| OCTOBER 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Shiing-shen Chern | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Oct 1911; died 3 Dec 2004.
Chinese-American mathematician and educator whose researches in differential geometry include the development of the Chern characteristic classes in fibre spaces, which play a major role in mathematics and in mathematical physics. "When Chern was working on differential geometry in the 1940s, this area of mathematics was at a low point. Global differential geometry was only beginning, even Morse theory was understood and used by a very small number of people. Today, differential geometry is a major subject in mathematics and a large share of the credit for this transformation goes to Professor Chern." - C N Yang, quoted from the book, Chern, a great geometer of the twentieth century. (1992) |
| W(illiam) Lloyd Warner | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1898; died 23 May 1970.
W(illiam) Lloyd Warner was an American sociologist and anthropologist who is remembered for authoring studies of social class structure. He pioneered in applying anthropology research methods in the field of the contemporary urban social community. In his Yankee City (5 vols.), he merged an ethnographic perspective gained from fieldwork among Australian aborigines with information gathered from formal interviews for his social study of a New England city, Yankee City. He was the first sociologist to use a six-fold classification. In studying the old town, Warner recognised three distinct groups - upper, middle and lower classes - each sub-divided into upper and lower sections. The topmost, or upper-upper class, was composed of the wealthy old families; the lower-lower class represented the poorest.«  Yankee
City, edited by W. Lloyd Warner. |
| Charles Eugene Bedaux | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1887; died 18 Feb 1944.
French-born American efficiency engineer who developed the Bedaux plan for measuring and compensating industrial labour. Bedaux was born in Paris in 1886 and migrated to the U.S. early in the 20th century. He became one of the pioneering contributors to the field of scientific management. Bedaux worked out various ideas about measuring human energy: these provided the basis for the innovative work study programs that lead to startling improvements in productivity. Bedaux introduced the concept of rating assessment in timing work. He adhered to Gilbreth's introduction of a rest allowance to allow recovery from fatigue. He is also known for extending the range of techniques employed in work study, including value analysis. |
| Max Mason | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1877; died 23 Mar 1961)
American mathematical physicist, educator, and science administrator. During World War I he invented several devices for submarine detection - several generations of the Navy's "M," or multiple-tube, passive submarine sensors. This apparatus focused sound to ascertain its source. To determine the direction from which the sound came, the operator needed only to seek the maximum output on his earphones by turning a dial. The final device had a range of 3 miles. Mason's special interest and contributions lay in mathematics (differential equations, calculus of variations), physics (electromagnetic theory), invention (acoustical compensators, submarine-detection devices), and the administration of universities and foundations. |
| Gaetano Arturo Crocco | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1877; died 19 Jan 1968.
Italian pioneer in aeronautics and space science who designed revolutionary airships and patented an early cyclic pitch design for helicopter rotors (1906). While the design of helicopters was in its infancy, Crocco recognized that a way to change the pitch cyclically on the blades was needed if a helicopter was to work properly in forward flight. He designed a number of airships in the early part of the 20th century and switched to designing rocket engines in the 1920s. Crocco founded the Italian Rocket Society (1951) and made many contributions to the theory of spaceflight. He calculated that a spacecraft could travel from Earth to Mars, perform a reconnaissance Mars flyby (without orbit), and return to Earth in a total time of about one year.« |
| C(harles) W(illiam) Post | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1854; died 9 May 1914.
American industrialist who founded Post Cereal Company with the Grape-Nuts cereal he created. In 1890, a nervous breakdown had led Post to the sanitorium of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, where he was fed on Kellogg's grain-intensive vegetarian diet. Early in 1895, Post began the manufacture of Postum, a grain product intended as a coffee substitute, similar to one of Kellogg's concoctions. The manufacture of Grape-Nuts, based on another Kellogg item, began the following year. Post's new company, Postum Ltd., achieved wide-scale distribution of its products through massive spending on advertising appealing to the health concerns of the American public. In 1929, Postum became General Foods Corporation. |
| Georg Frobenius | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1849; died 3 Aug 1917.
German mathematician who made major contributions to group theory, especially the concept of abstract groups (with Ludwig Stickleberger) and the theory of finite groups of linear substitutions (with Issai Schur), that later found important uses in the theory of finite groups as it applies to quantum mechanics. He also contributed to means of solving linear homogenous differential equations. The fact so many of Frobenius's papers read like present day text-books on the topics which he studied is a clear indication of the importance that his work, in many different areas, has had in shaping the mathematics which is studied today. |
| Lewis Boss | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1846; died 12 Oct 1912.
American astronomer best known for his compilation of two catalogues of stars (1910, 1937). In 1882 he led an expedition to Chile to observe a transit of Venus. About 1895 Boss began to plan a general catalog of stars, giving their positions and motions. After 1906, the project had support from the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. With an enlarged staff he observed the northern stars from Albany and the southern stars from Argentina. With the new data, he corrected catalogs that had been compiled in the past, and in 1910 he published the Preliminary General Catalogue of 6,188 Stars for the Epoch 1900. The work unfinished upon his death was completed by his son Benjamin in 1937 (General Catalogue of 33,342 Stars for the Epoch 1950, 5 vol.). |
| Giovanni Maria Lancisi | |
(source) |
Born 26
Oct 1654; died 20 Jan 1720.
Italian clinician and anatomist, personal physician to three popes, who is considered the first modern hygienist. He obtained his M.D. in 1672, a month before age 18 years. Having examined the causes of sudden deaths, in 1706 he published De motu cordis mortibus, on the problems of cardiac pathology, and De motu cordis et aneuysmatibus (1728). He carried out extensive anatomical and physiological studies, also epidemiology studies on malaria, influenza and cattle plague. In 1717, contrary to the old conception of "mal' aria " - literally, "bad air" - Lancisi observed that the lethal fever, malaria, disappeared when the swamps near to the city were cleared. He concluded that injurious substances transmitted from flies and mosquitos were the origin of the disease. |
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| OCTOBER 26 - DEATHS | |
| Hans Walter Kosterlitz | |
(source) |
 Died
26 Oct 1996 (born 27 Apr 1903)
German-born British pharmacologist who had already retired from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, when he discovered (1975), with John Hughes, enkephalins, two potent naturally occurring opiates in the brain. Enkephin was the first known opioid produced by the human body. This opiate-like substance was produced by the brain in response to the perception of pain. Kosterlitz's discovery illuminated the brain's role in pain modulation and had direct clinical implications. |
| Alfred Tarski | |
|
Died
26 Oct 1983 (born 14 Jan 1902)
Polish-born American mathematician and logician who made important studies of general algebra, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and metamathematics. Formal scientific languages can be subjected to more thorough study by the semantic method that he developed. He worked on model theory, mathematical decision problems and with universal algebra. He produced axioms for "logical consequence", worked on deductive systems, the algebra of logic and the theory of definability. Group theorists study 'Tarski monsters', infinite groups whose existence seems intuitively impossible.  Alfred
Tarski: Life and Logic by Anita Burdman Feferman |
| Igor I. Sikorsky | |
(source) |
Died
26 Oct 1972 (born 25 May 1889)
Igor Ivan Sikorsky was a Russian-born U.S. pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. His earliest successes were with fixed-wing aircraft, including his prize-winning S-6-A (1912) which led to a position as head of the aviation subsidiary of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works. In this position, as a result of a mosquito-clogged carburetor and subsequent engine failure, he had the radical idea of an aircraft having more than one engine. Thus he produced the first multi-engine airplane, the four-engined "The Grand." This revolutionary aircraft featured such things as an enclosed cabin. a lavatory, upholstered chairs and an exterior catwalk atop the fuselage so passengers could take a turn about in the air. [Image: from U.S. airmail postage stamp] |
| Charles P. Steinmetz | |
(source) |
Died
26 Oct 1923 (born 9 Apr 1865)
German-born American inventor and electrical engineer whose theories and mathematical analysis of alternating current systems helped establish them as the preferred form of electrical energy in the United States, and throughout the world. In 1893, Steinmetz joined the newly organized General Electric Company where he was an engineer then consultant until his death. His early research on hysteresis (loss of power due to magnetic resistance) led him to study alternating current, which could eliminate hysteresis loss in motors. He did extensive new work on the theory of a.c. for electrical engineers to use. His last research was on lightning, and its threat to the new AC power lines. He was responsible for the expansion of the electric power industry in the U.S. |
| George Robert Stephenson | |
| Died
26 Oct 1905 (born 20 Oct 1819)
English railroad engineer who contributed to the pioneering work of his uncle George Stephenson and his cousin Robert Stephenson. He began his career in 1837, assisting his uncle on the construction of a railway from Manchester to Leeds. He helped his cousin build the Victoria tubular bridge across the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Later, he functioned independently as a consultant and designer on railway projects and bridges in England, New Zealand and Denmark. Upon Robert's death in 1859, George Robert became director of the Newcastle locomotive works.« |
|
| Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchayev | |
| Died
26 Oct 1903 (born 17 Feb 1846)
Russian geomorphologist, Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchayev, pioneered the study of soil creation processes and their classification. Dokuchayev regarded the composition of soil as the product of the combined interaction of climate, bedrock, and organisms. Thus, he showed (1898) that different soils of different areas may result from similar bedrock material when climate is differs. In this way, he was beginning the recognition of biomes. He introduced (1883) the term chernozem for a type of rich black soil, rich in carbonates and humus, that occurs in the temperate latitudes of Russia. |
|
| Alfred The Great | |
(EB) |
Died
28 Oct 900 (born 849)
English monarch who in the Dark Ages recognized the value of learning, not merely for himself but for the benefit of the people of his country. He not only encouraged men of learning, but he laboured himself and gave proof of his own learning. He made every effort that worthwhile Latin books should be translated into Anglo-Saxon, and brought in scholars from Wales and the Continent to assist. He did much work himself, translating the works of Boethius and Bede. The year of death is uncertatin and sometimes given as 899. |
| OCTOBER 26 - EVENTS | |
| Baby Fae | |
(source) |
In 1984, Baby Fae became the first new-born recipient
of a cross-species heart transplant. Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, a heart surgeon
at Loma Linda University Medical Center, California, transplanted
a walnut-sized young baboon heart. She had been born prematurely 12 days
earlier with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a lethal underdevelopment
of the left side of the heart. Bailey suggested the experimental xenotransplant
to the mother. By 1977, three such animal-heart transplants into adults
had provided less than four days of life at best. Bailey believed the infant's
underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue,
and a new drug cyclosporine would help. Baby Fae lived 20 days before complications
caused her death.« |
| Killer smog | |
(source) |
In 1948, a killing smog
blanketed the small town of Donora,
near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The people of that working class community
went to bed not knowing that a suffocating cloud
of industrial gases would descend upon them during the night. The cloud,
a poisonous mix of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and metal dust, came
from the smokestacks of the local zinc smelter where most of the town worked.
Over the next five days, twenty residents died and half the town's population
- 7000 people - were hospitalized over the next with difficulty breathing.
The Donora tragedy shocked the nation and marked a turning point about
industrial pollution and its effect on health. [Image
left: Donora, at noon on 29 Oct 1948] (Map source) |
| Rotary washer | |
(source) |
In 1858, a U.S. patent was issued for cycling reheated water in a washing
machine, to Hamilton E. Smith of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (No. 21,909).
His invention was an improvement for washing machines in which a reciprocating
plunger acts on clothes in a tub. His invention placed two horizontal diaphragms
in the tub. Both moved vertically with the action of the plunger. The upper
one was perforated, and the lower one had a valve. Below the lower diaphragm
springs pushed it up as the plunger was lifted. Their motion acted to pump
water into the tub from a circuit of pipe that included coils in a heating
tank and drained cooler water from the top of the tub. Smith improved his
machine and obtained a second patent in 1863. |
