| JUNE 9 - BIRTHS | |
| Ben L. Abruzzo | |
(source) |
 Born 9
Jun 1930; died 11 Feb 1985.
American balloonist who, with three crew mates, made the first transpacific balloon flight hat was also the longest nonstop balloon flight, in the Double Eagle V. Thirteen-stories high, helium filled Double Eagle V, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clark and Rocky Aoki of Japan, launched from Nagashimi, Japan on 10 Nov 1981. When it landed 84 hours, 31 minutes later in Mendocino National Forest, Cal., the new distance record was set at 5,768 miles. He also accompanied Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman on the first tranatlantic balloon flight in the Double Eagle II (11-17 Aug 1978). Abruzzo died when his twin-engine airplane crashed in Albuquerque. See National Geographic, 4/82, "First Across the Pacific: Flight of Double Eagle V" pp. 513-521. [Image: Double Eagle II]  Double
Eagle, by Charles McCarry. |
| Forrest M. Bird | |
| Born 9
Jun 1921
American inventor and aeromedical scientist who developed the first reliable, low-cost, mass-produced medical respirator, the Bird Universal Medical Respirator for acute or chronic cardiopulmonary care. To continue its development and marketing, he founded Bird Products Corporation (1954). He tested it on patients so seriously ill that cardiopulmonary failure was expected, yet many of them survived due to his device - which became known as "the bird." Bird continued to make improvements. It was widely adopted by hospitals around the world. The "Babybird" respirator introduced in 1970 greatly reduced infant deaths due to respiratory problems.« |
|
| Patrick Steptoe | |
 |
Born 9 Jun 1913; died 21 Mar 1988.
Patrick (Christopher) Steptoe was a British scientist and medical researcher who, with Robert Edwards, perfected in-vitro fertilization of the human egg. Their technique made possible in the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first "test-tube baby," on 25 July 1978. Steptoe, decided at an early age to pursue medicine over music. During World War II, he was captured by the Italians after his ship was sunk. After the war, with a practice in obstetrics and gynecology, he pioneered a new fiber-optic device called a laparoscope to perform minimally invasive abdominal surgery. In 1966, to help women with blocked Fallopian tubes, a major cause of infertility, he teamed up with Edwards, a Cambridge physiologist who had developed a way to fertilize human eggs in the lab. [Image right: in-vitro fertilization (source)] The
New Fertility: A Guide to Modern Medical Treatment... by
Graham H. Barker, Patrick Steptoe |
| Kenneth L. Pike | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1912; died 31 Dec 2000.
Kenneth L(ee) Pike was a U.S. linguist and anthropologist known for his studies of the aboriginal languages of Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, New Guinea, Java, Ghana, Nigeria, Australia, Nepal, and the Philippines. He was also the originator of tagmemics which extends to the analysis of grammar and behavior the concepts used in phonology so as to view all elements as part of a system. He distinguished between the concept of emic and etic, terms he coined in 1954. Etic refers to a trained observer's perception of the uninterpreted "raw" data. Emic refers to how that data is interpreted by an "insider" to the system. Phonetics:
A Critical Analysis of Phonetic Theory... by Kenneth
L. Pike |
| William Joscelyn Arkell | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1904; died 18 Apr 1958.
English paleontologist, an authority on Jurassic fossils (those dating from 208 to 144 million years ago). Arkell taught at Trinity College, Cambridge University. His work includes the classification of Jurassic ammonites and an interpretation of the environments of that period. He wrote Jurassic Geology of the World (1956), which critically reviewed the information dispersed throughout the world's enormous literature on the world's Jurassic stratigraphy. He made numerous contributions to knowledge of the Jurassic stratigraphy, and gradually stabilized many stratigraphically significant zonal assemblages. In 1946, his "Standard of the European Jurassic" advocated a commission formulate a code of rules for stratigraphical nomenclature. |
| Sir Henry Dale | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1875; died 23 July 1968.
Sir Henry Hallett Dale was an English physiologist who in 1914 isolated the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from ergot fungi. In 1936 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with the German pharmacologist Otto Loewi) for discoveries in the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. Otto Loewi had shown that a substance released by electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve was responsible for effecting changes in heartbeat. Following up this work, Dale showed that the substance is in fact acetylcholine, thus establishing that chemical as well as electrical stimuli are involved in nerve action. He also worked on the properties of histamine and related substances, including their actions in allergic and anaphylactic conditions. |
| Wilhelm Roux | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1850; died 15 Sep 1924.
German zoologist who was a founder of experimental embryology, by which he studied how organs and tissues are assigned their structural form and functions at the time of fertilization. He experimented with frog eggs (1880s). He thought that mitotic cell division of the fertilized egg is the mechanism by which future parts of a developing organism are determined. He destroyed one of the two initial subdivisions (blastomeres) of a fertilized frog egg, obtaining half an embryo from the remaining blastomere. It seemed to him that determination of future parts and functions had already occurred in the two-cell stage and that each of the two blastomeres had already received the determinants necessary to form half the embryo. His theory was later negated by Hans Driesch. |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1836; died 17 Dec 1917.
English physician who sought the admission of women to professional education, especially in medicine. She become the first woman to qualify as a medical practitioner in Britain (1865), despite being refused admission by the medical schools because it was their policy not to train women as doctors. She had to study medicine privately, under some of the country's leading physicians; at times she was forced to dissect cadavers in her own room because she was forbidden to use hospital facilities. In 1865 she qualified as a medical practitioner by examination of the Society of Apothecaries. The following year, she founded the St. Mary's Dispensary for Women in London. She was also the first female member of the British Medical Association (1873-92). Elizabeth
Garrett Anderson by Jo Manton |
| Peter Henderson | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1822; died 17 Jan 1890.
Scottish-American scientist, known as the "Father of American Horticulture." He learned methods of gardening in the Old World, then immigrated to the U.S. in 1843. He started market gardening in 1847 with a capital of $500.00. The publication Gardening for Profit (1868) was the first American book devoted entirely to market gardening and it encouraged many to enter the business. His seed business was started in 1865. Few men have done more to simplify the handling of plants for commercial use. His greenhouses were models for his many visitors and his methods were widely copied. He also wrote Practical Floriculture (1868) for commercial floriculture, and later, for the amateur audience, Gardening for Pleasure (1875). Henderson's
Handbook Of Plants by Peter Henderson |
| Johann Gottfried Galle | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1812; died 10 Jul 1910.
German astronomer who on 23 Sep 1846, was the first to observe the planet Neptune, whose existence had been predicted in the calculations of Leverrier. Leverrier had written to Galle asking him to search for the 'new planet' at a predicted location. Galle was then a member of the staff of the Berlin Observatory and had discovered three comets. In 1838, while assistant to Johann Franz Encke, Galle discovered the dark, inner C ring of Saturn at the time of the maxium ring opening. In 1851, he became professor of astronomy at Breslau and director of the observatory there. In 1872, he proposed the use of asteroids rather than regular planets for determinations of the solar parallax, a suggestion which was successful in an international campaign (1888-89). |
| George Stephenson | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1781; died 12 Aug 1848.
English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive, and the famous Rocket locomotive. The first railway he built ran from Darlington to Stockton which opened 27 Sep 1825 when large crowds saw him at the controls of the Locomotion as it pulled 36 wagons filled with sacks of coal and flour. The initial journey of just under 9 miles took two hours. In the Rainhill trials of 1829, there was a competition as to who could build the fastest locomotive. He won with his locomotive he named the "Rocket," which traveled at an unheard of speed of 36 miles per hour. He then built the Liverpool to Manchester line which opened on 15 Sep 1830. He is regarded as one of the most influential people of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The
Life of George Stephenson by Samuel Smiles |
| Samuel Slater | |
(source) |
Born 9
Jun 1768; died 21 Apr 1835.
English-American mechanical engineer who founded the American cotton-textile industry. Before he left Nottingham and immigrating to the U.S. in 1789, Slater apprenticed with Jedediah Strutt (partner of Richard Arkwright) in England. Once in the U.S., he found backing to build Arkwright’s spinning and carding machinery, with which he established the first successful cotton mill in the U.S. in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as well as many others in the New England region. Memoir
of Samuel Slater, the Father of American Manufactures, by
George White |
|
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| JUNE 9 - DEATHS | |
| Daniel Mazia | |
(source) |
 Died
9 Jun 1996 (born 18 Dec 1912)
American cell biologist who was notable for his work in nuclear and cellular physiology. His research centered on the broad question of cell reproduction, especially the division and regulation mechanisms involved in mitosis (the process by which the chromosomes within the nucleus of a cell double and divide prior to cell division). Mazia is best known for his isolation (1951, with Japanese biologist Katsuma Dan) of the mitotic apparatus, the structure responsible for cell division. This brought understanding of the mechanisms of cell division and intracellular motility. A study in the early '60s on centrosomal reproduction, an until recently unappreciated structure, led to Mazia's interest in this cell organelle and the publication of a seminal paper. |
| George Beadle | |
(source) |
Died
9 Jun 1989 (born 22 Oct 1903)
George Wells Beadle was an American geneticist who helped found biochemical genetics when he showed that genes affect heredity genes act by regulating definite chemical events. He shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg. Beadle and Tatum succeeded in demonstrating that the body substances are synthesized in the individual cell step by step in long chains of chemical reactions, and that genes control these processes by individually regulating definite steps in the synthesis chain. This regulation takes place through formation by the gene of special enzymes. George
Beadle... The Emergence of Genetics in the 20th Century, by
Paul Berg, Maxine Singer |
| Adolf Windaus | |
(source) |
Died
9 Jun 1959 (born 25 Dec 1876)
German organic chemist, who was awarded the 1928 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research "for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins", the first Nobel prize for work in human nutrition. Windaus began his studies in 1901 with the steroid cholesterol since nothing was known about its structure at the time. In 1926, he proved that ultraviolet light (from sunlight or laboratory sources) activates the compound ergosterol and gives vitamin D, which is valuable in preventing the rickets bone disease. He later synthetically prepared vitamin D3, discovered histamine, and contributed to the synthesis of vitamin B.« |
| Camille Guérin | |
(source) |
Died
9 Jun 1961 (born 22 Dec 1872)
French bacteriologist who (with Albert Calmette) developed, the tuberculosis vaccine known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG (1921). It was adopted throughout Europe and America against tuberculosis. As a vaccine it is an attenuated (weakened) form of the Mycobacterium bovis bacterium. When injected, it gives partial protection against tuberculosis, by stimulating the body's defence system without causing the disease. A successful vaccination produces a lump at the injection site.« |
| Erminnie Adele Platt Smith | |
| Died
9 Jun 1886 (born 26 Apr 1836)
(née Platt) American anthropologist who was the first woman to specialize in ethnographic field work. She was primarily a geologist who at about age 40 organized the Aesthetic Society that had as many as 500 in her parlor meetings about science, literature, and art. It was at one of the meeting that she heard about the new field of anthropology. She studied the Iroquis Indian culture, gathering their legends and language. Her ethnographic studies surpassed any others in the field. Her studies of the Iroquois Federation enabled her to preserve a large segment of their legends and language. She wrote numerous scientic papers with Myths of the Iroquois (1883) as her best known book |
|
| Alvan Graham Clark | |
(source) |
Died
9 Jun 1897 (born 10 Jul 1832)
U.S. astronomer, one of an American family of telescope makers and astronomers who supplied unexcelled lenses to many observatories in the U.S. and Europe during the heyday of the refracting telescope. He began a deep interest in astronomy while still at school, then joined the family firm of Alvan Clark & Sons, makers of astronomical lenses. In 1861, testing a new lens, he looked through it at Sirius and observed faintly beside it, Sirius B, the twin star predicted by Friedrich Bessel in 1844. Carrying on the family business, after the deaths of his father and brother, Clark made the 40" lenses of the Yerkes telescope (still the largest refractor in the world). Their safe delivery was a source of anxiety. He died shortly after their first use. [Image: Clark beside the crown-glass element of the Yerkes Observatory 40-inch objective.] Alvan
Clark & Sons, Artists in Optics, by Warner and Ariail. |
| JUNE 9 - EVENTS | |
| Kraft cheese | |
(source) |
In 1953, John H. Kraft was granted a U.S. patent for "manufacture of soft
surface cured cheese" (No. 2,641,545).
The invention related in general to the manufacture of soft, surface cured,
mold ripened cheeses, such as for example, Camembert, Brie, and the like
and in particular, to the provision of a soft, surface cured cheese whose
mold pad may be readily removed. |
| Goddard's rocket aircraft | |
(USPTO) |
In 1931, Robert Goddard patented a rocket-fueled aircraft design (U.S.
No. 1,809,271). However, it drew no military interest from either the Army
or the Navy, despite its innovative design, since even the government following
the great Depression had limited resources to fund proper research. The
invention was designed to utilize the energy of the gas blast of a rocket
without dissipation to obtain the maximum propulsive effect by driving
one or more turbine elements, which in turn could turn propellers for driving
the plane in the usual manner at low altitudes. The invention also proposes
using the reaction of the gas blast itself at such higher altitudes where
the air is so thin that propellers would be useless. [Image:
patent diagram showing propellers at the rear.] |
| Edison patents | |
|
In 1914, three patents related to a "Phonograph -Reproducer" were issued
to Thomas A. Edison (U.S. Nos. 1,099,346; -8) and also a patent for a "Method
of Making Sound-Record Molds" (No.1,099,349). |
|
| Einstein published | |
c.1955 |
In 1905, Albert Einstein published his analysis of Planck's quantum theory
and its application to light. His article appeared in Annalen der Physik.
Though no experimental work was involved, it was for these insights that
Einstein earned his Nobel Prize. |
| Automat | |
(source) |
In 1902, the first restaurant with vending machine service was the Automat
Restaurant at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was
Horn & Hardart, a cavernous, waiterless establishment
that was a combination of fast-food, vending and a cafeteria. Horn &
Hardart Automats expanded into a chain
reaching Manhattan in 1912. With their uniform recipes and centralized
commissary system of supplying their restaurants, the Automats were America’s
first major fast-food chain. Customers put nickels into slots in the Automats
and turned a knob. In the compartment next to the slot, food revolved into
place for the customer to receive through a small glass door. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1891, Thomas A. Edison was issued a patent for an innovation for a "Phonograph"
(U.S. No. 453,741). |
|
| False teeth | |
|
In 1822, Charles Graham received the first patent for false teeth. His
were not the first false
teeth in use, however. In the Colonial years, rotten teeth were considered
the cause of many illnesses, and they would be extracted. Varied ways of
replacing them were tried. For example, George Washington had at least
four sets of false teeth (though none were wooden, despite a myth to that
effect). Washington's first dentures
were made using human teeth inserted into carved ivory. In 1789, dentist
John Greenwood of New York, made Washington another set from gold, hippo
teeth, and hippo and elephant ivory. The one natural remaining tooth was
a molar, and a hole was left for that. |
|
| Brown's Australian voyage ends | |
(source) |
In 1803, Robert Brown (1773-1858), botanist on Matthew
Flinders' vessel HMS Investigator ended a long voyage
of discovery
in Port Jackson, Australia. From the ship's arrival at the continent's
western coast (then known as New Holland or Terra Australis) in Dec 1801,
age 27, he had made an enormous collection of plant samples which he classified
and named. He published the results in his famous Prodromus Florae Novae
Hollandiae in 1810, now a classic in systematic botany, although it
was unillustrated, and failed to sell well at the time. He was the leading
British botanist to collect in Australia in the early 19th century. He
also described Brownian
motion: random motion observed by microscope of pollen immersed in
water (1827). |
| Metre | |
|
In 1795, a provisional metre bar was constructed in brass by Lenoir. On
1 Aug 1793, the metre had been defined to be 1/10 000 000 of the northern
quadrant of the Paris meridian (5 132 430 toises of Paris, from the north
pole to the equator). On 7 Apr 1795, the first legal definition of the
metre was made by the French National Assembly. A second measure was made
along the Dunkirk-Barcelona axis (5 130 740 toises of Paris). |
|
