| OCTOBER 23 - BIRTHS | |
| Ted Fujita | |
(source) |
 Born 23
Oct 1920; died 19 Nov 1998.
Tetsuya Theodore Fujita was a Japanese-American meteorologist who increased the knowledge of severe storms. In 1953, he began research in the U.S. Shortly afterwards, he immigrated and established the Severe Local Storms Project. He was known as "Mr. Tornado" as a result of the Fujita scale (F-scale, Feb 1971), which he and his wife, Sumiko, developed for measuring tornadoes on the basis of their damage. Following the crash of Eastern flight 66 on 24 Jun 1975, he reviewed weather-related aircraft disasters and verified the downburst and the microburst (small downburst) phenomena, enabling airplane pilots to be trained on how to react to them. Late in his career, he turned to the study of storm tracks and El Nino.«  The
Downburst: Microburst and Macroburst, by T. Theodore
Fujita. |
| Manolis Andronicos | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1919; died 30 Mar 1992.
Greek archaeologist who discovered ancient royal tombs in northern Greece, possibly belonging to the Macedonian King Philip II, the father of Alexander III the Great. In autumn 1977, an Andronicos discovered the unplundered royal tomb containing works of art of astounding richness and exquisite craftsmanship at Vergina in Macedonia. His suggestion that the tomb's occupant was probably Philip, son of Amyntas, king of the Macedonians, created understandable sensation, and aroused world-wide interest. Image: Small ivory-head, portrait of Philip II, found in the royal tomb at Vergina The
Acropolis, by Manolis Andronicos. |
| Ilya Mikhaylovich Frank | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1908; died 22 June 1990.
Russian physicist who, with Igor Y. Tamm, theoretically explained the mechanism of Cherenkov radiation. In 1934, Cherenkov discovered that a peculiar blue light is emitted by charged particles traveling at very high speeds through water. Frank and Tamm provided the theoretical explanation of this effect, which occurs when the particles travel through an optically transparent medium at speeds greater than the speed of light in that medium. This discovery resulted in the development of new methods for detecting and measuring the velocity of high-speed particles and became of great importance for research in nuclear physics. For this, Frank received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1958 (jointly with Pavel A. Cherenkov and Igor Y. Tamm). |
| Felix Bloch | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1905; died 10 Sep 1983.
Swiss-born American physicist who shared (with independent discoverer, E.M. Purcell) the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952 for developing the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) method of measuring the magnetic field of atomic nuclei. He obtained his PhD under Werner Heisenberg in 1928, then taught briefly in Germany, but as a Jew, when Hitler came to power, he left Europe for the USA. Bloch's concept of magnetic neutron polarization (1934) enabled him, in conjunction with L. Alvarez, to measure the neutron's magnetic moment. During WW II he worked on the atomic bomb. Thereafter, Bloch and co-workers developed NMR, now widely used technique in chemistry, biochemistry, and medicine. In 1954 he became the first director of CERN. |
| Ernest Julius Öpik | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1893; died 10 Sep 1985
Estonian astronomer best known for his studies of meteors and meteorites, and whose life work was devoted to understanding the structure and evolution of the cosmos. When Soviet occupation of Estonia was imminent, he moved to Hamburg, then to Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland (1948-81). Among his many pioneering discoveries were: (1) the first computation of the density of a degenerate body, namely the white dwarf 40 Eri B, in 1915; (2) the first accurate determination of the distance of an extragalactic object (Andromeda Nebula) in 1922; (3) the prediction of the existence of a cloud of cometary bodies encircling the Solar System (1932), later known as the ``Oort Cloud''; (4) the first composite theoretical models of dwarf stars like the Sun which showed how they evolve into giants (1938); (5) a new theory of the origin of the Ice Ages (1952). |
| Edwin G. Boring | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1886; died 1 Jul 1968
Edwin Garrigues Boring was an American psychologist who was first recognized for his experimental work but later known as a historian of psychology. When the U.S. entered WW I, Robert M. Yerkes recruited Boring to help test the intelligence of draftees. In 1922, he was invited to Harvard, where he began a long and productive career as director of the psychological laboratory (1924-49). To free psychology from its status as part of the Dept. of Philosophy, Boring succeeded in establishing a separate Dept of Psychology (1934). Upon retirement, he was appointed Edgar Pierce Professor Emeritus and continued to teach classes until he was nearly 71. Throughout his life, he wrote textbooks and edited professional journals. |
| G.N. Lewis | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1875; died 23 Mar 1946
G(ilbert) N(ewton) Lewis was an American chemist who collaborated with Langmuir in developing an atomic theory. He developed a theory of valency, which introduced the covalent bond (c. 1916), whereby a chemical combination is made between two atoms by the sharing of a pair of electrons, one contributed from each atom. This was part of his more general octet theory, published in Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules (1923). Lewis visualized the electrons in an atom as being arranged in concentric cubes. The sharing of these electrons he illustrated in the Lewis dot diagrams familiar to chemistry students. He generalized the concept of acids and bases now known as Lewis acids and Lewis bases.« |
| William Coolidge | |
(source) |
Born 23 Oct 1873; died 3 Feb 1975.
William D(avid) Coolidge was an American engineer and physical chemist whose improvement of tungsten filaments (1913, patent No.1,082,933) was essential in the development of the modern incandescent lamp bulb and the X-ray tube. Coolidge's X-ray tube (1916, U.S. patent No. 1,203,495) completely revolutionized the generation of X-rays and remains to this day the model upon which all X-ray tubes for medical applications are patterned [above R]. He worked on many other devices such as high-quality magnetic steel, improved ventilating fans, and the electric blanket. During World War II he contributed research to projects involving radar and radar countermeasures. He was awarded 83 patents during his lifetime. William
David Coolidge: A Centenarian and His Work, by Herman
Alfred Liebhafsky. |
| Frederick William Lanchester | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1868; died 8 Mar 1946.
English automobile and aeronautics pioneer who built the first British petrol automobile (1896) and founded the Lanchester Engine Co in 1899. In 1901, Lanchester patented disc brakes. His production cars were scientifically designed and owed little to their competitors. His 1903 car had a balanced "vibrationless" two-cylinder horizontal engine with two counter-rotating crankshafts, electric ignition, 3 speed epicyclic gearbox with pre-selector control, tiller steering and a worm drive back axle. In 1907-8, he published an important two-volume work on aerodynamics. Lanchester is recognized as the first to grasp the role of the trailing vortices behind lifting wings and as the initiator of the circulation theory of lift. He also founded mathematical modelling for military gaming. |
| (Friedrich Wilhelm) Ludwig Leichhardt | |
(source) |
Born 23
Oct 1813; died 1848.
(Friedrich Wilhelm) Ludwig Leichhardt was a German explorer and naturalist who went to Australia in 1842 to study the rocks and wildlife in Queensland and the Northern Territory. In 1846 he left on an expedition with nine men to find a route from Moreton Bay (Brisbane) to Perth, rather poorly equipped. The party disappeared, leaving a mystery as to its fate which nine major expeditions in the next 90 years failed to solve. On previous travels he discovered many important rivers and reported on land suitable for grazing, but with difficulties of poor leadership and planning. His first trip (1844) ran out of supplies, and was forced to live on wildlife. In an encounter with hostile aborginals, one man was killed and two injured.« |
| Samuel Morey | |
| Born 23
Oct 1762; died 17 Apr 1843.
American inventor of a rotary steam engine, windmill, water wheel, steam pump and internal combustion engine. |
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| OCTOBER 23 - DEATHS | |
| Luther George Simjian | |
(source) |
 Died
23 Oct 1997 (born 28 Jan 1905)
Turkish-born American whose over 200 inventions included the TelePrompter, a self-posing portrait camera, automatic postage metering equipment, and an indoor golf practice range. In WW II, his Range Estimation Trainer provided a simulator for pilots to learn to identify aircraft types, their distance and speed. It used synchronized moving mirrors, controlled lighting and a miniature airplane to present various speeds, lighting, and angles. From 1939, he held 20 patents for an early form of an automated teller machine, and in 1960 his Bankograph (US patent No. 3,079,603) was given a trial by New York's First National City Bank (now CitiBank). It was able to take deposits, photograph the money and issue a receipt showing those images.«  |
| Stuart Criddle | |
(source) |
Died
23 Oct 1971 (born 4 Dec 1877)
English-born Canadian farmer, mammalogist, and plant breeder who kept meticulous field notes of mammal (and bird) life. He carried out many breeding experiments with sunflowers, corn, and lilies and had a new variety of lily named after him. He was a charter member of the American Society of Mammalogists. Although he had no formal schooling, he was awarded an honorary D.Sc. at the first convocation of Brandon University in 1968. His older brother Norman Criddle was known as the "dean of entomology" in western Canada, and is recognized for his development of the "Criddle mixture" for grasshopper control and for his early application of biological observations to insect control. Stuart immigrated into Canada as a boy with his family in 1882. |
| Ernest Thompson Seton | |
(source) |
Died
23 Oct 1946 (died 23 Oct 1946)
Anglo-American naturalist, writer and illustrator who applied these skills in over forty books on wild life, woodcraft, Indian lore and animal-fiction stories. As a capable naturalist, in his field observations he made detailed studies of morphology, physiology, distribution, and behaviour. His fame as author began with Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) - still in print a century later. Over a period of twenty years he delivered over three thousand lectures. Believing in promoting the values of ethology and ecology, he was chairman of the committee that established the Boy Scouts in the U.S. (1910). Seton envisioned the North American Indian as a model for the movement, but Baden-Powell's military structure was adopted as in Britain.«
Wild
Animals I Have Known, by Ernest Thompson Seton. |
| Charles Barkla | |
(source) |
Died
23 Oct 1944 (born 7 Jun 1877)
Charles Glover Barkla was a British physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1917 for his work on X-ray scattering. This technique is applied to the investigation of atomic structures, by studying how X-rays passing through a material and are deflected by the atomic electrons. In 1903, he showed that the scattering of x-rays by gases depends on the molecular weight of the gas. His experiments on the polarization of x-rays (1904) and the direction of scattering of a beam of x-rays (1907) showed X-rays to be electromagnetic radiation like light (whereas, at the time, William Henry Bragg who held that X-rays were particles.) Barkla further discovered that each element has its own characteristic x-ray spectrum.« |
| Edward A. Doisy | |
(source) |
Died
23 Oct 1986 (born 13 Nov 1893)
Edward Adelbert Doisy was an American biochemist who shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Henrik Dam) for his isolation and synthesis of vitamin K, a substance that encourages blood clotting (1939), used in medicine and surgery. With the embryologist Edgar Allen (1922-34), he developed assay techniques that facilitated research on sex hormones. Doisy and his associates isolated the sex hormones estrone (theelin, 1929; the first estrogen to be crystallized), estriol (theelol, 1930), and estradiol (dihydrotheelin, 1935). In 1936-39 he isolated two forms of the vitamin, (K1 from lucerne seed and K2 from fish meal, in a pure crystalline form), determined their chemical structures, and synthesized the vitamin.« |
| John Boyd Dunlop | |
(source) |
Died
23 Oct 1921 (born 5 Feb 1840)
Scottish inventor who was a pioneer of the pneumatic tyre. In 1887, when his 9-yr-old son complained of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over the cobbled streets of Belfast. Dunlop devised and fitted rubber air tubes held on to a wooden ring by tacking a linen covering fixed around the wheels. Due to the major improvement in riding comfort, Dunlop continued development, until he patented the idea, issued on 7 Dec 1889 (No. 10607) as "An improvement in Tyres of Wheels for Bicycles, Tricycles or other Road Cars". |
| Cullen Whipple | |
 |
Died
23 Oct 1868 (born 4 Sep 1801)
American inventor and machinist of Providence, RI, who patented the first practical screw machine in the U.S. for making pointed screws (14 Dec 1852, No. 9,477). Early screws had blunt ends, and it was necessary to drill a starter hole. In Oct 1840, he was one of ten incorporators of The New England Screw Co. He invented a machine for the company to use cutting the threads of screws (patented 18 Aug 1842), another for shaving the heads of screws (patented 6 Apr 1843) and one for removing the burs left in cutting the slots in the heads (patented 19 Apr 1843). He invented and patented seven other machines or devices for improving the manufacture of screws, such as a Screw-Blank Feeding mechanism (3 Jun 1856, No.15,052).« |
| OCTOBER 23 - EVENTS | |
| Oldest fossils | |
In 1977, American paleontologist Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard announced
the discovery of Pre-Cambian spherical one-celled algae microfossils (named
Eobacterium)
3.4
billion years old, earth's earliest life forms. Barghoorn, with J. William
Schopf, studied the 3.2 billion year old chert (a flintlike or quartz-like
rock) of the Fig Tree formation in Transvaal, South Africa. Rubidium and
strontium ratios
in the chert suggested an age of over 3 billion years. The fossils are
examples of Prokaryotes, organisms with simple cell wall containing organic
chemicals. A huge number of varieties exist today. They all produce oxygen;
and, in the Precambrian period, began to change the earth's primoidal reducing
atmosphere to the oxygenated one we have today. |
|
| Married Nobel laureates | |
(source) |
In 1947, the first American husband and wife team
to win a Nobel Prize, Carl and Gerty Cori (née Radnitz) of Washington
University Medical School, were awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize
for "the discovery on how glycogen is converted to glucose in the body,
and for the effects of hypophysis hormones on sugar metabolism." The prize
was shared with Bernardo Alberto Houssay who worked on another aspect of
sugar metabolism. In 1903, the French couple Pierre and Marie Curie were
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the extraordinary
services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation
phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." (Marie was born in
Poland.)« |
| Erie Canal | |
 |
In 1819, the first boat
passed through the Erie canal. The trial trip and excursion was made by
the Chief Engineer of Rome, from Utica to Rome and returned the
next day. Governor DeWitt Clinton and state officials with ladies and gentlemen
about seventy persons on board, composed the party. The boat was named
in compliment to Benjamin Wright, then chief engineer of the Erie canal. 
[Image: Benjamin Wright]
Wedding
of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation,
by Peter L. Bernstein. |
| Plastic surgery | |
(source) |
In 1814, the first modern plastic surgery was performed
at the Duke of York's Hospital, Chelsea, England. The surgeon, Joseph Carpue,
had read letter by a British surgeon, Lucas, in the Oct 1794 in the Gentleman's
Magazine. Lucas described a successful procedure performed in India
whereby a forehead flap was used to reconstruct
a man's mutilated nose. It had been deliberately mutilated enemies of the
British East Indian forces. (Hindu texts, up to 2600 years ago, have described
various reconstruction techniques.) Having first practiced on several cadavers,
Carpue operated on a British military officer who had lost his nose to
the toxic effects of mercury treatments, and another whose nose was mutilated
by a sword.
« [Image: plate from a
Carpue publication which shows a refined flap.] |
| Dalton's atomic weights | |
 |
In 1803, John Dalton presented
an essay on the absorption of gases by water, at the conclusion of which
he gave a series of atomic weights for 21 simple and compound elements.
He read his paper at a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society. |
| Earth's biblical creation | |
|
In 4004 BC, according to biblical interpretation by church leaders in 1650,
the Earth was supposed to have been created. |
|
