| MARCH 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Christian Boehmer Anfinsen | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Mar 1916; died 14 May 1995.
American biochemist who, with Stanford Moore and William H. Stein, received the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research on the shape and primary structure of ribonuclease (the enzyme that hydrolyses RNA). Ribonuclease is made up of a single peptide (a molecule consisting of two or more amino acid molecules joined by a peptide bond) chain folded into a sphere bound together by four disulphide bonds. These bonds can be broken down so that the enzyme becomes denatured (collapses), losing all of its enzyme properties. Anfinsen found that its shape and consequently its enzymatic power could be restored, and concluded that ribonuclease must retain all of the information about its configuration within its amino acids. |
| Paul Erdös | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1913; died 20 Sep 1996.
Hungarian mathematician, who was one of the century's top math experts and pioneered the fields of number theory and combinatorics. The type of mathematics he worked on were beautiful problems that were simple to understand, but notoriously difficult to solve. At age 20, he discovered a proof for a classic theorem of number theory that states that there is always at least one prime number between any positive integer and its double. In the 1930s, he studied in England and moved to the USA by the late 1930s when his Jewish origins made a return to Hungary impossible. Affected by McCarthyism in the 1950s, he spent much of the next ten years in Israel. Writing his many hundreds of papers made him one of history's most prolific mathematicians. |
| Sir Bernard Katz | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1911
German-born British physiologist who elucidated how nerve cells transmit signals to muscles. Although it was known that neurons release acetylcholine at their terminal ends, Katz discovered in the early 1950s that the release of this neurotransmitter occurs continuously and spontaneously, although at low levels when neurons are at rest. Further, he found that acetylcholine is released in discrete packets, later called vesicles. In the late 1960s, Katz determined that the amount of acetylcholine in a vesicle was related to the electrical potential at the terminal of an axon (the long extension of a neuron that transmits the impulse). These studies won him a share (with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler) of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. |
| James B. Conant | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1893; died 11 Feb 1978.
James Bryant Conant was an American educator and scientist. After earning his PhD at Harvard (1916), Conant spent a year in the research division of the chemical warfare service during World War I, then returned to Harvard as a chemistry instructor. In research, he made important findings on the chemistry of chlorophyll and hemoglobin. In 1933, Conant became president of Harvard University. An early advocate of aid to the Allies, Conant became a central figure in organizing American science for WW II, including the development of the atomic bomb. Following WW II, he became a diplomat, as U.S. high commissioner for western Germany (1953). From 1957, he was an education reformer.  |
| Othmar Herman Ammann | |
(EB) |
Born 26
Mar 1879; died 22 Sep 1965.
Othmar Herman Ammann was a Swiss-born American engineer and designer of numerous long suspension bridges as the New York Port Authority's Chief Engineer (1929), including the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge over New York harbour, at its completion (1965) the longest single span in the world. The first of six bridges he would design for the city was the George Washington Bridge, completed (1931) at a cost of $59 million, and opened to traffic on 25 Oct. It crosses the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, and represents a marvel of construction for its time. |
| Max Abraham | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1875; died 16 Nov 1922.
German physicist whose life work was almost all related to Maxwell's theory. The text he wrote was the standard work on electrodynamics in Germany for a long time. Throughout his life, he remained strongly opposed to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, objecting to its postulates which he felt were contrary to classical common sense. He further held that the experimental evidence did not support that theory. In 1902, he had developed a theory of the electron in which he held that an electron was a perfectly rigid sphere with a charge distributed evenly over its surface. He also believed in the ether theory, thought that future astronomical data would validate it, and thus relativity was not in fact a good description of the real world. |
| Ernst Engel | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1821; died 8 Dec 1896.
German statistician, the head of the Prussian Statistical Bureau (1860-82), known for the "Engel curve," or Engel's law, which states that the proportion of expenditure on food will fall as income rises, i.e. food is a necessary good. Engel's law applies to goods as a whole. Demand for food, clothing and shelter - and for most manufactured products - doesn't keep pace with increases in incomes. Engel curves are useful for separating the effect of income on demand from the effects of changes in relative prices. Engel also examined the relationship between the size of the Prussian rye harvest and the average price of rye over a number of years prior to 1860, probably the first empirical study of the relationship between price and supply. |
| Herman Haupt | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1817; died 14 Dec 1905.
American civil engineer, manufacturer and inventor, known especially for his work on the Hoosac Tunnel in Massachusetts. He designed and patented his Haupt Truss configuration in 1839. His greatest achievement came as Chief of construction and transportation for the military railroad system for the Union Army in the Civil War. Haupt supervised the rebuilding of bridges, restoration of track, integration of the railroad network, and the scheduling of shipments, He facilitated the rapid movement of troops and supplies that gave the Federal government a vitally important strategic advantage over the Confederacy. The systemization of the military railroads also provided an impetus for their postwar unification. |
| William C. Redfield | |
(NASA) |
Born 26
Mar
1789; died 12 Feb 1857.
American meteorologist who observed the whirlwind character of tropical storms. Following a hurricane that struck New England on 3 Sep 1821, he noted that in central Connecticut trees had toppled toward the northwest, but in the opposite direction 80-km further west. He found that hurricanes are generated in a belt between the Equator and the tropics, then veer eastward when meeting westerly winds at about latitude 30ºN. In 1831, he published his evidence that storm winds whirl counterclockwise about a centre that moves in the normal direction of the prevailing winds. He also promoted railroads and steamships. He co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and was president at its first meeting (Sep 1848). |
| Sir Benjamin Thompson Rumford | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1753; died 21 Aug 1814.
American-born British physicist, government administrator, and a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. His investigations of heat overturned the theory that heat is a liquid form of matter and established the beginnings of the modern theory that heat is a form of motion. Because he was a Redcoat officer and an English spy during the American revolution, he moved into exile in England. He invented a double boiler, a kitchen stove and a drip coffee pot.  Count
Rumford on the nature of heat, by Benjamin Rumford. |
| Nathaniel Bowditch | |
(source) |
Born 26
Mar 1773; died 16 Mar 1838
Self-educated American mathematician and astronomer. He learnt Latin to study Newton's Principia and later other languages to study mathematics in these languages. Between 1795 and 1799 he made four sea voyages and in 1802 he was in command of a merchant ship. He was author of the best book on navigation of his time, New American Practical Navigator (1802), and his translation (assisted by Benjamin Peirce) of Laplace's Mécanique céleste gave him an international reputation. Bowditch was the discoverer of the Bowditch curves, which have important applications in astronomy and physics. |
| Conrad Gesner | |
The first known illustration of a lead pencil is found in Gesner's book on fossils (1565) |
Born 26
Mar 1516; died 13 Dec 1565.
Swiss physician, naturalist, and encyclopedist is best known for his monumental works. Gesner's aim was to survey all the world's recorded knowledge. His books included systematic compilations of information on animals and plants. Elaborately illustrated , Historiae animalium comprised five volumes, the first appearing in 1551, each covering a portion of the animal kingdom. Gesner's pictures made his works both more appealing and less ambiguous. Although he listed all the animals known in Europe, he had no idea of the relationships one animal to another. Yet, in Historica Plantarum (History of Plants), published two centuries after his death, he was the first to recognize that similar species could be grouped to form genera. |
|
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| MARCH 26 - DEATHS | |
| David Packard | |
(source) |
 Died
26 Mar 1996 (born 7 Sep 1912)
U.S. entrepreneur and electrical engineer who cofounded the Hewlett-Packard Co., a leading manufacturer computers, computer printers, and analytic and measuring equipment. In 1939, he formed a partnership known as Hewlett-Packard Company with William R. Hewlett, a friend and Stanford classmate. HP's first product was a resistance-capacitance audio oscillator based on a design developed by Hewlett when he was in graduate school. The company's first "plant" was a small garage in Palo Alto, and the initial capital amounted to $538. |
| Arthur Martin Vineberg | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1988 (born 24 May 1903)
Canadian heart surgeon, noted chiefly for his development, in 1950, of a surgical procedure for correction of impaired coronary circulation. In the Vineberg operation one end of an artery in the chest, called the internal mammary artery, is freed up. The side branches to the artery, like tributaries flowing off a river, are cut to allow blood to flow freely from them. The artery then is snaked under the surface of the heart muscle, and each time the heart beats, blood from the branches oozes into the heart muscle, nourishing it. Over time new vessels grow and supply blood to the myocardium. The first clinical procedure was carried out at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal in 1950. Modern bypass surgery pre-empted it in the 1960s. |
| Cyril Dean Darlington | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1981 (born 19 Dec 1903)
British biologist whose research on chromosomes influenced the basic concepts of the hereditary mechanisms underlying the evolution of sexually reproducing species. He elucidated the behaviour of chromosomes during the formation of gametes (meiosis). Knowing that Thomas Hunt Morgan had shown that portions of homologous chromosomes cross over (are exchanged), Darlington recognized that this applied to evolution. He formulated a theory of evolution in which the inherited characteristics of the next generation are variable, determined by this crossing over mechanism. |
| Edward U. Condon | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1974 (born 2 Mar 1902)
Edward U(hler) Condon was an American physicist remembered for the Franck-Condon principle (1928), development of radar and contributing to the design of magnetic separation equipment subsequently applied to process uranium for atomic bombs. The Franck-Condon principle (1928) is a quantum-mechanical treatment of the earlier statement by James Franck (1925) that in any molecular system the transition from one energy state to another occurs so near to instantaneously that the nuclei of the atoms involved are stationary. During the Manhattan project, he assisted J. Robert Oppenheimer assemble the team of scientist that created the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos, N.M. He led a scientific study of UFO's, which found no credible evidence.« Selected
popular writings of E.U. Condon, by Edward Uhler Condon. |
| Albert William Stevens | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1949 (born 13 Mar 1886)
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. |
| Fred L. Maytag | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1937 (born 14 July 1857)
Frederick Louis Maytag was an American industrialist who with three other men in 1893 started a farm implement business in Newton, Iowa. They made threshing machine, band-cutter and self-feeder attachments invented by one of the founders, George Parsons. By 1902, the firm was the world's largest manufacturer of threshing machine feeders. However, the company later moved into the production of washing machines due to the seasonal nature of the farm industry. Its first washing machine was the Parson's Pastime hand-powered wood tub (1907-08). By 1909, Maytag took charge of his own industry, the Maytag Company to maintain his control of quality in the planning and production of washing machines.« |
| Henry Martyn Leland | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1932 (born 16 Feb 1843)
American inventor and industrialist who founded Cadillac Motors (22 Aug 1902) to build the Cadillac, the first automobile with high-precision, fully-interchangable parts. Earlier in his life, he had learned precision toolmaking making rifles during the Civil War, invented the first mechanical barber's clippers, and made engines for Oldsmobiles. When Leland designed an improved engine, but Olds did not want to adopt it, Leland started Cadillac to build his own own brand of automobile. He eventually sold the company to Will Durant's General Motors Co. During WW I, he formed a new company to manufactured aircraft engines, which after the war he produced a new automobile: the Lincoln. That company was bought by Henry Ford.« Master
of precision: Henry M. Leland, by Ottilie M Leland. |
| Thomas Hancock | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1865 (born 8 May 1786)
English inventor and manufacturer who founded the British rubber industry. His chief invention, the "masticator," worked rubber scraps into a shredded mass of rubber that could be formed into blocks or rolled into sheets. This process, perfected in 1821, led to a partnership with the Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, inventor and manufacturer of waterproof rubber impregnated fabric. Hancock established the first English rubber factory in 1820 and supplied Macintosh. The process of vulcanization was discovered (1839) independently by Hancock and an American, Charles Goodyear. That made possible a resilient rubber product, and led eventually to the large-scale usage of rubber in bicycle and automobile tires. Noble
Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the
Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century,
by Charles Slack. |
| Joseph Ignace Guillotin | |
(source) |
Died 26 Mar 1814 (born 28 May 1738)
French physician and inventor of the guillotine. He first promoted a law that all executions, even those of commoners, be carried out by means of a “machine that beheads painlessly”. Such consideration was no longer to be the prerogative of nobles. After a series of experiments on cadavers taken from a public hospital, the first of these machines was put up in the Place de Grève in Paris on 4 Apr 1792. The first to be so executed was a highwayman, on 25 Apr 1792. Soon this invention was to become the hallmark of the years 1792-94. Known first as the “machine”, after the beheading of Louis XVI it became known also as “la louisette” or “le louison.” After 1800 the term “la guillotine” became established, used in many countries. |
| James Hutton | |
(source) |
Died
26 Mar 1797 (born 3 Jun 1726)
Scottish geologist who initiated the principle of uniformitarianism with his Theory of the Earth (1785). He asserted that geological processes examined in the present time explain the formation of older rocks. John Playfair effectively championed Hutton's theory. Hutton, in effect, was the founder of modern geology, replacing a belief in the role of a biblical flood forming the Earth's crust. He introduced an understanding of the action of great heat beneath the Earth's crust in fusing sedimentary rocks, and the elevation of land forms from levels below the ocean to high land in a cyclical process. He established the igneous origin of granite (1788). He also had early thoughts on the evolution of animal forms and meterology.«
The
Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth's Antiquity,
by Jack Repcheck. |
| MARCH 26 - EVENTS | |
| Asteroid's moon | |
(source) |
In 1994, a picture was released showing the first moon discovered be in
orbit around an asteroid. The potato-shaped asteroid Ida and its newly-discovered
moon, Dactyl
was
imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, about 14 minutes before its closest
approach to the asteroid on 28 Aug 1993. Ida appears to be about about
36 miles long and 14 miles wide. It shows numerous craters,
including many degraded craters, indicating Ida's surface is older than
previously thought. The tiny moon
is about one mile (1.5-km) across. The names are derived from the Dactyli,
a group of mythological beings who lived on Mount Ida, where the infant
Zeus was hidden (and raised, in some accounts) by the nymph Ida and protected
by the Dactyli. |
| Salk polio vaccine | |
|
In 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced a new vaccine to immunize people against
polio. |
|
| Palomar telescope | |
|
In 1936, the first 200-inch diameter, reflecting mirror was shipped from
Corning, New York, to Mt. Palomar Observatory in California. The lens of
the Hale telescope weighed 20 tons. It was dedicated in 1948. |
|
| First BBC radio weather forecast | |
|
In 1923, the BBC began its daily radio weather forecast.« |
|
| Birdman of Alcatraz | |
 |
In 1916, Robert Stroud stabbed and killed a prison guard in Leavenworth
Kansas. For this crime, he was imprisoned for life, and became the "Birdman
of Alcatraz," named for the prison where he spent his sentence. While there,
Stroud conducted and published important research on bird diseases. |
| First U.S. radiological society | |
|
In 1900, the Roentgen Society of the United States was organised a meeting
of doctors from nine states held in Dr. Herber Robarts' office in St. Louis.
Dr. Robarts was founder and editor of the American X-Ray Journal,
and had been active in radiology since exposing his first X-ray plates
in Feb 1896. Robarts was elected as president of the new society and and
Dr. J. Rudis-Jicinsky as secretary. They arranged to hold the first annual
meeting at the Grand Central Palace in New York City on 13-14 Dec 1900.
In 1901, it was renamed as the Roentgen Society of America to include Canadians.
It was reorganised at the next annual meeting on 10-11 Dec 1902 as the
American Roentgen Ray Society.« |
|
| Phantoscope | |
|
In 1895, the Phantoscope, an early motion picture projector that enlarged
film images for viewing by large groups, was patented by Charles Francis
Jenkins (No. 536,569). The Phantascope was designed
jointly by C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat, and shown at the Cotton
States Exposition in Atlanta, Ga. in October 1895. Armat sold his rights
to Thomas Edison, who marketed the invention.
The Phantascope, modified by Armat, became the basis of Edison's Vitascope
projector. These developments owed much to George
Eastman's invention of roll film, followed by transparency film, that
enabled the same camera to make multiple photographs in a series. |
|
| Wacky patent | |
|
In 1895, a patent was issued for a "railroad car for passing" invented
by Henry Simmons (No. 538,366) |
|
| First cremation in England | |
(source) |
In 1885, the first cremation
in England took place at Woking, where a crematorium was built. The deceased
was a Mrs Jeannette C. Pickersgill, a well-known figure in literary and
scientific circles. By year's end, only 3 cremations took place out of
597,357 deaths in the UK. The crematorium was founded
in 1878, when a piece of land was bought by Sir Henry Thompson, surgeon
to Queen Victoria and founder of The Cremation Society. By 1901, with 6
crematoria established, only 427 cremations took place out of 551,585 deaths
- less than one-tenth percent. However, by the end of the century (2000),
over 240 crematoria were in use. Over 70% of the deceased were cremated
(437,609 out of 611,960 deaths). [Image:
Crematorium, early 19th century] |
| Continuous-strip photographic film | |
(source) |
In 1885, commercial production began of George
Eastman's flexible, paper-backed photographic film, the first continuous-strip
negative able to be compactly spooled. The film consisted of a layer of
paper and a coating of insoluble sensitized gelatin emulsion, separated
by a layer of soluble gelatin to enable release of the film layer after
developing. He incorporated the Eastman Dry-Plate and Film Co., Rochester,
NY, on 1 Oct 1884, and was issued patent No. 306,594 for this invention
on 14 Oct 1884. He began promoting
its convenience benefits to photographers over the bulkier, heavier and
fragile glass plates then in use. Eastman designed the machinery for its
manufacture, and a roll holder to use instead of glass plates.«  [Image:
Detail from an 1887 advertisement showing Eastman's negative paper on a
roll and its package.] |
| Fire extinguisher | |
|
In 1872, Thomas J. Martin was awarded a patent for the fire extinguisher. |
|
| Vulcan | |
|
In 1859, Lescarbault, a French medical doctor and amateur astronomer reported
sighting
a new planet in an orbit inside that of Mercury which he named Vulcan.
He had seen a round black spot on the Sun with a transit time across the
solar disk 4 hours 30 minutes. He sent this information and his calculations
on the planet's movements to Jean LeVerrier, France's most famous astronomer.
Le Verrier had already noticed that Mercury had deviated from its orbit.
A gravitational pull from Vulcan would fit in nicely with what he was looking
for. However, it was not consistently seen again and it is now believed
to have been a "rogue asteroid" making a one-time pass close to the sun. |
|
| Adhesive plaster | |
|
In 1845, a patent was awarded for an adhesive medicated plaster (No. 3,965),
predating the "Band-Aid." Drs. Horace Harrell and William H. Shecut developed
a process in which rubber is dissolved in a solvent then spread on fabric.
They later sold the idea to Dr. Thomas Allcock who marketed it as Allcock's
Porous Plaster. |
|
| Lifeboat | |
|
In 1845, Joseph Francis of New York City patented a corrugated sheet-iron
lifeboat. |
|
