| JUNE 17 - BIRTHS | |
| François Jacob | |
(source) |
 Born 17
June 1920
French biologist who, (with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod), was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning in molecular genetics that showed how the production of protiens from DNA is regulated. Through experiments with the bacterium Escherichia coli cultured in various media, it was possible to discover the effect of the medium on enzyme production. Jacob and his team found that a regulator (R-gene) produces a repressor substance that prevents an operator (O-gene) from providing messenger RNA, blocking production of protein. |
| William K(aye) Estes | |
(source) |
Born 17
Jun 1919
American psychologist, a leader in bringing mathematical methods into psychological research, who was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1997 for "his fundamental theories of cognition and learning that transformed the field of experimental psychology. His pioneering methods of quantitative modeling and an insistence on rigor and precision established the standard for modern psychological science." In his early professional research he partnered with another pioneering psychologist B. F. Skinner in studying animal learning and behavior. The quantitative method they devised to measure emotional reactions is still widely used today. From 1979, Estes focussed on investigating human memory and classification learning. |
| Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann | |
(source) |
Born 17
Jun 1888; died 16 Sep 1925
Russian mathematician who was the first to work out a mathematical analysis of an expanding universe consistent with general relativity, yet without Einstein’s cosmological constant. In 1922, he developed solutions to the field equations, one of which clearly described a universe that began from a point singularity, and expanded thereafter. In his article On the Curvature of Space received by the journal Zeitschrift für Physik on 29 Jun 1922, he showed that the radius of curvature of the universe can be either an increasing or a periodic function of time. In Jul 1925, he made a record-breaking 7400-m balloon ascent to make meteorological and medical observations. A few weeks later he fell ill and died of typhus. |
| Edward Anthony Spitzka | |
(source) |
Born 17
Jun 1876; died 4 Sep 1922.
American anatomist and brain morphologist who autopsied (29 Oct 1901) the brain of Leon Franz Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. president William McKinley. At the time, he had just published an exhaustive series of eight papers on the human brain, but was only in the fourth year of his medical training. Although he detected a few very minor variations in gyri and sulci patterns in the brain of Czolgosz, he reported in the New York Medical Journal (1902) that "nothing has been found in the brain of this assassin that would condone his crime." He became editor of American editions of Gray's Anatomy. Throughout his career he studied the brain morphology of groups of famous people, different races, and criminals, thought ultimately he was unable to link traits to brain structure.«  |
| George Cormack | |
(source) |
Born 17
June 1870; died Sep 1953
Co-inventor of Wheaties cereal. In 1921, a health clinician in Minneapolis, while mixing a batch of bran gruel for his patients, spilled some of the mix on a hot stove where it sizzled into a crisp flake. After tasting the very first Wheaties prototype, he took the idea to the Washburn Crosby Company, where the head miller, George Cormack, took on the task of trying to strengthen the flakes to keep them from turning to dust inside a cereal box. Cormack tested 36 varieties of wheat before he developed the perfect flake. It was introduced in test marketing in Nov 1924. The name Wheaties was chosen by a company wide contest won by Jane Bausman, the wife of the export manager. Numerous other entries included Nutties and Gold Medal Wheat Flakes.* |
| John Robert Gregg | |
(source) |
Born 17 June 1867; died 23 Feb 1948.
Irish-born American inventor of a popular shorthand system named for him. He first introduced his system in 1888 in the pamphlet Light-Line Phonography published in Liverpool, England. By 1893, he had published Gregg Shorthand in America where it was soon taught in public schools throughout the U.S., and adapted to several languages. The Gregg system modeled the mechanics and positioning of traditional writing. He published dozens of textbooks on the subject from 1880-1920. [Image right: examples of Gregg alphabet] |
| Sir William Crookes | |
(source) |
Born 17 June 1832; died 4 Apr 1919.
British chemist and physicist who discovered the element thallium and showed that cathode-rays were fast-moving, negatively-charged particles. The Crookes dark space is the dark region around a cathode making electrical discharges at low pressure. He invented the radiometer (1875) in which four vanes suspended on a needle in a vacuum with one side black and the other side white are observed to rotate by the effect of incident light. He also invented the spinthariscope (1903) which reveals alpha particles emitted by radium as light flashes when they impact a zinc sulphide screen viewed under magnification. His interests included spiritualism, but provided more practical guidance for improving sanitation and artifical fertilizers.« [Image right: radiometer] |
| E. G. Squier | |
(source) |
Born 17
June 1821; died 17 Apr 1888.
E(phraim) G(eorge) Squier U.S. was a newspaper editor, diplomat, and archaeologist who, with the physician and archaeologist Edwin H. Davis, conducted the first major study of the remains of the pre-Columbian North American Mound Builders. Their book, Ancient Monuments (1848, more familiarly known as "Squire and Davis") was the undisputed primary reference source of their time on Indian mounds in the eastern US. It gave the grandest illustrations of what remained of the unbelievable civilizations that inhabited this continent. While hundreds of mounds have been plowed flat, theirs is a guide to what was lost. He also explored in Central America, Peru, and Bolivia in an effort to find the origins of the Mound Builder civilization.  Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Classics in Smithsonian Anthropology)
by
E. H. Davis, E. G. Squier, Charles Sullivan (illustrator) |
| Lord Rosse | |
(source) |
Born 17 June 1800; died 31 Oct 1867.
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse was an Irish astronomer who built the largest reflecting telescope of the 19th century. He learned to polish metal mirrors (1827) and spent the next few years building a 36-inch telescope. He later completed a giant 72-inch telescope (1845) which he named "Leviathan," It remained the largest ever built until decades after his death. He was the first to resolve the spiral shape of objects - previously seen as only clouds - which were much later identified as galaxies independent of our own Milky Way galaxy and millions of light-years away. His first such sighting was made in 1845, and by 1850 he had discovered 13 more. In 1848, he found and named the Crab Nebula (because he thought it resembled a crab), by which name it is still known.* [Image right: people standing in front of Leviathan] |
| César-François Cassini de Thury | |
(source) |
Born 17
June 1714; died 4 Sep 1784.
French astronomer and geodesist (Cassini III), who continued surveying work he began while assisting his father, Jacques Cassini (Cassini II), resulting in the first topographical map of France produced by modern principles. His grandfather, Giovanni Domenico Cassini (Cassini I) discovered four satellites of Saturn, a band on planet's surface, and that its ring was subdivided. Cassini I was the first to assume effective direction (1671) of the new observatory established by the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, which his descendants in turn continued. Cassini III was the first official director of the observatory when the post was created by the king in 1771. His son was Jean-Dominique Cassini (Cassini IV).« |
| JUNE 17 - DEATHS | |
| Donald J. Cram | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Jun (born 22 Apr 1919)
Donald J(ames) Cram was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry (with Charles J. Pedersen and Jean-Marie Lehn) for his creation of molecules that mimic the chemical behaviour of molecules found in living systems. |
| Thomas S. Kuhn | |
(source) |
Died
17 Jun 1996 (born 18 Jul 1922)
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian philosopher of science who was the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), one of the most widely read and influential books in 20th-century social sciences, humanities, and philosophy. He pointed out that scientific research and thought are defined by "paradigms," or trusted theories, concepts, methods and experiments. Such paradigms are accepted by scientists, who continue to extend, refine, explain and measure results until they meet an problem that cannot be resolved within the established framework. Such anomaly or contradiction eventually requires an intellectual revolution, such as the paradigm shifts from Ptolemaic cosmology to Copernican heliocentrism. |
| Sir Arthur Harden | |
| Died
17 June 1940 (born 12 Oct 1865)
English biochemist and corecipient, with Hans von Euler-Chelpin, of the 1929 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on the fermentation of sugar and the enzyme action involved. |
|
| James Starley | |
age 23 (source) |
Died
17 June 1881 (born 21 Apr 1830)
British inventorand manufacturer, known as the father of the bicycle industry. Starley left the family farm as a teenager and after initially working as a gardener, he turned to mechanical interests. He improved the early sewing machine, and by about 1861, was in business with Josiah Turner as the Coventry Sewing Machine Company. Within a few years, their factory began producing bicycles. In 1870, he went into business for himself, producing his Europa sewing machines and Ariel bicycles, "penny-farthing" and tricycles. The Ariel, a lightweight all-metal bicycle (1871), is regarded as the first true bicycle, the first self-propelled two-wheeler to use pivot-center steering. His tangent-tension spoke wheel (1876) is still used.« |
| JUNE 17 - EVENTS | |
| Polaroid camera | |
In 1970, Edwin Land patented the Polaroid camera. |
|
| Chinese H-bomb | |
(source) |
In 1967, China tested
its first hydrogen bomb. This was China's sixth nuclear test, and its first
full scale radiation implosion (Teller-Ulam) weapon test. The device contained
U-235, lithium-6 deuteride, and U-238. It was detonated at 2960 m
over the Lop Nur Test Ground after being dropped from an airplane, and
had a yield of 3.3 megatons. (It was conducted only 32 months after Chinas's
first atomic test, 16 Oct 1964, the shortest elapsed time for any nuclear
weapons state. The country's first test was an atomic bomb, a pure-fission
U-235 implosion fission device named "596." That device weighed 1550 kg
with a 22 kiloton yield. No plutonium was available at the time of this
first bomb was tested.) |
| Kidney transplant | |
|
In 1950, the first kidney transplant operation took place in Chicago in
a 45-minute operation performed by Dr. Richard H. Lawler. |
|
| Pan Am | |
|
In 1947, the first globe-circling passenger airline was inaugurated by
Pan Am Airways as it left New York. The fare to travel around the world
was $1700. |
|
| Amelia Earhart | |
|
In 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland
to Wales; she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, though
as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stultz. In 1932, she became
the first woman to fly solo across that ocean. |
|
| Goodyear | |
 |
In 1837, Charles Goodyear obtained
his first rubber-processing patent
(U.S. No. 240). At this time, the original india-rubber would become sticky
melt in the summer heat. Goodyear resolved
to solve this problem. After various unsuccessful methods, he devised a
process to treat the India rubber with metallic solutions such as copper
nitrate and strong acid for a few minutes, followed by washing with water.
Such process treated both rubber on the surface and below the surface to
a useful condition. His patent explained this method, and also the use
of a water paste of quicklime to bleach the rubber for which he listed
various new purposes. He obtained additional patents as he continued to
revised his process by using sulphur and oil of turpentine.
 Trials
of an Inventor: Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyear,
by Bradford Peirce |
| Lister | |
 |
In 1867, Joseph Lister in Glasgow, Scotland became the first surgeon to
perform surgery under antiseptic conditions. |
| Plow and gun | |
(USPTO) |
In 1862, during the American Civil War period (1861-1865), W.H. Fancher
and C.M. French of Waterloo, N.Y. received a U.S. patent for a combined
plow and gun (No. 35,600).
To the metal plow with wooden handles of ordinary construction, the inventors
added the elements of light ordinance, designed for "especially when used
in border localities, subject to savage fueds and guerrilla warfare." The
share serves as an anchor in the ground to resist recoil, the wooden handles
being used to set direction. Projectiles could be grape shot or balls of
one to three pounds weight. The combination was proposed to give those
in agricultural pursuits to have at hand an "efficient weapon of defense
at very slight expense in addition" to that of a plow. |
