| MARCH 21 - BIRTHS | |
| Walter Gilbert | |
(source) |
 Born 21
Mar 1932
American molecular biologist who was awarded a share (with Paul Berg and Frederick Sanger) of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980 for his development of a method for determining the sequence of nucleotide links in the chainlike molecules of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). Everything from bacteria up, he says, with the exception of some viruses, shares some similar DNA. There are many genes, in many species, that create proteins that have the same biochemical function. In some cases, those genes are identical; sometimes they're very similar. Thus, all living things probably trace back to a single ancestral DNA. Whereas many human genes are similar to those in other life forms, each species evolved enough unique genes to distinguish itself. |
| Halton Christian Arp | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1927
American astronomer noted for challenging the theory that red shifts of quasars indicate their great distance. Arp is one of the key actors in the contemporary debate on the origin and evolution of galaxies in the universe. His landmark compilation of peculiar galaxies led him to challenge the fundamental assumption of modern cosmology, that redshift is a uniform indicator of distance. Astronomers have debated Arp's assertion that quasars are related to peculiar galaxies since the late 1960's. Most astronomers believe that quasars are unrelated to the peculiar galaxies. Yet, no one has been able to explain why the quasars seem to be more numerous around the peculiar galaxies. |
| Yigael Yadin | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1917; died 28 Jun 1984.
(original name Yigael Sukenik) Israeli archaeologist and military leader noted for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yadin’s fieldwork from the 1950’s included Hazor, caves of the Judean Desert, Massada, and Meggido.Yadin’s findings have shed light on various periods of ancient Israel, such as the Canaanite, First Temple, and Herodian periods, as well as the Bar Kokhba revolt. He made a famous contribution decoding and interpreting several scrolls from the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert. In 1963-5, he excavated at Masada, the ancient mountaintop fortress ruins in the desert about 48.3 km (30 mi) southeast of Jerusalem, the scene of the last stand made by the Jewish Zealots in their revolt against Roman rule (66-73 AD). |
| Paul Alfred Weiss | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1898; died 8 Sep 1989.
Austrian-American biologist who researched nerve regeneration, wound healing and the mechanics of nerve development. During World War II Weiss and his colleagues developed and tested the first practical system of preserving human tissue for later surgical grafting. His experiments on growth and development of neuronal cells led to a study of inductive interactions between tissues as contact effects. Further, he investigated organ-specific antibodies as possible catalysts in growth and differentiation of the respective organs caused by a cooperative product of cell and cell matrix interaction |
| David Keilin | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1887; died 27 Feb 1963.
Russian-British biochemist who discovered cytochromes, as enzymes critical to the cell's use of oxygen (1923). His career began as an entomologist studying the life cycles of flies. While studying the absorption spectrum of the muscles of the horse botfly, that he noticed four absoption bands that disappeared when the cell suspension was shaken in air, but reappeared afterwards. He had found a respiratory enzyme. He named it cytochrome, and began a thorough investigation of its role in cellular respiration. Like haemoglobin, the cytochrome enzyme contains iron. Cytochrome is a pigment found in some cells, such as bacteria and yeast. He studied also catalase and peroxidase which are also iron-containing enzymes with a role involving oxygen. |
| George David Birkhoff | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1884; died 12 Nov 1944.
American mathematician, foremost of the early 20th century, who formulated the ergodic theorem. As the first American dynamicist, Birkhoff picked up where Poincaré left off, gaining distinction in 1913 with his proof of Poincaré's Last Geometric Theorem, a special case of the 3-body problem. Although primarily a geometer, he discovered new symbolic methods. He saw beyond the theory of oscillations, created a rigorous theory of ergodic behavior, and foresaw dynamical models for chaos. His ergodic theorem transformed the Maxwell- Boltzmann ergodic hypothesis of the kinetic theory of gases (to which exceptions are known) into a rigorous principle through use of the Lebesgue measure theory. He also produced a mathematical model of gravity.  Dynamical
Systems: A Renewal of Mechanism: Centennial of George David Birkhoff,
by
George David Birkhoff, et al. |
| Maurice Farman | |
1909 (source) |
Born 21
Mar 1877; died 25 Feb 1964.
French aircraft designer and manufacturer who contributed greatly to early aviation. In 1908, with his brother Henri, he made the first circular flight of over 1-km, completing a 1.6-km (one-mile) flight near Paris. They built a plane the following year and flew a record distance of 160 km (100 miles). Four years after that, the two brothers started their own aviation company at Boulogne-sur-Seine, supplying the army in France and other countries. The UK also made use of Farman's inventions, for example, air-screw reduction gears, in WW II. In 1917 the Farman brothers built the first long-distance passenger plane, the Goliath. |
| Albert Kahn | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1869; died 8 Dec 1942.
German-American industrial architect and planner, considered the world's foremost in his time: "father of modern factory design." His rise coincided with the growth of U.S. industry, particularly for the auto industry in Detroit. Shortly after founding Albert Kahn Associates in 1895, he designed Detroit’s first large auto plants for the Packard Motor Car Company. Kahn's design for Packard’s tenth building was the first concrete- reinforced auto factory. The building was strong, fireproof, and with large areas free of columns, an advance over the dangerous, inefficient, timber-framed plants of the era. Kahn designed Ford Motor Company’s famous Highland Park plant, where Ford produced of the Model T and perfected the assembly line process. |
| Ignatz Venetz | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1788; died 20 Apr 1859.
Swiss geologist who was one of the first to propose that vast glaciers once covered a substantial portion of the earth's surface. He came to this conclusion by observing that typical striations left in rock by glaciers extended for many miles beyond the limits of existing glaciers. He published these thoughts in 1821, but they were generally ignored. Jean de Chapentier supported Venetz in these ideas, but was also ignored. However, they influenced Louis Agassiz who developed them. |
| Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier | |
(source) |
Born 21
Mar 1768; died 16 May 1830.
[Baron] French mathematician, known also as an Egyptologist and administrator, who exerted strong influence on mathematical physics through his Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822; The Analytical Theory of Heat). He introduced an infinite mathematical series to aid in solving conduction equations. This analysis technique allows the function of any variable to be expanded into a series of sines of multiples of the variable, which is now known as the Fourier series. His equations spawned many new areas of study in mathematics and physics, including the branch of optics named for him, have subsequently been applied other natural phenomena such as tides, weather and sunspots.  |
| MARCH 21 - DEATHS | |
| Leo Fender | |
(source) |
 Died
21 Mar 1991 (born 10 Aug 1909)
American inventor and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, including the first solid-body electric guitar to be mass-produced: the Fender Broadcaster (1948, renamed the Telecaster two years later). He was an electronics enthusiast and radio repairman who got involved with guitar design after guitar-playing customers kept bringing him their external pickups for repair. Before Fender came along, guitarists met their amplification needs by attaching pickups to the surface of their hollow-bodied instruments. The Stratocaster (1954), had a flashier, contoured, double-cutaway body, with three (as opposed to two) single-coil pickups and a revolutionary string-bending (tremolo) unit. It became a much favored model of rock guitarists. |
| Patrick Steptoe | |
 |
Died 21 Mar 1988 (born 9 Jun 1913)
Patrick (Christopher) Steptoe was a British scientist and medical researcher who, with Robert Edwards, perfected in-vitro fertilization of the human egg. Their technique made possible in the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first "test-tube baby," on 25 July 1978. Steptoe, decided at an early age to pursue medicine over music. During World War II, he was captured by the Italians after his ship was sunk. After the war, with a practice in obstetrics and gynecology, he pioneered a new fiber-optic device called a laparoscope to perform minimally invasive abdominal surgery. In 1966, to help women with blocked Fallopian tubes, a major cause of infertility, he teamed up with Edwards, a Cambridge physiologist who had developed a way to fertilize human eggs in the lab. [Image right: in-vitro fertilization (source)] |
| Carl Koller | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1944 (born 3 Dec 1857)
Czech-born American ophthalmic surgeon whose introduction of cocaine as a surface anesthetic in eye surgery on 16 Sep 1884 inaugurated the modern era of local anesthesia. He was a colleague of Sigmund Freud, who in 1884 was interested in the use of cocaine to cure morphine addiction. Koller noticed cocaine had a numbing effect on the tongue and, after experimenting with animals, introduced it as a local anaesthetic in ophthalmology. It was also quickly adopted for nose and throat surgery and for dentistry. Cocaine was isolated in 1859 and was synthesized in 1885. It became evident that this agent produced erosion of the corneal epithelium in high doses or with repeated use. Later, less toxic, synthetic local anesthetics such as tetracaine and proparacaine were developed. |
| Frederick W. Taylor | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1915 (born 20 Mar 1856)
American inventor and engineer who is known as the father of scientific management. His system of industrial management has influenced the development of virtually every country enjoying the benefits of modern industry. He introduced a scientific approach (1881) to "time and motion study" while chief engineer at Midvale Steel Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Taylor and his associates used stop-watches to time the laborers as they performed various tasks, counted the number of shovel-loads they each moved, and the load per shovel. Thus he was able to determine an optimum shovel size and length. Such careful observations, aimed at recognizing wasted effort and minimizing time used, increased the efficiency of actions of factory workers. |
| William Scoresby | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1857 (born 5 Oct 1789)
English explorer, scientist and clergyman, who made early scientific studies of the Arctic. On Sir Joseph Banks' advice, he recorded the natural phenomena he saw during his Arctic voyages since existing information was sparse. He proved that the temperature of the polar ocean has a warmer temperature at considerable depths than it has on the surface. His drawings and paintings showed whaling incidents, animals and plants never seen by Europeans. He drew the hexagonal shapes of snowflakes from microscope observation. He realized that the colours of the Arctic Sea were due to plankton. He investigated terrestrial magnetism and improved Admiralty compasses. Eventually all navy ships were supplied with Scoresby's compasses.« |
| Giovanni Arduino | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1795 (born 16 Oct 1714)
Italian geologist, known as the father of Italian geology, who introduced the terms Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary in 1760 to classify four broad divisions of the Earth's rock surface, each earlier in deposition. Within each he recognized numerous minor strata, and had a clear paleontological interpretation of the age sequence of the fossil record. The Primary order contained Paleozoic formations from the oldest, lowest basaltic rock from ancient volcanoes overlaid with metamorphic and sedimentary rocks which he saw in the Atesine Alps. He classified Mesozoic prealpine foothills as of the Secondary order, Tertiary in the subalpine hills and the Quaternary alluvial deposits in the plains.« |
| Nicolas Louis de Lacaille | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1762 (born 15 Mar 1713)
French astronomer who and named many of them. Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille was a French astronomer who named 15 of the 88 constellations in the sky. He spent 1750-1754 mapping the constellations visible from the Southern Hemisphere, as observed from the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost part of Africa. In his years there, he was said to have observed over 10,000 stars using just his 1/2-inch refractor. He established the first southern star catalogue containing 9776 stars (Caelum Australe Stelliferum, published partly in 1763 and completely in 1847), and a catalogue of 42 nebulae in 1755 containing 33 true deep sky objects (26 his own discoveries). |
| Daniel Quare | |
(source) |
Died
21 Mar 1724 (born c.1648)
English clockmaker, one of the most eminent of his time, with wealthy clients for his clocks, barometers and mathematical instruments. In 1680, he invented a repeating pocket watch mechanism which struck the nearest hour and quarter hour on a bell inside the case when a pin was pushed, thus giving the time even in the dark. On 2 Aug 1695 he received a patent for a portable weather-glass (barometer) which "may be removed and transported to any place, though turned upside down, without spilling one drop of the quicksilver, or letting any air into the tube." Quare's elegant barometers had a wooden or ivory column resting on brass feet, with a brass compartment with a glass front to read the measurement scales at the top of the barometric tube.« [Image: Repeating pocket watch by Quare, circa 1700] |
| MARCH 21 - EVENTS | |
| Round-the-world balloon flight | |
(source) |
In 1999, a balloon achieved the first non-stop round-the-world balloon
flight. After 20 days of flight, the experimental Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon,
flown by Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, touched down in the Egyptian
desert. Bertrand is the grandson of the balloon flight pioneer, Auguste
Piccard.
. |
| Plutonium named | |
(source) |
In 1942, a secret report was submitted suggesting the name "plutonium"
for artificial element 94 since it followed neptunium and uranium (elements
93 and 92). The symbols Pu and Np were also suggestions. The paper was
held secret until after WW II, when it was published
by the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1948. The authors
were Glenn Seaborg and Arthur C. Wahl. Since McMillan and Abelson had named
neptunium after the planet that lies outside of the orbit of Uranus, the
name for the next element in the periodic table was named after the next
planet, Pluto. But instead of "plutium," the authors decided on the name
"plutonium." Seaborg said,
" It just sounded better." They also liked "Pu" instead of "Pl." [Image:
Twenty micrograms of pure plutonium hydroxide in capillary tube, September
1942.] |
| Exclusion principle | |
 |
In 1925, Wolfgang Pauli published his "exclusion principle." At the young
age of 24, in an article in Zeitschrift für Physik, Pauli introduced
the idea that two nearby electrons cannot be in exactly the same state
at the same time. For this, now fundamental, contribution to quantum mechanics,
he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1945. |
| Butler Act | |
(source) |
In 1925, the Butler Act became state law in Tennessee that prohibited
"the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals
and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole
or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties
for the violations thereof ... that it shall be unlawful ... to teach any
theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in
the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order
of animals." Within a few months, John Scopes became a willing defendant
in the "Scopes Monkey Trial." which received world attention as the statute
was tested. |
| Anthrax | |
 |
In 1877, Louis Pasteur began work on virulent anthrax bacteria in his laboratory
at Lille, France. He was spurred by a devastating outbreak (1876-77) of
anthrax, a fatal disease mainly of cattle and sheep. Robert Koch had already
identified the anthrax bacillus. Pasteur determined that the disease was
caused by this living organism itseld, and not a related toxin. He worked
with a solution containing the infection, which he showed that at a dilution
by a factor of 1 part to 100 still caused death as the living organism
continued to multiply. By 1881, he was able to innoculate animals with
a vaccine made from a weakened strain of the anthrax bacterium. He demonstrated
that sheep treated with the vaccine were immunized and survived, while
an untreated control group died. He later produced an effective rabies
vaccine.« |
| First U.S. Zoo | |
(source) |
In 1859, the first Zoological Society
was incorporated
in Philadelphia. PA, USA by its 36 members. The Civil War interrupted establishing
the park. On 5 Jun 1873, a perpetual lease of thirty-three acres of land
was made to the Society by the Park Commissioners of the city's West Park,
and work commenced at once. Fences, cages, and houses were erected, and
donations of birds, beasts, and reptiles began to arrive. The garden did
not open to the public until 1
Jul 1874, by which time it had a bear pit and a lion house as featured
attractions. By the end of the fiscal year 1875-76, there were added 919
animals, including 342 Quadrupeds, 485 Birds, 74 Reptiles and 31 Fish.
Elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and three Seal Ponds. « [Image:
Male Indian rhinoceros, from an Arbuckle Coffee trade card, 1890. In 1875,
this was the first zoo to exhibit one. ] |
| Saturn moons | |
(source) |
In 1684, Giovanni Domenico Cassini
discovered* two moons of Saturn: Tethys
and Dione, using a refractor telescope with an aperture of 108mm. He had
previously discovered two other satellites of Saturn: Iapetus (Sep 1671)
and Rhea (1672). Christiaan Huygens
was the first to discover a moon of Saturn, when he viewed
Titan (the largest and easiest to see) on 25 Mar 1655.« [Images
(top):
Tethys; (bottom)
Dione. NASA photographs by Voyager.] |
