Reichstein in 1933. Also known as ascorbic acid, (a- = not, without; scorbus = scurvy), vitamin C is a colourless crystalline water-soluble vitamin found especially in citrus fruits and green vegetables. Most organisms synthesize it from glucose but man and other primates and various other species must obtain it from their diet. It is required for the maintenance of healthy connective tissue; deficiency leads to scurvy. Vitamin C is readily destroyed by heat and light. |
| Clinton Joseph Davisson | |
1946(EB) |
Born 22
Oct 1881; died 1 Feb 1958.
American experimental physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1937 with George P. Thomson of England for discovering that electrons can be diffracted like light waves. Davisson studied the effect of electron bombardment on surfaces, and observed (1925) the angle of reflection could depend on crystal orientation. Following Louis de Broglie's theory of the wave nature of particles, he realized that his results could be due to diffraction of electrons by the pattern of atoms on the crystal surface. Davisson worked with Lester Germer in an experiment in which electrons bouncing off a nickel surface produced wave patterns similar to those formed by light reflected from a diffraction grating, and supporting de Broglie's electron wavelength = (h/p). |
| Frederick William Twort | |
(source) |
Born 22
Oct 1877; died 20 Mar 1950.
English bacteriologist who, working with George Ingram, was the first to publish (1912) a method for isolating and culturing the extremely fastidious Mycobacterium paratuberculosis, the bacterium that causes Johne's disease, or chronic dysentery of cattle. He was the first to publish a report (1915) on what were called bacteriophage (viruses that prey upon bacteria) when Félix d'Hérelle independently made the discovery two years later. Twort's somewhat accidental discovery happened when he noticed that the bacteria infecting his plates became transparent. Thinking the virus to be a primitive life form, thereafter he tried to grow viruses in artificial media, but had difficulty funding the research.« In
Focus, Out of Step: A Biography of Frederick William Twort,
by Antony Twort. |
| Stephen Moulton Babcock | |
(EB) |
Born 22
Oct 1843; died 2 Jul 1931.
American agricultural research chemist, often called the father of scientific dairying, chiefly because of his development of the Babcock test (1890), a simple method of measuring the butterfat content of milk. It consists in liberating the fat globules by dissolving the casein in a strong acid and then separating the fat by means of a centrifuge. The test discouraged milk adulteration and provided for the first time an adequate standard by which fair payment for milk could be determined, stimulated improvement of dairy production, and aided in factory manufacture of cheese and butter. He worked for 43 years at the University of Wisconsin, where he established a laboratory where he carried out pioneering research in nutrition and in the chemistry of vitamins. |
| Constantine Samuel Rafinesque | |
(source) |
Born 22
Oct 1783; died 18 Sep 1840.
Naturalist, traveler, and writer who made major and controversial contributions to botany and ichthyology. Rafinesque believed that each variety of a species is a "deviant," which, through reproduction, may become a permanent species; thus, he anticipated, to some extent, part of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Although Rafinesque's scientific abilities were recognized in his lifetime, he was also severely criticized for sometimes doing careless work and for his tendency to establish new genera and species. Throughout his life he traveled extensively, collected specimens wherever he went, and wrote and published constantly. |
|
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages: Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages: Today in Science History Science Store Click here to browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| OCTOBER 22 - DEATHS | |
| Dr. Rollo May | |
(source) |
 Died
22 Oct 1994 (born 21 Apr 1909)
American psychologist. May is the best known American existential psychologist. Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig Binswanger is great. Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in that he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and more interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud’s. In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the US. |
| Albert Szent-Gyorgyi | |
(source) |
Died
22 Oct 1986 (born 16 Sep 1893)
Hungarian biochemist who was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid." He isolated the vitamin C (ascorbic acid), noted its value for preventing scurvy, and extracted quantities of it from Hungarian paprika. He also investigated biological oxidation and recognized the catalytic function of the C4-dicarboxylic acids and discovered flavin. In 1938 he began work on muscle research and shortly discovered the proteins actin and myosin and their complex.« 
Search
and discovery: A tribute to Albert Szent-Györgyi.
Academic Press. |
| Elvin Morton Jellinek | |
(source) |
Died
22 Oct 1963 (born 15 Aug 1890)
Elvin Morton Jellinek was an American physiologist who was a pioneer in the scientific study of the nature and causes of alcoholism and in descriptions of its symptomatology. He was an early proponent of the disease theory of alcoholism, arguing with great persuasiveness that alcoholics should be treated as sick people. Jellinek gathered and summarized his own research and that of others in the important and authoritative works Alcohol Explored (1942) and The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (1960). In the latter book, Jellinek also recognized that some features of the disease (e.g., inability to abstain and loss of control) were shaped by cultural factors. |
| Sir Roderick Murchison | |
(source) |
Died
22 Oct 1871 (born 19 Feb 1792)
Scottish geologist who first differentiated the Silurian strata in the geologic sequence of Early Paleozoic strata (408-540 million years old). He believed in fossils as primary criteria. In 1831, Murchison began researching the previously geologically unknown graywacke rocks of the Lower Paleozoic, found underlying the Old Red Sandstone in parts of Wales, which culminated in his major work The Silurian System (1839). He named the Silurian after an ancient British tribe that inhabited South Wales. He established the Devonian working with Adam Sedgwick (1839). Another worldwide geological system, the Permian (1841), the uppermost of the Paleozoic, he named after the Perm province in Russia where he made a geological survey in 1840-45.« Scientist
of the Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, by Robert A. Stafford. |
| Oziel Wilkinson | |
| Died
22 Oct 1815 (born 30 Jan 1744)
American blacksmith and inventor who began manufacturing farm tools, domestic utensils and cut nails using water power at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, from about 1783. He expanded with an anchor-forging shop the next year, and later added a metal rolling and slitting mill. About 1786, he began making iron screws for clothier's and oil presses. In 1791 he built a reverbatory air furnace. By 1800, Wilkinson and his sons had established themselves as the centre of iron products manufacturing in New England, supplying the machinery parts needed by new industries. Wilkinson joined his son-in-law Samuel Slater in the textile industry. Oziel's son, David furnished the iron forgings and castings for the first carding and spinning machines at Slater's Mill.«. |
|
| Guillaume Le Gentil | |
| Died
22 Oct 1792 (born 12 Sep 1725)
Guillaume-Joseph-Hyacinthe-Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaziere was a French astronomer who attempted to observe the transit of Venus across the sun by travelling to India in 1761. He failed to arrive in time due to an outbreak of war. He stayed in India to see the next transit which came eight years later. This time, he was denied a view because of cloudy weather, and so returned to France. There, he found his heirs had assumed he was dead and taken his property. |
|
| OCTOBER 22 - EVENTS | |
| Xerography | |
(source) |
In 1938, xerography was demonstrated
by Chester F. Carlson. With
his assistant, Otto Kornei, Carlson used a sulphur coating on a zinc plate,
vigorously rubbed with a handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge.
A glass slide was prepared using India ink to write "10-22-38 ASTORIA,"
then laid on the sulphur surface in a darkened room. After illuminating
them with a bright incandescent lamp for a few seconds, the slide was removed.
When lycopodium powder was sprinkled
on the sulphur surface and blown off, there remained a near-perfect image
of the writing. Permanent copies were made by transferring the powder images
to wax paper and heating the sheets to melt the wax. Xerox
is a term coming from "xerography" which means dry writing and is a trademark.
Copies
in Seconds: ...Chester Carlson and the Birth of Xerox,
by David Owen. |
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1912, Thomas A. Edison was issued
patents for a "Conveyor" related to a cement kiln, and for a "Phonograph-Stylus"
formed of crystallized boron, which because of its hardness (in fact, much
harder than sapphire) could operate on sound records formed from hard materials
without wearing away. Small crystals of boron could be formed in an electric
furnace, and were easier to polish than diamond, while not being as fragile.
(U.S. Nos. 1,041,756 and 1,041,983). |
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1878, Thomas A. Edison was issued
a patent for "Quadruplex-Telegraph Repeaters" (U.S. No. 209,241). This
invention is an improved method for one quadruplex circuit to repeat into
another quadruplex circuit. The patent describes the electromagnets, local
circuits, switches and connections. The circuits work into and operate
each other, so that the message are repeated automatically into one circuit
by the receiving instrument of the other circuit, instead of the finger
key being operated by hand. |
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1872, Thomas A. Edison was issued
patents for an improvement
in "Paper for Chemical Telegraphs" and for an improved "Apparatus for Perforating
Paper for Telegraph Use" (U.S. Nos.132455, -6). The chemical paper Edison
had previously designed used a solution of potassium iodide and starch
adhered to paper and used while moist. He noted that when dry, the starch
tended to crack and peel from paper. He patented an improvement using a
very thin paste of flour and water that with the solution of potassium
iodide would pentrate the paper fabric. In the second
patent, Edison described a compact machine to punch perforated tape used
to transmit telegraphic messages. Keys could punch either a single hole
for a dot or three holes for a dash. |
| First parachute jump | |
(source) |
In 1797, the first parachute jump
was made by André-Jacques
Garnerin, released from a balloon 2,230-ft above the Parc Monceau,
Paris. He rode in a gondola fixed to the lines of a 23-ft diameter parachute,
which was supported by a wooden pole and had its 32 white canvas gores
folded like a closed umbrella. Lacking any vent in the top of the parachute,
Garnerin descended with violent oscillations, and suffered the first case
of airsickness. For his next jump, he added a hole in the top of the parachute.
He made his fifth jump on 21 Sep 1802 over London, from a height of 3,000-ft.
This was the first parachute descent made in England, and landed near St.
Pancras Church. Having eliminated the centre vent for this jump, he again
suffered a fit of vomitting.* |
