| MARCH 13 - BIRTHS | |
| John H. Van Vleck | |
(source) |
 Born 13
Mar 1899; died 27 Oct 1980.
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck was an American physicist and mathematician who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977 with Philip W. Anderson and Sir Nevill F. Mott. The prize honoured Van Vleck's contributions to the understanding of the behaviour of electrons in magnetic, noncrystalline solid materials. |
| Albert William Stevens | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1886; died 26 Mar 1949.
U.S. Army officer, balloonist, and early aerial photographer who took the first photograph of the Earth's curvature (1930) and the first photographs of the Moon's shadow on the Earth during a solar eclipse (1932). On 11 Nov 1935, Stevens made a record balloon ascent in the Explorer II to 72,395 ft with Captain (later Lieutenant General) Orvil Anderson at Rapid City, S.D. |
| Clifford M. Holland | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1883; died 1924.
Clifford Milburn Holland was the American engineer who designed the 1.5-mile-long Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River, between New York City and Jersey City, NJ. In 1919, Holland, took office as Chief Engineer of the tunnel that would eventually bear his name. Tunnel construction began 12 Oct 1920 and was completed in 1927. In Holland's design, the new problem of noxious gases from internal combustion engines, was solved with huge-capacity fans in ventilating buildings at each end, forcing air through a supply duct below the roadway, with an exhaust duct above the ceiling. Holland did not see his dream come to fruition At age 41, he died one day before construction crews from the two sides met. The tunnel opened 13 Nov 1927. |
| Dayton Clarence Miller | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1866; died 22 Feb 1941
American physicist. Author of The Science of Musical Sounds (1916). Miller's collection of nearly 1,650 flutes and other instruments, and other materials mostly related to the flute, is now at the Library of Congress. To provide a mechanical means of recording sound waves photographically, he invented the phonodeik (1908). He became expert in architectural ecoustics. During WW I, he was consulted concerning using his photodeik to help locate enemy guns. Miller spent considerable research effort on repeating the Michelson and Morley experiment, proposed by Maxwell, to detect a stationary aether. He spent some time working with Morley (1902-4), then more time at Mt. Wilson, recording results favoring the presence of the aether. |
| Percival Lowell | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1855; died 12 Nov 1916.
American astronomer who predicted the existence of the planet Pluto and initiated the search that ended in its discovery. Lowell was also passionately committed to finding proof of intelligent life on Mars. In 1894, he founded the Lowell Observatory, atop Mars Hill, at Flagstaff as Arizona's first astronomical observatory. Studying Mars, Lowell drew in intricate detail, the network of several hundred fine, straight lines and their intersection in a number of "oases." Lowell concluded that the bright areas were deserts and the dark ones were patches of vegetation. He believed further, that water from the melting polar cap flowed down the canals toward the equatorial region to revive the vegetation. |
| Joseph Priestley | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1733; died 6 Feb 1804.
English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist who discovered the element oxygen. His early scientific interest was electricity, but he is remembered for his later work in chemistry, especially gases. He investigated the "fixed air" (carbon dioxide) found in a layer above the liquid in beer brewery fermentation vats. Although known by different names at the time, he also discovered sulphur dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and silicon fluoride. Priestley is remembered for his invention of a way of making soda-water (1772), the pneumatic trough, and recognising that green plants in light released oxygen. His political opinions and support of the French Revolution, were unpopular. After his home and laboratory were set afire (1791), he sailed for America, arriving at New York on 4 Jun 1794.«  Joseph
Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth,
by F W. Gibbs. |
| Charles Bonnet | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1720; died 20 May 1793.
Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer who discovered parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization) in female aphids. Bonnet also: demonstrated the regenerative ability of annelid worms, found that insects breathe through pores which he called stigmata, studied photosynthesis and epinasty in plants and noted the emission of bubbles by a submerged illuminated leaf. With eyesight failing in the 1750's he turned to speculation. Remembering the aphid, in 1770, Bonnet published an argument that all females carry within them all future evolutionary generations in a miniature form, able to survive even such cataclysms as the biblical Flood. He predicted, moreover, that these catastrophes thus brought about evolutionary change. |
| Federico Cesi | |
(source) |
Born 13
Mar 1585; died 1 Aug 1630.
Italian scientist who founded the Accademia dei Lincei (1603, Academy of Linceans or Lynxes), often cited as the first modern scientific society, and of which Galileo was the sixth member (1611). Cesi first announced the word telescope for Galileo's instrument. At an early age, while being privately educated, Cesi became interested in natural history and that believed it should be studied directly, not philosophically. The name of the Academy, which he founded at age 18, was taken from Lynceus of Greek mythology, the animal Lynx with sharp sight. He devoted the rest of his life to recording, illustrating and an early classification of nature, especially botany. The Academy was dissolved when its funding by Cesi ceased upon his sudden death.  The
Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern
Natural History by David Freedberg |
|
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| MARCH 13 - DEATHS | |
| Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain | |
(source) |
 Died
13 Mar 1998 (born 14 Dec 1911)
German aeronautical engineer and designer of the first operational jet engine, the HeS3b turbojet engine that powered the experimental first jet aircraft, the He178, on its historic maiden flight on 27 Aug 1939, near the German port city of Rostock. Ohain had first conceived his theory of jet propulsion in 1933. His continued work on the gas-turbine engine during World War II resulted in abandonment of the centrifugal flow concept, and adoption of the axial flow compressor type engine. In 1945, he emigrated to the U.S. and became an engineer for the U.S. Air Force at its engine development centre. In 1956, Von Ohain became Director of the famed Air Force Aeronautical Research Laboratory Hans
Von Ohain: Elegance in Flight, by Margaret Conner. |
| Bruno Bettelheim | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1990 (born 28 Aug 1903).
Austrian-born American psychologist known for his work in treating and educating emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim was a revered author of influential clinical studies on the lives of autistic children as well as popular Freudian interpretations of myth and fairy tale; and founder of the Orthogenic School of psychoanalysis in Chicago. After his suicide, at the age of 86, a scandal followed when his reputation as a benevolent sage was besmirched by former patients who claimed that he had sadistically beaten them. |
| Daniel Cowan Jackling | |
(source) |
Died 13 Mar 1956 (born 14 Aug 1869)
American mining engineer and metallurgist who founded the Utah Copper Company and with an economical method to process low-grade porphyry copper ores, below 2% copper. As electicity use expanded in the early 20th century, so demand for copper rose, and the need to exploit even low-grade ore. Such ore was obtained by open-pit mining then loaded by steam shovels into railroad cars and transported to concentrating mills. Jackling developed improved extraction/flotation processes to produce a higher-grade concentrate for smelting. By the time Jackling died, over 60% of the world's copper production took advantage of his low-grade ore processing methods. His Bingham Canyon Mine, now a huge pit, still produces copper.« [Image right: Bingham Mine] |
| Lucien Lévy-Bruhl | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1939 (born 19 Apr 1857)
French philosopher whose study of the psychology of primitive peoples gave anthropology a new approach to understanding irrational factors in social thought and primitive religion and mythology. |
| Elihu Thomson | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1937 (born 29 Mar 1853)
U.S. electrical engineer and inventor whose discoveries in the field of alternating current phenomena led to the development of successful alternating current motors. Thomson invented electric welding and other important inventions in electric lighting and power among his lifetime total of about 700 patents. Thomson was also a cofounder of the General Electric Company (in 1892, in a merger with the Edison Company) industry. |
| Robert Innes | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1933 (born 10 Nov 1861)
Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes was a Scottish astronomer who discovered Proxima Centauri (1915), the closest star to earth after the Sun. Invited by David Gill to the Cape Observatory, South Africa (1894), he became a successful binary star observer with the 7-inch refractor (1628 discoveries). His most famous discovery, Proxima Centauri is a faint star near the binary star Alpha Centauri, which is so far south it is not visible from most of the northern hemisphere. He was also the first to see the Daylight Comet of 1910, though this comet was found independently by so many people in the Southern Hemisphere that no single "original'' discoverer could be named. Innes recorded it on 17 Jan 1910. |
| Charles Lapworth | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1920 (born 30 Sep 1842)
English geologist who proposed what came to be called the Ordovician period (505 to 438 million years old) of geologic strata. Lapworth is famous for his work with marine fossils called graptolites. By fastidiously collecting the tiny, colonial sea creatures, he figured out the original order of layered rocks that had been faulted and folded in England's Southern Uplands. This method of correlating rocks with graptolites became a model for similar research throughout the world. In 1879, Lapworth proposed a new classification of Lower Paleozoic rocks with the Ordovician, between the redefined Cambrian and Silurian periods, Lapworth convincingly settled a heated dispute. The name comes from an ancient Welsh tribe, the Ordovices. |
| Austin Flint | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1886 (born 20 Oct 1812)
One of the most eminent of 19th-century physicians, and a pioneer of heart research in the United States. He discovered (1862) a disorder, now known as the Austin Flint murmur, characterized by regurgitation of blood from the aorta into the heart before contraction of the ventricles. He practiced and taught in Boston and Buffalo, NY, where in 1847 he founded Buffalo Medical College. An authority on pulmonary and respiratory diseases, he popularized the use of the binaural stethoscope. He wrote numerous textbooks, of which Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine (1866) was the best known. Image: Austin Flint's diagram of the relations of the heart to the lungs, liver, and stomach (1859). |
| John Frederic Daniell | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1845 (born 12 Mar 1790)
British chemist and meteorologist who invented the Daniell cell, which was a great improvement over the voltaic cell used in the early days of battery development. His research in1820 led to the invention of a dew-point hygrometer that measured relative humidity which afterwards became a standard instrument. Daniell began experiments in 1835 in an attempt to improve the Voltaic battery with its problem of being unsteady and as a weak source of electrical current. In 1836, he invented a primary cell in which hydrogen was eliminated in the generation of the electricity. Daniell had solved the problem of polarization due to the was a thin film of hydrogen bubbles that formed over the positive electrode that reduced current. |
| Henry Shrapnel | |
(source) |
Died
13 Mar 1842 (born 3 Jun 1761)
English soldier and inventor of the Shrapnel shell, a spherical case designed to explode in midair, spreading its content of small lead musket balls to injure enemy soldiers over a wide area. He joined the Royal Artillery shortly after his 18th birthday, and spent his life in service during which time he devised and refined his shell, invented a percussion lock for small arms (patented 1834) and other improvements in fuses, ammunition and small arms. He also prepared important artillery range tables and originated the brass tangent slide to improve the sighting of guns. Incorporating his idea of the parabolic chamber, howitzers and mortars were operated more efficiently.«  |
| MARCH 13 - EVENTS | |
| Pluto | |
In 1930, the discovery of a ninth planet was announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh
at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth as large as Earth and four
thousand million miles away. The planet was named Pluto on 24 May 1930. |
|
| Zoopraxiscope | |
(source) |
In 1882, the zoopraxiscope,
an optical apparatus
invented by Eadweard J. Muybridge (1879) to exhibit photographs of moving
animals, was shown at the Royal Institution in the presence of the Prince
of Wales. Muybridge's great work on the subject was published in 1887-9,
and his Animals in Motion in 1899.*
The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession
to give the impression of motion. It functioned as essentially the first
movie projector, with a sequence of stop-motion silhouette images hand-painted
around the edge of a circular glass disk, which was loaded
onto the projector's side in a vertical position. In 1893, he lectured
at "Zoopraxigraphical Hall" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.«
[Image:
Zoopraxiscope light source with chimney (left), glass disc (bottom alone,
and right of centre mounted vertically). A large lens mounted for focussing
the light beam stands on the right outside the picture.]
Eadweard
Muybridge, by Gordon Hendricks. |
| Earmuffs | |
(USPTO) |
In 1877, the first U.S. patent for earmuffs was issued to teen-aged Chester
Greenwood of Farmington, Maine (No. 188,292). While trying out a new pair
of ice-skates one winter, he experienced stinging ears, and solved his
problem with beaver fur pads on a wire frame. By his mid-twenties, he had
a factory and 11 workers producing in his hometown of Farmington producing
50,000 earmuffs yearly. His distribution grew to 400,000 pairs in 1936,
the year he died. He patented many other inventions. In 1977, Maine's legislature
declared
21 Dec, the first day of winter, as the annual Chester Greenwood Day. His
hometown celebrates with a parade in early December, although the Greenwood
Ear Protector factory is now a laundry.« |
| Uranus | |
(source) |
In 1781, English astronomer William
Herschel detected Uranus in the night sky, but he thought it was a
comet. It was the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope.
By 1787, he had also observed the Uranian satellites
Titania and Oberon (11 Jan 1787), which were later given these names by
his son, John Herschel. |
