| APRIL 28 - BIRTHS | |
| Gene Shoemaker | |
(source) |
 Born 28
Apr 1928; died 18 July 1997.
Eugene Merle Shoemaker was an American planetary geologist. Shoemaker initiated and vigorously promoted the intensive geologic training of the astronauts that made them able scientific observers and reporters on moon landings. He was a major investigator of the imaging by unmanned Ranger and Surveyor satellites which, before any Apollo landing, revealed the nature of the Moon's cover of soil and broken rock that he named the regolith. He codiscovered Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 which collided with Jupiter (1994), the first observed collision of two solar system bodies. He died in a car crash. In tribute, a small capsule of his ashes were launched in a memorial capsule aboard Lunar Prospector to the moon. |
| Ferruccio Lamborghini | |
(source) |
Born 28
Apr 1916; died 20 Feb 1993
Italian industrialist who founded a luxury car company that produced some of the fastest, most expensive, and sought-after sports cars in the world. Lamborghini worked as a mechanic in the Italian army during World War II, and after the war he started a tractor company. 
Lamborghini:
Forty Years, by David Jolliffe. |
| Kurt Gödel | |
(source) |
Born 28
Apr 1906; died 14 Jan 1978.
Austrian-born US mathematician, logician, and author of Gödel's proof. He is best known for his proof of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (1931) He proved fundamental results about axiomatic systems showing in any axiomatic mathematical system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved within the axioms of the system. In particular the consistency of the axioms cannot be proved. This ended a hundred years of attempts to establish axioms to put the whole of mathematics on an axiomatic basis. |
| Bart J. Bok | |
(source) |
Born 28
Apr 1906; died 7 Aug 1983.
Bart Jan Bok was a Dutch-American astronomer whose name remains associated with the "Bok globules" he was the first to investigate - dark clouds of dense gas and dust visible against a background of bright nebulae. Bok globules have a mass of 10 to 50 times the mass of the Sun and are about a light year across. He began their observation in the 1940's and in a 1947 paper with E.F. Reilly proposed that these were sites of new star formation as the gas clouds underwent gravitational collapse. Bok's other important work was on the structure and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy. His enthusiasm for astronomy began as a young boy. Bok bicycled to Norway to observe the solar eclipse of 1927. He moved to the U.S. in 1929.« The
Milky Way, by Bart J. Bok. |
| Jan H. Oort | |
1970 (source) |
Born 28
Apr 1900; died 5 Nov 1992.
Jan Hendrik Oort was a Dutch physicist and astronomer who was one of the most important figures in 20th-century efforts to understand the nature of the Milky Way Galaxy, who measured the rotation of the earth's galaxy and hypothesized an "Oort Cloud." In 1927 Oort analyzed motions of distant stars, found evidence for differential rotation and founded the mathematical theory of galactic structure. After World War II, he led the Dutch group which used the 21-cm line to map hydrogen gas in the Galaxy. They found the large-scale spiral structure, the galactic center, and gas cloud motions. In 1950 Oort proposed the now generally accepted model for the origin of comets. He continued researching galaxies until shortly before his death at 92. |
| Peter Guthrie Tait | |
| Born 28
Apr 1831; died 4 Jul 1901.
Scottish physicist and mathematician who helped develop quaternions, an advanced algebra that gave rise to vector analysis and was instrumental in the development of modern mathematical physics. |
|
| Francis Baily | |
(EB) |
Born 28
Apr 1774; died 30 Aug 1844.
English astronomer who detected the phenomenon called "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse of the Sun on 15 May 1836. His vivid description aroused new interest in the study of eclipses. After retiring in 1825 from a successful business career, Baily turned to science. Baily revised several star catalogs, repeated Henry Cavendish's experiments to determine the density of the Earth, and measured its elliptical shape. His protests regarding the British Nautical Almanac, then notorious for its errors, were instrumental in bringing about its reform. |
| Franz Karl Achard | |
(source) |
Born 28
Apr 1753; died 20 Apr 1821.
German chemist who invented a process for the large-scale extraction of table sugar (sucrose) from beets, and in 1801, opened the first sugar-beet factory, in Silesia (now Poland). At first, though simple, the method was costly, He improved it using suggestions of the Institute in France, including that the beets be pressed without cooking them, which saved much expense for fuel. He had succeeded Andreas Sigismund Marggraf upon his death (1782) as director of the "Class of Physics" at the Berlin Academy. It was Marggraf that had first discovered the presence of sugar in beetroot, and isolated it on an experimental scale in 1747. Achard also discovered a method for working platinum and was the first to prepare a platinum crucible (1784). |
|
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| APRIL 28 - DEATHS | |
| Arthur L. Schawlow | |
 Died
28 Apr 1999 (born 5 May 1921)
American physicist who was a corecipient (with Nicolaas Bloembergen of the U.S. and Kai Siegbahn of Sweden) of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in developing the laser and in laser spectroscopy. |
|
| Edouard van Beneden | |
| Died
28 Apr 1910 (born 5 Mar 1846)
Edouard (Joseph Louis-Marie) van Beneden was a Belgian embryologist and cytologist best known for his discoveries concerning fertilization in sex cells and chromosome numbers in body cells. From 1883, he experimented with the worm Ascaris megalocephala, an intestinal worm found in horses. His studies showed that sexual fertilization results from the union of two different cell half-nuclei. Thus a new single cell is created with its number of chromosomes derived as one-half from the male sperm and the other half from the female egg. Van Beneden also determined that the chromosome number is constant for every body cell of a species. His theory of embryo formation in mammals became a standard scientific principle. |
|
| J. Willard Gibbs | |
(source) |
Died
28 Apr 1903 (born 11 Feb 1839)
J(osiah) Willard Gibbs was an American mathematical physicist and chemist known for contributions to vector analysis and as one of the founders of physical chemistry. In 1863, He was awarded Yale University's first engineering doctorate degree. His major work was in developing thermodynamic theory, which brought physical chemistry from an empirical enquiry to a deductive science. In 1873, he published two papers concerning the fundamental nature of entropy of a system, and established the "thermodynamic surface," a geometrical and graphical method for the analysis of the thermodynamic properties of substances. His famous On the Equilibrium of Homogeneous Substances, published in 1876, established the use of "chemical potential," now an important concept in physical chemistry.« The
Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs, Vol. 1: Thermodynamics,
by J. Willard Gibbs. |
| Johannes Peter Müller | |
1857 (source) |
Died
28 Apr 1858 (born 14 Jul 1801)
German physiologist and anatomist, one of the greatest of 19th century who, with Magendie, is credited for establishing the science of physiology in its modern form. His famous discovery of the principle of specific nerve energies (1826) when he was able to show that sensory nerves impulses, however stimulated, will be interpreted in the same way. For example, any stimulation of the optic nerve results in a sensation of light, whether light is really involved or not. His major work, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen für Vorlesungen, (Elements of Physiology, in 2 vols.) was published in 1833-40. His broad pathology studies included hermaphroditism, embryology, echinoderms, fishes, lmph, chyle, the blood and the voice.« |
| Sir Charles Bell | |
| Died
28 Apr 1842 (born Nov 1774)
Scottish anatomist whose New Idea of Anatomy of the Brain (1811) has been called the "Magna Carta of neurology." After further research on the anatomy of the brain he published an expanded version, entitled The Nervous System of the Human Body (1830). In these books Bell distinguished between sensory nerves that conduct impulses to the central nervous system and motor nerves that convey impulses from the brain or from other nerve centres to a peripheral organ of response. He announced that the anterior roots of the spinal nerves are motor in function, while the posterior roots are sensory. This observation was confirmed eleven years later and more fully elaborated by François Magendie. |
|
| APRIL 28 - EVENTS | |
| Space shuttle mission | |
In 1991, the space shuttle Discovery was launched with a crew of
seven to perform "Star Wars" defense research. |
|
| Chernobyl announced | |
|
In 1986, Russia announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. |
|
| Overcoat built for two | |
(USPTO) |
In 1953, a U.S. patent was issued for an overcoat for two people (or Siamese
Twins) to Howard C. Rossin (No. 2,636,176). |
| Cartoon sign | |
|
In 1937, the first animated-cartoon electric sign display in the U.S. was
shown by Douglas Leigh on the front of a building on Broadway, New York
City. It used 2,000 bulbs, and its four-minute show included a cavorting
horse a ball tossing cats. |
|
| Kon Tiki | |
(source) |
In 1947, a balsa-wood raft, the Kon Tiki and a crew of six left
Peru, bound for Polynesia, which was reached 101 days later, captained
by anthropologist
Thor Heyerdahl.
He wished to demonstrate his belief that the voyage was possible using
materials and technology of pre-Columbian times, and that thus ancient
Polynesians could have originated in South America. The Kon-Tiki
raft party reported first sighting land - Pukapuka Island in the Tuamotas
- on 30 Jul 1947. It struck a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands in
the Pacific Ocean on 7 Aug 1947. Kon
Tiki was an old name of the Inca sun god, Viracocha.
Kon-Tiki:
Across the Pacific in a Raft, by Thor Heyerdahl. |
| Yellow fever vaccine | |
|
In 1932, a vaccine was announced for yellow fever for human immunization.
This first public announcement was made at a meeting of the American Societies
for Experimental Biology at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was developed
by Drs. Wilbur A. Sawyer, Wray D.M. Lloyd, and Stuart F. Kitchen, who were
sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. |
|
| Eclipse filmed | |
|
In 1930, the first U.S. motion picture of the 1.5 minute totality of an
eclipse of the sun was taken from an airplane flying about 18,000 feet
over at Honey Lake, California. The flight was sponsored by the U.S. Naval
Observatory, and carried out by Lt. Leslie E. Gehres amd Chief Photographer
J.M.F. Haase of the U.S. Navy. An attempt made during an earlier eclipse
had been made by the same photographer on 10 Sep 1923, but was unsuccessful
due to cloudy conditions. A U.S. Navy dirigible was first used to make
a motion film of an eclipse on 24
Jan 1925. The dirigible was about 4,500 feet above a point almost 19
miles east of Monauk Point, New York, which it filmed the 2-min 5-sec eclipse. |
|
| Wave mechanics | |
|
In 1926, the term "wave mechanics" was coined by nuclear physicist Erwin
Schrödinger in a letter he sent to Einstein. The term was applied
to the newly emerging branch of physics which interprets the behavious
of subatomic particles according to a mathematical description in terms
of a wave motion. |
|
| Parachute | |
|
In 1919, the first jump with the Army manually operated army parachute
was made by Leslie LeRoy Irvin in Dayton, Ohio. This was the first test
of this type, known as the "free parachute," with which the operator jumps
before pulling the ripcord. He jumped at an altitude of 1,500-ft from a
de Havilland DH-9 biplane while flying at 100-mph over McCook Field, Dayton,
Ohio. He broke his ankle upon landing on the ground. Later, he founded
the Irving Air Chute, Co., which business name resulted from an spelling
error on the incorporation papers. |
|
| Addressograph | |
|
In 1896, the first U.S. patent for an addressing machine, the Addressograph
(No. 558,936) was issued to J.S. Duncan of Sioux City, Iowa developed from
the invention he made in 1892. His earlier model consisted of a hexagonal
wood block upon which was glued rubber type torn from rubber stamps. While
revolving, the block simultaneously inked the next name and address ready
for the next impression. The "Baby O" model was put into production 26
Jul 1893 in a small back room of the old Caxton Building in Chicago, Ill. |
|
| Municipal fire alarm system | |
|
In 1852, the first municipal electric fire alarm system using call boxes
with automatic signaling indicating a fire's location was placed into operation
in Boston. It proved very effective in saving lives and avoiding great
loss of property resulting from fire. (As recently as 16 Dec 1835, a great
fire in New York City had resulted in the demolition of 600 buildings,
at a loss of $20 million.) The success of Boston's fire alarm system was
soon apparent, and the system spread across the United States and Canada.
The inventors, William Channing and Moses Farmer, received a U.S. patent
on their system on 19 May 1857 (No.
17,355). Their original 28-page proposal was given to the mayor of Boston
on 27 Mar 1851 and construction began 7 Sep 1851.« |
|
