| FEBRUARY 20 - BIRTHS | |
| Robert Huber | |
(source) |
 Born 20
Feb 1937
German biochemist who, along with Johann Deisenhofer and Hartmut Michel, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a protein complex that is essential to photosynthesis in bacteria. |
| John Willard Milnor | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1931
American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1962 for his his proof that a 7-dimensional sphere can have 28 different differential structures. This work opened up the new field of differential topology. Milnor's theorem shows that the total curvature of a knot is at least 4  .
In the 1950's, Milnor did a substantial amount of work on algebraic topology
in which he constructed the classifying space of a topological group and
gave a geometric realisation of a semi-simplicial complex. Since the 1970's
his interest is in dynamics, especially holomorphic dynamics. Milnor served
the American Mathematical Society as vice president (1975-76) and was awarded
the Wolf Prize in 1989.
 Topology
from the Differentiable Viewpoint, by John Willard
Milnor. |
| Ansel Easton Adams | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1902; died 22 Apr 1984.
American photographer and environmentalist whose compelling images of the American landscape were matched by his dedication to the conservation of those lands. His love began as a child on a family vacation in Yosemite National Park (1916) with the Kodak Box Brownie camera his parents had given him. By 1920 he had joined the Sierra Club and before long was contributing photographs to the Sierra Club Bulletin. On 10 Apr 1927 he created his first masterpiece, Monolith: The Face of Half Dome showing Yosemite's most striking feature. He turned to a career in commercial photography. While on the Sierra Club board of directors (1934-71) he helped lobby to save the great wilderness shown in his photographs.« America's
Wilderness: The Photographs of Ansel Adams With the Writings of John Muir,
by Ansel Adams et al. |
| René Dubos | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1901; died 20 Feb 1982.
René (Jules) Dubos was a French-born American microbiologist, environmentalist, and author who pioneered research in isolating antibacterial substances from certain soil microorganisms and the discovery of major antibiotics. In 1938, he discovered ribonuclease, a simple 3D enzyme, but an early contribution to research on the most basic functions of life. In 1939, Dubos showed that a soil bacterium was capable of decomposing the starchlike capsule of the pneumococcus bacterium, rendering it harmless - unable to cause pneumonia. From the soil microbe Bacillus brevis, he isolated tyrothricin, that was highly toxic to a wide range of bacteria. Other research included acquired immunity, tuberculosis, and bacteria of the gastrointestinal tract. Rene
Dubos, Friend of the Good Earth,
by Carol L. Moberg. |
| Curt Paul Richter | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1894; died 21 Dec 1988.
American psychobiologist who discovered the body’s biorhythms and identified the part of the brain that controls daily cycles of sleeping, waking and other activities. He first wrote about this biological clock in a 1927 paper in which he described how internal cycles control an animal's drinking, eating, running, and sexual behaviour. He also studied the great extent to which animal biological processes can be modifed by learned behaviour. Richter connected the discovery of fire by ancient peoples to significant modifications in habits, communication, learning and even resulted in changes in brain structure. He related behaviour and the biochemistry of sleep, stress, and the onset of disease. Altogether Richter wrote over 250 research papers.« Biological
clocks in medicine and psychiatry, by Curt Paul Richter. |
| Raymond Cecil Moore | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1892; died 16 Apr 1974.
American paleontologist known for his work on Paleozoic crinoids, bryozoans, and corals (invertebrate organisms existing 570 to 245 million years ago). Crinoids are stalked echinoderms (spiny-skinned, exclusively marine organisms), almost extinct today, related to sea stars. Fossil stemmed forms, sometimes called "sea lilies," have a superficial resemblance to flowers, but were animals. Moore is probably best known as the founder and editor of the landmark multi-volume Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology. Invertebrate
Fossils, by Raymond C. Moore. |
| Charles Hubbard Judd | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1873; died 18 Jul 1946.
U.S. psychologist who was a leader adopting the scientific method in the study and reform of education. His own research included the nature and development in reading, language, number ideas and their development, writing, and the higher mental processes. He examined the psychological issues of school curriculum and the pedagogical methods used in education. He believed an overarching educational objective was to developing the learner's social consciousness, rather than the expression of an individual's instinct, but to participate in a cooperative social experience. He filed an affidavit at the Scope's trial in strong support of the teaching of evolution in schools.« The
evolution of a democratic school system, by Charles Hubbard
Judd. |
| Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann | |
(source) |
Born 20
Feb 1844; died 5 Sep 1906.
Physicist who founded statistical mechanics. After obtaining his doctorate, he became an assistant to his teacher Josef Stefan. Boltzmann's fame is based on his invention of statistical mechanics, independently of Willard Gibbs. Their theories connected the properties and behaviour of atoms and molecules with the large scale properties and behaviour of the substances of which they were the building blocks. He also worked out a kinetic theory of gases, and the Stefan-Boltzmann law concerning a relationship between the temperature of a body and the radiation it emits. His firm belief and defense of atomism (that all matter is made of atoms) against hostile opposition to this new idea, may have contributed to his suicide in 1906. Boltzmann's
Atom: The Great Debate That Launched A Revolution In Physics, by
David Lindley |
| FEBRUARY 20 - DEATHS | |
| Ferruccio Lamborghini | |
(source) |
 Died
20 Feb 1993 (born 28 Apr 1916)
Italian industrialist who founded a luxury car company that produced some of the fastest, most expensive, and sought-after sports cars in the world. Lamborghini worked as a mechanic in the Italian army during World War II, and after the war he started a tractor company. Lamborghini:
Forty Years, by David Jolliffe. |
| René Dubos | |
| Died
20 Feb 1982 (born 20 Feb 1901)
Dubos died on his birthday. See above. |
|
| Maria Goeppert Mayer | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1972 (born 28 Jun 1906)
German physicist who shared one-half of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany for their proposal of the shell nuclear model. (The other half of the prize was awarded to Eugene P. Wigner of the United States for unrelated work.) In 1939 she worked at Columbia University on the separation of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb project. In 1949, she devised the shell nuclear model, which explained the detailed properties of atomic nuclei in terms of a structure of shells occupied by the protons and neutrons. This explained the great stability and abundance of nuclei that have a particular number of neutrons (such as 50, 82, or 126) and the same special number of protons. Maria
Goeppert Mayer, by Joseph P. Ferry. |
| Sir Leonard Woolley | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1960 (born 17 Apr 1880)
Sir (Charles) Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist whose excavation of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur (in modern Iraq) greatly advanced knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian civilization. His discovery of geological evidence of a great flood suggested a possible correlation with the deluge described in Genesis. His excavation of Ur (1922-34), enabled scholars to trace the history of the city from its final days during the 4th century BC back to its prehistoric beginnings (c. 4000 BC). His finds revealed much about everyday life, art, architecture, literature, government, and religion in this "cradle of civilization." In royal tombs dating from about 2700 BC, he uncovered the practice of the sacrificial burial of a deceased king's personal retinue. Woolley
of Ur: The Life of Sir Leonard Woolley, by H. V. F. Winstone. |
| Heinrich Georg Barkhausen | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1956 (born 2 Dec 1881)
German physicist who discovered the Barkhausen effect (1919), a principle concerning changes in the magnetic properties of metal. His work in acoustics and magnetism led to the discovery that magnetization affects whole domains of a ferromagnetic material, rather than individual atoms alone. He discovered that a slow, smooth increase of a magnetic field applied to a piece of ferromagnetic material, such as iron, causes it to become magnetized, not continuously but in minute steps. With Karl Kurz, he developed the Barkhausen- Kurz oscillator (1920) for ultrahigh frequencies (forerunner of the microwave tube), leading to understanding of the principle of velocity modulation. He is also known for experiments on shortwave radio transmissions. |
| Oswald Avery | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1955 (born 21 Oct 1877)
Oswald (Theodore) Avery was a bacteriologist whose research on pneumococcus bacteria made him one of the founders of immunochemistry. His research laid the groundwork for modern genetics and molecular biology. Avery spent most of his research life at Rockefeller Institute where he made important contributions to the understanding of the pneumococcus organism, a particularly virulent bacterium that caused lobar pneumonia. Prior to Avery's work, genetic material was assumed to be protein. At age 67, Avery made his most important discovery when he proved conclusively that DNA from the nucleus of the cell is the genetic material, in a seminal 1944 paper co-authored by Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty.
Oswald
Avery and the Story of DNA, by Vesta-Nadine Severs and
Jim Whiting. |
| Antonio Abetti | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1928 (born 19 June 1846)
Italian astronomer who was an authority on minor planets. At first a civil engineer, he became an astronomer at the University of Padua (1868-93), with an interest in positional astronomy and made many observations of small planets, comets and star occultations. In 1874, Abetti went to Muddapur, Bengal, to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's disk where his use of a spectroscope was the first use of this kind. Later, he became director at the Arcetti Observatory and Professor of astronomy at the University of Florence (1894-1921). The observatory had been founded by G. B. Donati in 1872, and Abetti equipped it with a new telescope that he had built in the workshops at Padua. He was active after retirement, until his death. |
| Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1907 (born 8 Feb 1834)
(Also spelled Mendeleyev) Russian chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements. In his final version of the periodic table (1871) he left gaps, foretelling that they would be filled by elements not then known and predicting the properties of three of those elements. 
"Dmitry
Ivanovich Mendeleyev: His Life and His Work" by O. N.
Pisarzhevsky |
| Henri Moissan | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1907 (born 28 Sep 1852)
French chemist who received the 1906 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of the highly reactive gaseous element fluorine, and the development of the Moissan electric furnace. In 1884, he began studying fluorine compounds, and separated fluorine two years later when he electrolyzed a solution of potassium fluoride in hydrofluoric acid. Having isolated fluorine, he was then able to determine its physical and chemical properties. From 1892, with an electric arc furnace he designed, Moissan began experimenting with reactions possible at much higher temperatures than before and discovered many new compounds and was able to vaporize substances previously impossible. He developed the furnace for industrial production of acetylene. |
| Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1892 (born 30 Oct 1817)
German chemist and historian of chemistry whose studies of the relation of physical properties to chemical structure pioneered physical organic chemistry. Through measurement of boiling point, density, specific heat, and thermal expansion, Kopp showed that differences in the physical properties of organic compounds reflected the degree by which their structure differs. |
| Charles Knowlton | |
| Died
20 Feb 1850 (born 10 May 1800)
American physician whose popular treatise on birth control, the object of celebrated court actions in the United States and England, initiated the widespread use of contraceptives. Anonymously published, his book The Fruits of Philosophy: or The Private Companion of Young Married People was the first on the subject in the U.S. Despite an otherwise appropriate discussion of the medical, social, and economic aspects of birth control, he so offended the public taste of the times that he was prosecuted in the U.S., fined (1832) and imprisoned for three months. In England he was aquitted in what became a famous test case. Subsequently, the book sales rose from 1,000 to 250,000 a year. |
|
| Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1841 (born 19 Jun 1783)
German chemist who discovered morphine (1806) while trying to isolate the portion of opium that caused sleep. He named the bitter white crystalline alkaloid after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.When his initial reports of the drug's properties were challenged, he engaged the help of three friends in test taking the drug themselves. After this delay, the medicinal values of morphine were recognized in his lifetime. Subsequently, Sertürner became insane in mid-life, though he lived to age 57. Morphine is among the most important naturally occurring compounds, being of use in the treatment of pain and other calming effects. Unfortunately, addiction is a possible side effect. Its discovery established alkaloid chemistry. |
| Jean-Charles de Borda | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1799 (born 4 May 1733)
French mathematician and nautical astronomer noted for his studies of fluid mechanics and his development of instruments for navigation and geodesy, the study of the size and shape of the Earth. Borda joined the navy, took part in several scientific voyages and played a role in the American War of Independence. He was one of the main driving forces in the introduction of the decimal system. Borda made good use of calculus and experiment to unify areas of physics. For his surveying, he also developed a series of trigonometric tables. In 1782, while in command of a flotilla of six French ships, he was captured by the British. Borda's health declined after his release. He is one of 72 scientists commemorated by plaques on the Eiffel tower. |
| Johann Tobias Mayer | |
(source) |
Died
20 Feb 1762 (born 17 Feb 1723)
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. |
| Jean-Adrien Helvetius | |
(source) |
Died 20 Feb 1727 (born 1661)
Dutch physician who popularized the use of the ipecacuanha root for its sudorific, expectorant and emetic qualities. A traveller, Le Gras, had brought a quantity of this root from Brazil to Europe in 1672, held by a Parisian apothecary Claquenelle. Helvetius exploited the root extracts successfully as a secret remedy to treat dysentry and diarrhoea. He secured lettres royales from King Louis XIV on 19 July 1688* - a four-year monopoly to sell the drug. The Dauphin - the eldest son of the King and direct heir to the throne - was a grateful patient, cured of an attack of dysentery. On 17 Jan 1708, Helvetius was appointed conseiller du roi as inspector-general of the hospitals in Flanders. He treated cases of dysentery in the King's army.« [Image: Title page of Treaty of the most frequent diseases and of the remedies suitable to cure them by Helvetius; right: ipecac herb] |
| FEBRUARY 20 - EVENTS | |
| Sakurai's Object | |
(source) |
In 1996, a bright "new" star was discovered
in Sagittarius by Japanese amateur astronomer Yukio Sakurai. It was found
not to be a usual nova, but instead was a star
going through a dramatic evolutionary state, re-igniting its nuclear furnace
for one final blast of energy called the "final helium flash." It was only
the second to be identified in the twentieth century. A star like the Sun
ends its active life as a white dwarf star gradually cooling down into
visual oblivion. Sakurai's Object had a mass a few times that of the Sun.
Its collapse after fusing most of its hydrogen fuel to helium raised its
temperature so much higher it began nuclear fusion of its helium remains.
This was confirmed using its light spectrum to identify the elements present.«
[Image:
star image superimposed on telescope beside Sukarai] |
| Space station Mir | |
(source) |
In 1986, the Soviet Union launched
into orbit Mir, a new space station. Mir,
the Russian word for peace, had six docking ports and special laboratories
for scientific research. Weeks later, a veteran crew was sent to man the
56-ft-long and 13.6-ft wide station. The core module provided living quarters
for the cosmonauts: galley/table, cooking elements and storage, individual
crew cabins and personal hygiene area. They also had a working compartment
for monitoring and commanding the core systems supported by an electric
power system, thermal control system, computer systems, environmental control
and life support, communications and tracking systems. Five additional
modules were launched between Mar 1987 and April 1996. [Image:
Russia's Mir complex as Shuttle Atlantis approached for docking on 15 Jan
1997] |
| Laser TV | |
|
In 1963, a television receiver and transmitter operated by a laser beam
was demonstrated in Bayside, NY. The laser (light amplification by stimulated
emission of radion) provides a narrow high-intensity light beam that can
be focussed and directed over long distances. The demonstration was made
by the General Telephone and Electronics Co. |
|
| Glenn in orbit | |
(source) |
In 1962, John Glenn piloted
the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first U.S. manned
orbital mission.
Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, he completed three-orbits
around the earth, at a maximum altitude of approx. 162 miles and an orbital
velocity of approx. 17,500 mph. He spotted Perth, Australia, when that
city's residents greeted him by switching on their house lights in unison.
A four-cent U.S. stamp was put on sale the same day, making it the first
U.S. stamp issued on the day of the event it commemorated. Glenn returned
to space 36 years later, making 134 more orbits as a crew member of the
space shuttle Discovery (29 Oct - 7 Nov 1998) for investigations on space
flight and the aging process. |
| Car airplane | |
(source) |
In 1937, the first a successful automobile-airplane combination
was complete and ready for testing.The first
flight took place the next day, 21 Feb 1937. Built by the Westerman
Arrowplane Corporation of Santa Monica, Cal., the vehicle was dubbed the
Arrowbile,
and claimed a top air-speed of 120 mph and 70 mph on a highway. Designed
by aeroengineer
Waldo Dean Waterman
(1894-1976), it evolved from the prototype Arrowplane,
a
project to design a simple, easy to fly, low cost airplane. The Studebaker
Corporation, which supplied the 100 hp engines, eventually took delivery
of five Arrowbiles. |
| Artificial radioactivity | |
(USPTO) |
In 1934, a U.S. patent was issued to Ernest O. Lawrence for his "Method
and Apparatus for Acceleration of Ions," known as the cyclotron (No.1,948,384).
He described its operation as "based on the cumulative action of a succession
of accelerating impulses wach requiring only a moderate voltage but eventually
resulting in an ion speed corresponding to a much higher voltage. The ions
are constrained in a circular path in a vacuum chamber by a strong magnetic
field while they are accelerated in resonance with oscillations of an electric
field. Spurred by a report by Frédéric Joliot concerning
the probability that many elements could become radioactive upon hydrogen
ion bombardment, Ernest O. Lawrence applied his invention to bombarding
nitrogen in their cyclotron to produce artificial radioactivity.«
[Image:
diagrammatic elevation (top) and section views of the apparatus.] |
| Air Ship | |
(source) |
In 1900, John F. Pickering, of Gonaives, Haiti, received a U.S. patent
for his design of an air ship or launch (No. 643,975). It combined a "balloon,
an attached car carrying a motor and a propeller, fans driven by the motor,
air-pipes provided with bent, movable outlets leading both upward and downward
from the fans and extending through the balloon and the bottom of the car,
and means for shifting the blast of the fan to either upward or downward
air-pipes." The operator would also be in control of "the propulsion horizontally
or at any desired angle with relation to the horizon ... or the turning
of the same to any desired point of the compass." |
| Elevator | |
(source) |
In 1872, Cyrus W. Baldwin received a U.S. patent for a vertical geared
hydraulic electric elevator which was installed in the Stephens Hotel hotel
in New York City (No. 123,761).
The patent described "suspending and operating the elevator carriage from
the bottom or platform thereof." Safety devices were included to prevent
a fall if the suspending devices should fail. Baldwin also expressed design
features to reduce the transfer of sounds to the rest of the building. |
| Paper bag machine | |
(source) |
In 1872, Luther Childs Crowell,
a prolific inventor
of Cape Cod, Mass., received a patent for a machine for manufacturing square-bottom
paper bags. Patent #123,811 allowed for the bags to have two longitudinal
inward folds. As a child, he spent a great deal of time folding pieces
of paper, unlike most of his peers who mostly whittled and made things
out of wood. In 1867, he took out his first patent for a square-bottom
paper bag, and wholesale production began in 1879. It remains the standard
paper bag in use throughout the world. Among his 293 patents, other inventions
were a bottle-labeling machine, one for folding and wrapping magazines
for mailing, and he experimented with an airplane that would be fueled
by gunpowder. |
| Toothpicks | |
(source) |
In 1872, Silas Noble and James P. Cooley of Granville, Mass., patented
a toothpick manufacturing machine. It was described in patent No. 123,790
as an invention which allows "a block of wood, with little waste and in
one operation, [to] be cut up in to toothpicks ready for use." The Noble
& Cooley Co. made not only military drums of all sizes, but also
toy drums. In 1854, the company produced 631 drums, by 1873 they were manufacturing
100,000 drums a year! Special machinery was designed and built to aid in
the difficult process of steam bending, decorating and fabricating the
drum parts. The company is now the largest and oldest toy drum manufacturer
in America. |
| Darwin sights volcano | |
(source) |
In 1835, Charles Darwin, in Chile,
experienced
a very strong earthquake and shortly afterward saw evidence of several
feet of uplift in the region. He repeated measurement a few days later,
and found the land had risen several feet. He had proved that geological
changes occur even in our own time. Lyell's
principles were based on the concept of a steady-state, nondirectional
earth whereby uplift, subsidence, erosion, and deposition were all balanced.
Thereby, Darwin coupled in his mind this dramatic evidence of elevation
with accompanying subsidence and deposition. Thus he hypothesized that
coral reefs of the Pacific developed on the margins of subsiding land masses,
in the three stages of fringing reef, barrier reef, and atoll. 
From
So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, by
Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson. |
