| NOVEMBER 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Stanley Cohen | |
(source) |
 Born 17
Nov 1922
American biochemist who, with Rita , shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his researches on epidermal growth factor (EGF), a substance produced in the body that influences the development of skin tissues. With the nerve growth factor (NGF) studied by Levi-Montalcini, these were the first of many growth-regulating signal substances to be discovered and characterized. The discovery of NGF and EGF opened new fields of widespread importance to basic science and increased understanding of many disease states such as developmental malformations, degenerative changes in senile dementia, delayed wound healing and tumour diseases. |
| Geoffrey Bourne | |
 |
Born 17
Nov 1909; died 19 Jul 1988.
Geoffrey (Howard) Bourne was an Australian-born American anatomist. His studies of the mammalian adrenal gland made him a pioneer in the chemistry of cells and tissues (histochemistry). Professor and Chairman of the Anatomy Department of the Emory University Medical School, Atlanta, Ga.; later became Director (1962-78) of the Yerkes Primate Research Center there. Bourne was a most articulate spokesman for nonhuman primate research. He fought vigorously to proceed with research involving all primates, especially the dwarf chimpanzee. His numerous books covered many facets of biology. |
| Honda Soichiro | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1906; died 5 Aug 1991.
Soichiro Honda was the Japanese engineer, race car driver and industrialist who founded the Honda Motor Company, motor cycle and car manufacturer. Born in Iwata Gun, Japan, his career began as a garage apprentice (1922) which led to opened his own garage in 1928. He began manufacturing with a piston-ring factory (1934) expanding to motor cycles in 1948, followed by the release of a sports car and light truck in 1963. Soichiro Honda retired in 1973, and was appointed a "supreme adviser." |
| Eugene Paul Wigner | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1902; died 1 Jan 1995.
Hungarian-born American physicist who was the joint winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Maria Goeppert Mayer and Johannes Hans Jensen) for his insight into quantum mechanics, for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles. He made many contributions to nuclear physics and played a prominent role in the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy.  The
Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, by Eugene Paul Wigner,
Andrew Szanton. |
| Hans Zinsser | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1878; died 4 Sep 1940.
American bacteriologist and immunologists who was an international authority on typhus, a deadly disease. In 1936, he isolated the typhus germ. By 1939 he had perfection of a method to produce enough anti-typhus vaccine to protect a country nation. He travelled abroad to study disease outbreaks: an typhus epidemic in Serbia (1915), cholera in the Soviet Union (1923), a prison typhus epidemic in Mexico (1931) and lectured in China (1938). He published over 160 scientific papers. The cause of typhus, Rickettsia organisms are carried by a louse or a rat flea and transmitted to humans by a bite from the parasites, especially in areas of poor sanitation and overcrowding. He wrote his autobiography in the third person, As I Remember Him, while dying of leukemia.« Rats,
Lice, and History ... of Typhus Fever, by Hans Zinsser. |
| William Merriam Burton | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1865; died 29 Dec 1954.
American chemist who devised the first thermal cracking process that more than doubled the proportion of gasoline yield from crude oil by using high heat and high pressure. The crude petroleum mixture of various hydrocarbons can be separated into several groups of constituents by physical means, commonly distillation. His thermal cracking process (patented 7 Jan 1913, No. 1,049,667) chemically reformed longer molecules of less volatile components into smaller molecules thus doubling the yield of gasoline needed to fuel the motor industry. During its first 15 years in use the process saved more than 1 billion barrels of crude oil. In 1937 the invention of catalytic cracking superceded the Burton process, but it remains in wide use.« |
| John Stanley Plaskett | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1865; died 17 Oct 1941.
Canadian astronomer known for his expert design of instruments and his extensive spectroscopic observations. He designed an exceptionally efficient spectrograph for the 15-inch refractor and measured radial velocities and found orbits of spectroscopic binary stars. He designed and supervised construction of the 72-inch reflector built for the new Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria and was appointed its first director in 1917. There he extended the work on radial velocities and spectroscopic binaries and studied spectra of O and B-type stars. In the 1930s he published the first detailed analysis of the rotation of the Milky Way, demonstrating that the sun is two-thirds out from the centre of our galaxy about which it revolves once in 220 million years. |
| Sir George Thomas Beilby | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1850; died 1 Aug 1924
Scottish industrial chemist who developed (1890) the process of manufacturing potassium cyanide (widely used to extract gold from low-grade ore) by passing ammonia over a heated mixture of charcoal and potassium carbonate. Beilby entered the oil-shale industry in 1869 and greatly increased the yield of paraffin and ammonia by introducing the continuous retort. Noting the destruction of metals by ammonia at high temperatures, Beilby researched the flow of solids. He inferred that when a solid is caused to flow, as in polishing, the crystalline surface is broken down to a harder and denser layer. Although much criticized, this theory explained the hardening of metals under cold working and gave valuable stimulus to further research. |
| William Arnold Anthony | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1835; died 29 May 1908.
American physicist and pioneer in the teaching of electrical engineering in the United States. While teaching in the Physics Department at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., he initiated and developed one of the first courses in electrical engineering in the U.S. (1883). During 1872-75, Anthony, with the aid of student George Moler, built the first American Gramme dynamo for direct current, used to power arc lamps that lighted the Cornell campus, the first American electrical outdoor-lighting system. Anthony also built a mammoth tangent galvanometer, a device which utilized the earth's magnetic field for the measurement of current. He designed the dynamo for first underground electricity distributing system. Anthony contributed to development of gas-filled electric lamps. |
| Sir John Evans | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1823; died 31 May 1908.
British antiquarian, numismatist, and a founder of prehistoric archaeology. In about 1860, he began his searches for relics of early man in Britain. He garnered a notable collection of prehistoric stone and bronze implements. Evans found humanly made stone axes in the same layers as the bones of extinct European animals like hippopotamus, elephant, and saber-toothed tiger. In 1859, from such evidence, he announced that humans had lived much earlier than 6,000 years ago. This was much older than the long accepted Biblical chronology implied. Evans also collected coins of the ancient Britons, Romans and Anglo-Saxons. His son Sir Arthur (John) Evans followed his interests as an archaeologist. |
| August Möbius | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1790; died 26 Sep 1868.
August Ferdinand Möbius was a German astronomer, mathematician and author, died in Leipzig. He is best known for his work in analytic geometry and in topology, especially remembered as one of the discoverers of the Möbius strip, which he had discovered in 1858. A Möbius strip is a two-dimensional surface with only one side. It can be constructed in three dimensions as follows. Take a rectangular strip of paper and join the two ends of the strip together so that it has a 180 degree twist. It is now possible to start at a point A on the surface and trace out a path that passes through the point which is apparently on the other side of the surface from A. Although his most famous work is in mathematics, Möbius did publish important work on astronomy. |
| Nicolas Lémery | |
(source) |
Born 17
Nov 1645; died 19 Jun 1715.
French chemist and pharmacist who prepared a comprehensive dictionary of pharmaceuticals in the Pharmacopée universelle (1697) and the Traité des drogues simples (1698). He also gave popular lectures on chemistry. His Traité de l'antimoine (1707), contains the results of his investigation into the properties and preparations of mineral antimony. His chemistry textbook, Cours de chymie (Paris, 1675), went through 31 editions by 1756. He classified compounds as animal, vegetable or mineral in origin, and explained chemical activity in mechanistic terms (ex. he supposed that "spiky" atoms were associated with acidity and porous atoms with alkalinity, the two fitting together when a chemical reaction took place). |
|
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| NOVEMBER 17 - DEATHS | |
| Louis-Eugène-Félix Néel | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Nov 2000 (born 22 Nov 1904)
French physicist, corecipient (with the Swedish astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 for his pioneering studies of the magnetic properties of solids. His contributions to solid-state physics have found numerous useful applications, particularly in the development of improved computer memory units. About 1930 he suggested that a new form of magnetic behavior might exist - called antiferromagnetism. Above a certain temperature (the Néel temperature) this behaviour stops. Néel pointed out (1947) that materials could also exist showing ferrimagnetism. Néel has also given an explanation of the weak magnetism of certain rocks, making possible the study of the past history of the Earth's magnetic field. |
| Robert Hofstadter | |
 |
Died
17 Nov 1990 (born 5 Feb 1915)
American scientist who was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1961 for his investigations in which he measured the sizes of the neutron and proton in the nuclei of atoms. He revealed the hitherto unknown structure of these particles and helped create an identifying order for subatomic particles. He also correctly predicted the existence of hte omega-meson and rho-meson. He also studied controlled nuclear fission. Hofstadter was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Stanford Linear Accelerator. He also made substantial contributions to gamma ray spectroscopy, leading to the use of radioactive tracers to locate tumors and other disorders. (He shared the prize with Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer of Germany.) |
| Detlev (Wulf) Bronk | |
(source) |
Died
17 Nov 1975 (born 13 Aug 1897)
American scientist credited with formulating the modern theory of the science of biophysics. He pioneered use of electro-microscopy to monitor human nerve network and was a leader in the study of human physiology in aeronautics. During WW II, he coordinated a group physiologists, located on air bases at home and abroad, who developed the Army Air Force altitude training and night vision training programs for pilots. Meanwhile, he studied the effects of low oxygen pressure on human performance. After the war, he became president of Rockefeller Institute/University (1953-68) and was prominent in scientific and governmental organizations including the National Science Foundation and the Presidential Science Advisory Committee.« |
| John Evershed | |
Sunspots (source) |
Died
17 Nov 1956 (born 26 Feb 1864)
English astronomer who discovered (1909) the Evershed effect - the horizontal motion of gases outward from the centres of sunspots. While photographing solar prominences and sunspot spectra, he noticed that many of the Fraunhofer lines in the sunspot spectra were shifted to the red. By showing that these were Doppler shifts, he proved the motion of the source gases. This discovery came to be known as the Evershed effect. He also gave his name to a spectroheliograph, the Evershed spectroscope. |
| Raymond Pearl | |
(source) |
Died
17 Nov 1940 (born 3 Jun 1879)
American zoologist, one of the founders of biometry, the application of statistics to biology and medicine. Pearl was chief statistician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1919-35). He pioneered studies in longevity, changes in world population, and genetics. He reported in the May 1938 Scientific American that "the smoking of tobacco was associated definitely with an impairment of life duration and the amount or degree of this impairment increased as the habitual amount of smoking increased." In 1926, he first reported health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption (as opposed to both abstinence and heavy drinking) in a modern medical light. |
| Herman Hollerith | |
(source) |
Died
17 Nov 1929 (born 29 Feb 1860)
American inventor of a tabulating machine that was an important precursor of the electronic computer. For the 1890 U.S. census, he invented several punched-card machines to automate the sorting of data. The machine which read the cards used a pin going through a hole in the card to make an electrical connection with mercury placed beneath. The resulting electrical current activated a mechanical counter. It saved the United States 5 million dollars for the 1890 census by completing the analysis of the data in a fraction of the time it would have taken without it and with a smaller amount of manpower than would have been necessary otherwise. In 1896, he formed the Tabulating Machine Company, a precursor of IBM. |
| Carl E. Akeley | |
Age 46 (source) |
Died
17 Nov 1926 (born 19 May 1864)
Carl Ethan Akeley was an American naturalist and explorerwho developed the taxidermic method for mounting museum displays to show animals in their natural surroundings. His method of applying skin on a finely molded replica of the body of the animal gave results of unprecedented realism and elevated taxidermy from a craft to an art. He mounted the skeleton of the famous African elephant Jumbo. He invented the Akeley cement gun (1911) to use while mounting animals and the Akeley camera which was used to capture the first movies of gorillas. In the 1920's Akeley made a large specimen collection, part of the American Museum's famous African mammal hall. He died in the Virunga mountains while working towards the mountain gorilla diorama. |
| Johan August Brinell | |
(source) |
Died
17 Nov 1925 (born 21 Nov 1849)
Swedish metallurgist who devised the Brinell hardness test, a rapid, nondestructive means of determining the hardness of metals. Brinell studied many aspects of iron and its production. Brinell´s important work on transformations in steel during heating and cooling. His discoveries about the control of the carbon containing phases is the present basis for the knowledge about properties of steel. The Brinell Hardness Test measures the relative hardness of metals and alloys, by forcing a 10mm hard steel ball into a test piece with a 3000kg load for 30 seconds and measuring the surface area of the resulting indentation. The load is reduced to 500kg for very soft materials and the steel ball is replaced with tungsten carbide for very hard materials. |
| François-Joseph-Victor Broussais | |
(source) |
Died
17 Nov 1838 (born 17 Dec 1772)
French physician whose advocacy of leech treatments dominated Parisian medical practice early in the19th century. Early physicians felt that the depleting effect of bloodletting was "cooling," relieving the congestion of inflamed capillaries, and saw leeches as a panacea. From his findings of blood in the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract during postmortem examinations, Broussais believed all disease results from inflammation due to excessive build-up of blood. Thus, he thought that all diseases could be treated through diet and bleeding, and was said to have routinely applied 30 leeches to each of his patients. But by 1850 new techniques and drugs replaced leeches. In 1836, François Broussais presented 20 lectures on phrenology. |
| NOVEMBER 17 - EVENTS | |
| Neutron bomb | |
In 1978, from Moscow, Brezhnev said the Soviets have tested neutron bomb.* |
|
| Nuclear bomb | |
|
In 1976, the Chinese detonated their most powerful nuclear device to date.* |
|
| Mouse | |
 |
In
1970, a U.S. patent was issued for the computer mouse - an "X-Y Position
Indicator for a Display System" (No. 3541541). The inventor
was Doug Engelbart. In the lab, he and his colleagues had called it a "mouse,"
after its tail-like cable. The first mouse was a simple hollowed-out wooden
block, with a single push button on top. Engelbart had designed this as
a tool to select text, move it around, and otherwise manipulate it. It
was a key element of his larger project - the NLS (oN Line System),
a computer he and some colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute had
built. The NLS also allowed two or more users to work on the same document
from different workstations. |
| Surveyor 6 | |
|
In 1967, Surveyor 6 made a six-second flight from its landing site on the
moon, first lift-off on lunar surface.* |
|
| Iliad mozaic | |
|
In 1952, archeologists reported finding a 2,000-year-old mosaic floor
at Circum, Cyprus, that depicts a scene from Homer's Iliad.* |
|
| Nuclear-powered heating | |
|
In 1951, development of world's first nuclear-powered heating system was
reported in Britain.* |
|
| Cancer treatment | |
|
In 1925, Dr. W. Blair Bell gave a lecture in London, advocating treatment
of cancer with lead injections.* |
|
| Suez Canal | |
|
In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and
the Red seas. |
|
| First bowler hat sold | |
|
In 1849, the first bowler hat was sold by Lock & Co. of St. James's,
London, to William Coke of Holkham, Norfolk for twelve shillings. He had
placed an order intending for the hat to protect him from low-hanging branches
when he was out shooting. On this day, he travelled to London to take delivery,
and tested it by putting it on the floor and stamping on it. It had been
made for Lock & Co. by Thomas and William Bowler, felt hat makers on
Southwark Bridge Road, London. This accounts for the name by which the
hat is now known, although Lock's still refer to the style as a Coke after
their first customer who bought it.*« |
|
| Clock patent | |
(source) |
In 1797, the first patent in the U.S. for a clock was issued to Eli
Terry of East Windsor, Conn. for an equation clock. The clock had two
minute hands, one of which showed the mean or true time, while the other
"together with the striking part and hour hand showed the apparent time,
as divided by the sun according to the table of variation of the sun and
clock for each day of the year." He began making
clocks in 1793, in Plymouth, Conn. Terry introduced wooden geared clocks
using the ideas of Eli Whitney's new armory practice to produce interchangeable
gears (1802) and mass production of very inexpensive
household clocks. Terry developed
ways to produce wooden clock works by machine.
Eli
Terry: Clockmaker of Connecticut, by Leslie Allen Jones. |
