| DECEMBER 18 - BIRTHS | |
| Harold Varmus | |
(source) |
 Born 18
Dec 1939
American virologist and cowinner (with J. Michael Bishop) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989 for their work on the origins of cancer - that cancer genes (oncogenes) can arise from normal cellular genes, called proto-oncogenes. Oncogenes are normal genes that control growth in every living cell, but which under certain conditions can turn renegade and cancerous. They believed that the growth of cancerous cells is not the result of an invasion from outside the cell, but rather a misuse of a normal gene by a retrovirus, as a result of exposure to some aggravating carcinogen, such as radiation or smoke. Their research in the mid '70s has led to great strides in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of cancers. |
| Daniel Mazia | |
(source) |
Born 18
Dec 1912; died 9 Jun 1996.
American cell biologist who was notable for his work in nuclear and cellular physiology. His research centered on the broad question of cell reproduction, especially the division and regulation mechanisms involved in mitosis (the process by which the chromosomes within the nucleus of a cell double and divide prior to cell division). Mazia is best known for his isolation (1951, with Japanese biologist Katsuma Dan) of the mitotic apparatus, the structure responsible for cell division. This brought understanding of the mechanisms of cell division and intracellular motility. A study in the early '60s on centrosomal reproduction, an until recently unappreciated structure, led to Mazia's interest in this cell organelle and the publication of a seminal paper. |
| Edwin H. Armstrong | |
(source) |
Born 18
Dec 1890; died 31 Jan/1 Feb 1954.
Edwin H(oward) Armstrong was the American inventor who laid the foundation for much of modern radio and electronic circuitry. Fascinated by radio from childhood, he built a 125-foot-tall antenna in the front yard in 1910 and invented the continuous-wave transmitter (1912), the regenerative circuit (1912), superheterodyne circuits (1918), and frequency modulation for the FM radio system (1933). His inventions and developments form the backbone of radio communications as we know it. Exhausted by nonstop patent battles from the 1920s on, he took his own life. Nevertheless, he won most of the suits posthumously. |
| Walter Dorwin Teague | |
(source) |
Born 18
Dec 1883; died 5 Dec 1960.
Industrial designer who pioneered in the establishment of industrial design as a profession in the United States. Teague designed cameras for Eastman Kodak and Polaroid, glassware for Steuben, interior designs, and many other items such as flat irons and radios. He designed the old-style Texaco gas stations, the ones that were painted white with forest-green streamline stripes and a free-standing post bearing the red Texaco star logo on a white disk, which were built alike over America. |
| Sir J.J. Thomson | |
(source) |
Born 18
Dec 1856; died 30 Aug 1940.
Sir J(oseph) J(ohn) Thomson was an English physicist who helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908. Thomson experimented with currents of electricity inside empty glass tubes, investigating a long-standing puzzle known as "cathode rays." His experiments prompted him to make a bold proposal: these mysterious rays are streams of particles much smaller than atoms. He called these particles "corpuscles," and suggested that they might make up all of the matter in atoms. It was startling to imagine a particles inside the atom at a time when most people thought that the atom was indivisible, the most fundamental unit of matter. |
| Théodule-Armand Ribot | |
(source) |
Born 18
Dec 1839; died 9 Dec 1916.
French psychologist who pioneered in experimental psychology and conducted influential psychpathological studies. His endeavour to account for memory loss as a symptom of progressive brain disease was published in his Les Maladies de la mémoire (1881; Diseases of Memory), constitutes the most influential early attempt to analyze abnormalities of memory in terms of physiology. Ribot was instrumental in introducing dynamic psychology in France. In 1885 Ribot was appointed to teach the first course in experimental psychology offered by the Sorbonne, at the University of Paris. |
|
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| DECEMBER 18 - DEATHS | |
| Konrad Zuse | |
(source) |
 Died
18 Dec 1995 (born 22 Jun 1910)
German engineer who in 1941 constructed the first fully operational program-controlled electromechanical binary calculating machine, or digital computer, called the Z3. Earlier, Zuse developed and built the Z1 the first binary digital computer in the world (1936-8) and two more machines before the end of WW II, but he was unable to convince the Nazi government to support his work. He created a basic programming system known as Plankalkül with which he designed a chess playing program.The Z3 was destroyed in 1944 during the war. Next came the more sophisticated Z4, which was the only Zuse Z-machine to survive the war, by several moves to new locations away from air raids. During the last days of war it was hidden. In 1950, he took it to Zurich. |
| Nathan Rosen | |
 |
Died
18 Dec 1995 (born 22 Mar 1909)
U.S.-born Israeli theoretical physicist who in 1935 collaborated with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on a much-debated refutation of the theory of quantum mechanics; he later came to accept the theory. The famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen critique of quantum mechanics was published in the 1935 Physical Review. (A New York Times obituary described The Physical Review as "one of the most impenetrable periodicals in the English language.") Rosen founded the Institute of Physics at Technion in Haifa. |
| Theodosius Dobzhansky | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1975 (born 25 Jan 1900)
Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionist whose work had a major influence on 20th-century thought and research on genetics and evolutionary theory. He made the first significant synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution with Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics in his book Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937). From 1918 his research gave experimental evidence that genes could vary far more than geneticists had previously believed. Thus, successful species tend to have a wide variety of genes that, while redundant in its present environment, do provide a species as a whole with genetic diversity. Such diversity enables the species to adapt effectively to changes in the surrounding environment - the basis for modern evolutionary theory. |
| Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod | |
1952 (source) |
Died
18 Dec 1968 (born 5 May 1892)
English archaeologist who, between the wars, dominated a string of pioneering excavations in the Near East (1929-34), most notably the 22 month excavation at Mount Carmel, Palestine, which put Near Eastern prehistory on the map. The Mount Carmel cave deposits spanned 200,000 years of human occupation, and finds included over 92,000 stone tools. Most important were the finds of human fossils, including the skeleton of a female Neanderthal dated c. 110,000 BC, the first ever to be found outside Europe. This led on to the discovery of more skeletal remains of primary importance to the study of human evolution. A leading authority on the Paleolithic for many years, Garrod was the first woman to receive a professorship at the University of Cambridge (1939-52). |
| Bedrich Hrozný | |
(source) |
Died 18 Dec 1952 (born 6 May 1879)
Czech archaeologist and linguist who, working with cuneiform tablets from Hattusas, deciphered the Hittite language. His first archeological fieldwork was in Palestine (1904). In 1913, he collaborated in deciphering the cuneiform languages recorded in Winckler's archives from Boghazkioi, the ancient Hittite capital in central Turkey. Hrozny maintained that Hittite was an Indo-European language, and he published his translations in 1917. His work on the cuneiform documents derived from the Assyrian merchants at Kultepe revealed the political and economic conditions in the Near East prior to 2000 B.C. In 1934, he travelled widely in Asia Minor studying heiroglyphics. He excavated Hittite sites in Turkey, including ancient Kanesh.« [Image right: detail of Cuneiform inscription from Bedrich Hrozny's notes.] |
| Andrija Mohorovicic | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1936 (born 23 Jan 1857)
Croatian meteorologist and geophysicist who discovered the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle, a boundary now named the Mohorovicic discontinuity. In 1901 he was appointed head of the complete meteorological service of Croatia and Slavonia, he gradually extended the activities of the observatory to other fields of geophysics: seismology, geomagnetism and gravitation. After the Pokuplje (Kupa Valley) earthquake of 8 Oct 1909, he analyzed the spreading of seismic waves with shallow depths through the Earth. From these, he was the first to establish, on the basis of seismic waves, a surface of velocity discontinuity separating the crust of the Earth from the mantle, now known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity |
| Sir John William Alcock | |
(EB) |
Died
18 Dec 1919 (born 6 Nov 1892)
Aviator who as pilot, with his fellow British aviator Arthur Brown as navigator, made the first nonstop transatlantic flight. Alcock served with the Royal Naval Air Service and was considered one of their best pilots. In the WW I, he flew numerous missions over Turkish enemy lines, winning a DSC for a solo attack on three Turkish planes (1917). Alcock and Brown took off on 14 Jun 1919 in a twin-engine Vickers Vimy, a converted bomber from Lester's Field near St. John's, Newfoundlan, They landed the plane in a bog near Clifden, Ireland, the next day, having flown 1,950 miles in 16h 27m averaging 118 mph. They received a prize of £10,000 from the Daily Mail newspaper and were knighted. He died in an air crash six months after his transatlantic flight. |
| Sir Richard Owen | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1892 (born 20 Jul 1804)
English anatomist and paleontologist who is remembered for his contributions to the study of fossil animals and for his strong opposition to the views of Charles Darwin. He created the word "Dinosaur" meaning "terrible reptile" (1842). Owen synthesized French anatomical work, especially from Cuvier and Geoffroy, with German transcendental anatomy. He gave us many of the terms still used today in anatomy and evolutionary biology, including "homology". In 1856, he was appointed Superintendent of the British Museum (Natural History). Image: Detail from portrait by William Holman Hunt. |
| Michel Chasles | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1880 (born 15 Nov 1793)
French mathematician who, independently of the Swiss-German mathematician Jakob Steiner, elaborated the theory of modern projective geometry, the study of the properties of a geometric line or plane figure that remain unchanged when the figure is projected onto a plane from a point not on either the plane or the figure. In his text Traité de géométrie in 1852 Chasles discusses cross ratio, pencils and involutions, all notions which he introduced. Chasles was the victim of a celebrated fraud paying the equivalent of 20,000 pounds for various letters from famous men of science and others which turned out to be forged. |
| Jacques Charles-François Sturm | |
(EB) |
Died
18 Dec 1855 (born 29 Sep 1803)
French mathematician whose work resulted in Sturm's theorem, an important contribution to the theory of equations. As tutor of the de Broglie family in Paris (1823-24), Sturm met many of the leading French scientists and mathematicians. In 1826, with the Swiss engineer Daniel Colladon, he made the first accurate determination of the velocity of sound in water and a year later wrote a prizewinning essay on compressible fluids. In 1829, he found the number of real roots of a given polynomial in a given interval. [Image: Sturm, pencil sketch by Daniel Colladon, 1822; in the Academy of Sciences, Paris] |
| Bernhard Bolzano | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1848 (born 5 Oct 1781)
Bohemian mathematician and theologian who made significant contributions to both mathematics and the theory of knowledge. He provided a more detailed proof for the binomial theorem in 1816 and suggested the means of distinguishing between finite and infinite classes. Bolzano helped to establish the foundations of analysis (for example, the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem), attempted to elaborate mathematical method, and anticipated some basic ideas of Cantor's set theory. His major work, Wissenschaftslehre (1837), contains various contributions to logic and semantics concerning the relations of compatibility, derivability, and consequence, the deduction theorem, and the logic of classes, entailment, and probability. |
| Canvass White | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1834 (born 8 Sep 1790)
American engineer who assisted Benjamin Wright constructing the Erie Canal from 1816. To prepare for building the canal, in late 1817, White travelled extensively in Great Britain visiting canals and learning construction methods. With this experience, on his return, he was Wright's principal assistant. Building locks required a hydraulic cement as mortar between the stones. Because of the high cost to import it from England, White investigated making cement from local limestone. He found rock near the canal route in Madison County was very suitable. He obtained a the first U.S. patent for waterproof cement on 1 Feb 1820. White was consulting engineer for many other canal projects, but retired young due to poor health, and died shortly after at age 44.« 
 Great
Engineers and Pioneers in Technology, Vol 1, editted
by Roland Turner and Steven L. Goulden. |
| Jean-Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier (Knight) de Lamarck | |
(source) |
Died
18 Dec 1829 (born 1 Aug 1744)
Pioneer French biologist who is noted for his speculations about the evolution of living things, particularly his theory that acquired traits are inheritable (such as giraffes who, he said, through stretching to reach tall trees, make their necks longer, and then pass on longer necks to their offspring.) This Lamarckism idea is controverted by Darwinian theory. He published a flora of France (1778) and a system of classification for invertebrate animals, published in his Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertebres (7 vols, 1815-22). In 1809 Lamarck published his theory of evolution (in Philosophie zoologique). Lamarck's speculations about the physical and natural world found little favour among his contemporaries and he died blind and in poverty.  |
| DECEMBER 18 - EVENTS | |
| Tokyo Bay tunnel | |
Umi-hotaru (source) |
In 1997, the 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) toll expressway, Tokyo Bay Aqualine
bridge and tunnel that spans the narrowest gap of Tokyo Bay, opened to
traffic after 31 years of studies. It connects
the cities of Kawasaki and Kisarazu. The project took 8-1/2 years to complete
and cost $17 billion. Total length: 15.1 km (9.38 mi) includes a 4.4-km
(2.7 mi) bridge, a 9.5-km (5.9 mi) shield tunnel, and two artificial islands.
It has the world's longest undersea tunnel, running 60 meters (197 feet)
deep under the surface of the water. An artificial island, Umi-hotaru,
connects the bridge and tunnel portions, as a parking, rest area
and tourist attraction, offshore in Tokyo Bay. Previously, the trip required
a 1 hr ferry or 100 km (62.1 miles) drive. |
| Project SCORE satellite | |
(source) |
In 1958, the first American communications satellite was launched. Project
SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was put
into orbit from Cape Canaveral using an Atlas B missile, also the first
successful trial of the Atlasas
a space launch vehicle. The entire rocket was placed into low orbit with
the communications equipment integrated into the fairing pods of the missile.
The low orbit limited life expectancy of the satellite to only 2 to 3 weeks,
thus limiting opportunities for realtime relay between two ground
stations. Therefore, a storeandforward mode was added by including
a tape recorder, which also gave the satellite a worldwide broadcast capability
- the world's first satellite to broadcast
voice. [Image: An Atlas-B rocket
of the type used to launch the Project SCORE satellite.] |
| Nuclear power station retired | |
(source) |
In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first
large-scale civilian nuclear power
plant in the world first fed electricity into the grid for the Pittsburgh
area. Shippingport is located on the Ohio River about 25 miles from Pittsburgh.
Ground was broken in 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower when the Atomic
Energy Act of 1954 authorized private nuclear power production in the U.S.
He made the official opening dedication on 26 May 1958, a year in which
the United States would detonate 77 atomic tests,
but one that would also see the first tentative test ban agreement. It
was taken out of service in 1982. Decommissioning was completed
in 1989. |
| America's first giant panda | |
(source) |
In 1936, the first giant panda infant to reach the U.S. alive, was brought
back from an expedition in Tibet by Ruth Harkness, a young Manhattan socialite.
A welcome diversion from the news of the Depression era, the lady and panda
were a media sensation. The panda baby, named Su-Lin, appeared on the front
page of the Chicago Tribune for nine consecutive days. Entrepreneurs
sold toy pandas. Su-Lin was eventually acquired by Brookfield Zoo, Chicago.
Shortly after their marriage, her husband, a wealthy adventurer, had left
for China on an expedition
to capture a panda (1934), but instead died there of throat cancer. Ruth
left home to complete the quest on a remarkable adventure trekking through
Tibet. (Su Lin died 1 Apr 1938.)«
[Image:
Ruth Harkness with Su Lin]
The
Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of Ruth Harkness...,
by Vicki Constantine Croke. |
| Photon | |
(source) |
In 1926, in a letter published in Nature, G.N.
Lewis coined the word
"photon" when he suggested that it "would seem inappropriate to speak of
one of these hypothetical entities as a particle of light, a corpuscle
of light, a light quantum, or a light quant, if we are to assume that it
spends only a minute fraction of its existence as a carrier of radiant
energy, while the rest of the time it remains as an important structural
element within the atom. It would also cause confusion to call it merely
a quantum, for later it will be necessary to distinguish between the number
of these entities present in an atom and the so-called quantum number.
I therefore [propose for this] which is not light but plays an essential
part in every process of radiation, the name photon. |
| Piltdown man | |
(source) |
In 1912, the discovery of the skull known as Piltdown man, the first important
fossil human skull ever to be unearthed in England was announced at a meeting
of the Geological Society of Great Britain. Charles Dawson, steward of
Barkham Manor, an attorney and secretary to the Sussex Archaeological Society;
and Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the British
Museum announced their remarkable find had been made at Piltdown Common.
The specimen, known as Piltdown man, occupied an honored place in the catalogues
of fossil hominids for the next 40 years. But in 1953, thanks to some rigorous
scholarly detective work, Piltdown man was revealed to be nothing more
than a forgery,
manufactured from modern human and animal remains. |
| Wood pulp paper | |
(source) |
In 1854, pioneering samples of basswood pulp paper made by John Beardsley
were reported in the New York Daily Times which reprinted an article from
the Democrat newspaper of Buffalo, New York. The article described
three varied samples of the new paper that were shown to the editor of
the Buffalo newspaper. Basswood is a tree of the linden family. Paper-making
materials then in use included grasses, rag and flax. To transform wood
into pulp, the cellulose fibres must be separated.
Beardsley used a mechanical means of revolving cutters. A later history
of paper-making book stated that his results were not successful. Earlier
patents had been issued to other inventors for the processing of wood pulp
for paper.« |
| Earliest U.S. celestial photograph | |
|
In 1839, John William Draper took
a daguerreotype of the moon, the first celestial photograph made in the
U.S. He exposed the plate for 20 minutes using a 5-inch telescope and produced
an image one inch in diameter. Draper was a professor of chemistry at New
York University, New York City. His research in the effect of light upon
chemicals had led him to take up photography. He also made his first satisfactory
photographic portrait in 1839. A picture he took (1840) of his sister is
the oldest surviving photographic portrait. Draper made important scientific
contributions in fields of radiant energy, photochemistry, photography,
and electric telegraphy. He also anticipated development of spectrum analysis. |
|
