| FEBRUARY 3 - BIRTHS | |
| George A(rmitage) Miller | |
(source) |
 Born 3
Feb 1920
American psychologist, one of the fathers of modern cognitive psychology, who also helped to establish psycholinguistics as an independent field of research in psychology. His early studies were in speech production and perception. Later he worked on human memory. In his most famous paper, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information (1956) he described some limits on the human capacity to process information. Since 1985, Miller has overseen development of WordNet, a lexical database for the English language, funded in part by government agencies interested in machine translation. In 1991 he was awarded the National Medal of Science.  Language
and Speech, by George A. Miller |
| Jacques Soustelle | |
| Born 3
Feb 1912; died 7 Aug 1990.
Jacques (-Émile) Soustelle was a French anthropologist and politician who was instrumental in the return to power of General Charles de Gaulle in 1958 but afterward broke with de Gaulle over the issue of Algeria. |
|
| Paul Scherrer | |
| Born 3
Feb 1890; died 25 Sep 1969.
Swiss physicist who collaborated with Peter Debye in the development of a method of X-ray diffraction analysis. The Debye-Scherrer method is widely used to identify materials that do not readily form large, perfect crystals. |
|
| William Jackson Humphreys | |
| Born 3
Feb 1862; died 10 Nov 1949.
American atmospheric physicist who applied basic physical laws to explain the optical, electrical, acoustical, and thermal properties and phenomena of the atmosphere. His book, Physics of the Air (1920), covers most of classical physical meteorology. |
|
| Hugo Junkers | |
| Born 3
Feb 1859; died 3 Feb 1935.
German aircraft designer and early proponent of the monoplane and all-metal construction of aircraft. Junkers died on his 76th birthday. |
|
| Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen | |
| Born 3
Feb 1857; died 11 Nov 1927.
Danish botanist and geneticist whose experiments in plant heredity offered strong support to the mutation theory of the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries (that changes in heredity come about through sudden, discrete changes of the heredity units in germ cells). Many geneticists thought Johannsen's ideas dealt a severe blow to Charles Darwin's theory that new species were produced by the slow process of natural selection. In 1909, Johannsen proposed that each portion of a chromosome that controls a phenotype be called a "gene" (Greek: "to give birth to"). |
|
| Hudson Maxim | |
 |
Born 3
Feb 1853; died 6 May 1927.
American inventor of explosives, much used in WW I. In his early career, a printing business at Pittsfield, Mass. (1883) he invented a method of color printing in newspapers. He turned to improving explosives and made the first smokeless powder in the U.S. It was adopted by the U.S. Army. In 1901, he invented maximite, a high explosive bursting powder 50% more powerful than dynamite. When used in torpedoes, maximite resisted both the shock of firing and the greater shock of piercing armour plate without exploding until it was then set off by a delayed-action detonating fuse, another Maxim invention. Later, he perfected a new smokeless powder, called stabillite because of its high stability, and motorite, a self-combustive substance to propel torpedoes. |
| Sir William Cornelius Van Horne | |
| Born 3
Feb 1843; died 11 Sep 1915.
U.S.-born Canadian railway official who directed the construction of Canada's first transcontinental railroad. |
|
| Spencer Fullerton Baird | |
(source) |
Born 3
Feb 1823; died 19 Aug 1887.
American naturalist, vertebrate zoologist, and in his time the leading authority on North American birds and mammals. A pioneer in museum collecting and display, he was named the Smithsonian Institution's second Secretary upon the death of the first Secretary, Joseph Henry. Whereas Henry had envisioned the Smithsonian primarily as a research institute, Baird saw Smithson's gift as the means to develop a national museum. By 1878, Congress had formally given responsibility for the U.S. National Museum to the Smithsonian Institution. During the Baird years, the Smithsonian became a showcase for the nation's history, resources, and treasures. By the end of his tenure, the National Museum housed more than 2.5 million specimens and artifacts. |
| Elizabeth Blackwell | |
(source) |
Born 3
Feb 1821; died 31 May 1910.
Anglo-American physician who is considered the first female doctor of medicine in modern times. She was the first woman to gain the M.D. degree from a medical school in the United States. Many 19th century physicians, including a few women, practiced without a degree, but Blackwell wished desired professional status. While rejected by all the major medical schools in the nation because of her sex, her application to Geneva Medical School (now Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York) was referred to the student body. They accepted with great hilarity thinking it was a spoof from a rival school. Working with quiet determination, she turned aside the hostility of the professors, students, and townspeople. She earned her medical degree in 1849. |
| Gideon Algernon Mantell | |
(source) |
Born 3 Feb 1790; died 10 Nov 1852.
British physician, geologist, and paleontologist, who discovered 4 of the 5 genera of dinosaurs known during his time. As the son of a shoemaker, to a becoming physician, he began a hobby that became all-consuming. An early identification was of the fossil teeth he found while walking with his wife in 1822. When he saw the connection with teeth of the present lizard, the iguana, in 1825, he named the animal the iguanadon ("fossil teeth"). Subsequently, he made additional finds of fossil bones of other large animals which he described accurately: the hylaeosaurus, pelorosaurus, and regnosaurus. His contemporary, paleontologist Sir Richard Owen, coined the word dinosaur ("terrible lizards"). Mantell's books include Medals of Creation (1844). |
| Jean-Étienne-Dominique Esquirol | |
(source) |
Born 3
Feb 1772; 12 Dec 1840.
Early French psychiatrist who was the first to combine precise clinical descriptions with the statistical analysis of mental illnesses. He was a pioneer of the humane treatment of persons considered insane and was appointed resident physician at the Bedlam of Paris in 1811. He was the Chief physician of Charenton asylum (1826). The book he authored, Des maladies mentales (1838), was the first modern textbook of psychiatry. He gave the the first modern description of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in 1838, which he the folie de doute, or doubting madness, and suspected it was rooted in a physical problem in the brain. |
| FEBRUARY 3 - DEATHS | |
| Ernst Mayr | |
(source) |
 Died
3 Feb 2005 (born 5 Jul 1904)
German-born American biologist known for his work in avian taxonomy, population genetics, and evolution. In 1928, he led the first of three expeditions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands where he studied the effects of geographic distribution among various animal species. He led development of the modern synthetic theory of evolution (the interplay of gene mutation and recombination, changes in structure and function of chromosomes, reproductive isolation and natural selection). In 1940, he proposed a definition of species that became accepted in scientific circles. He began bird watching as a young boy, and by the age of ten, he could recognize all of the local bird species by call as well as sight. |
| William Coolidge | |
(source) |
Died 3 Feb 1975 (born 23 Oct 1873)
William D(avid) Coolidge was an American engineer and physical chemist whose improvement of tungsten filaments (1913, patent No.1,082,933) was essential in the development of the modern incandescent lamp bulb and the X-ray tube. Coolidge's X-ray tube (1916, U.S. patent No. 1,203,495) completely revolutionized the generation of X-rays and remains to this day the model upon which all X-ray tubes for medical applications are patterned [above R]. He worked on many other devices such as high-quality magnetic steel, improved ventilating fans, and the electric blanket. During World War II he contributed research to projects involving radar and radar countermeasures. He was awarded 83 patents during his lifetime. |
| Émile Borel | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1956 (born 7 Jan 1871)
(Félix-Édouard-Justin-) Émile Borel was a French mathematician who (with René Baire and Henri Lebesgue), was among the pioneers of measure theory and its application to probability theory. In one of his books on probability, he proposed the thought experiment that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard will - with absolute certainty - eventually type every book in France's Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library). This is now popularly known as the infinite monkey theorem. He was first to develop (1899) a systematic theory for a divergent series. He also published (1921-27) a number of research papers on game theory and became the first to define games of strategy. Space
and Time, by Emile Borel. |
| Robert M.Yerkes | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1956 (born 26 May 1876)
Robert Mearns Yerkes was an American psychologist and a principal developer of comparative (animal) psychology in the U.S. In his book The Dancing Mouse (1908), he helped established the use of mice and rats as standard subjects for experiments in psychology. He also studied primates, publishing his results in 1929 in the classic book The Great Apes. |
| Hugo Junkers | |
| Died
3 Feb 1935 (born 3 Feb 1859)
See entry above in Births on 3 Feb 1859. |
|
| Oliver Heaviside | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1925 (born 18 May 1850)
English physicist who predicted the existence of the ionosphere. In 1870, he became a telegrapher, but increasing deafness forced him to retire in 1874. He then devoted himself to investigations of electricity. In 1902, Heaviside and Kennelly predicted that there should be an ionised layer in the upper atmosphere that would reflect radio waves. They pointed out that it would be useful for long distance communication, allowing radio signals to travel to distant parts of the earth by bouncing off the underside of this layer. The existence of the layer, now known as the Heaviside layer or the ionosphere, was demonstrated in the 1920s, when radio pulses were transmitted vertically upward and the returning pulses from the reflecting layer were received. Oliver
Heaviside : The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian
Age, by Paul J Nahin |
| Edward Charles Pickering | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1919 (born 19 July 1846)
Edward Charles Pickering, was born Boston, Mass., U.S. physicist and astronomer. After graduating from Harvard, he taught physics for ten years at MIT where he built the first instructional physics laboratory in the United States. At age 30, he directed the Harvard College Observatory for 42 years. His observations were assisted by a staff of women, including Annie Jump Cannon. He introduced the use of the meridian photometer to measure the magnitude of stars, and established the Harvard Photometry (1884), the first great photometric catalog. By establishing a station in Peru (1891) to make the southern photographs, he published the first all-sky photographic map (1903). |
| Edmond Frémy | |
| Died
3 Feb 1894 (born 28 Feb 1814)
French chemist best known for his discovery of hydrogen fluoride and investigations of fluorine compounds. Among other compounds, Frémy investigated those of iron, tin, and lead. He also studied osmic acid, ozone, the colouring substances of leaves and flowers, and the composition of animal substances. He applied chemistry to the commercial saponification of fats, and to the technology of iron, steel, sulfuric acid, glass and paper. He tried, but failed, to isolate the element fluorine. He also failed in attempts to make crystals of aluminium oxide, but instead found he could create rubies. |
|
| Sir Morell Mackenzie | |
(EB) |
Died
3 Feb 1892 (born 7 July 1837)
English laryngologist (born Leytonstone, Essex), Britain's leading specialist, was at the centre of a bitter international controversy over the death of Emperor Frederick III of Germany. In his book, The Fatal Illness Of Frederick The Noble (1888), Mackenzie describes his care of laryngeal cancer in the Crown Prince, later Emperor Frederick the Noble. He had been accused of medical malpractice by German physicians following the emperor's death on 15 June 1888. The book not only decribes laryngology at the end of the 19th century, but also offers hidden insight into German history, as well as a soap opera complete with scheming and attempts at character assassination. |
| Christophorus Buys Ballot | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1890 (born 10 Oct 1817)
Christophorus (Henricus Didericus) Buys Ballot was a Dutch meteorologist, born in Kloetinge, the Netherlands, particularly remembered for his observation in 1857 that the wind blows at right angles to the atmospheric pressure gradient. He showed that northern hemisphere winds circulate counter-clockwise around low pressure areas and clockwise around high pressure areas. The reverse is true in the southern hemisphere. Although not the first to make this discovery, his name remains attached to it as Buys Ballot's law. He studied and taught at the University of Utrecht, and founded the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in 1854. He was the inventor of the aeroklinoscope and of a system of weather signals. |
| John Gould | |
c.1849 (source) |
Died 3 Feb 1881 (born 14 Sep 1804)
English ornithologist whose life work produced 41 lavishly illustrated volumes on birds from all over the world, containing in all about 3,000 plates, all lithographed and hand-painted. Of these, his Birds of Australia was particularly significant (1840-69) as the first comprehensive record of the continent's birds and mammals. With its plates of the birds were descriptions, notes on their distribution and adaptation to the environment. He assisted Charles Darwin with identification of the specimens collected during the voyage of the Beagle. By informing Darwin that the finches belonging to separate species, he provided essential information giving Darwin insight leading to his later development of the theory of evolution.« [Image right: Plate from Vol III of Birds of Australia showing a male and two young Dusky Robins, Petroica Fesca.] |
| Maximilian, Prinz (Prince) zu Wied-Neuwied | |
| Died
3 Feb 1867 (born 23 Sep 1782)
German aristocratic naturalist, ethnographer, and explorer whose observations on a trip to the American West in the 1830s provide valuable information about the Plains Indians at that time. |
|
| Jean-Baptiste Biot | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1862 (born 21 Apr 1774)
French mathematician and physicist who co-developed the Biot-Savart law, that the intensity of the magnetic field produced by current flow through a wire varies inversely with the distance from the wire. He did work in astronomy, elasticity, heat, optics, electricity and magnetism. In pure mathematics, he contibuted to geometry. In 1804 he made a 13,000-feet (5-km) high hot-air balloon ascent with Joseph Gay-Lussac to investigate the atmosphere. In 1806, he accompanied Arago to Spain to complete earlier work there to measure of the arc of the meridian. Biot discovered optical activity in 1815, the ability of a substance to rotate the plane of polarization of light, which laid the basis for saccharimetry, a useful technique of analyzing sugar solutions.« |
| David Wilkinson | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1852 (born 5 Jan 1771)
American inventor and manufacturer who patented a machine for cutting screw threads which incorporated the slide rest (14 Dec 1798). It had a heavy carriage supported on three rollers. With his father and brother, Wilkinson supplied the cotton industry by machining, casting and forging iron parts to build textile manufacturing equipment for such factories as Slater Mill, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. With such business to keep him occupied, Wilkinson did not further develop his screw machine. His business failed in the the financial panic of 1829. However, the slide-rest invention was widely applied by others, especially making firearms for the U.S. government. He petitioned Congress in 1848 for a financial reward for his invention and received $10,000.« |
| George Claghorn | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1824 (born 6 July 1748)
American revolutionary soldier and ship-builder whose most notable vessel was the USS Constitution, one of several 44-gun frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 to protect commerce at sea. He served in the Revolutionary War, rising from first lieutenant to the rank of colonel, then became a well-known ship-builder at New Bedford, Mass. He built the whalerRebecca there, launched in Mar 1785. It is said to be the first American whaler to round Cape Horn and return with a cargo of sperm oil from the Pacific. In 1794, he moved to Boston to build the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"). Its difficult launch began on 20 Sep 1797, but it was not afloat until 21 Oct. It remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.« |
| Tommaso Ceva | |
(source) |
Died
3 Feb 1737 (born 20 Dec 1648)
Italian mathematician, poet, and brother of the mathematician Giovanni Ceva. At the age of fifteen he entered the Society of Jesus. His education was entirely within the Jesuit Order and he obtained a degree in theology. His first scientific work, De natura gravium (1669), dealt with physical subjects, such as gravity and free fall, in a philosophical way. Tommaso Ceva's mathematical work is summed up in Opuscula Mathematica (1699) which examines geometry (geometric-harmonic means, the cycloid, and conic sections), gravity and arithmetic. He also designed an instrument to divide a right angle into a given number of equal parts. He gave the greater part of his time to writing Latin prose. His poem Jesus Puer was translated into many languages.« |
| Johannes Gutenberg | |
| Died
3 Feb 1468 (born 14th century)
German inventor, printer, who invented moveable type. Johann Gensfeisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, was a German craftsman and inventor of movable type used together with a new type-metal alloy, a new press, and an oil based printing ink. In combination, this was a new method of printing never used before. Gutenberg prepared his type by casting any quantity of precise copies of a letter stamped into the mold. His screw press pressed paper lying on an inked type forme in a manner similar to presses used in winemaking. |
|
| FEBRUARY 3 - EVENTS | |
| Embryo transplant | |
In 1984, a Long Beach, Calif., hospital announced the birth of the world's
first baby conceived by embryo transplant. |
|
| First soft landing on the moon | |
(source) |
In 1966, three days after its takeoff, the unmanned Soviet Luna
9 spacecraft
landed safely on the moon in the Ocean of Storms. It was the first ever
soft landing on another celestial body, and opened the way for manned trips
to the moon, by removing doubts lest the surface was an unsafe dusty quicksand.
On striking the surface, the Soviet probe ejected a 250-lb capsule which
then rolled upright and unfolded four spring actuated petals to steady
itself. A TV camera with a revolving mirror system enabled Luna
9 to take pictures, including panoramic views of the lunar landscape
and closer views of nearby rocks, which were transmitted back to earth
until 6 Feb when the batteries ran out and contact with the spacecraft
was lost. |
| Weather satellite | |
(source) |
In 1966, the U.S. launched
its first operational weather satellite, ESSA-1 to provide cloud-cover
photography to the U.S. National Meteorological Center for preparation
of operational weather analyses and forecasts. The spacecraft was an 18-sided
polygon, 42-in. diameter, 22-in. high and weight 305-lb. It was made of
aluminum alloy and stainless steel, then covered with 9100 solar cells.
The solar cells served to charge the 63 batteries. Its two cameras were
mounted 180 degrees opposite each other along the cylindrical side of the
craft. A camera could be pointed at some point on Earth every time the
satellite rotated along its axis. ESSA-1 was able to view the weather of
each area of the globe, photographing a given area at the exact same local
time each day. |
| The Silent Spring | |
|
In 1958, Rachael Carson wrote to E.B. White, editor of The New
Yorker magazine, to urge him to write a book. The environmental content
she had in mind became her famous book, The Silent Spring. However,
because White replied that although he felt unable to do it himself, he
encouraged her to write it herself. So she did. |
|
| Missing link fossil | |
(source) |
In 1925, a report of the first "missing link" fossil, found by Raymond
Dart, was published in a newspaper. The Star of Johannesburg, South
Africa announced the find, instead of the professional journal
Nature,
when
the editors of the journal changed their mind. In 1924, Dart found the
skull that made him famous. Mr. Dart with his students made the find in
the Taung limestone works in the Harts Valley of Bechuanaland. When an
endocranial cast was found, at first it seemed to be just another primate
skull. Then, Dart noticed how amazingly close to human it looked. Dart
had discovered
the Taung child, who was only three years old at the time of death. He
named it Australopithecus africanus. "Australis" meaning south and
"pithecus" meaning ape. |
| Black American patent | |
(source) |
In 1880, black American inventor, Joseph W. Waller of Baltimore, Maryland,
was issued a U.S. patent for a "Shoemaker's Cabinet or Bench" (No. 224,253).
The design combined a cabinet and a calf-skin seat. The cabinet was designed
with compartments and divisions for boxes, jars and bottled; and pockets
for holding various tools. It was also provided with a lamp for heating
purposes and a groove for stones for sharpening tools. The seat and its
back were hinged to make the cabinet lid, and the seat legs were detachable,
so the entire assembly could be shipped as a compact box.
Great
Discoveries and Inventions by African-Americans, by David
M. Foy |
| First incandescent light bulb demonstration | |
 |
In 1879, the first practically usable incandescent filament electric light
bulb was demonstrated to an audience of 700 by its inventor
Joseph Wilson Swan at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle
upon Tyne. Following his successful demonstration, Swan established the
world's first electric light bulb factory at Benwell in the western subburbs
of Newcastle. Later, Swan's bulbs were used to light up Mosley Street in
the Newcastle city centre, the first street in the world to be lit by electric
light. By 1881, Swan had introduced his bulbs in London where 1,200 of
them were used in the lighting the Savoy Theatre in front of an astonished
audience. |
| Newspaper-to-go | |
(source) |
In 1862, as a boy almost 15 yrs old, Thomas Edison (1847-1931), became
the first publisher of a newspaper produced and sold on a moving train.
He had set up a small press in the baggage car of the Grand Trunk Railroad
train
from Port Huron to Detroit, Mich. Already obsessed with telegraphy, he
worked out the logistics of getting advance news. His weekly Grand Trunk
Herald, a single sheet measuring 7-in. x 8-in., included local
news and advertisements for his fathers store. He had been selling candy
and newspapers on commission on that train run since age 12. Now, promoting
his own newspaper he earned more. Edison became renowned as a pioneering
boy journalist. At its peak, he sold about 200 copies a day to train riders. |
