| MAY 14 - BIRTHS | |
| Yuval Ne'eman | |
(source) |
 Born 14
May 1925
Israli theoretical physicist, who worked independently of Gell-Mann but almost simultaneously (1961) devised a method of grouping baryons in such a way that they fell into logical families. Now known as the Eightfold Way (after Buddha's Eightfold Path to Enlightenment and bliss), the scheme grouped mesons and baryons (e.g., protons and neutrons) into multiplets of 1, 8, 10, or 27 members on the basis of various properties. |
| James Hardy | |
(source) |
Born 14
May 1918; died 19 Feb 2003.
American surgeon who headed teams that performed the first human lung transplant in 1963; the first animal-to-human heart transplant in 1964; and a double-lung transplant that left the heart in place in 1987. Three years before Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human-to-human heart transplant, on 23 Jan 1964, 68-year-old Boyd Rush was admitted to the hospital. No human was heart available; Hardy decided to use the heart of a chimpanzee named Bino. The newly-transplanted heart beat on its own; but it was too small to maintain independent circulation and Rush died after 90 minutes. Hardy had to endure some severe criticism. Overall, his work helped to alter perceptions about the transplantation process. |
| Mikhail Semyonovich Tswett | |
(source) |
Born 14
May 1872; died 26 Jun 1919.
(Also: Tsvet) Russian botanist, the "father of chromatography," who developed and named the adsorption chromatography technique of separating plant pigments by extracting them from leaves with ether and alcohol and percolating the solution through a column of calcium carbonate. The components of the mixture moved at different rates, producing a series of bands. He is known in particular for his study of the chlorophylls and the carotenoids. However, in Tswett's own lifetime, chromatography remained virtually unrecognized as a scientific tool. In the 1930s, it was rediscovered and then spread worldwide. The chromatography technique he invented is now widely used to separate substances from mixtures. |
| John Charles Fields | |
(source) |
Born 14
May 1863; died 9 Aug 1932.
American mathematician who originated the idea, postumously given his name - for the Fields Medal. It became the most prestigious award for mathematicians, often referred to as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for mathematicians. As a professor at the University of Toronto, he had worked to bring the International Congress of Mathematicians to Toronto (1924). The Congress was so successful that afterward there was a surplus of about $2,500 which Fields, as chairman of the organizing committee, proposed be used to fund two medals to be awarded at each of future Congresses. This was approved on 24 Feb 1931. He died the following year, leaving $47,000 as additional funding for the medals, which have been awarded since 1936.«  |
| George Fownes | |
(source) |
Born 14
May 1815; died 31 Jan 1849.
English chemist who prepared furfurine and benzoline (1845), the first examples of vegeto-alkali or organic salt-bases, as they were known then. He coined their names. Fownes was the first winner of the one hundred guineas (£105) Actonian Prize from the Royal Institution for his essay, Chemistry as Exemplifies the Wisdom and Beneficence of God. He published this essay, which dealt with animal and plant chemistry, in 1844. In the same year he also published a successful general text-book of chemistry, A Manual of Elementary Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical, which survived decades after him through twelve editions, the last in 1872. He died at the young age of 34.« |
| MAY 14 - DEATHS | |
| Bruce Merrifield | |
(source) |
 Died
14 May 2006 (born 15 Jul 1921)
R(obert) Bruce Merrifield was an American biochemist who was received the 1984 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of the solid phase peptide synthesis method to build up large organic molecules on a solid matrix. He first attached an amino acid to small plastic polymer spheres, then added other amino acids, one after another, until a polypeptide chain was built up. The chain was then released from the polymer. Chains of amino acids can thus be built in any predetermined order to synthesize a wide variety of proteins, hormones, and other organic molecules. Merrifield's work has encompassed the development of resins, protecting groups and chemical strategies, and the engineering which brought automation to peptide chemistry.« |
| Christian Boehmer Anfinsen | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1995 (born 26 Mar 1916)
American biochemist who, with Stanford Moore and William H. Stein, received the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research on the shape and primary structure of ribonuclease (the enzyme that hydrolyses RNA). Ribonuclease is made up of a single peptide (a molecule consisting of two or more amino acid molecules joined by a peptide bond) chain folded into a sphere bound together by four disulphide bonds. These bonds can be broken down so that the enzyme becomes denatured (collapses), losing all of its enzyme properties. Anfinsen found that its shape and consequently its enzymatic power could be restored, and concluded that ribonuclease must retain all of the information about its configuration within its amino acids. |
| John Chipman | |
| Died
14 May 1983 (born 25 Apr 1897)
American physical chemist and metallurgist who was instrumental in applying the principles of physical chemistry to constituents in liquid metals and to the chemical reactions between slag and liquid iron that are important in the production of pig iron and steel. |
|
| William P. Lear | |
 |
Died
14 May 1978 (born 26 Jun 1902)
American who taught himself electrical engineering and is best known for the Lear Jet Corporation he founded, the world's first mass-producer of business jet aircraft. Beginning in 1930, over a 20 year period, he secured more than 100 patents for aircraft radios, communications and navigation equipment. Lear's other inventions include the miniature automatic pilot for aircraft, the first commercial automobile radio, and the eight-track stereo tape player. |
| Enrico Barone | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1924 (born 22 Dec 1859)
Italian mathematical economist who built on the general equilibrium theory of Léon Walras and was instrumental in convincing Walras to incorporate variable production techniques - and, by extension, marginal productivity theory - into the Walras theory. Barone's greatest contribution was in getting the "Socialist Calculation" debate started with his famous 1908 article. His position was that it was indeed possible in a collectivist state for a planning agency to calculate prices for maximum efficiency. He was the first to apply indifference curve analysis to compare the relative burdens of income taxes and excise taxes (1912). He opposed "progressive" taxation schemes as based on dubious utilitarian calculations.« |
| Ronald Montagu Burrows | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1920 (born 16 Aug 1867)
English archaeologist who in 1895-96 conducted excavations in southwestern Greece at Pylos and the adjacent island of Sphacteria, revealing remains of Spartan fortifications. These confirmed the battle of 425 BC in the Peloponnesian War recorded by the ancient Athenian historian Thucydides. Burrows was by nature a classicist, whose primary purpose in seeking tangible evidence from the past was to verify ancient texts. At Rhitsona, in Boeotia (1905, 1907), his original goal was to find the temple of Delium, but without success. Instead he found and catalogued artifacts from Boeotian graves dating from the 7th and 6th century B.C. at the necropolis of Mykalessos, near Tanagra. In 1907, he published Recent Discoveries in Crete.« |
| Henry John Heinz | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1919 (born 11 Oct 1844)
Businessperson who founded H.J. Heinz Co.and invented the "57 varieties" slogan was a born salesman. His entrepreneur and business genius had roots in post-Civil War Pittsburgh, where iron, steel and glass factories were forging industrial America. By age 12 he was peddling produce from the family garden. At 25, in 1869, he and a friend launched Heinz & Noble. Its first product: Henry's mother's grated horseradish, bottled in clear glass to reveal its purity. Heinz & Noble thrived until an overabundance of crops in 1875 brought bankruptcy. But Henry plunged back in, eventually building a model factory complex along the Allegheny River. By 1896, at only 52, the pickle king had become a millionaire and celebrity. |
| Lars Frederik Nilson | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1899 (born 27 May 1840)
Chemist who discovered (1879) the oxide of scandium, scandia, in the rare-earth minerals gadolinite and euxenite. The existence of the element had been predicted by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev (1871) who tentatively called it ekaboron. |
| Ernst Eduard Kummer | |
(source) |
Died
14 May 1893 (born 29 Jan 1810)
German mathematician whose introduction of ideal numbers, which are defined as a special subgroup of a ring, extended the fundamental theorem of arithmetic to complex number fields. He worked on Function theory, and extended Gauss's work on hypergeometric series, giving developments that are useful in the theory of differential equations. He was the first to compute the monodromy groups of these series. Later. Kummer devoted himself to the study of the ray systems, but treated these geometrical problems algebraically. He also discovered the fourth order surface based on the singular surface of the quadratic line complex. This Kummer surface has 16 isolated conical double points and 16 singular tangent planes. |
| Georg Ernst Stahl | |
(EB) |
Died
14 May 1734 (born 21 Oct 1660)
German physician and chemist, born in Ansbach, Germany, who developed the phlogiston theory of combustion and of such related biological processes as respiration, fermentation, and decay. Combustible objects, he said, were rich in phlogiston, and during combustion is lost. The remaining ash, now having no phlogiston, could no longer burn.The theory dominated chemical thought for almost a century. He extended the idea to the rusting of metals: metal had phlogiston, rust did not. Air was only indirectly involved in his idea of combustion. It was a carrier of phlogiston, as when charcoal burns phlogiston could be transferred to a metal ore which then converts to metal. At times, Stahl believed in alchemy and animism, though he had rational views on mental disease. |
| MAY 14 - EVENTS | |
| Skylab | |
(source) |
In 1973, the United States launched "Skylab One," its first manned space
station. During the following nine months, three successive crews of astronauts
manned the orbiting laboratory. This was the largest payload launched into
space. It fell back into and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere in July,
1979. The official emblem (left) depicts the U.S. Skylab space station
cluster in Earth orbit with the Sun in the background. The cluster
is composed of the Apollo Command/Service Module, Orbital Workshop,
Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM), Multiple Docking Adapter, and Airlock
Module. The arrays of solar cell panels turn sunlight into electric power
for the space station. |
| TV program signal transmitted by laser | |
|
In 1963, a laser light beam link first carried the TV signal during a network
broadcast. It was demonstrated during the CBS program I've Got a Secret.
The
signal from a studio camera was used to modulate a laser beam that travelled
two feet to a receiver that decoded the signal from the beam. That signal
was relayed via the control room for the national broadcast. This communication
system was the work of GTE scientists Samuel M. Stone and Louis Richard
Bloom. (Laser light beams are now routinely used to transmit signals along
optical fibres.) |
|
| Solar airplane patent | |
|
In 1963, the first U.S. patent on a "solar airplane vehicle" was issued
to Elmer G. Johnson of Fairborn, Ohio (No. 3,089,670). |
|
| Electric timer | |
|
In 1932, the first electrical timing device was tested at a track meet
for three events between Columbia and Syracuse at Baker Field, New York
City. |
|
| Yellow Fever Commision | |
|
In 1900, the military orders establishing
the U.S. Yellow Fever Commission were issued : "By direction of the Secretary
of War a board of medical officers is appointed to meet at Camp Columbia,
Quernados Cuba for the purpose of pursuing scientific investigations with
reference to the infectious diseases prevalent on the Island of Cuba." |
|
| Vaseline | |
|
In 1878, the name Vaseline was registered as a trademark for the
petroleum jelly developed by an English-born chemist Robert Augustus Chesebrough.
He began, in 1859, with an interest
in the petroleum oil boom, and travelled to Titusville, Pa., where oil
strikes began, to enter that business. Once there, his chemist's curiosity
was caught by a pasty residue that stuck to driller's rods and clogged
their pumps. Workers had found it was practical to use on burns and cuts
to promote healing. Cheseborough returned to Brooklyn and spent years experimenting
to extract and purify the useful ingredient he called "petroleum jelly."
Manufacturing from 1870, he received a patent on the product on 4 Jun 1872
(No. 127,568). |
|
| Chronograph | |
|
In 1862, Swiss watchmaker Adolphe Nicole patented the chronograph, which
was able to give split-second timing of sports events. |
|
| Origin of the Species | |
(source) |
In 1856, Charles Darwin began
writing his book, The Origin of Species, sitting in the study of
his country home in Down, England. 
 From
So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, by
Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson. |
| Dish-washing machine patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1850, the first U.S. patent for a dishwashing machine was issued to
Joel Houghton of Ogden, NY, for an "Improvement in Machines for Washing
Table Furniture" (No.7,365).
Its design had a cylindrical wire basket to contain the dishes in a tub
of boiling water which contained beaters turned by a handle to move the
water against the tableware in the basket. The cylinder could also be rotated
to expose its contents evenly to the action of the churning water. The
first patent on a dishwasher that became commerically successful was issued
on 28 Dec1886 to Josephine
Cochrane. She began a company supplying her machines to restaurants and
hotels, which continued after her death, and years later led to the "KichenAid"
brand of home dishwashers.« |
| Vaccination | |
Jenner (source) |
In 1796, English physician Edward Jenner
administered the first vaccination against smallpox to an eight-year-old
boy. Jenner innoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps, with material
from the sores of dairymaid Sarah Nelmes who had a mild case of cowpox.
A few weeks later, on 1 Jul, he subsequently tested the boy's resistance
to smallpox, by inoculating Phipps with smallpox virus. Fortunately, the
immunization had been successful. This tested a conventional wisdom he
had heard that those who had survived cowpox seemed to be immune to the
deadly smallpox disease. By 1798 he had 23 cases, which he recorded in
An
Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. Jenner's
work was rapidly taken up in Europe and America.« |
