| MAY 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Marcel Roland de Quervain | |
 Born 17
May 1915
Swiss glaciologist who investigated the physical properties of snow, which he applied to the development of avalanche warning systems and the mitigation of other problems associated with snowfields. An example of his work is the study of the metamorphism and the hardening of snow relative to the pressure and temperature gradient. He joined the Swiss Federal Snow and Avalanche Research Institute in 1943 as assistant director and became its director in 1950. He retired in 1980.« |
|
| Odd Hassel | |
(source) |
Born 17
May 1897; died 11 May 1981.
Norwegian physical chemist and corecipient, with Derek H.R. Barton of Great Britain, of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in establishing conformational analysis (the study of the 3-D geometric structure of molecules). A ring of six carbon atoms has two conformations - the chair and boat forms. These easily interchange - about a million times in a second at room temperature. One of the conformations is, however, strongly predominant (about 99%). Hassel carried out fundamental investigations on this system and showed how heavy or bulky groups, attached to the carbon atoms, take up their positions relative to the ring and to each other. Such work is of great importance for predicting the mode of reaction of a certain molecule. |
| Elvin Charles Stakman | |
(source) |
Born 17
May 1885; died 22 Jan 1979.
Pioneering American plant pathologist and educator. As an agricultural specialist, Stakman established the methods for identifying and combatting diseases of wheat and other important food crops. After investigating the behavior and control of fungal lead rust in cereals at the University of Minnesota, Stakman became involved in international scientific affairs. He pleaded for a joint U.S.-Mexico research station devoted to the improvement of corn. This was established in 1943 and eventually grew into a worldwide network of research stations under the International Center for Corn and Wheat Improvement, an organization to improve food production in developing nations. Stakman wrote many scientific papers, and co-authored Campaign Against Hunger (1967). |
| Horace E. Dodge | |
 |
Born 17
May 1868; died 10 Dec 1920.
Horace Elgin Dodge, with his brother John Francis Dodge, were American automobile manufacturers who invented one of the first all-steel cars in America. They built their first Dodge car Nov 1914 in Detroit, Mich. |
| Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer | |
(source) |
Born 17
May 1836; died 16 Aug 1920.
British astronomer who in 1868 discovered and named the element helium that he found in the Sun's atmosphere before it had been detected on Earth. He also applied the name chromosphere for the sun's outer layer. Lockyer discovered, together with Pierre J. Janssen, the prominences (red flames) that surround the solar disk. He was also interested in the classification of stellar spectra and developed the meteoric hypothesis of stellar evolution. His works include the books Contributions to Solar Physics (1873), The Sun's Place in Nature (1897) and Inorganic Evolution (1900).  Science
and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer, by
A. J. Meadows. |
| Thomas Davidson | |
(source) |
Born 17 May 1817; died 14 Oct 1885.
Scottish naturalist and paleontologist who became known as an authority on brachiopods, known as "lamp shells" because some varieties resemble a Roman oil lamp, a phylum of bottom-dwelling marine invertebrates (Brachiopoda). Some of these fossils are among the oldest found. His major work, Monograph of British Fossil Brachziopoda, was published by the Palaeontographical Society (1850-1886). Together with supplements, this comprised six quarto volumes with more than 200 plates drawn on stone by the author. Upon his death, he bequeathed his fine collection of recent and fossil brachiopoda to the British Museum. |
| John Gould Anthony | |
(source) |
Born 17
May 1804; died 16 Oct 1877.
American conchologist who was was recognized as an authority on the American land and fresh-water mollusca. During a career in business, his interest in natural history led to a collection of freshwater mollusks of the Ohio River. From 1835 on, he corresponded with mollusk researchers and began to publish his findings. Serious eye trouble (1851) forced his retirement from business. In 1853, he toured Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to collect mollusks. His publications attracted the attention of Professor Agassiz, who asked him to take charge of the conchologieal department of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (1863), where he remained until his death. He accompanied Agassiz on the Thayer expedition to Brazil in 1865. |
| Amos Eaton | |
Born 17
May 1776; died 10 May 1842.
American botanist, geologist, and lawyer who aroused widespread interest in science through his public lectures and inspired many students as a teacher and writer of textbooks. |
|
| Edward Jenner | |
(source) |
Born 17
May 1749; died 26 Jan 1823.
English surgeon and discoverer of vaccination for smallpox. There was a common story among farmers that if a person contracted a relatively mild and harmless disease of cattle called cowpox, immunity to smallpox would result. On 14 May 1796 he removed the fluid of a cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy, proving the theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin word vacca, meaning cow, and vaccinia, meaning cowpox. Jenner also introduced the word virus. |
|
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| MAY 17 - DEATHS | |
| G. Evelyn Hutchinson | |
 Died
17 May 1991 (born 30 Jan 1903)
G(eorge) Evelyn Hutchinson was an English-born American zoologist known as the "father of modern limnology" for his ecological studies of freshwater lakes. |
|
| Erwin Wilhelm Müller | |
(source) |
Died
17 May 1977 (born 13 Jun 1911)
German-U.S. physicist who invented the field emission microscope (FIM), which provided magnifications in excess of one million. For the first time made it possible to take pictures of individual atoms. Images of the atomic structures of tungsten were first published in 1951 in the journal Zeitschrift für Physik. In FIM, a voltage of about 10kV is applied to a sharp metal tip, cooled to below 50 kelvin in a low-pressure helium gas atmosphere. Gas atoms are ionized by the strong electric field in the vicinity of the tip and repelled perpendicular to the tip surface. A detector images the spatial distribution of these ions giving a magnification of the curvature of the surface. |
| Boris Borisovich Golitsyn | |
| Died
17 May 1916 (born 2 Mar 1862)
(Prince) Russian physicist known for his work on methods of earthquake observations and on the construction of seismographs. He invented the first effective electromagnetic seismograph in 1906. A seismometer of this type picks up earthquake waves with a pendulum that supports a coil of insulated wire between the poles of a magnet rigidly linked to the earth. The relative motion between the magnet and the coil caused by tremors in the earth generates corresponding electric currents in the coil. The currents can be amplified to operate a pen recorder. |
|
| John Deere | |
(source) |
Died
17 May 1886 (born 7 Feb 1804)
American agricultural equipment inventor and pioneer manufacturer. As a blacksmith in a U.S. prairie town, he frequently repaired the wood and cast-iron plows of eastern U.S. design because the local soils were heavy and sticky. By 1838 he had produced three more suitable steel plows of his own new design, and more in following years, which expanded into the agricultural machine business he began upon moving to Moline, Ill. (1847). In another ten years, his annual production had increased ten-fold. Originally using imported English steel instead of cast iron, he converted to U.S. made steel when Pittsburgh steel plants could supply a suitable product. The company diversified with production of harrows, drills, cultivators and wagons.« Genuine
Value: The John Deere Journey, by John J. Gerstner. |
| Josef Leopold Auenbrugger | |
(source) |
Died
17 May 1809 (born 19 Nov 1722)
Austrian physician who devised the diagnostic technique of percussion (the art of striking a surface part of the body with short, sharp taps to diagnose the condition of the parts beneath the sound). With this technique, he could estimate the amount of fluid in a patient's chest and the size of his/her heart. (As a boy he had tapped the wine barrels in his father’s cellar to find how full they were.) After seven years of investigation, he published the method in Inventum Novum (1761), though his technique did not gain recognition and acceptance until years after his death. When a translator republished the work in French (1808) the method gained acceptance around the world, and through time to the present as a fundamental diagnostic procedure. |
| Alexis Claude Clairaut | |
| Died
17 May 1765 (born 7 May 1713)
Mathematician prodigy. Tutored by his father, he was studying calculus at age ten. Clairaut read his first paper, Quatre problèmes sur de nouvelles courbes to the Paris Academy (1726) at the age of 13. He accompanied Maupertuis on an expedition to Lapland to measure the length of the meridian. From this experience, he began a book (1743) on the shape of the rotating earth under the influences of gravity and centrifugal forces. Further, he showed how to measure the shape by use of measurements of the effect of gravity at different location on the swing of a pendulum. He also determined the first reasonable value for the mass of Venus, an improved value for the mass of the moon, and predicted the timing of the return of Halley's Comet. |
|
| MAY 17 - EVENTS | |
| Scopes monkey trial law repealed | |
(source) |
In 1967, the governor of Tennessee signed
into law the repeal of the 1925 state law, the Butler Act, prohibiting
the teaching of evolution. The law had made it "unlawful for any teacher
in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the
State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds
of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation
of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended
from a lower order of animals." The law had been tested in what became
known as the "Scopes monkey trial." Scopes was found guilty, but the law
had been undermined. Upon appeal, Scopes was acquitted on a technicality.
The law itself remained a Tennessee state statute for 42 years.«
[Image:
cartoon from the New York Times, 25 Jul 1925. The cane is tagged
"Evolution Trial."] |
| Reserpine | |
(source) |
In 1955, the American psychiatrist, Nathan Kline, appeared before the U.S.
Congress to explain his work with the drug reserpine.
He is credited with founding the field of psychopharmacology with his discovery
and use of reserpine to treat the mental disorder psychosis. His testimony
before congress influenced
the passage of the Mental Health Studies Act of 1955. Kline then used his
Washington connections to write research grants to study antidepressant
medications. By summer 1956, he gained
two million dollars in congressional funding for psychopharmacological
research by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The purified
alkaloid reserpine
was isolated in 1952 from the root of Rauwolfia plants found extensively
in Africa.« [Image
right: reserpine molecule]
Ten
Years Which Changed the Face of Mental Illness, by Jean
Thullier. |
| Atomic reactor | |
|
In 1955, an atomic reactor was patented by Fermi and Szilard (U.S. No.
2,708,656). |
|
| CERN groundbreaking | |
In 1954, official ground-breaking
took place at the Meyrin site of the new CERN Laboratory in Geneva. A recommendation
had been adopted 12
Dec 1949 at the European Cultural Conference for a European Institute
of Nuclear Physics. By 1952, the third session of its provisional Council
decided to locate in Switzerland. In Jun 1953, the host community, the
canton of Geneva, gave strong approval in a referendum passing with 16539
votes to 7332. On 29 Sep 1954,
twelve founding
Member States ratified CERN (Centre Européenne de Recherche Nucléaire):
Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Norway,
Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.« 
History
of CERN, vol I, by A. Hermann, et al. |
|
| First G.B. automatic telephone exchange | |
|
In 1912, the London newspaper,
The
Times, reported that new automatic telephone equipment was in place
at Epsom, to be tested in the afternoon of the following day. The experiment,
the first of its kind in Great Britain, provided 320 Epson telephone subscribers
the ability to dial other numbers in the town themselves instead of having
to ask the operator to get the number for them. The news article carefully
described the operation of the new rotating dial with finger holes, about
an inch above a numbered disk, attached to the subscriber's telephone.
This marked the beginning of the telephone automation in Britain, which
had already arrived in America, Canada, and other countries. |
|
| First British comic paper | |
|
In 1890, Comic Cuts, the first British weekly comic paper, was published
in London by Alfred Northcliffe. |
|
| Feed rack | |
|
In 1887, black American inventor D.W. Shorter was issued a patent for a
"feed rack" (U.S. No. 363,089)
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| Dissociation theory | |
|
In 1883, Svante Arrhenius was struck by the ideas for his dissociation
theory during a sleepless night. This theory explains that substances like
salt (ex. sodium chloride) when dissolved in water, dissociate (separate)
into electrically charged ions (ex. positive sodium ions and negative chloride
ions). The idea was controversial at first, but is now a basic fact in
understanding the chemistry of ionic compounds. |
|
| Water wheel | |
|
In 1839, a water wheel was patented by Lorenzo Adkins (U.S. No. 1,154). |
|
