| FEBRUARY 4 - BIRTHS | |
| Rolf William Landauer | |
(source) |
 Born 4
Feb 1927; died 27 Apr 1999.
German-born American physicist known for his formulation of Landauer's principle concerning the energy used during a computer's operation. Whenever the machine is resetting for another computation, bits are flushed from the computer's memory, and in that electronic operation, a certain amount of energy is lost. Thus, when information is erased, there is an inevitable "thermodynamic cost of forgetting," which governs the development of more energy-efficient computers. While engineers dealt with practical limitations of compacting ever more circuitry onto tiny chips, Landauer considered the theoretical limit, that if technology improved indefinitely, how soon will it run into the insuperable barriers set by nature?« |
| Clyde W. Tombaugh | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1906; died 17 Jan 1997.
American astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto, which he photographed on 23 Jan 1930, the only planet discovered in the twentieth century, after a systematic search instigated by the predictions of other astronomers. Tombaugh was 24 years of age when he made this discovery at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. He also discovered several clusters of stars and galaxies, studied the apparent distribution of extragalactic nebulae, and made observations of the surfaces of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon. Born of poor farmers, his first telescope was made of parts from worn-out farming equipment.  Out
of the Darkness, the Planet Pluto, by Clyde William Tombaugh. |
| Charles A. Lindbergh | |
1927 (source) |
Born 4
Feb 1902; died 26 Aug 1974.
Charles A(ugustus) Lindbergh was a famous American aviator, remembered for the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic (1927). He first served as an apprentice to a barnstormer, performing as a wingwalker and parachute jumper. Then, he purchasing a war surplus Jenny trainer, made his first solo flight and barnstormed himself for about a year. Later, he became the first air mail pilot between Chicago, Ill., and St, Louis, Mo. On 20 May 1927, Lindbergh left New York for Paris, carrying sandwiches and water. He decided against carrying a parachute and radio in favor of more gasoline. He fought fog, icing and drowsiness. He landed 21 May, 33-1/2 hours later, in Paris after a 3,600 mile flight.« The
Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles A. Lindbergh. |
| Friedrich Hund | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1896; died 31 Mar 1997.
Friedrich (Hermann) Hund was a German physicist known for his work on the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. He introduced a method of using molecular orbitals to determine the electronic structure of molecules and chemical bond formation. His empirical Hund's Rules (1925) for atomic spectra determine the lowest energy level for two electrons having the same n and l quantum numbers in a many-electron atom. (1) The lowest energy state has the maximum multiplicity consistent with the Pauli exclusion principle. (2) The lowest energy state has the maximum total electron orbital angular momentum quantum number, consistent with rule (1). They are explained by the quantum theory of atoms by calculations involving the repulsion between two electrons. |
| Raymond A. Dart | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1893; died 22 Nov 1988.
Raymond A(rthur) Dart was an Australian-born South African physical anthropologist and paleontologist whose discoveries of fossil hominids led to significant insights into the evolutionary origins of human beings. In 1924, working with students in the Taung limestone works in Bechuanaland, he rewarded the most interesting find. One seemed at first to be just another primate skull. Then, Dart noticed how amazingly close to human it looked. He recognized as a "missing link" in the evolution from ape to man. Dart had found the Taung child, only three years old at the time of death. He named it Australopithecus africanus, "australis" meaning south and "pithecus" meaning ape. His theory is now generally accepted, but was originally very controversial. |
| Ludwig Prandtl | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1875; died 15 Aug 1953.
German physicist who is remembered for his studies of both aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. He established the existence of the boundary layer adjoining the surface of a solid over which a fluid flows. The design of an efficient shape, weight, and mass for ships and aircraft owes much to his work, for which he is considered to be the father of aerodynamics. His made major studies on the effects of streamlining and the properties of aircraft wings. He made improvements to such constructions as wind tunnels. The Prandtl number is a dimensionless group used in the study of convection. The von Karman-Prandtl equation describes the logarithmic variation of water velocity within a channel from zero flow at the stream bed to a maximum velocity at the water surface. |
| Alfred Lacroix | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1863; died 12 Mar 1948.
French mineralogist and geologist whose Minéraux des roches (1888; "The Minerals of Rocks"), written with the geologist Albert Michel-Lévy, was a pioneer study of the optical properties of rock-forming minerals. He gave particular attention to minerals connected with volcanic phenomena and igneous rocks, to the effects of metamorphism, and to mineral veins. He pursued his interests in various parts of the world, but notably in the Pyrenees. In his numerous contributions to scientific journals he dealt with the mineralogy and petrology of Madagascar, and published an elaborate and exhaustive volume on the eruptions in Martinique, La Montagna Pelée et ses Éruptions (1904). |
| Clément Ader | |
(source) |
Born 4 Feb 1841; died 5 Mar 1926.
Self-taught French engineer and inventor, best known as a pioneer of flight before the Wright brothers. In 1890 he constructed a steam-powered aircraft with bat-shaped wings. His craft, the Eole, which could not be steered, made the first heavier-than-air flight (of 50 m). His first patent, on 15 Apr 1866, related to railways. From the late 1870's, he registered many telephone patents. In 1881, Ader relayed music from the Paris Opera via phone lines to listeners with headphones at the Paris International Exhibition of Electricity, and demonstrated "Stereo", in a sense, by use of two carbon microphones picking up signals from two points close to each other. Ader also made inventions and improvements for bicycles (1868) and automobiles (1898). |
| John Bachman | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1790; died 24 Feb 1874.
Naturalist and Lutheran minister who published studies of southern animals and works on botany and agriculture. He met John James Audubon in 1831 and helped him write the text of The Birds of America (1840-44). After visiting the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt at the University of Berlin in 1838, Bachman did much of the writing and edited all of Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, 3 vol. (1845-49). He also published The Unity of the Human Race (1850), in which he theorized that all humans are of one species. Audubon named the Bachman's Sparrow in honor of his friend. Bachman discovered and named the Bachman's Warbler (a bird probably extinct today). |
| Augustin Pyrame de Candolle | |
(EB) |
Born 4
Feb 1778; died 9 Sep 1841.
Swiss botanist whose prolific writings in taxonomy and botany were highly influential, particularly his belief that taxonomy should be based on morphological characters, and his scheme of classification, for which he coined the term taxonomy, prevailed for many years. Candolle achieved extensive subdivision of flowering plants, describing 161 families of dicotyledons, and demonstrated decisively the inadequacy of Linnaean classification, which his system supplanted. Candolle also contributed to agronomy and the linking of soil type with vegetation. He also pioneered the study of phytogeography, the biogeography of plants, by carrying out investigations in Brazil (1827), East India (1829), and North China (1834). |
| Thomas Earnshaw | |
(source) |
Born 4
Feb 1749; died 1 Mar 1829.
English watchmaker, the first to simplify and economize in producing chronometers so as to make them available to the general public. In 1782, he devised the spring detent chronometer escapement. He did much to develop the chronometer, and was awarded £3,000 by Board of Longitude. His chronometers were described in a publication by the Commissioners of Longitude in 1806. Forty years after his death, the novelist Jules Verne described Phileas Fogg as, "He gave the idea of being perfectly well-balanced, as exactly regulated as a Leroy or Earnshaw chronometer." |
|
Today in Science History Science Store Browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| FEBRUARY 4 - DEATHS | |
| Robert McCorkle Netting | |
(source) |
 Died
4 Feb 1995 (born 14 Oct 1934)
U.S. anthropologist who established cultural ecology as a scientific discipline. Netting earned international recognition in the field of cultural ecology for documenting the strategies used by residents of challenging habitats to survive. He covered this area extensively. Netting was involved with and studied human-environment interactions, focusing on subsistence and development issues. He was as loyal to geography as he was to anthropology. Netting filled the gap between geography and anthropology better than anyone else, especially from the anthropological side. |
| Carl R. Rogers | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1987 (born 8 Jan 1902)
American psychologist who founded humanistic psychology. The non-directive or client-centered, approach to psychotherapy that he originated stresses the importance of a personal relationship between therapist and client. He further pioneered encounter group technique. In Client-Centered Therapy (1951), he suggested that by neutrally reflecting clients' feelings, the therapist can create an empathetic environment, in which patients regulate the direction, speed of their own growth and duration of treatment. His methods greatly influenced the course of psychotherapy. |
| Satyendra Nath Bose | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1974 (born 1 Jan 1894)
Indian mathematician and physicist who collaborated with Albert Einstein to develop a theory of statistical quantum mechanics, now called Bose-Einstein statistics. In his early work in quantum theory (1924), Bose had derived the Planck black-body radiation law, without reference to classical electrodynamics. Einstein extended this technique to integral spin particles. Dirac coined the name boson for particles obeying these statistics. Bose also worked on X-ray diffraction and the interaction of electromagnetic waves with the ionosphere. |
| Edward Sapir | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1939 (born 26 Jan 1884)
American linguist and anthropologist, one of the foremost of his time, who is most widely known for his contributions to the study of North American Indian languages. A founder of ethnolinguistics, which considers the relationship of culture to language, he was also a principal developer of the American (descriptive) school of structural linquistics. Even more than the facts of the fields he studied, Sapir was interested in the more abstract connections between personality, verbal expression and socially determined behaviour. |
| Hendrik Antoon Lorentz | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1928 (born 18 July 1853)
Dutch physicist and joint winner (with Pieter Zeeman) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1902 for his theory of the influence of magnetism upon electromagnetic radiation phenomena. The theory was confirmed by findings of Zeeman and gave rise to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. From the start, Lorentz made it his task to extend James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electricity and of light. Already in his doctor's thesis, he treated the reflection and refraction phenomena of light from this new standpoint. His fundamental work in the fields of optics and electricity revolutionized conceptions of the nature of matter. In 1878, he published an essay relating the velocity of light in a medium, to its density and composition. |
| Robert Koldewey | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1925 (born 10 Sep 1855)
German archaeologist who discovered the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (ca. 580 BC) in modern day Iraq, thus confirming its historical existance and it was not just a legend. His excavations (26 Mar 1899-1917) at Babylon unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundations of the ziggurat Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar's palaces, the wide processional roadway which passed through the heart of the city and the Ishtar Gate. He developed several modern archaeological techniques including a method to identify and excavate mud brick architecture (made necessary at Babylon because the Gardens were built using mainly unfired mudbricks.) In his life, he led many excavations in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy.« The
excavations at Babylon, by Robert Koldewey. |
| James Owen Dorsey | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1895 (born 31 Oct 1848)
American ethnologist known principally for his linguistic and ethnographic studies of the Siouan Indians. As an ordained Episcopal deacon (1871), while a missionary to the Ponca tribe of the Dakota Territory, he used his knowledge of classical languages to learn the Ponca language. Subsequently, he joined the newly formed Bureau of American Ethnology (1879), as one of its first members, and was asssigned to Nebraska to study the Omaha tribe. From thereon, Dorsey was able to make extensive linguistic studies among several tribes there and others in Oregon. He published works of his own and edited other works that have remained substantial resources. Dakota
Grammar: With Texts and Ethnography, by Stephen R. Riggs,
James Owen Dorsey, John D. Nichols. |
| George Engelmann | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1884 (born 2 Feb 1809)German-American botanist and physician, who
varied his career in medical practice with botanical travels. After obtaining
his medical degree in Europe, he travelled to the U.S. and eventually settled
in St. Louis, Missouri. Among his 100 papers documenting western North
American flora, his monograph on the cactus, Monography of North American
Cuscutinae (1842), is particularly noteworthy. Engelmann collaborated
to incorporate a major botanical collection in the public Shaw's Gardens
established by businessman Henry Shaw (1800-89) in St. Louis, which is
now the Missouri Botanical Garden). The Engelmann spruce of the Rocky Mountains
is named for him.« |
| Henri Dutrochet | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1847 (born 14 Nov 1776)
Rene-Joachim-Henri Dutrochet was a French physiologist who discovered and coined the name for (1863) osmosis, the process in which a solvent passes through a semipermeable membrane into a region of greater solute concentration, thus equalizing concentrations on either side of the membrane. He also studied development of eggs of birds. He was the first to recognize that the take-up of carbon dioxide by plant cells depends on their green pigment. The light sensitivity, and geotropism of plants also drew his interest. He was one of the most successful champions, in animal as well as vegetable physiology, of the modern ideas which displaced the old vitalistic school of thought after 1820.« |
| Charles-Marie de La Condamine | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1774 (born 28 Jan 1701)
French naturalist and mathematician who became particularly interested in geodesy (earth measurement). He was put in charge by the King of France of an expedition to Equador to measure a meridional arc at the equator (1735-43). It was wished to determine whether the Earth was either flattened or elongated at its poles. He then accomplished the first scientific exploration of the Amazon River (1743) on a raft, studying the region, and brought the drug curare to Europe. He also worked on establishment of a universal unit of length, and is credited with developing the idea of vaccination against smallpox, later perfected by Edward Jenner. However, he was almost constantly ill and died in 1773, deaf and completely paralyzed. |
| Giambattista della Porta | |
(source) |
Died
4 Feb 1615 (born 1535)
Italian natural philosopher, experimenter and mathematician, though he also sought the miraculous or magical. He studied optics, including refraction (De refractione, 1593). Porta did not invent the telescope, regardless of his published claim. He was the first to propose adding a convex lens to the camera obscura, and first to recognise the heating effect of light rays. He wrote on cryptography in De furtivis literarum (1563), and his other books included mechanics, squaring the circle, description of a steam engine in De spiritali (1606). He formed the society, Accademia dei Segreti, dedicated to discussing and studying nature, meeting at his home, until closed by the Inquisition (about 1578).« |
| FEBRUARY 4 - EVENTS | |
| Longest surgery | |
In 1951, the longest operation in medical history, taking four days, began
in Chicago to remove a huge ovarian cyst from Mrs Gertrude Levandowski,
age 58. Over a period of ten years, she had increased in weight to 616-lb
and reached 9-ft in circumference. She had developed a huge ovarian cyst,
causing a bad heart condition as it pressed against her heart. Dr. M.S.
Roberts tapped the cyst, draining fluid slowly, 120 drops a minute, to
slowly reduce its pressure on her heart. Some 200-lb of fluid were removed
in four days. Then the remaining 100-lb cyst, the size of bushel-basket,
was removed. Her weight dropped to only 308-lb after the operation.« |
|
| Teflon | |
(source) |
In 1941, Roy Plunkett received a U.S. patent for "Tetrafluoroethylene Polymers,"
now known under the trade name Teflon, which he assigned to his employer,
Kinetic Chemicals Inc of Wilmington, Delaware. (No. 2,230,654). The patent
described that the polymer had exceptional properties, including being
"highly resistantant to corrosive influences and to oxidation, and which
can be moulded and spun and put in to a wide variety of uses where its
peculiar properties would be advantageous." The invention was by accident.
Plunkett had discovered a lining of the solid polymer had resulted when
he examined the inside of containers that had stored tetrafluoroethylene
gas under pressure.« [Image:
frying pan with Teflon non-stick surface.] |
| Radioactive synthesis | |
|
In 1936, the first radioactive substance to be produced in the U.S. synthetically
was radium E, by bombarding the element bismuth with neutrons. This
was achieved by Dr. John Jacob Livingood at the University of California
at Berkeley. |
|
| Pellegra | |
pellegra (source) |
In 1915, experiments
began to find the cause
of the disease,
pellagra.
In 1915 more than 10,000 people died of pellagra in the United
States alone. The work is conducted by Dr. Joseph Goldberger upon a dozen
vounteers from the inmates of a Mississippi state prison at Jackson. By
adjusting the food in their meals, it is eventually found that pellagra
is caused by poor diet. Improving diet remedies the potentially fatal disease.
The experiment is a medical classic. Goldberger's studies alerted
people to the importance of essential nutrients
found in diets and it began the "biological age" in nutrition research
during which the connection was made between disease and lack of essential
nutrients in the diet which we call vitamins. |
| Tire rims | |
|
In 1913, a patent for a "demountable tire-carrying rim", No. 1,052,270,
was issued to Louis Henry Perlman of New York City. This was the first
automobile tire rim that was designed to be removed and remounted.. |
|
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1902, Thomas A. Edison was issued a U.S. patent for a "Reversible Galvanic
Battery" (No. 692,507),
a design for a permanent battery with a large capacity per unit of weight.
Finely divided cadmium is used as the oxidizable element. An oxide of nickel
or cobalt is used as the depolarizer, mixed with a flake-like conducting
substance such as graphite. According the patent, "the oxid of nickel or
cobalt is raised to a superperoxid condition when charged. In discharging
the nickel or cobalt oxid will be reduced to a lower state of oxidation,
while the metallic cadmium will be oxidized." The active materials are
packed under pressure in perforations of a conducting plate. The nickel
oxide is preferred as less costly and less soluble in the alkaline electrolyte. |
| Black American patent | |
(source) |
In 1896, black American inventor, Willie H. Johnson, of Navasota, Texas,
was issued a U.S. patent for "A Mechanism for Overcoming Dead Centers"
which occur in machines when a shaft is driven by a crank (No. 554,223).
The essential part of his invention consisted of a two-part or compound
crank-rod of such construction that the members automatically locked together
at the proper point in the stroke, so as to act as a single rod, and at
other intervals of its travel would automatically unlocked, so that each
member would act independently of the other. Either could act to carry
the stroke past the top dead center of the other. Johnson secured a second
patent in Oct 1898 for an improvement to his design (No. 612,345).
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Lift bridge | |
(source) |
In 1895, the first rolling lift bridge opened over the Chicago River at
Van Buren Street, Chicago. This type was popular around 1900, designed
and patented by William Scherzer of Chicago. Steel trusses or girders across
the navigable channel are supported by, and rigidly connected to, large
steel rollers as curved steel bases, like rocking chair rockers, weighted
in the rear to counterbalance the span. To open, these bridges roll back
on their rockers until upright, like a jackknife.
One such bridge now remains in Chicago, the Cermak Road Bridge (1906),
reopened in 1998 after two years of repair. Image:
Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge (1914) for the Canadian Northern Railway crosses
the Rideau Canal, Canada, now a National Historic Site. |
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1890, Thomas A. Edison was issued a U.S. patent for a "Quadruplex Telegraph"
(No. 420,594).
This invention was designed to transmit and receive four independent messages
over a single wire, without interference with each other, two in one direction
and two in the opposite direction. The separate transmitting keys will
transmit a signal with a high or low current strength which are received
with sounders that respond only to either the high or low strength signal. |
| Edison patent | |
(source) |
In 1873, Thomas A. Edison was issued a U.S. patent for an "Improvement
to Circuits for Chemical Telegraphs" (No. 135,531).
It concerned a method to reduce the problem of marks running together on
the chemical paper from the electric action of one pulsation from the telegraph
wire not clearing before the next followed. Edison utilized electromagnets
in local or branch circuits to sharpen the pulses. |
| Darwin book | |
|
In 1868, Charles Darwin began writing
his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. He
was now 69 years old, working in his home in Downe, England. |
|
| Rubber galoshes | |
|
In 1824, J.W. Goodrich introduced rubber galoshes - thin rubber boots to
fit over shoes to protect them while worn outdoors during inclement weather. |
|
