October 29 - Today in Science History

OCTOBER 29 - BIRTHS
Klaus Friedrich Roth
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1925 German-born British mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1958. His major work has been in number theory, particularly the analytic theory of numbers. He solved in the famous Thue-Siegel problem (1955) concerning the approximation to algebraic numbers by rational numbers (for which he won the medal). Roth also proved in 1952 that a sequence with no three numbers in arithmetic progression has zero density (a conjecture of Erdös and Turán of 1935).
Carl Djerassi
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1923 American chemist noted for establishing physical methods for determining organic molecular structure and his contributions to synthetic organic chemistry, his effectiveness in translating scientific knowledge into technological practice, and his efforts to promote international scientific cooperation. His research is in such diverse fields as chemistry of steroids; structure of alkaloids, antibiotics and terpenoids; synthesis of drugs, particularly antihistamines, oral contraceptives, and anti-inflammatory agents; optical rotatory dispersion studies, organic mass spectrometry, and magnetic circular diehroism of organic compounds. He has lectured extensively on birth control issues, and holds U.S. patent No. 2,744,122 for an oral contraceptive - the birth control pill.
Baruj Benacerraf
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1920 Venezuelan-born American immunologist who studied the mechanisms and genetic basis of the immunologic response and especially of its role in certain diseases known as the autoimmune diseases. He received a share (with George Snell and Jean Dausset) of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Benacerraf showed that genetic factors intimately related to the genes that determine an individual's unique constitution of H antigens actually regulate the interaction among the various cells belonging to the immunological system and are thereby important to the strength of an immunological reaction. He studied the guinea pig's ability to mobilize an immune response against a certain antigen as determined by genetic factors (Ir or immune response) genes.
Alfred V. Kidder
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1885; born 11 Jun 1963. Alfred V(incent) Kidder was the foremost American archaeologist of the southwestern U.S. and Middle America of his day and the force behind the first comprehensive, systematic approach to North American archaeology. His excavations included Pecos in New Mexico and the Maya in Guatemala. In spite of his great efforts and diligence he was criticized for his lack of integrated conclusions drawn from his numerous reports from the field without any synthesis and interpretation of that data. In his time, archeology was still considered as "gentlemanly adventure" with the goal of adding "artifacts" to museums. Kidder emphasized archeology's need for the scientific "eye" was the development of fact collecting techniques and clear definitions.
Othniel Marsh
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1831; died 18 March 1899. Othniel Charles Marsh was a U.S. scientist and paleontologist who discovered over 1000 fossils. He made extensive scientific explorations of the western U.S. and contributed greatly to knowledge of extinct North American vertebrates. Marsh spent only four seasons in the field, between 1870 and 1873. "The Great Bone Wars," were the result of rivalry with Edward Drinker Cope, America's other great vertebrate paleontologist of the period. Each scientist hired field crews to unearth and ship back fossils as fast as possible. The rival crews were known to spy on each other, dynamite their own and each other's secret localities (to keep their opponents from digging there), and occasionally steal each other's fossils.
John Elliotson
(EB)	Born 29 Oct 1791; died 29 Jul 1868. English physician who advocated the use of hypnosis in therapy and who in 1849 founded a mesmeric hospital. He was one of the first teachers in London to emphasize clinical lecturing and was one of the earliest of British physicians to urge use of the stethoscope, together with the methods of examining the heart and lungs which are used to this day. In 1823 acupuncture was mentioned in the first edition of the Lancet and in 1824 Dr. Elliotson began to use this method of treatment. In 1827 he published a series of results on the treatment of forty-two cases of rheumatism by acupuncture. In 1834 he became physician to the University College Hospital, where his interest in hypnosis led to conflicts with the hospital's medical committee and his resignation in 1838.
Robert Hoe
(source)	Born 29 Oct 1784; died 4 Jan 1833. English-American printing-press manufacturer. The Smith brothers established a carpenter shop in New York City with Hoe's assistance under the firm name of Smith, Hoe & Company, specializing in wooden hand presses. Later, they made cast-iron frame presses with the toggle-joint principle instead of the screw for pressure. After the Smiths died, Hoe continued the business under the name of R. Hoe & Company (1823-33). He purchased (1827) Samuel Rust's patent for a wrought-iron framed printing press, made improvements and successfully manufactured it as the "Washington" press. His son Richard continued the business after his death and developed the rotary press which increased newspaper production.

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OCTOBER 29 - DEATHS

Arne Tiselius
(source)	Died 29 Oct 1971 (born 10 Aug 1902) Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius was a Swedish biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1948 for his work on electrophoresis and other new methods of separating and detecting colloids and serum proteins. In electrophoresis - a method of separating chemically similar charged colloids - an electrical field is applied to the sample, and particles with different sizes migrate at different rates to the pole of opposite charge, enabling them to be detected and identified. Using the technique on blood serum Tiselius confirmed the existence of four different groups of proteins - albumins and alpha, beta, and gamma globulins. Tiselius also conducted work on chromatography (from 1940) and partition and gel filtration (from the late 1950s).
Robert Aitken
(source)	Died 29 Oct 1951 (born 31 Dec 1864) American astronomer who specialized in the study of double stars, of which he discovered more than 3,000. He worked at the Lick Observatory from 1895 to 1935, becoming director from 1930. Aitken made systematic surveys of binary stars, measuring their positions visually. His massive New General Catalogue of Double Stars within 120 degrees of the North Pole allowed orbit determinations which increased astronomers' knowledge of stellar masses. He also measured positions of comets and planetary satellites and computed orbits. He wrote an important book on binary stars, and he lectured and wrote widely for the public.
Albert Calmette
(source)	Died 29 Oct 1933 (born 12 July 1863) Albert Calmette was a French doctor and bacteriologist, born in Nice. He was a pupil of Louis Pasteur. He joined the Navy as a doctor, and was the Director of the Bacteriological Institute of Saigon (1891). On his return in France, as a professor of bacteriology, he created the Pasteur Institute of Lille. (1895-1919). Calmette studied the venoms of the snakes and anti-venomous serotherapy. He developed and improved several processes of vaccination, in particular that against tuberculosis with its fellow-member bacteriologist and veterinary Camille Guerin (1872-1961). These two researchers gave their name to the famous antituberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG).
Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud
(source)	Died 29 Oct 1881 (born 16 Sep 1796) French physician and clinician who first discovered the localisation of the speech centre in the middle of the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. He reported this observation in 1825 in his early treatise on brain diseases. He also presented clinical evidence that loss of speech corresponds to a lesion of the anterior lobes of the brain, confirming Gall's opinion on the seat of the organ of articulate language. As a clinician, he published on diverse fields of medicine, including hermaphroditism, on cholera, encephalitis, diseases of the heart, cancer and various forms of fever. In his significant work on rheumatism he recognised the cartilaginous and synovial lesions of this disease and was the first to describe them.«
Jean le Rond D'Alembert
(source)	Died 29 Oct 1783 (born 16 Nov 1717) French mathematician known for his work in various fields of applied mathematics, in particular dynamics. In 1743 he published his Traité de dynamique (Treatise on Dynamics). The d'Alembert principle extends Newton's third law of motion, that Newton's law holds not only for fixed bodies but also for free moving bodies. D'Alembert also wrote on fluid dynamics, the theory of winds, the properties of vibrating strings and conducted experiments on the properties of sound . His most significant purely mathematical innovation was his invention and development of the theory of partial differential equations. He published eight volumes of mathematical studies (1761-80). He was editor of the mathematical and scientific articles for Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie.



OCTOBER 29 - EVENTS

Glenn returns to space
(source)	In 1998, U.S. astronaut John Glenn was launched into space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. In 1962, Glenn first made history as the first American to orbit the Earth, strapped into a nine-by-seven-foot capsule. Now at age 77, and a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Glenn was a member of the STS-95 crew, serving as a Payload Specialist, aboard the Discovery. He carried out studies on the commonalities between the effects of space flight and aging. His microgravity research results relate to product-oriented commercial applications in such diverse fields as medical, agriculture and manufacturing. The 9-day mission returned on 7 Nov 1998, after 134 Earth orbits, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213-hr 44-min. His original flight had lasted about 5 hours.
Gaspra asteroid
(source)	In 1991, space probe Galileo become the first human object to fly past an asteroid, Gaspra, making its closest approach at a distance of 1,604 km, passing at a speed of 8 km/sec (5 mi/sec). The encounter provided much data, including 150 images, which showed Gaspra has numerous craters indicating it has suffered numerous collisions since its formation. Gaspra is about 20-km long and orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Gaspra, asteroid 951, was discovered by Ukrainian astronomer Grigoriy N. Neujamin (1916) who named it after a Black Sea retreat. In the photograph (left), subtle color variations have been exaggerated by NASA to highlight changes in reflectivity, surface structure and composition.«
Bone repair by electricity
(source)	In 1971, the first successful use of electricity to repair a bone fracture is reported by surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. Electrical currents have been used to heal bone since the mid-1800s, and the effect of electrical stimulation on bone has been long studied and well documented.When human bone is bent or broken, it generates an electrical charge ("On the Piezoelectric Effect of Bone", Fukada and Yasuda, 1957). This low level electrical charge stimulates the body's internal repair mechanism. [Image: steps in a fractured bone healing]
Angiogram
(source)	In 1958, the first coronary angiogram was performed by Dr. F. Mason Sones, Jr. (1919-1985), a pediatric cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. This is a diagnostic x-ray procedure designed to visualize blockages of the small nutrient arteries of the heart. Sones discovered the technique by accidental. In studies on dog's hearts, dye injected in coronary arteries caused heart fibrillation, and therefore had never been used on humans. While attempting to dye a patient's diseased vessels by injecting contrast material only near their openings, on one occasion about 30 cc of the dye went into the patient's coronary artery. Expected heart fibrillation (requiring the opening of the patient's chest to treat) did not occur. Thus, lower amounts of dye could in fact be used safely. [Image: Right coronary artery shown on an angiogram: white where healthy, dark where blocked.]
Cloud seeding
	In 1947, a forest fire at Concord, N.H. was drenched with rain produced by seeding cumulus clouds with dry ice, the first such event in the U.S. The rain-making planes were flown over the burning area by seeders from the General Electric Co. of Schnectady, N.Y. Part of Project Cirrus, the experimental mission was a joint weather research program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Naval Research. However, natural rainfall followed, caused by natural conditions, so it was not possible to measure the artificial rainfall.
First ballpoint pen
	In 1945, the first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department Stores for $12.95. In June, 1945, Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, in Buenos Aires on unrelated business, saw the Biro pen in a store, recognized the pen’s sales potential and bought a few as samples. Reynolds returned to America and started manufacturing. He copied the product in four months, (ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, Eversharp Company. On the first day of sale, his Reynolds' Rocket pen was immediately successful; $100,000 worth are sold its first day on the market). The ballpoint pen became a fad. However, it leaked, skipped and was unreliable. By 1948, the price dropped to less than 50 cents. Reynolds' company failed in 1951.
Alaska highway
	In 1942, the Alaska highway was opened to traffic. At mile 1202, Beaver Creek , the final connection was completed here when the 97th Engineers met the 18th Engineers. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 spurred construction of the Alaska Highway. Alaska was considered vulnerable to a Japanese invasion, and the highway was deemed a military necessity. Construction began in Mar 1942, and was completed 8 months later. Literally bulldozed through the wilderness, road conditions along the Alcan were horrific; 90 degree turns and 25 percent grades were not uncommon. Rain and truck traffic turned sections of the road into an impassable mire. The highway was improved in 1943. The 1,523 mile highway officially opened to the public in 1948.
Windmill
	In 1872, the all-metal windmill was patented (J.S. Risdon, Genoa, Ill.).
Ohio River steamboat
	In 1811, the first Ohio River steamboat left Pittsburgh for New Orleans.