| MAY 12 - BIRTHS | |
| James S. Coleman | |
 |
 Born 12
May 1926; died 25 Mar 1995.
James S(amuel) Coleman was a U.S. sociologist, a pioneer in mathematical sociology whose studies strongly influenced education policy. In the early 1950s, he was as a chemical engineer with Eastman-Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y. He then changed direction, fascinated with sociology and social problems. In 1966, he presented a report to the U.S. Congress which concluded that poor black children did better academically in integrated, middle-class schools. His findings provided the sociological underpinnings for widespread busing of students to achieve racial balance in schools. In 1975, Coleman rescinded his support of busing, concluding that it had encouraged the deterioration of public schools by encouraging white flight to avoid integration. |
| Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1910; died 29 Jul 1994.
Dorothy (Mary) Hodgkin (née Crowfoot) was an English chemist, born in Cairo, Egypt. A crystallographer of distinction, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 for her discoveries, by the use of X-ray techniques, of the structure of biologically important molecules, including penicillin (1946), vitamin B-12 (1956), and later, the protein hormone insulin (1969). Her achievements included not only these structure determinations and the scientific insight they provided but also the development of methods that made such structure determinations possible. (One of her students was Margaret Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, the only British prime minister with a degree in science.)  Dorothy
Hodgkin: A Life, by Georgina Ferry. |
| Maurice Ewing | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1906; died 4 May 1974.
(William) Maurice Ewing was a US geophysicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding of marine sediments and ocean basins. He worked in a range of subjects, making contributions to earthquake seismology, explosion seismology, marine acoustics, sedimentology, and tectonics. He adapted seismic exploration methods to use in the oceans; explicated a large segment of the earthquake seismogram, the coda; did studies of Earth's free oscillations; and described the ocean sound channel and the dispersion of sound in seawater. He also developed or greatly improved the bathythermograph, the piston corer, heat-flow probes, sonar, hydrophones, gravimeters and deep-sea cameras. The
floor of the sea: Maurice Ewing and the search to understand the earth,
by William Wertenbaker. |
| Sir Christopher Hinton | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1901; died 22 Jun 1983.
(Baron of Bankside) English engineer who was a leading figure in the development of the nuclear energy industry in Britain; he supervised the construction of Calder Hall, the world's first large-scale nuclear power station (opened in 1956). He first worked for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) where at age 29 he was appointed chief engineer of the Alkali Groups. While at ICI he was selected to start building nuclear power plants. Britain's first four such plants were completed in six years. He played a founding role in fast breeder technology. The decision to build the Dounreay Fast Reactor was made in 1954, which ran successfully for over two decades, until its planned shutdown in 1977, thus demonstrating the safe operation of the concept. |
| William Francis Giauque | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1895; died 28 Mar 1982.
Canadian-born American physical chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1949 for his "achievements in the field of chemical thermodynamics and especially his work on the behavior of matter at very low temperatures and his closely allied studies of entropy." He is remembered particularly for his discovery of adiabatic demagnetization as a means to reach temperatures close to absolute zero as well as for his exhaustive and meticulous thermodynamic studies, over a lifetime of research, which utilized the third law of thermodynamics while also developing a large body of evidence for its validity. |
| Lincoln Ellsworth | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1880; died 26 May 1951.
(original name William Linn Ellsworth) American explorer, engineer, and scientist who led the first trans-Arctic (1926) and trans-Antarctic (1935) air crossings. Polar
Extremes: The World of Lincoln Ellsworth, by Beekman
H. Pool. |
| Baron Clemens von Pirquet | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1874; died 28 Feb 1929.
Austrian physician who originated a skin test for tuberculosis that bears his name, a classic diagnostic test in which tuberculin is applied to a superficial abrasion of the skin of the arm. In 1906 he noticed that patients who had received injections of horse serum or smallpox vaccine usually had quicker, more severe reactions to second injections. While studying the symptoms of cowpox vaccination, he also developed a new theory about the incubation time of infectious diseases and the formation of antibodies. In 1909 he published the results of a series of tuberculin tests of inhabitants of Vienna that showed that 70% of the children tested had been infected by tuberculosis by age 10, and over 90% at age 14. He also studied infant nutrition. |
| Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1863; died 6 Jan 1945.
Russian geochemist and mineralogist who was a founder of the specialist sciences of geochemistry and biogeochemistry. He was the first to popularize the concept of the noosphere - the biosphere controlled by the mind of man. Within the last 200 years, humanity has been a powerful geologic force, moving more mass upon the earth than the biosphere. Two of the laws detailed by Vernadsky are that the number and kinds of chemical elements and compounds entering the cycling organization of living matter increase with time, and that as we move toward the present the pace of cycling increases. |
| Oskar Bolza | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1857; died 5 Jul 1942.
German mathematician who moved to the U.S. in 1888. He published The elliptic s-functions considered as a special case of the hyperelliptic s-functions in 1900. From 1910, he worked on the calculus of variations. Bolza wrote a classic textbook on the subject, Lectures on the Calculus of Variations (1904). He returned to Germany in 1910, where he researched function theory, integral equations and the calculus of variations. In 1913, he published a paper presenting a new type of variational problem now called "the problem of Bolza." The next year, he wrote about variations for an integral problem involving inequalities, which later become important in control theory. Bolza ceased his mathematical research work at the outbreak of WW I in 1914.« |
| Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1856; died 9 Sep 1901.
German botanist whose Pflanzentogeographie (1898) was one of the first and finest mapping of the floral regions of the continents. He coined (1885) the term chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that conduct photosynthesis), and distinguished them from chromatophores (pigment-containing cells found in many marine animals). In 1880, he proved that starch is the source of stored energy for plants. His explorations included Florida, the West Indies, South America, and Indonesia. On the Valdivia expedition (1898) he studied the oceanic plankton of numerous oceanic islands and coastal Africa. His father, Wilhelm Philipp Schimper was an expert on mosses and whose cousin Karl Friedrich Schimper studied plant morphology.« |
| Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1849; died 24 Jun 1915.
(née Matilda Coxe Evans) was an American ethnologist who became one of the major contributors to her field, particularly in the study of Zuni religion. She married geologist James Stevenson (Apr 1872). In 1879, he became executive officer of the U.S. Geological Survey and she took an interest in her husband's work, accompanying him on an expedition to New Mexico to study the Zuni for the Bureau of American Ethnology. On several visits to the Zuni she studied their domestic life and in particular the roles, duties, and rituals of Zuni women. The Twenty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau in 1901-02 published her 600-page The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies, her most important written work. [Image: Matilda Coxe Stevenson with Pueblo woman, mid 1890s] |
| Edward Lear | |
| Born 12
May 1812; died 29 Jan 1888.
English nature and landscape artist who is better known the creator of limericks and nonsense poetry. In his late teens, in 1832, he was hired as an illustrator by the London Zoological Society. These notably precise and vivid drawings of parrots were published in The Family of the Psittacidae (1832), the first large-scale volume of colored drawings of parrots to appear in England, and among the first color plates of animals ever published in Great Britain. In the same year, he was invited by the Earl of Denby to reside at his estate where he painted animals from the earl's menagerie. He stayed there until 1836. His first book of poems, published ten years later, A Book of Nonsense (1846) was composed for the grandchildren of the Denby household.« |
|
| William Howe | |
| Born 12
May 1803; died 19 Sep 1852.
U.S. inventor who pioneered in the development of truss bridges in the U.S. |
|
| Justus Liebig | |
| Born 12
May 1803; died 18 Apr 1873.
(baron) German chemist who made many important contributions to the early systematization of organic chemistry, to the application of chemistry to biology (biochemistry), to chemical education, and to the basic principles of agricultural chemistry. Justus
von Liebig : The Chemical Gatekeeper, by William H. Brock. |
|
| John Bell | |
(source) |
Born 12
May 1763; died 15 Apr 1820.
Scottish surgeon, anatomist and artist. His anatomical etchings are harshly realistic because he criticized the approach of artists in his day to beautify the body and their "vitious practice of drawing from imagination." He believed that unlike the painter "striving for elegance of form" the anatomist must focus on "accuracy of representation." Bell began his medical training at age 17 (1779) in Edinburgh. By 1790, Bell set up his own anatomy school to present the subject more effectively for the practicing surgeon than offered at the established Royal Infirmary. Meeting opposition from other surgeons caused by his outspokenness, he ceased teaching after 13 years, and for the next 20 years limited himself to surgical practice and consulting.« |
|
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages: Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages: Today in Science History Science Store Click here to browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| MAY 12 - DEATHS | |
| Roy J. Plunkett | |
(source) |
 Died
12 May 1994 (born 26 Jun 1910)
American chemist and inventor of Teflon (the DuPont trademark name for Polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE). His discovery, while working for DuPont, was accidental. On 6 Apr 1938, Plunkett found that a tank of gaseous tetrafluoroethylene (CF2CF2) had polymerized to a white powder. During WW II this new polymer was applied as a corrosion-resistant coating to protect metal equipment used in the production of radioactive material. DuPont released its trademarked Teflon coated nonstick cookware in 1960. |
| Erik H. Erikson | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1994 (born 15 Jun 1902)
Erik H(omburger) Erikson was a German-born psychoanalyst. He trained under Anna Freud (1927–33), specializing in child psychology, then emigrated to the U.S. He taught at Harvard, engaged in a variety of clinical work, and widened the scope of psychoanalytic theory to take greater account of social, cultural, and other environmental factors. In 1950, he profoundly influenced the study of human development with the publication of Childhood and Society, in which he divided human development, from infancy to old age, into a life cycle of eight stages. His later works dealt with ethical concerns in the modern world. |
| Thomas Milton Rivers | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1962 (born 3 Sep 1888)
American virologist who, as chairman of the virus research committee of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation; 1938-55), organized the long-range research program that led to development of the Salk and Sabin anti-poliomyelitis vaccines. His interest in medical research was awakened while with the Army medical corps (1918). He worked from 1922-55 at the Rockefeller Institute as a bacteriologis, and as its Director (after1937). Rivers addressed a range of topics relating to some of the most devastating viral diseases, including smallpox, Rift Valley Fever, and epidemic encephalitis. He also discovered the parainfluenzae bacillus and cultivated vaccine virus for human use. |
| Robert Almer Harper | |
| Died
12 May 1946 (born 21 Jan 1862)
American biologist who identified the details of reproduction in the development of the fungus ascospore (sexually produced spores of fungi in the class Ascomycetes). |
|
| Sir William Huggins | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1910 (born 7 Feb 1824)
English astronomer who explored the spectra of stars, nebulae and comets to interpret their chemical composition, assisted by his wife Margaret Lindsay Murray. He was the first to demonstrate (1864) that whereas some nebulae are clusters of stars (with stellar spectral characteristics, ex. Andromeda), certain other nebulae are uniformly gaseous as shown by their pure emission spectra (ex. the great nebula in Orion). He made spectral observations of a nova (1866). He also was first to attempt to measure a star's radial velocity. He was one of the wealthy 19th century private astronomers that supported their own passion while making significant contributions. At age only 30, Huggins built his own observatory at Tulse Hill, outside London.« |
| Jean-Baptiste Boussingault | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1887 (born 2 Feb 1802)
French agricultural chemist who identified the biological nitrogen cycle. His first career was as a mining engineer. He wrote variously on such topics as mineralogy, volcanic gases, climate of the Andean region, and earthquakes (which he theorized were a violent elevation of the hardened crust, then subsidence and formation of caves). In 1821, Boussingault discovered that iodine-rich salts could be used to treat goiter, though he did not understand its preventive role. From 1836, he pursued agricultural chemistry. He determined that plants could not assimilate nitrogen directly from the air, but instead from nitrates in the soil. He investigated plant respiration, the function of their leaves, and the value and effect of manures.« Boussingault,
Chemist and Agriculturist, by F. W. J. McCosh. |
| Charles-Adolphe Wurtz | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1884 (born 26 Nov 1817)
French chemist and educator noted for his research on organic nitrogen compounds, hydrocarbons, and glycols. In 1848, he studied a group of compounds related to ammonia called amines and showed they belonged to a type with a nitrogen nucleus. In ammonia a nitrogen atom was bound to three hydrogens, whereas in amines, organic radicals replaced one or more of these hydrogens. |
| Anselme Payen | |
| Died
12 May 1871 (born 6 Jan 1795)
French chemist who made important contributions to industrial chemistry and discovered cellulose, a basic constituent of plant cells. |
|
| Abraham Trembley | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1784 (born 3 Sep 1710)
Swiss naturalist, is best known for his studies of the freshwater hydra, mainly Chlorohydra viridissima. He discovered the freshwater hydra in 1740. His extensive systematic experiments foreshadowed modern research on tissue regeneration and grafting. In 1744, Trembley published that he found that a complete hydra would be regenerated from as little as 1/8th of the parent body. He also succeeded in turning these animals inside out, a remarkably delicate operation which he performed by threading them on horse hairs. Trembley showed that the hydras would survive even this drastic operation. A thorough researcher, Trembley studied three species of hydra and published his findings in 1744. |
| Edme Mariotte | |
| Died
12 May 1684 (born c.1620)
French physicist and plant physiologist who, independent of Robert Boyle, discovered the law that states that the volume of a gas varies inversely with its pressure. Although widely known as Boyle's law, this basic tenet of physics and chemistry is called Mariotte's law in France. |
|
| Gerbert d'Aurillac | |
(source) |
Died
12 May 1003 (born c.945)
(Pope Sylvester II) French scholar who reintroduced the use of the abacus in mathematical calculations. He may have adopted the use of Arabic numerals (without the zero) from Khwarizmi. He built clocks, organs and astronomical instruments based on translations of Arabic works. He made no original contribution to mathematics or astronomy. However, he served in the all-important role of popularizer, communicating the value and importance of science to the uninitiated public. With the inspiration of Gerbert, Europe began its slow crawl out of the Dark Ages. |
| MAY 12 - EVENTS | |
| Oldest university unearthed | |
(source) |
In 2004, the discovery of what was believed to be the world's oldest seat
of learning, the Library of Alexandria, was announced
by Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities during
a conference at the University of California. A Polish-Egyptian team had
uncovered 13 lecture halls featuring an elevated podium for the lecturer.
Such a complex of lecture halls had never before been found on any Mediterranean
Greco-Roman site. Alexandria may be regarded as the birthplace of western
science, where Euclid discovered the rules of geometry, Eratosthenes measured
the diameter of the Earth and Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, the most
influential scientific book about the nature of the Universe for 1,500
years.« [Image: One of
the newly discovered auditoria.] |
| Dvorak keyboard | |
(source) |
In 1936, the Dvorak typewriter keyboard
was patented in the U.S. by Dvorak and Dealey (Patent No. 2,040,248). The
efficiency experts August Dvorak (a cousin of the composer) and William
Dealey studied the typewriter to determine that they could arrange the
keys in a new way which would speed up the operators of the typewriter.
They designed a keyboard to maximize efficiency by placing common letters
on the home row, and make the stronger fingers of the hands do most of
the work. By contrast, the original
QWERTY
layout was designed for the earlier, less efficient typewriters. Previously,
speed would result in two type bars hitting each other in their travel,
so the original keyboard was laid out to reduce collisions. |
| Alfred Wegener | |
(source) |
In 1931, the frozen body of Alfred
Wegener was found by a search party in Greenland, where he had been
on his fourth expedition since 1906 to study the ice cap and its climate.
He was last seen alive by his colleagues on his 50th birthday, 1 Nov 1930,
as he left the "Eismitte" research post. He set off to return to the base
camp at the coast with Greenlander Rasmus Villumsen after they brought
relief supplies to the outpost. Wegener was the German meteorologist
and geophysicist
who first gave a well-developed hypothesis
of continental drift. Others saw the fit of coastlines of South America
and Africa, but Wegener
added more geologic and paleontologic evidence that these two continents
were once joined. 
Origin
of Continents and Oceans, by Alfred Wegener. |
| Planetarium | |
(source) |
In 1930, the Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum was opened
to the public in Chicago, Illinois. A program using the Zeiss II star projector
was presented by Prof. Philip Fox, who resigned from the staff of Northwestern
Observatory to take charge of the new $1 million facility. Housed in a
granite building, it was donated to the city by Max Adler, retired vice
president of Sears, Roebuck & Co. He had been so impressed when he
previously visited the world’s first planetarium at the Deutsches Museum,
Munich, Germany, that he resolved to construct America's first modern planetarium
open to the public in his home city. Its site was within the fairgrounds
of the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933-34, and was an outstanding
attraction.« [Image left:
The Zeiss II star projector used from 1930 until replaced in 1971 by a
Zeiss IV projector. Image
right: exterior] |
| Tyre | |
|
In 1925, a treaded pneumatic tyre was patented in the U.S. by Alden Putnam
(No. 1,537,879) |
|
| Linde oxygen process | |
|
In 1903, Carl Linde recieved two U.S. patents for his Linde oxygen process
and associated equipment (Nos. 728,173 and 727,650). |
|
| Street sweepers | |
|
In 1896, black American inventor C.B. Brooks was issued a U.S. patent for
street sweepers (No. 560,154). He was issued an earlier patent for street
sweepers on 17 Mar of the same year (No. 556,711). Brooks also held a patent
for a punch issued 31 Oct 1893 (No. 507,672).
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| Linotype | |
|
In 1885, Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German-born American, received a U.S. patent
for his linotype machine that set entire lines of lead type as "slugs"
for printing. Typesetting was transformed
by the introduction of these keyboard machines. The individual character
matrices were notched so that they could be automatically recirculated
to their proper slot in the magazine. Justification was accomplished by
inserting wedged spacebands between words to expand each line to the same
chosen slug length. This both introduced a huge labor savings in typesetting,
(about 85% reduction
in time), and made obsolete the huge masses of hand-set metal type. The
linotype machine was first used by the New York Tribune (1886). |
|
| Ironing table | |
|
In 1874, the prolific black American inventor Elijah
J. McCoy patented an ironing table (No. 150,876). He is best
known for his lubricating devices for steam engines for which he held numerous
patents.
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| First printing press invented in the U.S. | |
(source) |
In 1816, the Columbian Press, the first printing press invented
in America, was designed
by George E. Clymer in Philadelphia, Pa. It was an iron horizontal
platen hand-printing press using a system of compound levers that multiplied
the pull of the operator to replace the iron screw previously used for
downward pressure. An eagle-shaped counterweight lifted the platen back
after the pressman's "pull". The Columbian was somewhat well-received in
America, even at $400, which was twice the cost of a wooden press. In 1818,
Clymer took his business to England and found much greater success. He
joined forces with William Dixon in 1825. From the 1840s, the presses were
manufactured by companies all over Europe. |
