| FEBRUARY 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Otto Stern | |
 Born 17
Feb 1888; died 17 Aug 1969.
German-born scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1943 for his development of the molecular beam as a tool for studying the characteristics of molecules and for his measurement of the magnetic moment of the proton. |
|
| Margaret Warner Morley | |
| Born 17
Feb 1858; died 12 Dec 1923.
American biologist, educator, and writer, author of many works for children on nature and biology. and attended public schools in Brooklyn, New York. After postgraduate studies in biology, she taught at several schools. Teaching and working with children led her into an interest in nature and biology, and in developing methods by which it might be better taught. Since there were not good textbooks on the subject, she began to write her own, beginning her true avocation as an author. Her books were considered authoritative though entertaining and became. Many were used as school texts at a time when nature study was beginning to be incorporated into a rapidly growing number of schools’ curricula. |
|
| Frederic Eugene Ives | |
(source) |
Born 17
Feb 1856; died 27 May 1937.
American photographer and inventor of the halftone process, a method of reproducing photographs on a printing press. Prior to this process, photos and illustrations were reproduced from hand-engraved plates. In this way printers could reproduce line drawings, but not the shades of gray in a photograph because printing presses cannot print gray - only black and white. Ives invented a screen that would convert a photograph into a pattern of tiny dots. Large dots form where the image is dark, and tiny dots where the image is light, thus giving the illusion of shades of gray. In 1881, he was the first to make a three-colour print from halftone blocks. Further inventions in photography and colour printing yielded 70 patents. (Image: 1996 U.S. postage stamp.) |
| Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchayev | |
| Born 17
Feb 1846; died 26 Oct 1903.
Russian geomorphologist, Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchayev, pioneered the study of soil creation processes and their classification. Dokuchayev regarded the composition of soil as the product of the combined interaction of climate, bedrock, and organisms. Thus, he showed (1898) that different soils of different areas may result from similar bedrock material when climate is differs. In this way, he was beginning the recognition of biomes. He introduced (1883) the term chernozem for a type of rich black soil, rich in carbonates and humus, that occurs in the temperate latitudes of Russia. |
|
| Friedrich Konrad Beilstein | |
(source) |
Born 17
Feb 1838; died 18 Oct 1906.
Russian chemist who compiled the Handbuch der organischen Chemie, 2 vol. (1880-83; Handbook of Organic Chemistry), an indispensable tool for the organic chemist. |
| Friedrich Eduard Beneke | |
| Born 17
Feb 1798; died 1 Mar 1854.
German philosopher and psychologist who argued that inductive psychology was the foundation for the study of all philosophical disciplines. He rejected the existing idealism for a form of associationism influenced by both Kant and Locke. Beneke agreed with Herbart's general idea that mathematics should be introduced into psychology, but he felt that Herbart's attempt to quantify psychological phenomena was insufficiently empirical. Beneke suggested that more precise observations were needed, through psychological experiments. Although he never carried out such experiments himself, Beneke demanded that psychologists should develop their theories, and test them, under controlled conditions and with the systematic variation of variables. |
|
| René Laënnec | |
(source) |
Born 17 Feb 1781; died 13 Aug 1826.
René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec was a French physician who invented the stethoscope and is generally considered the father of chest medicine. Using a foot-long wooden cylinder that he placed on the chests of his patients, he was able to hear the various sounds made by the lungs and heart. For three years he studied patients' chest sounds and correlated them with the diseases found in autopsy. He described his methods and findings in the classic De l'auscultation médiate (1819). Laënnec made numerous other contributions to the literature of respiratory and heart disease. (Image top right source) |
| Horace Bénédict de Saussure | |
(source) |
Born 17
Feb 1740; died 22 Jan 1799.
Swiss physicist, geologist, and early Alpine explorer. He made an extensive study of the structure of the Alps, described in the four volumes of Voyages dans les Alpes (1779-96). His theory was neptunian, but with uniformitarian overtones. The word geology was introduced into scientific nomenclature by Saussure with the publication of the first volume. Saussure developed what was probably the first electrometer (1766), used to measure electric potential. He also developed an improved hygrometer to measure atmospheric humidity (1783), the first to use human hair for the purpose. |
| Johann Tobias Mayer | |
(source) |
Born 17
Feb 1723; died 20 Feb 1762.
German astronomer who developed lunar tables that greatly assisted navigators in determining longitude at sea. Mayer also discovered the libration (or apparent wobbling) of the Moon. Mayer began calculating lunar and solar tables in 1753 and in 1755 he sent them to the British government. These tables were good enough to determine longitude at sea with an accuracy of half a degree. Mayer's method of determining longitude by lunar distances and a formula for correcting errors in longitude due to atmospheric refraction were published in 1770 after his death. The Board of Longitude sent Mayer's widow a payment of 3000 pounds as an award for the tables. |
| Rudolph Jacob Camerarius | |
(source) |
Born 17
Feb 1665; died 11 Sep 1721.
German botanist who demonstrated the existence of sexes in plants, which made plants available for studies of genetics and heredity. He demonstrated experimentally the sexuality of plants in Epistolae de Sexu Plantarum (Letter on the Sexuality of Plants, 1694) in which he identified the stamen and pistil as the male and female organs, and the pollen as the fertilizing agent. |
|
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| FEBRUARY 17 - DEATHS | |
| Marie-Louise von Franz | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Feb 1998 (born 4 Jan 1915)
Born 4 Jan 1915; died 17 Feb 1998. German-born Swiss psychologist who was a Jungian analyst (1948-98) in collaboration with Carl Jung for over 30 years. She was also fairy-tale expert whose research showed common themes in tales from many cultures, which she linked with experiences in daily life. She began analysis with Jung at eighteen, and worked with him until his death in 1961. As Jung's primary partner in his research into alchemical texts, her first major publication, Aurora Consurgens, is a companion volume to Jung's last major work, Mysterium Cuniuntionis. Other works include On Dreams and Myths and C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time. |
| Andrew J(ackson) Moyer | |
(source) |
Died
17 Feb 1959 (born 30 Nov 1959)
American microbiologist who invented a method for mass-producing the antibiotic penicillin. While working for the US Agriculture Department laboratory (1940-57), he discovered a technique for antibiotic fermentation using continuous shaking of a culture broth of corn steep liquor (a by-product of the corn starch manufacturing process) and lactose. His method improved on prior methods producing 2 to 8 Oxford units/ml of broth, to in excess of 200 Oxford units/ml. By making possible the large-scale production of penicillin, the process is credited with saving thousands of lives during World War II. Corn steep liquor was adopted for other commercial fermentation processes making many other antibiotics, and the method is still in use today.« |
| Waldemar Christofer Brøgger | |
(source) |
Died
17 Feb 1940 (born 10 Nov 1851)
Norwegian geologist and mineralogist whose research on Permian igneous rocks (286 to 245 million years ago) and tectonics of Norway. He greatly advanced petrologic (rock-formation) theory. In his studies of Permian rocks he carried out pioneering work on the theory of magmatic differentiation (the separation of molten magma into heterogeneous rocks). His work revealed much about the mineralogy of the rocks of southern Norway and the Oslo region. |
| Hiram Percy Maxim | |
| Died
17 Feb 1936 (born 2 Sep 1869)
American inventor and manufacturer known especially for the "Maxim silencer" gun attachment. |
|
| Christopher Latham Sholes | |
| Died
17 Feb 1890 (born 14 Feb 1819)
U.S. inventor who developed the typewriter. A printer and newspaper editor by trade, he developed a page numbering machine in the mid-1800s. A friend suggested he modify the machine into a letter-printing device. Sholes patented the typewriter in 1868 and sold the rights to Remington in 1873. |
|
| Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander | |
(source) |
Died
17 Feb 1875 (born 22 Mar 1799)
German astronomer who established the study of variable stars as an independent branch of astronomy and is renowned for his great catalog listing the positions and magnitudes of 324,188 stars. He studied at the University of Königsberg, Prussia, where he was a pupil and later the successor of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. In 1837, Argelander published the first major investigation of the Sun's motion through space. In 1844 he began studies of variable stars. |
| Adolphe Quetelet | |
(source) |
Died
17 Feb 1874 (born 22 Feb 1796)
(Lambert) Adolphe (Jacques) Quetelet was a Belgian mathematician, astronomer, statistician, and sociologist known for his pioneering application of statistics and the theory of probability to social phenomena, especially crime. At an observatory in Brussels that he established in 1833 at the request of the Belgian government, he worked on statistical, geophysical, and meteorological data, studied meteor showers and established methods for the comparison and evaluation of the data. In Sur l'homme et le developpement de ses facultés, essai d'une physique sociale (1835) Quetelet presented his conception of the average man as the central value about which measurements of a human trait are grouped according to the normal curve. Image: from a 1974 Belgian postage stamp. |
| Nobuhiro Sato | |
Early map of Japan (source) |
Died
17 Feb 1850 (born 18 Jul 1769)
Scientist and an early advocate of Westernization in Japan. He favoured the development of an authoritarian type of government based on Western science and political institutions. As an agronomist, Satô Nobuhiro wrote in Keizai yôryaku (The Epitome of Economy), "The rationale of economy is to manage the realm, develop goods, make domains affluent, and succor everyone." In short, economy was the know-how to succour people. Sato Nobuhiro, held the European powers to be a threat, and advocated economic reform so that Japan could build up its military to stave off the Western menace. Even this contrary perspective advocated expansionism much like the Imperialism of the European nations. Also prevalent in his writings are the call for urgent and drastic change in the Japanese system. He advocated for the development of transportation and for a government agency to fund such developments in order to encourage the nation's commerce. |
| Giordano Bruno | |
(source) |
Died
17 Feb 1600 (born 1548)
Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional geocentric (or Earth-centred) astronomy and intuitively went beyond the Copernican heliocentric (sun-centred) theory, which still maintained a finite universe with a sphere of fixed stars. Although one of the most important philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Bruno's various passionate utterings led to opposition. In 1592, after a trial he was kept imprisoned for eight years and interrogated periodically. When, in the end, he refused to recant, he was burned at the stake in Rome for heresy. |
| FEBRUARY 17 - EVENTS | |
| Computer chess | |
In 1996, world chess champion Gary Kasparov defeated Deep
Blue, IBM's chess-playing computer, by winning a six-game match 4-2,
in a regulation-style match held in Philadelphia, as part of the ACM Computer
Science Conference. Deep
Blue is an improved version of the older Deep Thought, augmented
by parallel special-purpose hardware. Deep Blue uses a selectively deepening
search strategy, using improvements of the alpha-beta search strategy,
with powerful evaluation functions. Transposition tables help avoid unnecessarily
calculating the same position more than once. Two powerful databases further
augment Deep Blue's play. Deep Blue would defeat Kasparov - the first time
the grandmaster ever lost a six-game match in championship play. |
|
| British atom bomb announced | |
(source) |
In 1952, Winston Churchill announced
that Britain had developed
its own atomic bomb. The test for the first British-made atomic bomb was
planned at the Monte Bello Islands off the northwest coast of Australia.
The formal postwar decision to manufacture a British atomic bomb had been
made by Prime Minister Clement Attlee's government early in Jan 1947 during
a
meeting of the Defence Subcommittee of the Cabinet. On 25 Feb 1952, at
Sellafield on the Irish Sea coast in Cumberland, the Windscale plutonium
plant began operation. On 3 Oct 1952, the first British atomic weapons
test,
called Hurricane, was successfully conducted aboard the frigate HMS
Plym. Britain was was the third nuclear power after the U.S. and Russia
to include the atomic bomb in its armoury. |
| Wernher von Braun | |
|
In 1945, a Soviet offensive forced the rocket expert Wernher von Braun
and other scientists to evacuate the V2 rocket site at Peenemunde, East
Germany. |
|
| Baird TV demonstrated | |
 |
In 1938, the first public experimental demonstration of Baird colour television
was transmitted from Crystal Palace to the Dominion Theatre, London. |
| Car self-starter | |
|
In 1911, the first self-starter, based on patented inventions created by
General Motors engineers Clyde Coleman and Charles Kettering, was installed
in a Cadillac. In the early years of fierce competition with Ford, the
self-starter would play a key role in helping GM to keep pace. The Ford
Model T’s crank starter caused its share of broken jaws and ribs. Charles
Kettering, the founder of Delco (Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company),
devised countless improvements for the automobile, including lighting and
ignition systems, lacquer finishes, antilock fuels, and leaded gasoline.
Prior to his work with cars, Kettering also invented the electric cash
register. |
|
| Mendeleev's Periodic Table | |
 |
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev
cancelled a planned visit to a factory and stayed at home working on the
problem of how to arrange
the chemical elements in a systematic way. To begin, he wrote each element
and its chief properties on a separate card and arranged these in various
patterns. Eventually he achieved a layout that suited him and copied it
down on paper. Later that same day he decided a better arrangement by properties
was possible and made a copy of that, which had similar elements grouped
in vertical columns, unlike his first table, which grouped them horizontally.
These historic documents still exist, and mark the beginning of the form
of the Periodic Table as commonly used today. (The date is given by the
Julian calendar in use in Russia at the time.) |
| Bicycle forerunner | |
 |
In 1818, Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patented the "draisine", the
forerunner of the bicycle. |
| First U.S. public street light | |
(source) |
In 1817, the first public gas street light in the U.S. was lit in Baltimore,
Maryland. From 19 Jun 1816,
the Gas
Light Company of Baltimore had been laying pipes with the approval
of the City Council in the first city ordinance of its kind in the U.S.
Earlier in 1816, artist and entrepreneur Rembrandt Peale had learnt about
gas lighting by travelling to England. On his return, he displayed his
"Ring of Fire" gas-powered light in his Baltimore museum on the corner
of Baltimore and Holiday Streets. Peale’s successful demonstration of the
power and value of gas led to a plan to light the streets of the city,
and the first gas company in America. [Image:
A lamp (from 1920-30's) kept burning on the site that Peale first constructed
his in 1817.] |
