| JULY 7 - BIRTHS | |
| Ian Wilmut | |
(source) |
 Born 7
July 1944
English embryologist who in 1996 supervised the team of scientists that produced a lamb named Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a cell from an adult. Dolly birth at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 5 Jul 1996, was announced on 23 Feb 1997. The key work was performed by microbiologist Keith Campbell.« [Image: Wilmut with preserved Dolly.] |
| Nettie Maria Stevens | |
(source) |
Born 7
July 1861; died 1912
Born in Cavendish, Vermont, the year that the Civil War began, despite difficult times and limited women's educational opportunities, Stevens became one of the first American women to achieve recognition for her contributions to scientific research. As a cell biologist and geneticist, her great contribution to science was as one of the first scientists to find that sex is determined by a single difference between two classes of sperm - the presence or absence of an X chromosome. |
| Lillien Jane Martin | |
| Born 7
July 1851; died 26 Mar 1943.
American psychologist who followed up her academic career with an active second career in gerontological psychology. Martin was determined to work in psychology though as a pioneer woman in psychology, she faced obstacles including age, as well as gender discrimination. Her determination was eventually rewarded with an honorary Ph.D. from a school that originally refused her a degree because of her sex. Martin worked with G.E. Muller in psychophysics, and founded the world's first mental health clinic for normal children and for the elderly. Her accomplishments and enthusiastic eagerness to share knowledge have changed the way applied psychology is viewed in areas of gerontology and mental hygiene for children. |
|
| Camillo Golgi | |
1906 (EB) |
Born 7
July 1843; died 21 Jan 1926
Italian physician and cytologist who, in 1873, published his key discovery, the use of silver salts to stain samples for microscope slides. Thus new details of cellular structure components were revealed, still known by such names as Golgi bodies and Golgi complex. Investigations into the fine structure of the nervous system earned him (with the Spanish histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal) the 1906 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. |
| Sir Morell Mackenzie | |
|
Born 7
July 1837; died 3 Feb 1892.
English laryngologist (born Leytonstone, Essex), Britain's leading specialist, was at the centre of a bitter international controversy over the death of Emperor Frederick III of Germany. In his book, The Fatal Illness Of Frederick The Noble (1888), Mackenzie describes his care of laryngeal cancer in the Crown Prince, later Emperor Frederick the Noble. He had been accused of medical malpractice by German physicians following the emperor's death on 15 June 1888. The book not only decribes laryngology at the end of the 19th century, but also offers hidden insight into German history, as well as a soap opera complete with scheming and attempts at character assassination. |
| Rudolf Wolf | |
(source) |
Born 7
July 1816; died 6 Dec 1893.
Swiss astronomer and astronomical historian. Wolf's main contribution was the discovery of the 11 year sunspot cycle and he was the codiscoverer of its connection with geomagnetic activity on Earth. In 1849 he devised a system now known as Wolf's sunspot numbers. This system is still in use for studying solar activity by counting sunspots and sunspot groups. In mathematics, Wolf wrote on prime number theory and geometry, then later on probability and statistics - a long paper discussed Buffon's needle experiment. He estimated 
by Monte Carlo methods. |
| Joseph Marie Jacquard | |
|
Born 7
July
1752; died 7 Aug 1834
French silk weaver, (born Lyons), inventor of the Jacquard programmable power loom for brocaded fabric. His loom would mechanically produce any pattern, controlled by perforated control cards (1805). This served as the impetus for the technological revolution of the textile industry and is the basis of the modern automatic loom. The concept of using punched cards was later applied by Hollerith to keeping track of the 1890 US census data. The idea futher evolved to computer input punched cards. |
|
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| JULY 7 - DEATHS | |
| Herman Kahn | |
(source) |
 Died
7 July 1983 (born 15 Feb 1922)
American physicist, who worked on nuclear strategy as a military analyst (1948-61). Later, he became known as a futurist making controversial studies of nuclear warfare in his books, including his provocative analysis of nuclear war in On Thermonuclear War (1960) and his predictions of the probability and survivability of nuclear war in Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962). He held that since it might be possible to survive a nuclear war, it was essential to plan to do just that. Kahn founded the influential Hudson Institute in New York in 1961 to study aspects of national security related to narcotics policy, international economics and trade, population, transportation, crime, medicine.«  The
Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War,
by Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi |
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | |
(source) |
Died
7 July 1930; born 22 May 1859.
Scottish novelist, physician, spiritualist. His fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, emulates the scientist, diligently searching through data and to make sense of it. "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." |
| Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler | |
(source) |
Died
7 July 1927 (born 16 Mar 1846)
Swedish mathematician who founded the international mathematical journal Acta Mathematica and whose contributions to mathematical research helped advance the Scandinavian school of mathematics. Mittag-Leffler made numerous contributions to mathematical analysis (concerned with limits and including calculus, analytic geometry and probability theory). He worked on the general theory of functions, concerning relationships between independent and dependent variables. His best known work concerned the analytic representation of a one-valued function, this work culminated in the Mittag-Leffler theorem. |
| Claudius Amyand | |
| Died
7 Jul 1740 (born 1680's)
English surgeon whose name is remembered in the term "Amyand's hernia" for an inguinal hernia with an appendix involved. In 1736, Amyand described a surgery for a hernia in an 11-year-old boy where the appendix, perforated by a pin, was within the hernia sac. It is regarded as the first recorded successful appendectomy, though the removal of the appendix was a secondary procedure to the hernia repair. (The first appendectomy which was the planned primary purpose of the procedure is usually credited to Lawson Tait, who performed the operation in May of 1880.) Amyand was Surgeon-in-Ordinary to King George II (1683-1760). He published interesting observations on rare surgical cases in the Philosophical Transactions. [Ref. for the hernia surgery: Philos Trans R Soc Lond 1736; 39: 329-336.] |
|
| JULY 7 - EVENTS | |
| Solar Challenger | |
In 1981, the first solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, crossed the
English Channel. |
|
| Last London tram | |
|
In 1952, the last London tram, No. 1951, ceased operation when it arrived
outside New Cross depot after a 5-mile midnight run on route 40 from Woolwich.
Large crowds witnessed its travel along the route. Electric trams had operated
in London since the early 1900's. By 1931, they came to be regarded as
too noisy and dangerous, and they were to be replaced by electric trolleybuses
which did not need tracks.« |
|
| Phillips-head screw | |
(source) |
In 1936, several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw
and screwdriver to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips (Nos. 2,046,343,
2,046,837 -40). They describe a fastening system involving a shallow cruciform
recess and a matching driver with a tapering tip that conveniently self-centers
in the screw head. Phillips founded the Phillips Screw Company to license
his patents. After three years of rejection, he finally persuaded the American
Screw Company to spend $500,000 developing a manufacturing process and
manufacture the screws. General Motors was convinced to use the screws
on its 1936 Cadillac. By 1940 virtually every American automaker had switched
to Phillips screws. |
| Boulder Dam | |
|
In 1930, construction began on Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam. |
|
| Radio compass | |
|
In 1920, a device known as the radio compass was used for the first time
on a U.S. Navy airplane near Norfolk, Virginia on this day. |
|
| Travelers cheque | |
|
In 1891, a patent was granted for the travelers cheque |
|
| Cartridge-loading machine | |
|
In 1885, G. Moore Peters of Xenia, OH, patented the cartridge-loading machine. |
|
| Faraday on River Thames pollution | |
(source) |
In 1855, a letter
from Michael Faraday in The Times
newspaper,
London, described the
polluted
state of the River Thames he had observed on a boat trip: "The whole
of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid. In order to test the degree
of opacity, I ... dropped [pieces of card] into the water at every pier
the boat came to; before they had sunk an inch below the surface they were
indistinguishable, though the sun shone brightly at the time." His words,
he said, were no exaggeration, they were "the simple truth." He asserted,
"If there be sufficient authority to remove a putrescent pond from the
neighbourhood of a few simple dwellings, surely the river which flows for
so many miles through London ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting
sewer." [Image: 1855 Punch
cartoon of Father Thames greeting Faraday.] |
| Goldbach's conjecture | |
(source) |
In 1742, the Russian mathematician Christian
Goldbach dated a letter to Leonhard
Euler in which he presented his famous conjecture. Stated in modern
terms, Goldberg's conjecture proposes that "Every even natural number greater
than 2 is equal to the sum of two prime numbers." It has been checked by
computer for vast numbers - up to at least 4 x 1014 - but still
remains unproved.
Goldbach also studied infinite sums, the theory of curves and the theory
of equations.« [Image:
Letter to Euler, in which Goldbach presented his conjecture.] |
| Isaac Newton receives degree | |
|
In 1668, Sir Isaac Newton received his M.A. from Trinity College in Cambridge. |
|
| Chocolate | |
|
In 1550, Europe introduced the first chocolate. |
|
