| APRIL 3 - BIRTHS | |
| Jane Goodall | |
|
(source) |
 Born 3
Apr 1934
(Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall) British ethologist, known for her exceptionally detailed and long-term research since 1960 on the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. This represents the longest-running study of a non-human primate in its natural habitat. Among many other discoveries, Goodall and her associates found that chimpanzees: occasionally hunt in groups and eat meat; have a range of social customs, including group warfare; and the manufacture of tools that they use is also taught to their offspring. |
| Katherine Esau | |
c.1930 (source) |
Born 3
Apr 1898; died 4 Jun 1997.
Russian-born American botanist who did groundbreaking work in the structure and workings of plants. She is best known for her research into the effects of viruses upon plant tissues, and her studies of plant tissue structures and physiology. Her research into plant viruses focused on how viruses effect the structure and development of a plant's phloem (its food-conducting tissue). This research enabled her to distinguish between primary and secondary viral symptoms, allowing studies of viral damage to specific plant tissues to be conducted. In addition, she clarified the development phases of plant tissues, particularly the sieve tubes which serve to move solutes throughout a plant. Her definitive work Plant Anatomy (1953, rev.1965) is a classic. |
| Ralph A. Bagnold | |
(source) |
Born 3 Apr 1896; died 28 May 1990.
English geologist who was a leading authority on the mechanics of sediment transport and on eolian (wind-effect) processes. While a career soldier, serving in Egypt prior to WW II, he first studied sand dune formation and movement. After retiring from the army (1935), he continued his research and wrote the book Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes, investigating the physics of particles moving through the atmosphere and deposited by wind. He recognized two basic dune types, the crescentic dune, which he called "barchan," and the linear dune, which he called longitudinal or "sief" (Arabic for "sword"). During WW II, his avocational interest in vehicle performance on blowing sand aided the Allies in North Africa. [Image right source ]  Physics
of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes, by Ralph A. Bagnold |
| William James Farrer | |
(source) |
Born 3
Apr 1845; died 16 Apr 1906
British-born Australian agricultural researcher who developed several varieties of drought- and rust-resistant wheat that made possible a great expansion of Australia's wheat belt. Farrer believed that he could produce a new strain which would be rust-resistant, as well as being suitable for Australian conditions. From 1889, although often ill, Farrer worked hard toward this goal for many hours a day and well into the night to record his results. His variety of wheat, noted for its drought-resistant qualities, was distributed in 1900 and therefore was called Federation. As a result, the average wheat yield per acre rose by about three bushels between 1900 and 1920. His wheats were not so much rust-resistant as rust escaping because of their early maturity. |
| Hermann Karl Vogel | |
|
(source) |
Born 3
Apr 1842; died 13 Aug 1907.
German astronomer who discovered spectroscopic binaries (double-star systems that are too close for the individual stars to be discerned by any telescope but, through the analysis of their light, have been found to be two individual stars rapidly revolving around one another). He pioneered the study of light from distant stars, and introduced the use of photography in this field. |
| John Burroughs | |
(source) |
Born 3
Apr 1837; died 29 Mar 1921.
American naturalist and author who lived and wrote after the manner of Henry David Thoreau. Burroughs studyied and celebrated nature in his many essays and books. Growing up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, Burroughs absorbed much of the nature and country life that would fill his essays in later life. As a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, he filled idle hours with writing about the outdoors he loved. This became his first book, Wake-Robin. Returning to the Hudson River Valley in 1873, he began fruit farming and continued to write, publishing a new book about every two years. He travelled extensively, camping out with such friends as the naturalist John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt. |
| Charles Wilkes | |
| Born 3
Apr 1798; died 8 Feb 1877.
American oceanographer, who led the first major ocean expedition (1838-42), which circled the globe, and determined that Antarctica (which Wilkes so named) is a continent. |
|
| Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau | |
(source) |
Born 3
Apr 1778; died 18 Feb 1862.
French epidemiologist who performed the first successful tracheotomy, an incision of and entrance into the trachea through the skin and muscles of the neck (1825). He was the first to distinguish typhoid from typhus and the first to clinically describe diphtheria, which he named (Traité de la Diphérite,1826). He also enunciated a theory of specific causes of infectious diseases, in which he foreshadowed the germ theory of Pasteur. |
| Simon Willard | |
| Born 3
Apr 1753; died 30 Aug 1848.
U.S. clockmaker, creator of the timepiece that came to be known as the banjo clock, and a member of a Massachusetts family of clockmakers designing and producing brass-movement clocks from 1765 to 1850. |
|
|
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| APRIL 3 - DEATHS | |
| Gino P. Santi | |
 Died
3 Apr 1997 (born 1916/17?)
American engineer whose long career with the U.S. Air Force was most notable for his development of the pilot ejection system. |
|
| Jérôme-Jean-Louis-Marie Lejeune | |
| Died
3 Apr 1994 (born 13 Jun 1926)
French geneticist who identified (1959) the human chromosomal abnormality linked to Down syndrome, or trisomy 21, one of the most common forms of mental retardation and the first chromosomal disorder to be positively identified. |
|
| Sir Edward Bullard | |
(source) |
Died 3 Apr 1980 (born 21 Sep 1907)
Sir Edward (Crisp) Bullard was an English marine geophysicist noted for his work in geomagnetism who made the first satisfactory measurements of geothermal heat-flow through the oceanic crust. In early work, he measured minute gravitational variations by timing the swings of an invariant pendulum, which he used to study the East African Rift Valley. Bullard helped to develop the theory of continental drift. He made a computer analysis of the precise fit of the rifted continental borders along the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and presented his results to the Royal Society of London. He developed a "dynamo" theory of geomagnetism, which explained the Earth's magnetic field results from the convection of molten material within the Earth's core. He was knighted in 1953. [Image right: source]« |
| Marston Bates | |
(source) |
Died 3 Apr 1974 (born 23 July 1906)
American zoologist and writer who studied mosquitoes and tropical diseases for the Rockefeller Foundation with fieldwork in Albania, Egypt and Columbia (1937-50). Rockefeller scientists reduced the problem of yellow fever in Columbia, where Bates supervised researchers who worked with local doctors in diagnoses and treatment, studied the region's forests and swamps in the area, and tested insects suspected as disease carriers. His first book, The Natural History of Mosquitoes (1949) was followed by more natural history books for laymen including The Nature of Natural History (1950) which showed his love of the tropics. As an environmental activist, he believed even the government should respect the earth's Environment.« 
[Image
right:
mosquito.]
 The
Natural History of Mosquitoes, by Marston Bates. |
| Richard Wilhelm Heinrich Abegg | |
(source) |
Died
3 Apr 1910 (born 9 Jan 1869)
German physical chemist who, with Boländer proposed a theory of valency (1899) to explain the capacity of an atom to combine with another atom in light of the newly discovered presence of electrons within the atom. He saw that the configurations of electrons in the noble gas elements are particularly stable. Thus, a halide element, such as chlorine, with one electron less than a noble gas element, would easily tend to accept one electron. An alkali metal element, such as sodium, having one electron more than a noble gas element, would tend to give it up. Thus a sodium atom could transfer an electron to a chlorine atom, forming a positively charged sodium ion bound electrostatically to a negatively charged chloride ion. He died in a balloon crash. |
| Albert Fink | |
(source) |
Died
3 Apr 1897 (born 27 Oct 1827)
German-born American railroad engineer and executive who was the first to investigate the economics of railroad operation on a systematic basis. He was also inventor of the Fink truss, used to support the roofs of buildings and for bridges. Instead of being supported with an arch or cables, a truss bridge is held up with a latticework of rods that reinforce its stiffness, as shown (left) on the Louisville-Nashville Railroad Bridge constructed in 1857-1859 to span the Green River, Ky. (until destroyed in October 1861 during the Civil war.) His truss, patented in 1850, was one of the first intended to be built from iron instead of wood. He was involved in the construction of roundhouses for locomotives, and a courthouse in Louisville, Ky. |
| Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni | |
(source) |
Died
3 Apr 1827 (born 30 Nov 1756)
German physicist, known as the "father of acoustics" for his mathematical investigations of sound waves. Chladni figures, seen when thin plates covered in sand at set in vibration, are complex patterns of vibration with nodal lines that remain stationary and retain sand. He demonstrated these to an audience of scientists in 1809. He measured the speed of sound in various gases by determining the pitch of the note of an organ pipe filled with different gases. To determine the speed of sound in solids, Chladni, used analysis of the nodal pattern in standing-wave vibrations in long rods. He performed on the euphonium, an instrument he invented, made of glass and steel bars vibrated by rubbing with a moistened finger. He also investigated meteorites. |
| APRIL 3 - EVENTS | |
| First cell phone call | |
In 1973, the first portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper.
The phone was 10 inches in height, 3 inches deep and an inch-and-a-half
wide and weighed 30-oz. Since then, cell phones have shrunk to a mere palm-size
weighing 4-oz, and are used by a billion people around the world. Cooper's
first ''shoebox'' phone replaced a car phone of the time that weighed more
than 30 pounds and cost thousands of dollars. A car phone owner had to
drill a hole in his car to install the antenna and most of the phone sat
in the trunk. A control unit with a handset was placed inside the car. |
|
| Twin blade razor | |
|
In 1973, Francis W. Dorion patented
a "dual razor blade assembly" (No. 3,724,070). |
|
| Artificial Heart | |
(source) |
In 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley implanted a total artificial heart into a 2-month-old
patient. Three days later, the patient received a heart transplant, but
dies of respiratory insufficiency only 14 hours later. |
| Moon orbited | |
(source) |
In 1966, Luna 10, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon entered
lunar orbit, and completed its first orbit 3 hours later. It had been launched
by the USSR from an Earth orbiting platform on 31 Mar 1966. The scientific
instruments on board included a gamma-ray spectrometer, triaxial magnetometer,
and a meteorite detector. Other instruments investigated the solar-plasma,
infrared emissions from the Moon, radiation conditions of the lunar environment
and gravitational studies. Luna 10 transmitted the Internationale
during the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It
was battery powered, operated for 460 lunar orbits and made 219 active
data radio transmissions before discontinued on 30 May 1966.« |
| Space nuclear power | |
|
In 1965, SNAP 10A, the first nuclear reactor in space, was launched
from Vanden berg Air Force Base, Calif. It was activated by a signal from
scientists on earth about four hours later, and generated 500 kilowatt-hours
of power during its life, providing electrical power for a 1 kgf
ion engine. While its ground version lasted 10,000 hours without problems,
the orbiting reactor was shut down by an electrical failure in another
of the satellite's systems after 45 days in operation. It is still
orbiting the earth. SNAP stands for Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power.
Although
the Soviet Union has flown many nuclear reactors in space, the SNAP-10A
is the only
one flown by the United States. |
|
| Catseye patent | |
(source) |
In 1934, a British patent application for the first catseye road marker
was recorded for inventor
Percy Shaw (1889-1975), described as "Improvements relating to Blocks for
Road Surface." These are the familiar reflectors which mark the lines that
are lit up at night by the lights of passing vehicles. The raised surface
in which the reflectors are mounted have a construction that "will yield
when travelled over by a vehicle wheel and sink to the level of the road
surface" such as a resilient white rubber cushion mounted in a metal holder
sunk below the road surface. The patent No. 436,290 was accepted 3 Oct
1935. A revised design was patented the following year as No. 457,536.
Shaw started Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd. to manufacture them. |
| Edison patents at Menlo Park | |
|
In 1876, Edison executed patent applications (on acoustic telegraphy) which
were the first since moving to Menlo Park (his second and third applications
after a year-long hiatus). |
|
| Hat manufacture | |
|
In 1866, a hat shaping machine was patented by Rudolph Eickemeyer and G.
Osterheld. |
|
| Coffee mill | |
|
In 1829, James Carrington of Wallingford, Conn, patented his coffee mill. |
|
| First patent grant | |
|
In 1449, the earliest
English patent was granted to John of Utynam protection for introducing
the making colored glass to England. In what was probably the first grant
by an instrument of letters patent, King Henry VI gave this exclusive
privilege for a term of 20 years during which none of his subjects could
use such arts without the consent of John. This was for the benefit of
the King, who directed John of Utynam to create stained-glass windows for
the King's new institutions: Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.
John had recently returned to England from Flanders and brought back knowledge
of other subjects which the King wished John to teach his subjects, as
well as tutoring some assistants in the skills of making coloured glass
for the creation of his windows.« |
|
