| APRIL 6 - BIRTHS | |
| Horst L. Störmer | |
(source) |
 Born 6
Apr 1949
Horst Ludwig Störmer is a German-born American physicist who shared (with Daniel C. Tsui and Robert B. Laughlin) the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery "of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations." By experiment using extremely powerful magnetic fields and low temperatures, in 1982, Störmer and Tsui found that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of "particles", with charges that are fractions of electron charges. Within a year. Laughlin made a theoretical analysis explaining their result.« |
| James Dewey Watson | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1928
American geneticist and biophysicist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) for the discovery of "the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material." Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the substance contained in cells that controls heredity. Crick and Watson began their collaboration in 1951, and published their paper on the double helix structure on 2 Apr 1953 in Nature. This accomplishment became a cornerstone of genetics and was widely regarded as one of the most important discoveries of 20th-century biology.«  DNA
: The Secret of Life, by James D. Watson, Andrew Berry. |
| Edmond H. Fischer | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1920
American biochemist who shared (with Edwin G. Krebs) the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of "reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism" which governs the activities of proteins in cells. They purified and characterized the first enzyme of this type. Their discovery was a key to unlocking how glycogen in the body breaks down into glucose. It fostered techniques that prevent the body from rejecting transplanted organs. Their breakthrough also opened new doors for research into cancer, blood pressure, inflammatory reactions and brain signals.« |
| Feodor Lynen | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1911; died 8 Aug 1979.
German biochemist who shared (with Konrad Bloch) of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research "concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism." These processes comprise series of reactions with a great number of individual steps. Providing this detailed knowledge of the mechanisms of lipid metabolism makes possible addressing medical problems related to them.« |
| Harold E(ugene) Edgerton | |
(source) |
Born 6 Apr 1903; died 4 Jan 1990.
American electrical engineer and ultra-high-speed photographer. As a graduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1926), he used a strobe light in his studies. By 1931, he applied the strobe to ultra-high-speed photography. He formed a company (1947) to specialize in electronic technology, which led to inventing the Rapatronic camera, capable of photographing US nuclear bomb test explosions from a distance of 7 miles. Throughout his career he applied high-speed photography as a tool in various scientific applications. He also developed sonar to study the ocean floor. Using side-scan sonar, in 1973, he helped locate the sunken Civil War battleship USS Monitor, lost since 1862, off Cape Hatteras, NC.« [Image right : Cornonet formed by a splashing milk drop (source)] Stopping
Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton,
by Gus Kayafas, Estelle Jussim. |
| Donald Douglas | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1892; died 1 Feb 1981.
Donald (Wills) Douglas was an American aircraft designer whose the Douglas Aircraft Company produced military and civil aircraft. He graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its first aeronautics student (1914), then consulted and designed for others until he founded his own business (1920). Over the years his company set the industry standard for reliability and safety. The DC series of commercial passenger planes, beginning with the DC-1 (which entered service in 1933) led to the DC-8, the first commercial jet airliner in 1958. In addition to military aircraft, the company also produced military missiles and spacecraft. The business merged with McDonnell Aircraft Company in 1967, and after his death, with Boeing in 1997.« Donald
W. Douglas: A Heart With Wings, by Wilbur H. Morrison |
| Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1890; died 23 Dec 1939.
Dutch-American airman and pioneer aircraft manufacturer who, having seen an airplane flight at age 16, was inspired to build his first airplane by age 20. This was a braced monoplane, the Spider he put assembled in an empty Zeppelin hangar in Baden-Baden, and flying it gained his pilot's licence. His first factory built many of Germany's WW I pursuit aircraft, and gained recognition, but at the end of the war was put out of business there by the treaty of Versailles. On 21 Jul 1919, he established a company for civil aircraft, in the Netherlands and subsequently started manufacturing in the U.S. He continued to influence airplane construction techniques, and adopted welded-steel tubing fusulage construction.« Fokker
Dr.I Triplane: A World War One Legend, by Paul Leaman. |
| André-Louis Danjon | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1890; died 21 Apr 1967.
French astronomer who devised a now standard five-point scale for rating the darkness and colour of a total lunar eclipse, which is known as the Danjon Luminosity Scale. He studied Earth's rotation, and developed astronomical instruments, including a photometer to measure Earthshine - the brightness of a dark moon due to light reflected from Earth. It consisted of a telescope in which a prism split the Moon's image into two identical side-by-side images. By adjusting a diaphragm to dim one of the images until the sunlit portion had the same apparent brightness as the earthlit portion on the unadjusted image, he could quantify the diaphragm adjustment, and thus had a real measurement for the brightness of Earthshine.« |
| Clarence E. McClung | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1870; died 17 Jan 1946.
Clarence Erwin McClung was an American geneticist and paleontologist who discovered the role of chromosomes in sex determination in a species of grasshopper. In a key paper, he reported that sperm exist in two forms, each with a different chromosome configuration. Thus, he was one of the first (1901) to deduce that chromosomes determine the sex of offspring. McClung also studied how the behaviour of chromosomes in the sex cells of different organisms affects their heredity. His theory was one of many that inspired scientists to pursue investigations such as the Human Genome Project, an attempt to map the structure and location of all human genes. He also published on Cretaceous fishes. [Note: This birth date is given by Encyclopedia Britannica. However, American Dictionary of Biography states 5 April 1870.] |
| Philip Henry Gosse | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1810; died 23 Aug 1888.
English popular science writer and naturalist who wrote books illustrating such topics as Jamaican wildlife and marine zoology. Stephen Jay Gould called Gosse the "David Attenborough of his day." However, he did not accept the theory of evolution, and in his best-known book, Omphalos, he attempted to apply biblical literalism in a way still consistent with uniformitarianism. His premise in the book was criticized by both sides of the debate. He invented the institutional aquarium when on 21 May 1853, he opened the Aquatic Vivarium, the world's first public aquarium in Regent's Park, London.* Glimpses
of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse, by
Ann Thwaite. |
| William Hallowes Miller | |
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1801; died 20 May 1880.
Welsh minerologist known for his Millerian indices built on his system of reference axes for crystals by which the different systems of crystal forms can be designated using a a set of three integers for each crystal face. When he published this scheme in A Treatise on Crystallography (1839), he provided an alternative to the existing confusion due to the many different descriptive systems previously in use. In his early career he published successful textbooks for hydrostatics and hydrodynamics (1831) and differential calculus (1833). Miller also prepared new standards in 1843 to replace the National Standards of weight and length that had been lost in the 1834 fire that destroyed the Parliament buildings.« |
| José Mutis | |
|
(source) |
Born 6
Apr 1732; died 11 Sep 1808.
José (Celestino Bruno) Mutis was a Spanish medically-trained botanist and astronomer, who left Spain in 1760 to live in South America where he engaged in botanical exploration. He pursued how the plants wood, dyes, waxes, rubbers available there could provide economic and agricultural benefits for Spain. He also modernized mining methods, and examined the medical properties of quinine. Over the years, as government funding improved, he supervised a staff of artists, zoologists, and botanists, to produce thousands of drawings, maintain a botanical garden, make a collection of bird and animal skins, and assembled an herbarium containing more than 24,000 plants.« |
|
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| APRIL 6 - DEATHS | |
| Rear-Admiral Dennis Cambell | |
 Died
6 Apr 2000 (born 13 Nov 1907)
English naval aviator, test pilot and inventor of the angled flight deck which gives pilots a second chance when landing on an aircraft carrier. Like any great invention, this idea was outstandingly simple. Without it, pilots landing on a straight deck depended on his plane's tail-hook catching a steel arrester wire across the flight deck to stop before crashing into the barrier and aircraft parked at the far end. Cambell's idea meant that aircraft which failed to stop had a clear escape and could "bolt" under reapplied throttle over the port bow. The US Navy first adopted the idea and made such structural alterations to the carrier Antietam. The British Admiralty, impressed by that ship's field tests, then converted their new large carrier Ark Royal and appointed Cambell as Captain. |
|
| Isaac Asimov | |
(source) |
Died
6 Apr 1992 (born 2 Jan 1920)
American author and biochemist, who was a prolific writer of science fiction and of science books for the layperson. Born in Petrovichi, Russia, he emigrated with his family to New York City at age three. He entered Columbia University at the age of 15 and at 18 sold his first story to Amazing Stories. After earning a Ph.D., he taught biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine after 1949. By 18 Mar 1941, Asimov had already written 31 stories, sold 17, and 14 had been published. As an author, lecturer, and broadcaster of astonishing range, he is most admired as a popularizer of science (The Collapsing Universe; 1977) and a science fiction writer (I, Robot;1950). He coined the term "robotics." He published about 500 volumes. |
| Otto Struve | |
1932 (source) |
Died
6 Apr 1963 (born 12 Aug 1897)
Russian-American astronomer who was a fourth generation astronomer, the great-grandson of Friedrich Struve. He made detailed spectroscopic investigations of stars, especially close binaries and peculiar stars, the interstellar medium (where he discovered H II regions), and gaseous nebulae. He contributed to the understanding of the broadening of spectral lines due to stellar rotation, electric fields, and turbulence and worked to separate these effects from each other and from chemical abundances. He was a pioneer in the study of mass transfer in closely interacting binary stars. Struve emigrated to the USA (1921) and joined the Yerkes Observatory, Wisc., becoming its director in 1932.« |
| Jules Bordet | |
(EB) |
Died
6 Apr 1961 (born 13 Jun 1870)
Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet was a Belgian bacteriologist and immunologist who discovered (1895) the complement, a complex of proteins in the blood that causes the destruction of foreign cells in an immune response. In 1906, he isolated the bacterium responsible for whooping cough, which is named after him - Bordetella (Haemophilus) pertussis- for which he developed a vaccine. He also isolated a number of other pathogenic bacteria. For his discovery of immunity factors in blood serum, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1919. This development was vital to the diagnosis and treatment of many dangerous contagious bacterial diseases. For example, it is the basis of the Wassermann test for syphilis. |
| Bradley Allen Fiske | |
1912 (EB) |
Died
6 Apr 1942 (born 13 Jun 1854)
U.S. naval officer and inventor whose new instruments greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of late 19th-century warships. In 1898, while the navigator of the gunboat Petrel during the Battle of Manila Bay, he determined the ranges of enemy ships for use by the gunners by using his own invention, a stadimeter range finder. Fiske's prolific activity as an inventor began in the mid-1870s with some applications in each World War. His major inventions in electrical and gun-control systems included range finding, ammunition hoists and gun-turret motors and torpedo radio control. |
| Alice Cunningham Fletcher | |
(source) |
Died
6 Apr 1923 (born 15 Mar 1838)
U.S. anthropologist whose stature as a social scientist, notably for her pioneer study of Indian music, has overshadowed her influence on federal government Indian policies that later were considered to be unfortunate. Her early interests were in archaeology. Her later interests, however, focused on contemporary Native Americans. Fletcher was one of the first ethnologists to live among the people whom she studied, the Omaha. She had a lifelong interest in Native American music, customs, and language, and with collaborators, transcribed hundreds of songs of the Plains Indians. She helped write and get passed the Dawes Act (1887) which "...gave each Indian legal title to a plot of land and also granted them citizenship" |
| Thomas Green Clemson | |
| Died
6 Apr 1888 (born 1 Jul 1807)
Engineer for whom Clemson Univ. was named. |
|
| Niels Henrik Abel | |
(source) |
Died
6 Apr 1829 (born 5 Aug 1802)
Niels Henrik Abel was a Norwegian mathematician, who developed several branches of modern mathematics. After a slow start in school, he began to show mathematical genius by the age of 15. In 1823 proved that there was no algebraic formula for the solution of a general polynomial equation of the fifth degree. He developed the concept of elliptic functions independently of Carl Gustav Jacobi, and the theory of Abelian integrals and functions became a central theme of later 19th-century analysis. He had difficulty finding an academic position, was troubled by poverty. He died in poverty at age 26, just two days before his talent was recognized and he was to be offered a professorship in Berlin. |
| Sir William Hamilton | |
(source) |
Died
6 Apr 1803 (born 13 Dec 1730)
English diplomat, archaeologist and geologist who spent his years as British envoy to the court of Naples (1764-1800) also conducting archaeological investigations and collecting antiquities. He took a particular interest in the volcanic remains around Vesuvius (Italy) and Etna (Sicily) and published several studies (1772-83) on earthquakes and volcanoes. His excavations included Herculaneum and Pompeii, the towns buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, where he collected lava samples, ashes and minerals. In 1767, he designed an apparatus to depict an eruption of Vesuvius using a combination of clockwork-driven moving pictures, light and sound effects - the first example of an animated picture with sound..« |
| Albrecht Dürer | |
| Died
6 Apr 1528 (born 21 May 1471)
German artist who published a book on geometric constructions (1535) using a straight-edge and compass. Although designed to enable artists better represent a natural three-dimensional scene on a canvas, Dürer included careful proofs to establish the validity of the constructions. In this respect, it could be regarded as the oldest surviving text on applied mathematics. He also wrote on the proportions of the human body. |
|
| APRIL 6 - EVENTS | |
| Russian nuclear accident | |
In 1993, in Russia, a huge radioactive cloud was released from an explosion
of a tank of radioactive waste at the secret military facility at Tomsk
7. Located in the Russian wilderness, 1700 miles east of Moscow, it was
the worse nuclear accident, thought not the only one, since the incident
at Chernobyl in Apr 1986. A week later, delegates at a meeting in Tokyo
from the world's richest nations, agreed to give urgent help to Russia
for problems with nuclear waste, obsolete nuclear missile warheads, and
aging nuclear reactors. |
|
| Pioneer 11 | |
|
In 1973, Pioneer 11 was launched to Jupiter and Saturn. |
|
| Early Bird satellite | |
|
In 1965, the United States launched the "Early Bird" Intelsat 1, the first
commercial geosynchronous communications satellite. It followed the Russian's
earlier launch of the "WORM" test satellite |
|
| Last NY trolley cars | |
|
In 1957, trolley cars in New York City completed their final runs on this
day. |
|
| Jupiter | |
(source) |
In 1955, a report that Jupiter emitted radio waves was the subject of a
page-length column
of the New York Times. Discovered by Bernard
F. Burke and Kenneth L. Franklin,
astronomers at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the waves resembled
short bursts of static,
similar to the interference on home radios caused by lightning. This was
the first time radio waves were detected
from any planet in our solar system. The astronomers announced their find
at the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Princeton,
N.J. Discovered at first by chance, it took several weeks to pinpoint Jupiter
as the origin, rather than any local source on Earth.« |
| TV dinner | |
|
In 1954, The TV Dinner was first put on sale by Swanson & Sons. |
|
| Teflon | |
(source) |
In 1938, Du Pont researcher Roy J. Plunkett and his technician Jack Rebok
accidentally discovered the chemical compound polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)
that was later marketed as Teflon. Plunkett was researching chemical reactions
of the gas perfluoroethylene in order to synthesize new types of refrigerant
gases. Rebok found an apparently defective cylinder of this gas, since
no pressure was found when the valve was opened, even though the cyclinder
weight was the same as full cylinders. Rebok suggested sawing it open to
investigate. Inside was a slippery white powder. Plunkett found it had
unusual properties, a wonderful solid lubricant in powdered form, was chemically
inert and had a very high melting point. He realized it was formed by an
unexpected polymerization. |
| Twinkies | |
|
In 1930, Hostess Twinkies were invented by bakery executive James Dewar. |
|
| Electric car starter | |
|
In 1912, the electric starter first appeared in cars. |
|
| Kodak camera | |
|
In 1889, the Kodak Camera was placed on sale by George Eastman. |
|
| American Museum of Natural History | |
|
In 1869, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City was officially
created with the signing of a bill by the Governor of New York, John
Thompson Hoffman. The museum
began from the efforts of Albert Smith Bickmore, one-time student of Harvard
zoologist Louis Agassiz, who was successful in his proposal to create a
natural history museum in New York City, with the support of William E.
Dodge, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., Joseph Choate, and J. Pierpont Morgan.
It opened to the public 27 Apr 1871. With a series of exhibits, the Museum’s
collection went on view for the first time in the Central Park Arsenal,
the Museum’s original home, on the eastern side of Central Park. |
|
| Celluloid | |
|
In 1869, celluloid was the first plastic to be patented. |
|
| Roller skate | |
|
In 1869, Isaac Hodgson received patent No. 88,711 for his "roller skate."
The earliest known type, using two large wheels on each skate was invented
by aa Belgian, Joseph Merlin, in 1759. In England, Robert John Tyers, a
Picadilly fruiterer, on 22 Apr 1823 patented his Volitos, an"apparatus
to be attached to boots ... for the purpose of travelling or pleasure,"
which used five small wheels in a single line. Somewhat similar skates
with rollers were used to simulate ice skating in a scene of Meyerbeer's
opera Prophète,
Paris, 16 Apr 1849.*
Another American inventor, James L. Plimpton of New York, had a patent
for four-wheeled roller skates from 1865, whose right was affirmed at a
trial for infringement, 28 Jan 1876.* |
|
| US milk inspector | |
|
In 1859, the first Inspector of Milk position in the U.S. was created by
the legislature of the state of Massachusetts. |
|
| Sunspot cycle | |
 |
In 1852, Edward Sabine
announced that the 11 year sunspot cycle was "absolutely identical"
with the geomagnetic cycle. Later, using a larger dataset, Rudolf Wolf
confirmed this fact. Since Newton's explanation of the effect of the sun's
gravity on earth, this was the first new phenomenon of the sun interacting
with the earth. Thus began continuing studies of the solar-terrestrial
activity. Sabine was an Irish geophysicist, astronomer, and explorer, who
made extensive pendulum measurements to determine the shape of the earth,
and established magnetic observatories to relate sunspot activity
with disturbances in terrestrial magnetism. Sabine was knighted in 1869. |
| Pompeii | |
|
In 1748, excavations began at Pompeii. Nearly 17 centuries before, the
Greco-Roman city was buried under lava by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. |
|
| Solar eclipse | |
|
In 648, B.C., the earliest total solar eclipse chronicled by Greeks was
observed. |
|
