| JUNE 20 - BIRTHS | |
| Reginald Crundall Punnett | |
(source) |
 Born 20
June 1875; died 3 Jan 1967.
English Mendelian geneticist who, with the English biologist William Bateson, were among the first English geneticists. They reported the discovery of two new genetic principles: the first account of genetic linkage in sweet pea; and gene interaction (1905). Punnett devised the "Punnett" square to depict the number and variety of genetic combinations. Punnett had a role in connecting Mendelism with statistics. In 1908, Punnett was asked at a lecture to explain, " if brown eyes were dominant, then why wasn't the whole country becoming brown-eyed?" Punnett in turn asked his friend the mathematician, G. H. Hardy. Out of this conversation came the Hardy-Weinberg Law which calculates how population affects genetic inheritance. |
| George Redmayne Murray | |
(source) |
Born 20
June 1865; died 21 Sep 1939.
English physician who pioneered in the treatment of endocrine disorders. He was one of the first to use extractions of animal thyroid to relieve myxedema (severe hypothyroidism) in humans. In 1891, Murray cut the thyroid out of a sheep, strained it through a handkerchief and prepared emulsions of dried sheep thyroid in glycerine. Despite being scoffed at by his colleagues, when he injected the thyroid extract into a patient with myxedema (the common form of hypothyroidism), he was completely successful on his first such attempt with the treatment. With continued use of thyroid extract, the patient lived in good health for over twenty-eight years after she had reached an advanced stage of myxoedema. |
| Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins | |
(source) |
Born 20
June 1861; died 16 May 1947.
British biochemist, who received (with Christiaan Eijkman) the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovery of essential nutrient factors, now known as vitamins, needed in animal diets to maintain health. Hopkins fed young rats on a basic diet which, in addition to the necessary salts, contained a carefully purified mixture of lard, starch, and casein (the most abundant protein in milk). After some time the animals ceased to grow. Then Hopkins demonstrated that it was only necessary to add a very small daily amount of milk, 2 - 3 cc for each animal, for growth to recommence. Thus the sufficiency of food consumed without the added milk could be fully utilized by the body only when the growth-promoting influence of the milk was present. |
| JUNE 20 - DEATHS | |
| Jack Kilby | |
(source) |
 Died
20 June 2005 (born 8 Nov 1923)
Jack St Clair Kilby was an American electrical engineer who invented the first integrated ciruit (IC), for which he shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. His interest in electronics grew out of his in school-age hobby of amateur radio. Year later, working at Texas Instruments, he devised a way to miniaturize a complicated transistor circuit by building its components on a block of silicon with internal connections that eliminated external wiring. On 12 Sep 1958, he demonstrated his first integrated circuit to his supervisor. A few months later, an IC device in an improved form was independently invented elsewhere by Robert Noyce. Geoffrey W.A. Dummer also had the concept years earlier, but not a working device. In Sep 1965, Kilby's team developed the first shirt-pocket electronic calculator using IC's.« |
| Henri-Gaston Busignies | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1981 (born 29 Dec 1905)
French-born American electronics engineer whose invention (1936) of high-frequency direction finders (HF/DF, or "Huff Duff") permitted the U.S. Navy during World War II to detect enemy transmissions and quickly pinpoint the direction from which a radio transmission was coming. Busignies invented the radiocompass (1926) while still a student at Jules Ferry College in Versailles, France. In 1934, he started developing the direction finder based on his earlier radiocompass. Busignies developed the moving target indicator for wartime radar. It scrubbed off the radar screen every echo from stationary objects and left only echoes from moving objects, such as aircraft.« |
| Georges Lemaître | |
 |
Died
20 June 1966 (born 17 Jul 1894)
Georges (Henri) Lemaître was a Belgian astronomer and cosmologist, born in Charleroi, Belgium. He was also a civil engineer, army officer, and ordained priest. He did research on cosmic rays and the three-body problem. Lemaître formulated (1927) the modern big-bang theory. He reasoned that if the universe was expanding now, then the further you go in the past, the universe’s contents must have been closer together. He envisioned that at some point in the distant past, all the matter in the universe was in an exceedingly dense state, crushed into a single object he called the "primeval super-atom" which exploded, with all its constituent parts rushing away. This theory was later developed by Gamow and others. |
| Kurt Alder | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1958 (born 10 Jul 1902)
German chemist who was the corecipient (with Otto Diels) of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1950 for their development of the Diels-Alder reaction (1928), or diene synthesis, a widely used method of synthesizing cyclic organic compounds. In this type of reaction, a compound containing two double bonds separated by a single bond (i.e. a conjugated diene) adds to a suitable compound containing one double bond (dienophile) to give a ring compound. In the dienophile, the double bond must have a carbonyl group on each side. The reaction proceeds in the mildest conditions, is of general application, and hence of great utility in synthesis. It is used in the synthesis of natural products, such as sterols, vitamin K, cantharides, and synthetic polymers. |
| Josef Breuer | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1925 (born 15 Jan 1842)
Austrian physician and physiologist whose cathartic method was acknowledged by Sigmund Freud and others as the principal forerunner of psychoanalysis. Breuer found (1880) that he had relieved symptoms of hysteria in a patient, Bertha Pappenheim, (called Anna O. in his case study), after he had induced her to recall past unpleasant experiences under hypnosis. By describing her traumatic experiences and feelings about them to Breuer she seemed to get some relief from debilitating symptoms such as partial paralysis and hallucinations. Although Breuer's treatment was not nearly as successful as he and Freud claimed, she eventually overcame her symptoms to become an innovative social worker and a leader of the women's movement in Germany. |
| Dmitry Iosifovich Ivanovsky | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1920 (born 9 Nov 1864)
Russian microbiologist who, from his study of mosaic disease in tobacco, first reported the characteristics of the organisms that were later called viruses. (Although he is generally credited as the discoverer of viruses, they were also independently discovered and named by the Dutch botanist M.W. Beijerinck only a few years later.) Ivanovsky had been commissioned in 1890 to study a mysterious disease that was killing tobacco crops in the Crimea. He determined that some agent in sap could transfer disease from plant to plant. Through detailed filtering and microscope work, he concluded that some invisible parasite, much smaller than any known bacterium, was the culprit. In fact, his super-small bacterium was a new life form - the virus. |
| James Mason Crafts | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1917 (born 8 Mar 1839)
American chemist, who with French chemist Charles Friedel, discovered an important organic carbon-chain addition to carbon-ring chemical synthesis techique, the Friedel-Crafts reaction (1877). This was a method of synthesizing hydrocarbons or ketones from aromatic hydrocarbons using aluminum chloride as a catalyst. Friedel and Crafts also did much work on the synthesis of organosilicon compounds. |
| Sebastian Wilhelm Valentin Bauer | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1875 (born 23 Dec 1822)
German pioneer inventor and builder of submarines. His first submarine, Le Plongeur-Marin ("The Marine Diver," 1850) sank 50-ft with water leaking inside during a test dive in Feb 1851 in Kiel Harbour. Over 7-hrs later, Bauer opened the hatch when the pressure of the air inside the hull, compressed by water leaking into the submarine, matched the water pressure outside. He and his crew then swam to the surface to find funeral services in progress. In 1855, Bauer built Le Diable-Marin ("The Marine Devil"), a 52-ft iron submarine for 11 crew. A four-man treadmill powered its screw propeller. Bauer made photographs through windows, probably the first taken underwater. He experimented on air purification and underwater sound for signaling. |
| Ferdinand Berthoud | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1807 (born 19 Mar 1727)
Outstanding Swiss horologist and author of extensive treatises on timekeeping who became involved in the attempt to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea. His major achievement was his further development of an accurate and practical marine clock, or chronometer. (Such an instrument had previously been constructed in expensive and delicate prototypes by Pierre Leroy of France and John Harrison of England.) He made his first chronometer in 1754, which was sent for trial in 1761. Berthoud's improvements to the chronometer have been largely retained in present-day designs. |
| Georg Christian Füchsel | |
(source) |
Died
20 June 1773 (born 14 Feb 1722)
German geologist who originated the idea of stratigraphic formations. He was one of the first actually to make recorded measurements of sections of stratified rock. He developed the concept of a strata, a rock formation as a depositional unit representing a certain epoch of time. Such formations were not thrown out at random, but deposited initially in a horizontal position as part of a clearly delineated, orderly succession under circumstances that may be inferred from the lithology and characteristic fossil assemblage. Recent deposits in his district with only terrestrial fossils, he thought, were from "the action of a great deluge." He also made the first published geological map of Germany and adjacent areas. |
| JUNE 20 - EVENTS | |
| World's oldest small mammal | |
(source) |
In 2005, a 41-yr-old wild bat was reported in an article received by the
Journal
of Gerontology. A male Brandt's bat (Myotis brandtii) was identified
as the world's oldest known small mammal from a band attached during a
project in the Biryusa karst region of Siberia in Russia. Over a number
of years around 1962, 1544 individual M. brandtii bats in cave colonies
had been banded. These bats are small - only about 6-g. A long annual hibernation
is suggested as one cause of the exception longevity of bats. M. brandtii
bats hibernate from late Sep until mid-Jun. Earlier age records include
a 24-yr-old female little
brown bat found 30 Apr 1960 in
the U.S. and on 25 Aug 1999, a newspaper
reported a 33-yr-old wild bat in Europe.« |
| Nuclear-powered heating | |
 |
In 2002, an agreement was signed to establish
a seawater desalination and heating plant - using atomic reactors - at
the coastal city of Yingkou,
China. It is designed
to address severe water shortages in China. The deep-water reactor designed
by Chinese scientists is to burn used fuel from nuclear power stations
under normal pressure giving 200 megawatts. The initial phase, costing
35 million yuan ($4 million) would provide heating for a building area
of 5 million sq. meters during winter. It can also desalinate 3,000 tons
of sea water daily when no heating is required. The daily capacity is expected
to amount to 80,000 tons. The reactor in theory is able to replace about
130,000 tons of coal burned every year, reducing immensely waste gases. |
| Chernobyl fall-out over UK | |
(source) |
In 1986, because of Chernobyl fall-out, the slaughter and movement of lambs
in parts of Cumbria,
Scotland, was temporarily banned.*
Fallout in the UK from the Chernobyl accident was greatest where the passage
of the cloud coincided with heavy rainfall in north Wales, Cumbria, parts
of Scotland and northern Ireland. 137Cs activity concentrations
in vegetation at one site in upland west Cumbria increased from 40 to 10,000
Bq kg–1 dry weight. Studies
after the Chernobyl accident have shown that the transfer of radionuclides
to sheep and goat products is greater than to cattle. Restrictions are
imposed if any individual sheep in a flock exceeds the 1,000 Bq kg-1
(fresh weight) limit at which meat cannot enter the foodchain.
[Image: Upland sheep in the area of Cumbria where movement and slaughter were still restricted 10 years after the Chernobyl accident.] |
| Trans-Alaska pipeline | |
(source) |
In 1977, the $7.7 billion trans-Alaskan oil pipeline opened. The $7.7 billion
project
links oil fields in Prudhoe Bay to the shipping port
of Valdez, where oil arrives 38 days later. Because of the earth's heat
at greater depths, oil pumped from the Prudhoe Bay field, which is 10,000-to-20,000
feet deep, is at about 145 to 180 degrees F. Using heat exchangers that
work like a car's radiator, the oil companies cool the oil to about 120
degrees before it enters the pipeline. The pipe is a tube of 1/2-inch thick
steel with a diameter of 48 inches, wrapped with four inches of fiberglass
insulation and a cover of aluminum sheet metal. Where it snakes over land,
the pipeline
is supported by posts designed to keep permafrost frozen. |
| Rocket airplane | |
Heinkel (source) |
In 1939, Ernst Heinkel's He-176 experimental
rocket airplane
- the world's first to be propelled solely by a liquid-fuelled rocket -
flew
for first time, at Peenemunde, Germany. It tested an engine based on Hellmuth
Walter's hydrogen peroxide-based rocket with Erich Warsitz as test pilot.
It was a small aircraft, without an enclosed canopy, built almost entirely
out of wood with a fixed, tricycle undercarriage. The 50-second flight
of the He-176 was not spectacular, but it did provide "proof of concept"
for rocket propulsion. The Reich
Air Ministry showed no interest, and Heinkel abandoned rocket propulsion
development. The He-176 was given to the German Technical Museum in Berlin,
where it was destroyed during a WW II air raid. [Image
right: (source)
] |
| Wireless car phone | |
|
In 1926, a wireless phone for autos was demonstrated in Berlin, Germany,
by Herr Schaetzle.* |
|
| X-ray burns | |
|
In 1918, the X-ray expert Dr. Eugene W. Caldwell, died of X-ray burns,
in New York. Dr. Caldwell was Director of X-ray in New York City’s Bellevue
Hospital, and his book
The Practical Application of Roentgen Rays in
Therapeutics was an accepted textbook on the subject. He received
the fatal burns in the course of his X-ray research.* |
|
| Zeppelin flight | |
 |
In 1908, Count Zeppelin made his first flight in his fourth new airship
at Friedrichshafen, Germany.*
The Luftschiff LZ4 had its first
flight 20 Jun 1908. Its first extended flight (12 hours) was taken
to Switzerland 1 Jul 1908. At the beginning of August, it embarked on an
extended flight which had taken it among other places to Basel, Straussberg,
and many of the major cities of southern Germany. While moored at Echterdingen
on 5 Aug 1908, it was torn from the mast by high winds and destroyed. As
interest in the Zeppelins ran high in German, the incident was felt as
a national disaster. Spontaneous donations resulted in approximately 5.5
million Marks and made it possible for Zeppelin to continue his work. |
| Velocipede patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1899, black American inventor Wesley Johnson was issued a patent for
a "Velocipede" (U.S. No. 627,335). Although conventional in appearance
in a side view, the innovation claimed was to use two wheels separated
by four to six inches in the front fork, and two wheels in similar fashion
at the back. The patent claimed this gives better stability and safety,
especially for those first learning to balance and ride a bicycle, the
timid, elderly or the invalid. Further, it said, corners could be turned
on slippery ground with better stability. [Image
right: top view]
 The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1893, Thomas A. Edison received one of his patents for a Phonograph
(U.S. No. 499,879). |
|
| Station indicator | |
|
In 1893,a patent for a "Station Indicator" was granted to the black American
inventor Thomas W. Stewart with William E. Johnson, of which they assigned
a half interest to Levi and Albert Johnson, all of Detroit, Michigan (U.S.
No. 499,895). The invention was for use in railway and street cars to indicate
the different stations and streets the car is approaching. It was to automatically
advance a belt of sign cards displaying the names of the stations and streets.
This advance was activated by a lever on the outside of the car coming
into contact with an inclined projection beside the track. An alarm would
also sound. Another lever allowed the vehicle operator to reverse the movement
of the belt for the return journey.
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| Morse patent | |
|
In 1840, Samuel F.B. Morse received a
patent for telegraphy signals (U.S. No. 1,647). |
|
