| APRIL 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Arno Penzias | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Apr 1933
Arno Allan Penzias is a German-American astrophysicist who shared one-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Robert Woodrow Wilson for their discovery of a faint electromagnetic radiation throughout the universe. Their detection of this radiation lent strong support to the big-bang model of cosmic evolution. |
| Michael Smith | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1932; died 4 Oct 2000.
British-born Canadian biochemist who won (with Kary B. Mullis) the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a technique called oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis, which enabled researchers to introduce specific mutations into genes and, thus, to the proteins that they encode. The prize recognized his groundbreaking work in reprogramming segments of DNA, the building blocks of life. His work launched a new era in genetics research. |
| Dr. Charles Richter | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1900; died 30 Sep 1985.
Dr. Charles Francis Richter was a seismologist and inventor of the Richter Scale that measures earthquake intensity which he developed with his colleague, Beno Gutenberg, in the early 1930's. The scale assigns numerical ratings to the energy released by earthquakes. Richter used a seismograph (an instrument generally consisting of a constantly unwinding roll of paper, anchored to a fixed place, and a pendulum or magnet suspended with a marking device above the roll) to record actual earth motion during an earthquake. The scale takes into account the instrument's distance from the epicenter. Gutenberg suggested that the scale be logarithmic so, for example, a quake of magnitude 7 would be ten times stronger than a 6. |
| Sir Owen Willans Richardson | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1879; died 15 Feb 1959.
English physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1928 for "his work on the thermionic phenomenon [electron emission by hot metals] and especially for the discovery of the law named after him." This effect is why a heated filament in a vacuum tube releases a current of electrons to travel an anode, which was essential for the development of such applications as radio amplifiers or a TV cathode ray tube. Richardson's law mathematically relates how the electron emission increases as the absolute temperature of the metal surface is raised. He also conducted research on photoelectric effects, the gyromagnetic effect, the emission of electrons by chemical reactions, soft X-rays, and the spectrum of hydrogen.« |
| Sir Alliott Verdon Roe | |
| Born 26
Apr 1877; died 4 Jan 1958.
Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe was the first Englishman to construct and fly his own airplane. He heard of the success of the Wright brothers and set out to build his own plane. On 8 Jun 1908, he flew his biplane a distance of 75 feet (23 m). |
|
| Erminnie Adele Platt Smith | |
| Born 26
Apr 1836; died 9 Jun 1886.
née Platt) American anthropologist who was the first woman to specialize in ethnographic field work. She was primarily a geologist who at about age 40 organized the Aesthetic Society that had as many as 500 in her parlor meetings about science, literature, and art. It was at one of the meeting that she heard about the new field of anthropology. She studied the Iroquis Indian culture, gathering their legends and language. Her ethnographic studies surpassed any others in the field. Her studies of the Iroquois Federation enabled her to preserve a large segment of their legends and language. She wrote numerous scientic papers with Myths of the Iroquois (1883) as her best known book |
|
| Theodor Billroth | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1829; died 6 Feb 1894.
Christian Albert Theodor Billroth was a Viennese surgeon, generally considered to be the founder of modern abdominal surgery. He was a friend and colleague of Halsted. Billroth was a pioneer abdominal surgeon, and perfected many procedures, including gastric resections still used daily in general surgery. He helped establish the foundations of academic training and university direction of surgical sciences. |
| Alfred Krupp | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1812; died 14 Jul 1887.
German manufacturer of steel and armaments and steel who was known as "The Cannon King." At an early age, in 1826, he inherited his father's small cast-steel works at Essen, which he expanded by 1843 to 100 workers making steel springs and machine parts. In 1859, he was contracted by the Prussian government to make 312 cannon. Developing this line of business, he became the largest steel maker in Europe. In 1862, he began making steel with the Bessemer process. His cannon were used in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. After this, he acquired control of the supply of German coal and Spanish iron-ore. His artillery business grew to 21,000 employees. His descendants continued the business and armed the Germans in WW II.«  The
Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany
at War, by William Manchester. |
| John James Audubon | |
(source) |
Born 26 Apr 1785; died 27 Jan 1851.
Ornithologist, artist, and naturalist known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds. He was born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a successful merchant, planter, and slave dealer. At age 4, he was taken to France and educated among the well-to-do. By 15 he was drawing French birds. In 1803, Audubon was in Pennsylvania managing his father's estate where he began his ventures into ornithology. In 1820, he made his goal the publication of an anthology of life drawings. He traveled the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes, exploring for birds. Unable to find a publisher in America he travelled to London in 1826-27 where his engravings were made. In 1831, Audubon returned to the U.S. and spent more years travelling and painting. Image right: Trumpeter swan by Audubon (1837). |
| Leopold von Buch | |
(source) |
Born 26
Apr 1774; died 4 Mar 1853.
(Baron) (Christian) Leopold von Buch was a German geologist, paleontologist and geographer. On his geological research trips in Europe he travelled as far north as Lapland. He investigated Vesuvius with his life-long friend Alexander von Humboldt, and examined the huge craters of the Canary Islands. His broad interests in geology also included the study of fossils, stratigraphy, and in particular the Jurassic system.« |
|
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| APRIL 26 - DEATHS | |
| Torunn Garin | |
 Died
26 Apr 2002 (born 19 Sep 1947)
Torunn Atteraas "Teri" Garin was a Norwegian chemical engineer who helped develop the sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute while working for General Foods (1971-85). Earlier in her career, she researched ways to minimize water pollution caused by food production and how to replace cancer-causing chemicals with natural dyes. She held two patents for her invention of a process to extract caffeine from coffee. Her professional education began at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, followed by a degree in chemical engineering from Columbia University (1971) and then a master's degree in environmental engineering from what is now the Polytechnic University, Brooklyn (1977)*. « |
|
| Arnold Sommerfeld | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1951 (born 5 Dec 1868)
Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm) Sommerfeld was a German physicist whose atomic model permitted the explanation of fine-structure spectral lines. His first work was on the theory of the gyroscope (with Klein), and then on wave spreading in wireless telegraphy. More significant was his major contribution to the development of quantum theory, generally, and in its application to spectral lines and the Bohr atomic model. He evolved also a theory of the electron in the metallic state valuable to the study of thermo-electricity. |
| Carl Bosch | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1940 (born 27 Aug 1874)
German industrial chemist who at BASF directed development of the industrial scale process for production of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen. In 1908, Fritz Haber, a professor of chemistry had suggested that nitrogen and hydrogen gases could be combined using high temperatures, high pressure and catalysts that resulted in the Haber-Bosch process. By 1910, Alwin Mittasch (1869-1953), head chemist of the BASF ammonia research laboratory identified activated iron as a suitable catalyst. Bosch supervised creation of new technical solutions for high pressure operations. He shared (with Friedrich Bergius) the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for devising chemical high-pressure methods.«
Enriching
the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and ... World Food Production,
by Vaclav Smil. |
| Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1920 (born 22 Dec 1887)
Indian mathematician known for his work on hypergeometric series and continued fractions. In number theory, he discovered properties of the partition function. Although self-taught, he was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series. His remarkable familiarity with numbers, was shown by the following incident. While Ramanujan was in hospital in England, his Cambridge professor, G. H. Hardy, visited and remarked that he had taken taxi number 1729, a singularly unexceptional number. Ramanujan immediately responded that this number was actually quite remarkable: it is the smallest integer that can be represented in two ways by the sum of two cubes: 1729=1 
"The
Man Who Knew Infinity" by Robert Kanigel |
| Eduard Suess | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1914 (born 20 Aug 1831)
Austrian geologist who helped lay the basis for paleogeography and tectonics--i.e., the study of the architecture and evolution of the Earth's outer rocky shell. He was an authority on structural geology, especially of mountains, and postulated the existence of the giant land mass Gondwanaland. While he was a professor (1857–1901) at the Univ. of Vienna, he also served for more than 20 years in the Austrian parliament. His Austrian-born son, Hans Suess, became a geochemist who pioneered radiocarbon dating techniques and was a founding faculty member of the University of California, San Diego. Image from Austrian commemorative stamp of 26 Apr 1989. |
| Karl August Möbius | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1908 (born 7 Feb 1825)
German zoologist whose work in marine biology included the formation of pearls and the anatomy of the whale. He introduced the ecosystem concept of the "life community" ("Biocönose" - life having something in common) which featured in his 1877 study of oyster culture - the order, structure and function of the oyster reef as it relates to the abiotic habitat of a river mouth and the biotic associations of plants, plankton, benthic communities and fisheries in an estuary. He cofounded the Hamburg zoo and aquarium, led expeditions in the tropics, and became director of the natural history museum in Berlin (1887-1905).« [Image: oyster reef] |
| Jean François Fernel | |
(source) |
Died
26 Apr 1558 (born 1497?)
French physician who in his historic career in medicine and physiology introduced dissection to clinical practice. He coined the terms "physiology" and "pathology," and was the first to describe appendicitis, peristalsis., systole and diastole of the heart, endocarditis, and the first description of the spinal canal. He wrote general medical texts and works of the cure of syphilis and fevers. |
| APRIL 26 - EVENTS | |
| Space shuttle Columbia mission | |
(source) |
In 1993, space shuttle Columbia was launchedon
the second German sponsored D-2 Spacelab Mission lasting until 6 May. Some
88 experiments covered
materials and life sciences, technology applications, Earth observations,
astronomy and atmospheric physics. Some 240 tadpoles and 240 fish larvae
were flown to test how their bodies adjusted to weightlessness in space;
most of the specimens died in ordit. Mission specialist Dr. Bernard Harris
set up the first I.V. (intravenous) line in space, injecting payload specialist
Hans Schlegel with saline as part of a study to replace body fluids lost
during adaptation to weightlessness. This mission brought the shuttle program's
cumulative flight time to one year. |
| Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion | |
(source) |
In 1986, in Pripet, Russia, the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded in the
world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe which sent a cloud of radioactive
dust over Europe. It was the result of an experiment went wrong, causing
the fourth reactor to explode and melt down. Thirty-one people, mostly
firemen, were killed immediately after the explosion, and several thousand
more - those involved in the clean-up and children - have since died from
radiation-related illnesses. Ukraine says the health of millions of its
people have been affected by the disaster. |
| Integrated circuit | |
|
In 1961, the integrated circuit was patented by Robert Noyce (No. 2,981,877). |
|
| Salk vaccine tested | |
 |
In 1954, mass testing of the Salk polio vaccine began, involving about
1.8 million children. |
| Weather broadcast | |
|
In 1921, the first U.S. broadcast of the weather was made from St. Louis,
Missouri, over station WEW for the federal government. |
|
| Shapley-Curtis debate | |
|
In 1920, Harlow Shapley of the Mount Wilson Observatory and Heber D. Curtis
of the Lick Observatory in California, two leading astronomers, debated
each other at the Smithsonian Institution on the relationship of the Milky
Way Galaxy to the Universe. Shapley's position was that the Milky Way is
the only galaxy in the universe,.Curtis, however, argued that the Milky
Way exists as just one of many "island universes" in the cosmos. Whereas
both scientists provided a stimulating debate, it was Curtis who was vindicated
for his opinion when by the end of the 1920s, the island universe theory
was validated by Edwin Hubble. |
|
| African-American invention | |
|
In 1899, "Life Saving Guards for Street Cars" were patented by the
black American inventor, J.H. Robinson (No, 623,929), who the previous
month was issued a patent for life saving guards for locomotives (14 Mar
1899, No. 621,143).
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| Perpetual motion machine | |
|
In 1882, a perpetual motion machine was patented by John Sutliff in the
U.S. (No. 257,103). |
|
| African-American invention | |
(USPTO) |
In 1882, black American inventor, W.B. Purvis was issued a patent for a
"Bag Fastener" (No. 256,856). It was designed to permit packages, especially
those wrapped in paper, to be "instantly sealed or bound up without the
use of cord or its equivalent." The invention was a light metallic pronged
fastening device, one end of which was to be secured by a paper strip held
by gum or paste to the open end of a bag. The opposite end had small barbs
designed to pierce and fasten to the opposite side of the seam being closed.
In later years, he also patented a hand stamp, a fountain pen, an electric
railway, a magnetic car balancing device, an electric railway switch and
ten paper bag machines.
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Photophone | |
|
In 1882, the photophone
was demonstrated
by Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. In their device, a
mirrored silver disc was made to vibrate by speech from a speaking tube.
Light reflected off the disc was focused by a parabolic dish onto a selenium
photocell. The variations in the reflected light were converted into electrical
signals carried to headphones. |
|
| Amazon exploration | |
|
In 1848, Welsh botanist Alfred
Russell Wallace and Henry
Walter Bates sailed from Liverpool for the Amazon. Their expeditions
yielded insights into natural history and evolution for the both of them.
Bates spent 11 years in Amazonia amassing large collections of insects
that were sent back to museums and collectors in Europe. Wallace left earlier
and collected in the Malay Archipelago. Wallace independently reached the
same conclusions as Darwin regarding
natural selection and wrote a paper read to the Linnaen Society on 1st
July 1858. Bates was quick to embrace Darwin's and Wallace's theory of
evolution by natural selection. Bates' own theory, Batesian mimicry, provided
evidence for evolution by natural selection. |
|
| First English patent in regular series | |
|
In 1552, the first in
the regular series of English Letter Patent was granted to Henry Smthe
for the making of Normandy glass. These Letter Patents were open letters
expressing the monarch's wishes to anyone that might read them. These were
due as any right to the recipient, but rather were privileges granted by
the monarch (or one of his delegated officers) primarily for what the ruler
may regard as a good purpose. The good would be on behalf of the country,
or the monarch (or the officer!). Earlier - by over one hundred years -
a letters patent had been granted by
King Henry VI to John of Utynam dated 3 Apr 1449, in connection, in part,
with skills to make coloured glass John would introduce to England, and
apply in the creation of stained glass windows for the King.« |
|
