| MARCH 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Walter Rudolf Hess | |
(source) |
 Born 17
Mar 1881; died 12 Aug 1973.
Swiss physiologist, who received (with António Egas Moniz) the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the role played by specific areas in the brain, especially the hypothalamus of the brain, in determining and coordinating the functions of internal organs, and in autonomic functions like sleep, hunger or defense mechanisms. Earlier, in 1948, Walter Rudolf Hess perfected a method of implanting electrodes in the brains of rats and was thus able to localize centers of the brain associated with certain instincts. |
| Charles Francis Brush | |
(source) |
Born 17
Mar 1849; died 15 June 1929.
U.S. inventor and industrialist who devised an electric arc lamp and a generator that produced a variable voltage controlled by the load and a constant current. It was adopted throughout the United States and abroad during the 1880's. The arc light preceded Edison's incandescent light bulb in commercial use and was suited to applications where a bright light was needed, such as street lights and lighting in commercial and public buildings. He assembled his first dynamo in the summer of 1876, resulting in a patent for his Improvement in Magneto-Electric Machines, issued 24 Apr 1877 (US No. 189997). He then developed an arc light that was regulated by a combination of electrical and mechanical means limited by a "ring clutch". |
| Cornelia Maria Clapp | |
(source) |
Born 17
Mar 1849; died 31 Dec 1934.
American zoologist and educator whose influence as a teacher was great and enduring in a period when the world of science was just opening to women. She became a professor of zoology at Mt. Holyoke College, where she developed a vivid laboratory method of instruction that proved highly effective. Clapp was active in the research group at the then newly established (1888) Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole, Mass. She carried on research there, primarily in the field of embryology. She published little during her career, her major influence being to extend scientific knowledge and opportunity to women through education. |
| Gottlieb Daimler | |
(source) |
Born 17 Mar 1834; died 6 Mar 1900)
Gottlieb (Wilhelm) Daimler was a German engineer and pioneer automobile manufacturer. He invented the first high-speed internal combustion engine, operating at up to 900 rpm (1883) and a carburetor (1885) to mix petrol fuel and air. The motorbike he built in 1885 was perhaps the world's first. It was the world's first when, with Wilhelm Maybach, he constructed a four-wheeled automobile in 1886 capable of a speed of 11 mph. After developing a four-speed gearbox and a belt-drive to transfer power to the wheels, they started manufacturing. In 1890 he founded Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, which produced the Mercedes (1889), later merging into Daimler-Benz & Co. in 1926. Zeppelin used Daimler engines for his airships.«  A
Daimler Century: The Full History of Britain's Oldest Car Maker,
by Lord Montagu. |
| William Withering | |
(source) |
Born 17
Mar 1741; died 6 Oct 1799
English physician who made a classic study of the medicinal use of digitalis. From his interest in botany, he paid attention to folk remedies used by herb-gatherers, including the foxglove. The leaf extract was efficacious in use for certain cases of "dropsy" (oedema, caused by heart failure). He determined the doses safe to use, and published a careful report of his findings in An Account of the Foxglove (1785). His report gave good case histories, including failures as well as successes. Thus he added digitalis as a very useful drug for physicians to use to steady and strengthen heart action. He was also a mineralogist, and witherite (barium carbonate) is named after him. He suffered greatly for years from chest disease, probably tuberculosis. |
|
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| MARCH 17 - DEATHS | |
| Haldan Keffer Hartline | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Mar 1983 (born 22 Dec 1903)
American physiologist who shared (with George Wald and Ragnar Granit) the 1967 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his analysis of how the sensory cells of the retina of the eye evaluate the light stimulus. In his early career, he studied the metabolism of nerve cells and in time came to research individual cells in the retina of the eye. He used tiny electrodes to isolate individual fibres in the eyes of horseshoe crabs and frogs. He learned how impulse generation in the sensory cells transmits a code in response to illumination of different intensity and duration. He spent almost half a century advancing the understanding of the neurophysiology of vision.« |
| Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke | |
| Died
17 Mar 1962 (born 13 Sep 1885)
German mathematician whose major contributions to geometry concerned kinematics and differential geometry. Kinetic mapping (important later in the axiomatic foundations of various geometries) he both discovered and established as a tool in kinematics. He also initiated topological differential geometry (the study of invariant differentiable mappings). |
|
| Irène Joliot-Curie | |
(source) |
Died
17 Mar 1956 (born 12 Sep 1897)
French physical chemist, wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who were jointly awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discovery of new radioactive isotopes prepared artificially. She was the daughter of Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie. |
| Adolf Meyer | |
(source) |
Died
17 Mar 1950 (born 13 Sep 1866)
Swiss-American psychiatrist (1900-40), whose teaching and influential work has become a part of psychiatric theory and practice in English-speaking countries. Already trained in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology when he emigrated to the U.S. (1892), from working at mental institutions, he began to attribute the disorder in mental illness not to brain pathology, but to a personality dysfunction. He recognized social environment as an influence in mental disorders. Throughout his years at Johns Hopkins University as professor of psychiatry (1910-41), he taught that in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, the patient must be evaluated as a whole person. |
| Christian Doppler | |
(source) |
Died
17 Mar 1853 (born 29 Nov 1803)
Austrian physicist who first described how the observed frequency of light and sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector, known as the Doppler effect. In 1845, to test his hypothesis, Doppler used two sets of trumpeters: one set stationary at a train station and one set moving on an open train car, all holding the same note. As the train passed the station, it was obvious that the frequency of the notes from the two groups didn't match. Sound waves would have a higher frequency if the source was moving toward the observer and a lower freqency if the source was moving away from the observer. Edwin Hubble used the Doppler effect of light from distant stars to determine that the universe is expanding. |
| Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel | |
(source) |
Died
17 Mar 1846 (born 22 Jul 1784)
German astronomer. In 1809, at the age of 26, Bessel was appointed director of Frederick William III of Prussia's new Königsberg Observatory and professor of astronomy, where he spent the rest of his career. His monumental task was determining the positions and proper motions for about 50,000 stars, which allowed the first accurate determination of interstellar distances. Bessel's work in determining the constants of precession, nutation and aberration won him further honors. Other than the sun, he was the first to measure the distance of a star, by parallax, of 61 Cygni (1838). In mathematical analysis, he is known for his Bessel function. |
| Daniel Bernoulli | |
| Died
17 Mar 1782 (born 8 Feb 1700)
The most distinguished of the second generation of the Bernoulli family of Swiss mathematicians. He investigated not only mathematics but also such fields as medicine, biology, physiology, mechanics, physics, astronomy, and oceanography. Bernoulli's theorem, which he derived, is named after him. |
|
| Chester Moor Hall | |
| Died
17 Mar 1771 (born 9 Dec 1703)
English jurist and mathematician who invented the achromatic lens, which he utilized in building the first refracting telescope free from chromatic aberration (colour distortion). |
|
| George Parker | |
| Died
17 Mar 1764 (born 1697)
[2nd Earl of Macclesfield] English astronomer who was instrumental in changing the computation of current chronology, subsequently enacted as the British Calendar Act of 1751 which co-authored and co-promoted. (Shortly thereafter, he was elected President of the Royal Society, 1752-1764). Since 1582, the new calendar of Pope Gregory XIII had been used in most of Europe. In England the new calendar was rejected as popish. By 1750, the old calendar became 11 days out of sequence with the position of the Earth in its orbit due to its lack of leap years. Parker was assisted in these calculations by his friend James Bradley, the astronomer royal, and received influential support from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. |
|
| MARCH 17 - EVENTS | |
| Life-form patent argued | |
(source) |
In 1980, arguments were heard
by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning whether a patent could be issued for
a genetically-engineered bacterium in the case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty.
On 16 Jun 1980, in a landmark decision, the judges held five to four that
the Patent Office should recognize "any" new and useful "manufacture" or
"composition of matter," and that the fact that micro-organisms are alive
was without legal significance in the related patent law. Microbiologist,
Ananda Chakrabarty had appealed the rejection of his 1972 patent application
for a human-made, genetically engineered bacterium capable of breaking
down crude oil, which no naturally occurring bacteria could do. The patent
was eventually issued 31 Mar 1981.« [Image:
the patented Burkholderia cepacia bacterium; inset:
Chakrabarty] |
| (New) London Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1973, Queen Elizabeth II opened new London
Bridge. [Image: in foreground,
a span of the new London Bridge, with Tower Bridge in the background] |
| U.S. first satellite | |
(source) |
In 1958, the U.S. launched its first object into space, the Vanguard
I satellite,
during the International Geophysical Year. Launched
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the three-pound satellite carried a radio
transmitter, orbitted every 107.9 minutes. This was America's late entry
into the Space Race, following the Soviet successes with their satellites
Sputnik
I (184 pounds) and Sputnik II (7000 pounds). But for Vanguard
I, the Americans in only 2 years, 6 months, and 8 days had developed
from scratch a complete high-performance three-stage launching vehicle,
a highly accurate worldwide satellite tracking system, an adequate launching
facility and range instrumentation. Vanguard is to this day the oldest
satellite still in orbit. |
| Californium | |
|
In 1950, a new radioactive element, element 98, named "californium" was
announced by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley. This
is a synthetic chemical element of the actinide series in Group IIIb of
the periodic table, isotope californium-245. The scientists Stanley G.
Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn T. Seaborg produced
it by bombarding curium-242 (atomic number 96) with helium-ions in the
60-inch cyclotron. Since then, longer lived isotopes have been created,
including californium-251 with an 800-year half-life, and microgram quantities
of compounds such as the oxychloride CfOCl, the oxide Cf2O3,
and the trichloride CfCl3. Also, californium-252, with a half-life
of 2.65-years, has industrial and medical applications as a very intense
point source of neutrons. |
|
| British birth control clinic | |
|
In 1921, Dr Marie Stopes opened
Britain’s first birth control clinic in North London.* |
|
| Submarine | |
(source) |
In 1898, the first practical submarine was demonstrated by John
Holland off Staten Island in New York for 100 minutes. Holland's sub
was not the first underwater
boat, but is credited as the first
practical one. |
| Elephant Man | |
(source) |
In 1885, a medical report of the deformities of Joseph Carey Merrick was
presented to the Pathological Society of London by Dr. Frederick Treves.
After a brief career as a professional "freak," he became the
best-known resident patient of London Hospital from 1886 until his
death in 1890. Merrick,
known as the "Elephant Man," had a head had become enormous (3 feet in
circumference), with large bags of brownish spongy skin hanging from the
back of his head and across his face. His deformed jaws limited his speech
to a difficult to understand splutter, and he was unable to show facial
expression. Modern researchers identify this as an example of an extremely
rare disease known as the Proteus syndrome.
"Elephant
Man" by Christine Sparks. |
| Rubber band | |
|
In 1845, the rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry of London. Early
folk native to Central and South America's rubber tree countries made footwear,
garments and bottles out of the tree milk. Sailors carried same to England.
Around 1820, a Londoner named Thomas Hancock sliced up one of the bottles
to create garters and waistbands. Some years later, another Englishman
Stephen
Perry, owner of the rubber manufacturing company Messers Perry and
Co. capitalized on Hancock's bright idea and took out a patent on the rubber
band. The first rubber bands were made from vulcanized rubber. |
|
| Porcelain patent | |
|
In 1768, William Cookworthy
obtained a British patent for his process to take local china clay and
manufacture
fine white porcelain. This was significant because he could produce hard
paste porcelain to compete in quality as finished goods imported from China.
He had also discovered
the needed raw materials in local deposits of sufficiently pure kaolin
and China stone (forms of decomposed granite), near St. Austell, Cornwall
(1756). This eliminated the need to import the china clay, previously obtained
from either China or America. Even though he spent only ten years running
his own factory, his years of experimenting to improve the manufacturing
process from the clay to the finished product established the porcelain
industry in Britain.« |
|
