| DECEMBER 29 - BIRTHS | |
| Klaus Fuchs | |
1960 (source) |
 Born 29
Dec 1911; died 28 Jan 1988.
(Emil) Klaus (Julius) Fuchs was a German-born physicist who was convicted as a spy on 1 Mar 1950, for passing nuclear research secrets to Russia. He fled from Nazi Germany to Britain. He was interned on the outbreak of WW II, but Prof. Max Born intervened on his behalf. Fuchs was released in 1942, naturalized in 1942 and joined the British atomic bomb research project. From 1943 he worked on the atom bomb with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, U.S. By 1945, he was sending secrets to Russia. In 1946, he became head of theoretical physics at Harwell, UK. He was caught, confessed, tried, imprisoned for nine of a 14 year sentence, released on 23 Jun 1959, and moved to East Germany and resumed nuclear research until 1979.« |
| Henri-Gaston Busignies | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1905; died 20 Jun 1981.
French-born American electronics engineer whose invention (1936) of high-frequency direction finders (HF/DF, or "Huff Duff") permitted the U.S. Navy during World War II to detect enemy transmissions and quickly pinpoint the direction from which a radio transmission was coming. Busignies invented the radiocompass (1926) while still a student at Jules Ferry College in Versailles, France. In 1934, he started developing the direction finder based on his earlier radiocompass. Busignies developed the moving target indicator for wartime radar. It scrubbed off the radar screen every echo from stationary objects and left only echoes from moving objects, such as aircraft.« |
| Wilhelm His | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1863; died 10 Nov 1934.
Swiss cardiologist who in 1893 fully described a group of modified muscle fibres (known as the bundle of His) forming part of the impulse-conducting system of the heart. (It was first noted in 1892 by Stanley Kent.) It runs as a single bundle from the atrioventricular node (between the atria and ventricles) then branches into pathways to the right and left ventricles. It relays an electrical impulse, establishing a single rhythm of contraction through the heart. He was among the first to recognize that the heartbeat originates in the individual cells of heart muscle. During WW I, His served as an advisory internist with several armies. In 1916 he described Trench Fever in Volhynia in Russia. His father of the same name was a famous anatomist.« |
| Georg August Schweinfurth | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1836; died 19 Sep 1925.
German botanist who travelled in the interior of East Africa (from 1868) and studied the inhabitants together with the flora and fauna of the region. During this journey, in Mar 1870, he discovered the River Welle (Uele), explored the upper Nile basin, and charted the western feeders of the White Nile. He wrote about the cannibalistic practices of the Mangbettu, and his discovery of the pygmy Akka confirmed the existence of dwarf races in tropical Africa (The Heart of Africa, 1873). During 1875-88, he lived in Cairo, where he founded the Royal Geographical Society of Egypt. He made historical, geological, ethnographical and botanical investigations ranging from there to the Arabian desert.« 
 The
heart of Africa: Three years' travels and adventures...,
by Georg August Schweinfurth. |
| Carl F.W. Ludwig | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1816; died 23 Apr 1895.
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, one of the creators of modern physiology, applied the experimental approach of chemistry and physics to explain the way the body functions. He investigated the structure of the kidneys and cardiac activity. The kymograph he invented (1847) continuously recorded blood pressure on a rotating drum. He explained blood circulation in terms of conventional forces, repudiating any mysterious "vital force." With his mercurial blood-gas pump (1859) he extracted gases from blood for study. In 1856, he was the first to keep an organ alive after removal from an animal (a frog heart), using perfusion (pumping blood plasma through them.) He was also first to study the nitrogen content of urine as a measure of protein metabolism.« |
| Alexander Parkes | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1813; died 29 Jun 1890.
British industrial chemist who invented many processes. Parkes was an expert in electroplating, able to silver-plate such diverse objects as a spider web and flowers. He patented a method of rubber coating fabrics to waterproof them (1841), an electroplating process (1843), and a method of extracting silver from lead ore by adding zinc (1850). He produced the first plastic (1855), which he called Parkesine, by dissolving cellulose nitrate in alcohol and camphor containing ether. The hard solid result could be molded when heated, but he could find no market for the material. (This was rediscovered in the 1860s by John Wesley Hyatt, an American chemist, who named it celluloid and successfully marketed it as a replacement for ivory.« |
| Charles Goodyear | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1800; died 1 Jul 1860
American inventor who baked rubber mixed with sulphur and discovered the vulcanization process which made rubber practical as a commercial product. Previously, rubber was of limited use since it froze hard in winter and sticky in summer. After years of persistent experimentation, Goodyear had created a tough, cured compound, able to withstand heat and stress. Sadly, he was a poor businessman, unable to profit from his invention or effectively patent it abroad. The "vulcanized" name was applied by English rubber pioneer Thomas Hancock, using the sugggestion of a friend to name the process after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. Nor was Goodyear ever connected to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. which was named in his honour.« The
Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber
Monopoly, by Richard Korman. |
| Joaquín Acosta | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1799; died 21 Feb 1852.
Colombian scientist who in 1834 attempted a scientific survey of his country between Socorro and the Magdalena River. Seven years later he explored western Colombia from Antioquia to Ancerma studying its topography, its natural history and the traces of its aboriginal inhabitants. In 1845, he went to Spain to examine documentary material which led to his publication of Compendio (1848), a work on the discovery and colonization of New Granada (Colombia). He also published Semenario embodying the botanical papers of Caldas, and a work (1847) mapping the Geology of New Granada.« |
| Christian Jürgensen Thomsen | |
(source) |
Born 29
Dec 1788; died 21 May 1865.
Danish archaeologist whose designation of the Stone, Iron and Bronze Ages became widely accepted. He was the first curator of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen (1816). He classified the specimens in this tripartite way, on the basis of the material used in making weapons and tools, while he was organising the museum exhibits to show man's progressive cultural and technological development in Europe. It was adopted as the basis of chronological schemes elsewhere in the world by generations of archaeologists. In 1841, he established the first ethnographic museum. In 1849, he became director of the National Museum. He was one of the first to open collections to the public free of charge in the interests of popular education.« |
| Charles Macintosh | |
(source) |
Born 29 Dec 1766; died 25 Jul 1843.
Scottish chemist and inventor of rubberized waterproof clothing. His father's business supplied textile dyes. Charles also entered the textile industry, with partner Charles Tennant in a cloth bleaching business. In 1799, Tennant patented a dry bleaching powder made from chlorine and slaked lime, though it may have been developed mainly by Macintosh. In the 1820's Macintosh went into partnership with a Manchester cotton manufacturer. Seeking uses for coal gasworks waste products, he utilized naptha as a solvent in his famous method of waterproofing cloth (1823) by pressing together two rubberized layers of cloth. His name remains associated with the raincoat made from such cloth. He also patented a steel-making process (1825).« [Image
right: U.S. advertisement from the late 1800s. (source)] |
| DECEMBER 29 - DEATHS | |
| Hermann Oberth | |
(source) |
 Died
29 Dec 1989 (born 25 Jun 1894)
Hermann (Julius) Oberth was a German scientist who was one of three founders of space flight (with Tsiolkovsky and Goddard). After injury in WWI, he drafted a proposal for a long-range, liquid-propellant rocket, which the War Ministry dismissed as fanciful. Even his Ph.D. dissertation on his rocket design was rejected by the University of Heidelberg. When he published it as Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923; “The Rocket into Interplanetary Space”) he gained recognition for its mathematical analysis of the rocket speed that would allow it to escape Earth's gravitational pull. He received a Romanian patent in 1931 for a liquid-propellant rocket design. His first such rocket was launched 7 May 1931, near Berlin.« Hermann
Oberth: The Father of Space Flight, by Boris V. Rauschenbach. |
| Anton Flettner | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1961 (born 1 Nov 1885)
German inventor who produced a practical helicopter for the German navy (1940). He also developed a device that allowed airplane pilots to raise or lower a plane's nose for better control. It evolved into a mechanism called the Flettner trim-tab control which is still used on all airplanes. He designed a rotor ship (1924) on which he replaced sails with unique propulsion - two 50-ft cylinders, electrically rotated, mounted vertically on the deck. A transatlantic voyage was accomplished using the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect which builds pressure behind a rotating cylinder. After WW II, he went to the U.S., and conducted helicopter research for the U.S. Army. He also invented a windmill and the Flettner marine rudder.« |
| Frederick Fuller Russell | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1960 (born 17 Aug 1870)
American scientist who developed the first successful U.S. typhoid fever vaccine. Russell earned his medical degree in 1893 and was commissed in 1898 as first lieutenant and assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. In summer 1908, the U.S. Army Surgeon General sent him to Europe to study the experience of the British and German armies in anti-typhoid vaccination. In 1909, Major Russell prepared a laboratory the Army Medical Museum for manufacturing vaccine, and vaccinated volunteers, the first of whom came from the museum and the medical school. By the end of 1910, 10,841 volunteers had been vaccinated. This was made compulsory for military personnel the next year. The reduction in the incidence of the disease was dramatic.« |
| William Merriam Burton | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1954 (born 17 Nov 1865)
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.« |
| Tullio Levi-Civita | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1941 (born 29 Mar 1873)
Italian mathematician who was one of the founders of absolute differential calculus (tensor analysis) which had applications to the theory of relativity. In 1887, he published a famous paper in which he developed the calculus of tensors. In 1900 he published, jointly with Ricci, the theory of tensors Méthodes de calcul differential absolu et leures applications in a form which was used by Einstein 15 years later. Weyl also used Levi-Civita's ideas to produce a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism. In addition to the important contributions his work made in the theory of relativity, Levi-Civita produced a series of papers treating elegantly the problem of a static gravitational field.« |
| Wilhelm Maybach | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1929 (born 9 Feb 1846)
German engineer, engine designer (who invented the spray carburettor) and the chief designer of the first Mercedes automobiles (1900-01). At age 26, he began designing cars with Gottlieb Daimler and Nikolaus Otto, with whom he developed the four-stroke engine cycle. In Apr 1882, Maybach joined Gottlieb Daimler in a partnership to produce a light-weight, high-speed petrol engine suitable for vehicles. Maybach invented the float-feed carburettor (1893) in which fuel was vaporized by passing it through a jet as a fine spray and mixed with air to produce a combustible mixture for the engine. Maybach designed the first Mercedes car for Daimler in 1901, but retired in 1907 to design and manufacture engines for Zeppelin airships.« |
| Sir William Osler | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1919 (born 12 Jul 1849)
(Baronet) Canadian physician who revolutionized the medical curriculum in North America, adapting the best of the systems he had observed in England and Germany. He believed that students learn best by doing, teaching medical students at the bedside. He introduced postgraduate training system, instituting a general internship of one year to be followed by a residency of several years. His textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) included the advances of the previous half-century in clinical medical science, and remained the standard text for 40 years. Early in his life, in 1873, he made the most careful description to date of what later were called the "blood-platelets," which was presented to the Royal Society.« William
Osler: A Life in Medicine, by Michael Bliss. |
| Leopold Kronecker | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1891 (born 7 Dec 1823)
German mathematician who worked to unify arithmetic, algebra and analysis, with a particular interest in elliptic functions, algebraic equations, theory of numbers, theory of determinants and theory of simple and multiple integrals. However the topics he studied were restricted by the fact that he believed in the reduction of all mathematics to arguments involving only the integers and a finite number of steps. He believed that mathematics should deal only with finite numbers and with a finite number of operations. He was the first to doubt the significance of non-constructive existence proofs, and believed that transcendental numbers did not exist. The Kronecker delta function is named in his honour.« |
| Brook Taylor | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1731 (born 18 Aug 1685)
British mathematician, best known the Taylor's series, a method for expanding functions into infinite series. In 1708, Taylor produced a solution to the problem of the centre of oscillation. His Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa (1715; “Direct and Indirect Methods of Incrementation”) introduced what is now called the calculus of finite differences. Using this, he was the first to express mathematically the movement of a vibrating string on the basis of mechanical principles. Methodus also contained Taylor's theorem, later recognized (1772) by Lagrange as the basis of differential calculus. A gifted artist, Taylor also wrote on basic principles of perspective (1715) containing the first general treatment of the principle of vanishing points.« |
| Thomas Sydenham | |
(source) |
Died
29 Dec 1689 (born, or at least baptized, 10 Sep 1624)
English physician who became known as the "English Hippocrates." He was a founder of clinical medicine who emphasized bedside observation of disease, and carefully kept a notebook of his clinical observations. He began his practice in London (c.1656) where he made studies on the causes and treatment of epidemics. His treatise on gout (1683) is considered his masterpiece. He named scarlet fever, recognized it was different from measles, and was among the first to describe it. Sydenham explained the nature of hysteria and St. Vitus' dance (Sydenham's chorea). He invented laudanum (alcohol tincture of opium) for use in medical practice, was one of the first to use iron in treating iron-deficiency anemia, and helped popularize quinine in treating malaria.« Dr.
Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689): His Life and Original Writings,
by Kenneth Dewhurst. |
| DECEMBER 29 - EVENTS | |
| Hong Kong bird flu | |
(source) |
In 1997, Hong Kong began killing its entire chicken population of up to
1.4 million birds to stem the spread of a mysterious avian
flu that had already killed four people. The Hong Kong government decision
came after birds at two sites were found to be infected with the H5N1 virus.
Nothing, animate or inanimate, could be moved in or out of those two infected
sites without permission. Birds at the territory's 200 chicken and mixed
poultry farms were to be placed in sealed containers and gassed. Owners
of close to 1,000 provision shops and market stalls were ordered to kill
their stock. The disinfected carcases were sealed in plastic bags and buried
at six landfill sites. The government compensated those whose stock was
destroyed. |
| Record stay in space | |
(source) |
In 1987, cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko ended his record 326-day space flight
orbiting Earth in the Mir
space station, landing in a Soyuz spacecraft at a snow-covered site in
Kazakhstan. His stay in space broke the previous Soviet record of 237 days.
For comparison, the U.S. space endurance record is 87 days. Romanenko rocketed
into orbit 6 Feb 1987 with flight engineer Alexander Laveikin who suffered
heart problems five months later and was replaced with Alexander Alexandrov.
They conducted 1,000 experiments in biology, medicine, materials processing
and geology. Romanenko and Alexandrov used the giant Kvant (Quantum) astrophysics
laboratory attached to the Mir to collect data from remote parts of the
solar system. |
| Transistor hearing aid | |
(source) |
In 1952, the first transistor hearing
aid went on sale, the model
1010 manufactured by the Sonotone Corporation in Elmsford, NY, U.S.
It weighed 3.5-oz, measured 3"x1.5"x0.6" and cost $229.50 (about $1500.00
today). It was a hybrid device consisting of two sub miniature pre-amplifier
tubes and a single transistor as the final audio amplifier to benefit from
the low power consumption of transistors. The reason for the hybrid design
was that the first junction transistors had signal to noise ratios which
were inferior to tubes. Within months, transistor production techniques
were improved
largely eliminating noise, so the hybrid model was shortly discontinued. |
| Anak Krakatoa | |
(source) |
In 1927, Krakatoa began a new volcanic eruption on the seafloor along the
same line as the cones of previous activity. By 26 Jan 1928, a growing
cone had reached sea level and formed a small island called Anak Krakatoa
(Child of Krakatoa). Sporadic activity continued until, by 1973, the island
had reached a height of 622 ft above sea level. It was still in eruption
in the early 1980s. The volcano Krakatoa
is on Pulau (island) Rakata in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra,
Indonesia. It had been quiet since its previous catastrophic eruption
of 1883. That threw pumice 33 miles high and 36,380 people were killed
either by the ash fall or by the resulting tidal wave. The only earlier
known eruption was in 1680, and was only moderate. |
| Lava soap trademarked | |
|
In 1896, "Lava" soap was trademarked by William Waltke & Co. of St.
Louis, Missouri. |
|
