| MAY 19 - BIRTHS | |
| Abraham Pais | |
(source) |
 Born 19
May 1918; died 28 Jul 2000.
Dutch-American physicist and science historian whose research became the building blocks of the theory of elemental particles. He wrote Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, which is considered the definitive Einstein biography. In Holland, his Ph.D. in physics was awarded on 9 Jul 1941, five days before a Nazi deadline banning Jews from receiving degrees. Later, during WW II, while in hiding to evade the Gestapo, he worked out ideas in quantum electrodynamics that he later shared when working with Niels Bohr (Jan - Aug 1946). In Sep 1946, he went to the U.S. to work with Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton, where Pais contributed to the foundations of the modern theory of particle physics. |
| Max Ferdinand Perutz | |
(source) |
Born 19
May 1914
Austrian-born British biochemist, corecipient of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his X-ray diffraction analysis of the structure of haemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen from the lungs to the tissues via blood cells. He identified that haemoglobin is constructed of four protein chains wound together, and that the molecule changes shape when oxygen is added. Perutz was also interested in studying glaciers, making measurements which were the first to show different rates of flow in different parts of the same glacier.  Science
Is Not a Quiet Life: Unravelling the Atomic Mechanism of Haemoglobin,
by Max F. Perutz. |
| Reginald Aldworth Daly | |
(source) |
Born 19
May 1871; died 19 Sep 1957.
Canadian-American geologist who independently developed the theory of magmatic stoping, whereby molten magma rises through the Earth's crust and shatters, but does not melt, the surrounding rocks. The rocks, being denser than the magma, then sink, making room for the magma to rise. This theory was instrumental in explaining the structure of many igneous rock formations. Daly understood the importance of field studies in defining key questions about geologic processes. Thus his exhaustive examination of some 400 miles of terrain along the 49th parallel led to a theory of the origin of igneous rocks. An expedition to the Samoan Islands, resulted in theories of the relationship of sea level, mediated by glacial effects, on the formation of coral atolls. |
| Henry Horatio Dixon | |
(source) |
Born 19
May 1869; died 20 Dec 1953.
Irish botanist who, with John Joly, investigated plant transpiration and originated the tension theory of sap ascent in trees (1894) building on the work of Eduard Strasburger, François Donny and Berthelot. Dixon's earlier work was in cytology and had developed sterile culture methods for seedlings (1892). After the 1894 publication, he made further transpiration experiments to consolidate his theory which he published in 1909 and 1914. He resolved the debate over the mechanism of xylem transport by proposing a compromise between the pulling power of the leaf and the tensile strength of the water columns. From 1910, he was curator of a new herbarium at Trinity College Dublin.« |
| John Fillmore Hayford | |
(NOAA) |
Born 19
May 1868; died 10 Mar 1925.
American civil engineer and early geodesist who established the modern science of geodesy, and made a precise determination of the ellipsoidal shape and size of the earth (1909). The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics adopted Hayford's calculations in 1924. This International ellipsoid has a flattening of exactly 1 part in 297. The Earth's equatorial radius is 6,378,388 m. The radius along the polar axis is then 1/297 less than that or 6,356,912 m. (Surprisingly, the U.S. did not adopt this datum.) Hayford's theory of isostasy gave that the pressure exerted by the earth's crust is approximately the same over the entire globe, regardless of the nature of the surface (for example, lowlands or mountains). |
| Carl E. Akeley | |
Age 46 (source) |
Born 19
May 1864; died 17 Nov 1926.
Carl Ethan Akeley was an American naturalist and explorer who developed the taxidermic method for mounting museum displays to show animals in their natural surroundings. His method of applying skin on a finely molded replica of the body of the animal gave results of unprecedented realism and elevated taxidermy from a craft to an art. He mounted the skeleton of the famous African elephant Jumbo. He invented the Akeley cement gun to use while mounting animals, and the Akeley camera which was used to capture the first movies of gorillas. In the 1920's Akeley made a large specimen collection, part of the American Museum's famous African mammal hall. |
| John Jacob Abel | |
(source) |
Born 19
May 1857; died 26 May 1938.
American pharmacologist and physiological chemist who made important contributions to a modern understanding of the ductless, or endocrine, glands. In 1893, he became the first full-time professor of pharmacology in the U.S. at John Hopkins University. Abel encouraged his students to conduct experiments and become active participants in his laboratory research. In 1897 he reported the isolation of a derivative of epinephrine (adrenaline). In 1926, he isolated and crystallized insulin. Abel also investigated the functions of the kidney and devised a vividiffusion apparatus for removing toxins from the blood of living animals, an apparatus that is widely regarded as a forerunner of the artificial kidney. |
|
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| MAY 19 - DEATHS | |
| Robert S. Dietz | |
(source) |
 Died
19 May 1995 (born 14 Sep 1914)
Robert Sinclair Dietz was an American geophysicist and oceanographer who set forth a theory (1961) of seafloor spreading (a term he coined), in which new crustal material continually upwells from the Earth's depths along the mid-ocean ridges and spreads outward at a rate of several inches per year. While a student Dietz identified the Kentland structure in Indiana as a meteoric impact site. His professors steered him toward marine geology. He became the founder and director of the Sea Floor Studies Section at the Naval Electronics Laboratory (1946-1963). He also achieved prominence by studying meteorite craters, both on Earth and on the moon and arguing that these impact craters were common. He died of a heart attack. |
| Godfrey Wilson | |
| Died
19 May 1944 (born 1908)
British anthropologist and analyst of social change in Africa. As first director of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Zambia, he theorized that the social problems in Africa were the products of colonialism and that the processes of industrialization and labor migration encompassed these social problems. His study of the cattle owning Nyakyusa of the Southern Highlands Province of Tanganyika Territory was made in 1936. It is much concerned with an account of marriage customs and sex relations, and described the peculiar traditional chiefdom. He committed suicide, as a conscientious objector in WW II. |
|
| Sir Joseph Larmor | |
(source) |
Died
19 May 1942 (born 11 Jul 1857)
Irish physicist, the first to calculate the rate at which energy is radiated by an accelerated electron, and the first to explain the splitting of spectrum lines by a magnetic field. His theories were based on the belief that matter consists entirely of electric particles moving in the ether. His elaborate mathematical electrical theory of the late 1890s included the "electron" as a rotational strain (a sort of twist) in the ether. But Larmor's theory did not describe the electron as a part of the atom. Many physicists envisioned both material particles and electromagnetic forces as structures and strains in that hypothetical fluid. |
| T. E. Lawrence | |
(source) |
Died
19 May 1935 (born 15 Aug 1888)
T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence, also known as "Lawrence of Arabia," was a British archaeological scholar, which activity he pursued assiduously from his teens up to the outbreak of WW I. In two of his important projects, he collaborated with Leonard Woolley in the British Museum Expedition excavating Carchemish, (1910-14) a Hittite city on the upper Euphrates; and in the Survey of the Wilderness of Zin. Later he became best known as a military strategist, and author for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during WW I, and for his account of those activities in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). He died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash near his home in Dorset. |
| Sir Benjamin Baker | |
(source) |
Died 19 May 1907 (born 31 Mar 1840)
English civil engineer and the chief designer of the railway bridge over the Firth of Forth, Scotland. His education began as an apprentice at the ironworks of Price & Fox, Neath Abbey, South Wales. In 1861, Baker became an assistant to the consulting engineer John Fowler, and by 1875 was his partner. In 1890, he was the lead designer of the Firth of Forth Bridge [image right] with John Fowler. His other projects included several parts of the London Underground, transporting from Egypt and installing Cleopatra's Needle by the River Thames in London, the Aswan Dam on the Nile (Egypt; 1902) and the first Hudson River Tunnel (USA).  |
| MAY 19 - EVENTS | |
| Keeping a head alive | |
 |
In 1987, a patent for "keeping a head alive" was issued to Chet Fleming
(U.S. No. 4,666,425). A cabinet provides physical and biochemical support
for an animal's head severed from its body. Oxygenated blood and nutrients
are circulated by means of tubes connected to arteries and veins that emerge
from the neck. A series of processing components removes carbon dioxide
and add oxygen to the blood. If desired, waste products and other metabolites
may be removed from the blood, and nutrients, therapeutic or experimental
drugs, anti-coagulants, and other substances may be added to the blood.
After being thoroughly tested on research animals, the patent suggests
it might also be used on humans suffering from various terminal illnesses. |
| Nuclear submarine | |
|
In 1959, the first submarine with two nuclear reactors was completed. The
Triton
was
447 feet long, 37 feet wide and was manned by 148 officers and crew. The
General Electric Co. built the two water-cooled nuclear reactors. Each
propeller was powered by electrical current provided by one of the reactors.
The submarine had a cruising range of 110,000 miles. The first U.S. atomic
powered submarine had been completed a few years before, on 22 Apr 1955. |
|
| Halley's Comet | |
(source) |
In 1910, the Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet, the most
intimate contact between the Earth and any comet in recorded history. The
event was anticipated with dire predictions.
Since a few years earlier, astronomers had found the poisonous gas cyanogen
in a comet,
it was surmised that if Earth passed through the comet's tail everyone
would die. Astronomers explained that the gas molecules within the tail
were so tenuous that absolutely no ill effects would be noticed. Nevertheless,
ignorance bred opportunists selling "comet pills" to the panicked portion
of the public to counter the effects of the cyanogen gas. On 20 May, after
Earth had passed through the tail, everyone was still alive - with or without
taking pills! [Image: Halley's
Comet and Venus, 1910] |
| Simplon Tunnel | |
(source) |
In 1906, the Simplon Tunnel was officially opened as the world's longest
railroad tunnel. Cutting through the Alps between Italy and Switzerland,
it was officially opened by the King of Italy and the president of the
Swiss Republic. The construction
of the 12-mile Simplon Tunnel, one of the world's longest rail tunnels
was undertaken in the 1890s by Alfred Brandt, head of a German engineering
firm, and inventor of an efficient rock drill. The total length of the
tunnel is 64,972 feet cut through the solid rock of the Simplon Mountain
between the Rhone and the Diveria valley. As a direct route under the mountain,
it considerably shortened the surface distance for an important European
trade route between Brig, Switzerland and Iselle, Italy. |
| Carborundum furnace | |
(USPTO) |
In 1896, Edward G. Acheson was issued a U.S.
patent for an electric furnace used to produce carborundum
(silicon carbide), one of the hardest industrial substances (No. 560,291).
The furnace used an electric current passed through a core of carbon rods
to produce a strong heating effect resulting from their resistance.« |
| Shoes | |
(source) |
In 1885, Jan Matzeliger
began the first U.S. mass production of shoes, in Lynn, Mass. A patent
was issued on his shoe-lasting machine
on 20 Mar 1883 (U.S. No 274,207). [Image:
Matzeliger inset from a U.S. stamp issued 15 Sep1991] |
| Fire alarm | |
 |
In 1857, the first U.S. patent for an "electromagnetic fire alarm telegraph
for cities" was issued to William Francis Channing of Boston, Mass. and
Moses Gerrish Farmer, of Salem, Mass. (No. 17,355). The city of Boston
adopted the system, having voted in June 1851 to spend $10,000 to test
the device. It consisted of a circuit between a signal station, central
station and alarm station, designed to give a local or general alarm in
a town or city. The central station upon receiving an alarm from a signal
station activates the public alarm signal station such as a bell struck
mechanically in a belfry. Enough signal stations, each sending its own
location signal, were envisaged such that one would be in reach of every
house. It began operation 28 Apr 1852. |
