| NOVEMBER 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Enrico Bombieri | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Nov 1940
Italian mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1974 for his major contributions to the study of the prime numbers, to the study of univalent functions and the local Bieberbach conjecture, to the theory of functions of several complex variables, and to the theory of partial differential equations and minimal surfaces. "Bombieri's mean value theorem", which concerns the distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions which is obtained by an application of the methods of the large sieve. Between 1979 and 1982 Bombieri served on the executive committee of the International Mathematical Union. Bombieri now works in the United States. In 1996 Bombieri was elected to membership of the National Academy of Sciences. |
| Boris Borisovich Yegorov | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1937; died 12 Sep 1994
Soviet physician who was the first practicing doctor in space. He travelled on Voskhod 1 ("Sunrise 1"), 12-13 Oct 1964 the first space flight with a crew of more than one man. He was an expert in the sense-of-balance mechanism of the inner ear. He collected medical information, including the effects of radiation, confinement and weightlessness on the crew. He began his training in the summer of 1964, a few months before the flight, but was not a long-term cosmonaut and afterwards returned to his medical practice. |
| Karl Ziegler | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1898; died 12 Aug 1973.
German chemist who in 1963 shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Giulio Natta "for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers" improving the quality of plastics. Polymer molecules are long chains of thousands of atoms, made by connecting together repeating units of a small molecule (the monomer). Ziegler found peculiar electrical forces in a bond between an aluminium and a carbon atom in a hydrocarbon chain: reactive molecules are drawn in and sandwiched between these two atoms, increasing the length of the chain. When the chain is long enough, detaching the aluminium stops further growth of the molecule. The combination of aluminium compounds with other metallic compounds gives Ziegler catalysts.. |
| Bertil Lindblad | |
 |
Born 26
Nov 1895; died 26 Jun 1965.
Swedish astronomer who contributed greatly to the theory of galactic structure and motion and to the methods of determining the absolute magnitude (true brightness, disregarding distance) of distant stars. He theorized that the areas around the center of a galaxy revolve and this is why it was flattened. Oort later proved that does indeed happen. He studied the structure and dynamics of star clusters, estimated the Milky Way's galactic mass, the period of our Sun's orbit, confirmed Harlow Shapley's direction and approximate distance to the center of the Galaxy, and developed spectroscopic means of distinguishing between giant and main sequence stars. |
| Norbert Wiener | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1894; died 18 Mar 1964.
U.S. mathematician, who established the science of cybernetics, a term he coined, which is concerned with the common factors of control and communication in living organisms, automatic machines, and organizations. He attained international renown by formulating some of the most important contributions to mathematics in the 20th century. His work on generalised harmonic analysis and Tauberian theorems won the Bôcher Prize in 1933 when he received the prize from the American Mathematical Society for his memoir Tauberian theorems published in Annals of Mathematics in the previous year. His extraordinarily wide range of interests included stochastic processes, quantum theory and during WW II he worked on gunfire control.  Cybernetics,
by Norbert Wiener. |
| Willis Haviland Carrier | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1876; died 7 Oct 1950.
American inventor who invented modern air conditioning. In 1902 (a year after graduating with an M.E.), he designed his first system to control temperature and humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant. By 2 Jan 1906, he patented an "Apparatus for Treating Air," the world's first spray type air conditioning equipment, (U.S. No. 808,897). His "Rational Psychrometric Formulae," (1911) remain essential for air conditioning engineers. In 1915, he started the Carrier Engineering Corporation, to deal with temperature and humidity conditions in the industrial environment. Eventually the technology reached public buildings and then homes. He developed the first safe, low pressure centrifugal refrigeration machine using nontoxic, nonflammable refrigerant.« Willis
Haviland Carrier Father of Air Conditioning, by Margaret
Ingels. |
| Sir Aurel Stein | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1862; died 26 Oct 1943.
Sir (Mark) Aurel Stein was an Hungarian-British archaeologist and geographer, born in Budapest, whose travels and research in central Asia, particularly in Chinese Turkistan, revealed much about its strategic role in history. In 1906, Stein uncovered a group of mummified corpses near Loulan, in Central Asia. Their well-preserved bodies were clad in woollen garments and they wore tall felt hats decorated with jaunty feathers. The men were bearded and their facial features seemed European. Stein dated them to c.100 BC. When the Dunhuang Caves, China, closed for centuries, were reopened, he discovered 15,000 manuscripts (1907), including the Diamond Sutra, reputed to be the first dated printed book (868 A.D.). |
| Ferdinand de Saussure | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1857; died 22 Feb 1913.
Swiss linguist, born in Geneva, whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century. The work by which he is best known, the Cours de linguistique générale (1916, Course in General Linguistics) was compiled from the lecture notes of his students after his death. His focus on language as an 'underlying system' inspired a great deal of later semiology and structuralism, and he is often described as the founder of modern linguistics. |
| John Newlands | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1837; died 29 July 1898.
John Alexander Reina Newlands, was a British chemist who first established an order of elements by the atomic weights, and observed a periodicity in the properties. Every eighth element has similar properties, hence he named the Law of Octaves (7 Feb 1863). It took another quarter century, and the work of others, such as Mendeleev, for the significance of his discovery to be recognized. |
| Charles-Adolphe Wurtz | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1817; died 12 May 1884.
French chemist and educator noted for his research on organic nitrogen compounds, hydrocarbons, and glycols. In 1848, he studied a group of compounds related to ammonia called amines and showed they belonged to a type with a nitrogen nucleus. In ammonia a nitrogen atom was bound to three hydrogens, whereas in amines, organic radicals replaced one or more of these hydrogens. |
| Sir William George Armstrong | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1810; died 27 Dec 1900.
(Baron of Cragside) English inventor, engineer, and industrialist in hydraulic engineering, shipbuilding and artillery. He invented a hydroelectric machine which produced frictional electricity (1843), a hydraulic crane (1846), a hydraulic accumulator to power machinery (1850), the Armstrong breech-loading gun made of successive rings of metal shrunk upon an inner steel barrel with rifle bore (1855), prototype of all modern artillery, and a breech-loading gun with wire-wound cylinder (1880). He founded Elswick Engineering Works (1847) which merged (1927) its armament and shipbuilding activities with Vickers' Sons and Co. to form Vickers Armstrong, Ltd. His mansion, Cragside, was the first British home lighted by hydroelectricity.« Arms
and the State: Sir William Armstrong and the Remaking of British Naval
Power, 1854-1914, by Marshall J. Bastable. |
| Georg Forster | |
(source) |
Born 26
Nov 1754; died 12 Jan 1794.
Explorer and scientist who helped to establish the literary travel book as a favoured genre in German literature. Forster sailed to the Pacific as a botanical collector with James Cook's second expedition to the Pacific 1772-75 on board the "Resolution". He then worked as an anthropologist, essayist, art critic, and travel writer in Germany, and finally participated in the French Revolution before dying in his Paris exile in 1794. He died before he was 40. |
| NOVEMBER 26 - DEATHS | |
| Ashley Montagu | |
 Died
26 Nov 1999 (born 28 Jun 1905)
British American anthropologist noted for his works popularizing anthropology and science. |
|
| Joy Paul Guilford | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1987 (born 7 Mar 1897)
American psychologist and practitioner of psychophysics, the quantitative measurement of subjective psychological phenomena, exemplified by his studies of the relative affectiveness of colour, hue, brightness, and saturation for men and women. Guilford also worked in other areas of quantitative methods in sensation, personality, psychophysics, and attention. In Guilford's Structure of Intellect theory (1959), intelligence is viewed as comprising operations, contents, and products. There are 5 kinds of operations (cognition, memory, divergent production, convergent production, evaluation), 6 kinds of products (units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, and implications), and 5 kinds of contents (visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, behavioral). |
| Sven Anders Hedin | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1952 (born 19 Feb 1865)
Swedish explorer and geographer, born in Stockholm, who led through Central Asia a series of expeditions that resulted in important archaeological and geographical findings. During his first major Asian expedition, he crossed the Pamirs, charted Lop Nor (Lake) in China, and finally arrived at Beijing. He then journeyed to Tibet by way of Mongolia, Siberia, and the Gobi Desert. Hedin explored Tibet and Xinjiang (Sinkiang), identified the sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus, and Sutlej rivers, and, in 1906, explored and named the Trans-Himalayas. In 1927 Hedin led an expedition of Chinese and Swedish scientists into Central Asia. He wrote Through Asia (1898), The Conquest of Tibet (1935), My Life as an Explorer (1926), and other accounts of his travels. |
| W. Atlee Burpee | |
1911 cover (source) |
Died
26 Nov 1915 (born 5 Apr 1858)
American seedsman who founded the world's largest mail-order seed company. The Burpee company was founded in Philadelphia in 1876 by an 18 year-old with a passion for plants and animals and a mother willing to lend him $1000 dollars of “seed money” to get started in business. Within 25 years he had developed the largest, most progressive seed company in America. |
| Benjamin Apthorp Gould | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1896 (born 27 Sep 1824)
American astronomer whose star catalogs helped fix the list of constellations of the Southern Hemisphere Gould's early work was done in Germany, observating the motion of comets and asteroids. In 1861 undertook the enormous task of preparing for publication the records of astronomical observations made at the US Naval Observatory since 1850. But Gould's greatest work was his mapping of the stars of the southern skies, begun in 1870. The four-year endeavor involved the use of the recently developed photometric method, and upon the publication of its results in 1879 it was received as a signicant contribution to science. He was highly active in securing the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences. |
| George Dobson | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1895 (born 4 Sep 1844)
Irish zoologist, chiefly remembered for his laborious investigation into the structure and classification of the chiroptera and insectivora, on both of which he became the chief authority of his time." After graduating with medical training (1867) from Trinity College, Dublin, he rose to the rank of surgeon lieutenant colonel in the army. He also served in the Zulu war of 1879. He was awarded the gold medal of the Dublin Pathological Society for his essay on Diagnosis and Pathology of the Injuries and Diseases of the Shoulderblade. He contributed the sections for Insectivora, Chiroptera, and Rodentia, in the article Mammalia and the articles Mole,Shrew, and Vampire to the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.[Image: example of a Chiroptera] |
| Thomas Andrews | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1885 (born 19 Dec 1813)
Irish chemist and physicist, who demonstrated the continuity of the gaseous and liquid states whereby during changes between the two states, physical properties display no abrupt changes. He discovered the critical temperature for carbon dioxide (1861), above which the gas cannot be liquefied by pressure alone. He wrote: We may yet live to see...such bodies as oxygen and hydrogen in the liquid, perhaps even in the solid state. He accurately measured heats of neutralisation, formation and reaction; and latent heats of evaporation. Andrews was the first to use a "bomb calorimeter" - a closed metal vessel in which a mixture of gases could be electrically exploded. He studied ozone, and proved that is an allotrope - or altered form - of oxygen.« |
| John Loudon McAdam | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1836 (born 21 Sep 1756)
John Loudon McAdam was born in Ayr, Scotland, and was the inventor of of macadamized roads. He made his fortune in his uncle's counting-house. (New York City, 1770-83) then returned to England. McAdam developed new methods of road construction. In 1816, as surveyor to the Bristol Turnpike Trust, he re-made their roads with a raised carriageway to improve drainage. Stones were graded and laid in three levels, with the smallest stones crushed and laid as a top surface. This provided swifter and safer travel. Later he added tarmacadam ("tarmac", asphalt) to bind the top layer. His methods were adopted in many other countries. In 1827 he was made surveyor-general of metropolitan roads in Great Britain. [Image: engraving by Charles Turner] |
| André Parmentier | |
 |
Died
26 Nov 1830 (born 3 July 1780)
(Anglicized name: Andrew Parmentier) Belgian-American, André Joseph Ghislain Parmentier, born in Enghien, Belgium, was a horticulturist, responsible for exhibiting many plant species in America. He was the second of four sons of a linen merchant. Little is known about his early life. In 1824 Parmentier emigrated to America where he lived for only six years until his untimely death in 1830. Soon after arriving he established a nursery in Brooklyn from which he supplied seeds and root stock he had imported or propagated himself. In 1825, he established the first botanic garden in Brooklyn, at Atlantic and Carleton Avenues. His work is also preserved at the Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park, NY, the most impressive of the four known Parmentier designs. |
| Dieudonné Dolomieu | |
(source) |
Died 26 Nov 1801 (born 23 Jun 1750)
(also called Déodat De Gratet De Dolomieu) was a French geologist and mineralogist after whom the mineral dolomite was named. A member of the order of Malta since infancy, at age 19 he was sentenced to death for killing a brother knight in a duel, but was pardoned. Following a study of the Alps (1789–90), he described dolomite (1791) The rock, which gave its name to the Dolomite Mountains where it was found, has crystals of calcium and magnesium carbonate, generally white or pinks. As a member of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt (1798), Dolomieu was captured on the way home and imprisoned at Messina. During his imprisonment he wrote his main treatise on minerals (1801), on the margins of a Bible. Image right: dolomite (source) |
| Edward Jacob | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1788 (born c.1710)
English naturalist who published Plantaeæ Favershamienses (1777) on the flora of Faversham, Kent. He also wrote about his fossil finds on his estate on the Isle of Sheppey (purchased in 1752), and nearby coastal cliffs of Kent, including chambered Nautilus varying in size "from that of a hazelnut to that of a Man's Head," crabs, turtle, petrified fruits and vegetables. In 1750, he discovered the acelabultim, a vertebra and a 4-ft thigh bone sticking in the clay on the Minster cliffs, which he thought were remains of an Elephas (elephant). Until his explorations there, little was known of interest to the antiquarian, naturalist, geologist and zoologist. He believed the great variety of remains of very different climates to be proof of "an universal deluge."«  |
| Nicolaus Steno | |
(source) |
Died
26 Nov 1686 (born 10 Jan 1638)
(a.k.a. Niels Steensen, or Stensen) was a (a.k.a. Niels Steensen, or Stensen) was a Danish geologist and anatomist who first made unprecedented discoveries in anatomy, then established some of the most important principles of modern geology. During medical studies in Amsterdam he discovered "Stensen's duct" providing saliva from the parotid gland to the mouth. He was Danish royal anatomist for 2 years. Interested by the characteristics and origins of minerals, rocks, and fossils, he published in Prodromus (1669) the law of superposition (if a series of sedimentary rocks has not been overturned, upper layers are younger and lower layers are older) and the law of original horizontality (although strata may be found dipping steeply, they were initially deposited nearly horizontal.) The
Seashell on the Mountaintop, by Alan Cutler. |
| Francisco Sanches | |
(source) |
Died
c. 26 Nov 1623 (born c. 1550)
Physician and philosopher who espoused a "constructive skepticism" that rejected mathematical truths as unreal and Aristotle's theory of knowledge as false. In Quod nihil scitur, written in 1576, explored the human epistemological situation and showed that man's knowledge claims in all areas were extremely dubious. Sanches advocated recognizing that nothing can be known and then trying to gain what limited information one can through empirical scientific means. |
| NOVEMBER 26 - EVENTS | |
| Tidal power | |
(source) |
In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle opened the world's first tidal power
station at Rance estuary, in Brittany. La Rance is the most powerful
tidal
power plant in the world. With its width of 700 metres, it blocks La
Rance estuary situated near Saint-Malo (Côtes d'Armor). The operation
of the dam is similar to that of run-of-river power plants since its head
is also low and there is a substantial flow rate. At high and low tide,
the water builds up rapidly on one of the sides of the dam. When the difference
in level is sufficient, the gates are opened and the water rushes into
the dam. The turbines are reversible so as to be able to operate regardless
of the direction of water flow. Each year, the power plant generates 500
million kWh. |
| France in space | |
(source) |
In 1965, 14:47 GMT, France launched its first satellite, Astrix-1
onboard a Diamant rocket from Hammaguir, Algeria, becoming the third
country in space (after the USSR Sputnik on 4
Oct 1957), and the U.S. Explorer-I on 31
Jan 1958). With a 42-kg payload, the French launch was a test of the
Diamant
launching vehicle for the first time. Before it lost the colony, the French
conducted nuclear, missile, and space launch tests from the Hammaguir site
in the Sahara desert near the Moroccan border. The fourth nation to put
a satellite in orbit was Japan (Osumi 5, 11
Feb 1970) followed by China (China 1, 24
Apr1970) and the U.K. (Prospero, 28
Oct 1972) |
| Tutankamun tomb antechamber sighted | |
(source) |
In 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter pierced
the second of two doorways closing the tomb
of King Tutankamun. Carter made archaeological history by unearthing the
first Egyptian pharaonic tomb that still contained most of its treasures.
Carter
recorded
in his notes, "...we made a tiny breach in the top left hand corner to
see what was beyond." On this day, Carter and his backer Lord Carnarvon
saw the Antechamber through this hole, where "...the interior of the chamber
gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary
and beautiful objects heaped upon one another." The antechamber was entered
the next day. [Image: view of
the antechamber with objects in situ.] |
| Military aviation | |
(source) |
In 1911, in France, the Nieuport
IV G monoplane
piloted by American Charles
Weymann won the first contest of military aviation. In these trials,
it outperformed seven other French manufacturers who were given a list
of requirements.
The aircraft and engine must be French, able to fly a roundtrip of 300
km without stopover, carrying a 300 kg payload, at a minimum of 60 km/h
(in no wind), and capable of making a landing on or takeoff from a plowed
field. It must also be transportable by road and by rail and able to be
dismounted for storage or remounted in less than 30 min. The Army, however,
deciding on the value of an earlier model, ordered 12 of the Nieuport II
N monoplanes with Rhone 80-hp engine to form a fleet (early 1913) at Rheims.
[Image
right: Charles Weymann (source)] |
| First meteor photo | |
 |
In 1885, the first meteor trail was photographed
in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This was part of the Andromedid
meteor shower also known as the Bielids because they were caused by Comet
Biela. William F. Denning (Bristol, England) noted the activity with
rates averaging 100 per hour. On the next evening, 27 Nov, he declared
"meteors were falling so thickly as the night advanced that it became almost
impossible to enumerate them." Observers with especially clear skies had
rates of about one meteor/second or 3600/hour. Meteor showers are produced
by small fragments of cosmic debris entering the earth's atmosphere at
extremely high speed. The debris originates from the intersection between
a planet's orbit and a comet's orbit. [Image:
clipart of a shooting star] |
| Refrigerated railcar | |
(USPTO) |
In 1867, the first U.S. patent for a refrigerated railroad car was issued
to J.B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan (No. 71,423). This described an
insulated car with double walls, double roof and double floor with the
space between filled with sawdust, felt or other suitable material. Ice
chambers at each end of the chamber would carry about 800 pounds of ice.
Hanging flaps were designed to maintain air circulation such that warmer
air moving upward would then flow through the ice chamber, and thus cooled,
be returned to the body of the car. Iron pipes mounted under the roof were
installed for hooks carrying meat, or other edibles. Matting was positioned
between the inner sliding door and outer door to keep the car as air-tight
as possible. |
| Street car | |
(source) |
In 1832, the first horse drawn American street car in the U.S. began public
operation in New York City. Named the John
Mason (after its owner, a prominent New York banker) it was equipped
with iron wheels and drawn over iron rails laid in the center of the road
along 4th Avenue from Prince St to 14th St. Thirty passengers were carried
in three non-connecting compartments with 10 seats in each. The fare was
12-1/2 cents. An earlier trip was made 14 Nov 1832 to show the street car
to municipal officials carried onboard. (The John
Mason was the first horse-drawn streetcar, although horses had
been used at an earlier date to pull trains on railroad track lines.) The
line prospered,
encouraging franchises in other cities. [Image:
San Diego horse car from 1886 during a 1911 parade] |
| Columbium | |
(source) |
In 1801, Charles Hatchett announced
to the Royal Society in London that he had discovered a new element, which
he named columbium (Cb). In 1801, while working for the British Museum
in London he analyzed a piece of columbite, a black mineral from New England,
found by JohnWinthrop (1606-1676), the first governor of Connecticut, a
mineral collector. His grandson sent the specimen decades before to Sir
Hans Sloane, who gave it to the museum. Columbite turned out to be a very
complex mineral but Hachett discovered that it contained a "new earth"
which implied the existence of a new element which he could detect, but
not isolate. Rediscovered 40 years by German chemist, Heinrich Rose, it
is now called niobium.« |
| Lion in US | |
(source) |
In 1716, the first lion to be seen in America, tamed for exhibition, was
exhibited by Captain Arthur Savage at his house in Brattle Street, Boston,
Mass. This lion was first advertised
for show in The Boston News Letter on 31 Mar 1718, as follows: "All
persons having the Curiosity of seeing the noble and Royal Beast the Lyon,
never one before in America, may see him at the House of Capt. Arthur Savage
near Mr. Colman's Church, Boston." This representative of the "dark continent"
was moved in 1720 to the home of Martha Adams. Her newspaper advertisement
welcomed anyone at any time, and a sign on her house read "The King of
Beasts is to be seen here." In 1726, the lion was shown in the West Indies,
in 1727 it was at Philadelphia, Penn., in 1728 it was seen in New York,
New Jersey and was last recorded as being in New London, Conn. |
| Eddystone lighthouse | |
(source) |
In 1703, during the "Great Storm" more than 8,000 people perished and the
first Eddystone lighthouse
was totally destroyed; among the dead was its designer, Henry Winstanley.
He was a a London merchant, who had lost two of his ships on the Eddystone
Reef, 14 miles south of Plymouth, England, site of many other shipwrecks.
In 1696, work began on a rather strange wooden structure. Although unlike
today's lighthouses, it was a major achievement for its day. It was first
lit on 14 Nov 1698. After additional modification and strengthening, Winstanley
was so confident that he said he wished to be present during "the greatest
storm there ever was.". His wish came true, for Winstanley was killed sleeping
inside it, during the 1703 storm. [Image:
from 1989 British stamp] |
