July 20 - Today In Science History

JULY 20 - BIRTHS
Gerd Binnig
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1947 German-born physicist who co-invented the scanning tunneling microscope with Heinrich Rohrer. They shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ernst Ruska, who designed the first electron microscope. This instrument is not a true microscope ( i.e. an instrument that gives a direct image of an object) since it is based on the principle that the structure of a surface can be studied using a stylus that scans the surface at a fixed distance from it. Vertical adjustment of the stylus is controlled by means of what is termed the tunnel effect - hence the name of the instrument.
Robert D. Maurer
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1924 American research physicist, who with his colleagues at Corning Glass Works, Dr. Donald B. Keck and Dr. Peter Schultz invented fused silica optical waveguide - optical fiber. This was a breakthrough creating a revolution in telecommunications, capable of carrying 65,000 times more information than conventional copper wire. In 1970, Maurer, Keck, and Schultz solved a problem that had previously stumped scientists around the world. They designed and produced the first optical fiber with optical losses low enough for wide use in telecommunications. The light loss was limited to 20 decibels per kilometer (at least one percent of the light entering a fiber remains after traveling one kilometer). He retired in 1989.
Tadeus Reichstein
	Born 20 Jul 1897; died 1 Aug 1996. Polish-born Swiss chemist who identified the steroid hormones of the adrenal cortex and studied their structure and biological effects. For his role in this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 with Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall.
John Reith
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1889 John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, first Director-General of BBC (1927-38) died in Stonehaven, Grampian. As the BBC's founding father, he looked westwards in the 1920s to America's unregulated, commercial radio, and then east to the fledgling Soviet Union's rigidly controlled state system. Reith's vision was of an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain. the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure. In doing that he believed it would enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC annually invites a leading figure to deliver a series of Reith lectures in his memory using the medium of radio to advance greater public understanding of their field.
Tadeus Reichstein
(source)	Born 20 July 1897 Swiss chemist who, with Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for his discoveries concerning hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects. With his co-workers, Reichstein accomplished the first isolation of four active hormones from the adrenal cortex, the first synthesis of one of them, the proof of the steroid nature of said hormones, and numerous details on the structure and properties of these important bodies. This made synthesis possible, leading to the creation of new medications.
Errett Lobban Cord
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1894; died 1974. U.S. automobile manufacturer, advocate of front-wheel-drive vehicles. Cord, still in his twenties when he arrived at the Auburn Automobile Company, had a talent for seeking and hiring young, innovative minds, full of drive and ambition. Cord was a brilliant, complex industrialist who helped personal and public transportation come of age. He is best known today for Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg automobiles, Cord's greatest talent may have been his unparalleled ability to construct an automotive empire durable enough to thrive during the darkest years of the Great Depression. Photo: 1929 Cord L-29 Sedan, America's first front-drive production car. Built by the Auburn Automobile Company, Auburn, Indiana.
Alberto Santos-Dumont
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1873; died 23 Jul 1932. Alberto Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian aviation pioneer, deemed the Father of Aviation by his countrymen. At the age of 18, Santos-Dumont was sent by his father to Paris where he devoted his time to the study of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. His first spherical balloon made its first ascension in Paris on 4 July 1898. He developed steering capabilities, and in his sixth dirigible on 19 Oct 1901 won the "Deutsch Prize," awarded to the balloonist who circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. He turned to heavier-than-air flight, and on 12 Nov 1906 his 14-BIS airplane flew a distance of 220 meters, height of 6 m. and speed of 37 km/h. to win the "Archdecon Prize." In 1909, he produced his famous "Demoiselle" or "Grasshopper" monoplanes, the forerunners of the modern light plane. Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight by Paul Hoffman
J. J. Sederholm
Granite (source)	Born 20 Jul 1863; died 26 June 1934 Jakob Johannes Sederholm was a pioneering geologist who studied the Precambrian rocks of Finland. He was appointed geologist to the Geological Commission of Finland in 1888, where later he became its director (1893 to 1933). The Precambrian period ran from 3.96 billion to 570 million years ago. Precambrian rocks, called sheilds can only be found today in Africa, Europe, and North America. Not much of these rocks can be found, but the ones that are display evidence of having been altered by intense metamorphosism. The minerals that the sheilds are made of are generally granite, schist, or gneiss.
Georg Elias Müller
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1850; died Dec 1934. Georg Elias Nathanael Müller was a German psychologist whose research work encompassed four principal areas: psychophysical method, memory, thought psychology, and color perception theory. The psychophysics anticipated the color theory, which was founded on Hering. The memory work led into the thought psychology, which was founded on Herbart and Külpe. Whereas earlier in his career his published works lacked original data, he sharpened his approach and became known as the methodologist of psychological experimentation. The experiments carried out in his lab were the gold standard of experimental results. He was directed one of the major centres of psychological research at the University of Göttingen (1881-1921).«
Julius Cohnheim
(source)	Born 20 July 1839; died 1884 Julius Friedrich Cohnheim was a pioneer of experimental pathology who helped determine the morbid changes that occur in animal tissue affected by inflammation, tuberculosis, and other disease states. He demonstrated that inflammation was an active dynamic process. He was the first to scientifically classify tumors the way we still do today (ex. carcinomas, fibroma, sarcoma). Cohnheim proposed the first great theory of cancer's origin, the theory of embryonal rests. He thought more germ cells are produced with a developing embryo than are needed to form any given part and that cancer's development involves this excess material.
Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt
	Born 20 July 1836; died 22 Feb 1925. English physician, the inventor of the short clinical thermometer. The need for suitable equipment to measure the progress of a fever by temperature at the bedside was solved in 1866 when Allbutt invented the conveniently portable six-inch clinical thermometer, able to take a temperature in five minutes. It replaced a foot-long model that required 20 minutes to determine a patient's temperature. His investigations also led to the improved treatment of arterial diseases when he proved than angina is caused by the narrowing of the coronary artery. Image: Allbutt, detail of a portrait by Sir William Orpen (EB)
Sir William Bowman
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1816; died 1892. (1st Baronet) was an English surgeon and histologist who obtained a European reputation for medical research long before he was thirty years of age. He described (1842) the histologic structure of the nephron, the functional unit of the kidney, where the process of of urine takes place as a by-product of blood filtration that is carried on in the kidney. The "Bowman's capsule" of the kidney carries his name. The kidney contains millions of very tiny sacs called Bowman's capsules that filter blood to produce urine. He also made important discoveries concerning the structure and function of the eye and of striated muscle. He collaborated with Todd in writing The Physiological Anatomy.
Sir Richard Owen
(source)	Born 20 Jul 1804; died 18 Dec 1892. English anatomist and paleontologist who is remembered for his contributions to the study of fossil animals and for his strong opposition to the views of Charles Darwin. He created the word "Dinosaur" meaning "terrible reptile" (1842). Owen synthesized French anatomical work, especially from Cuvier and Geoffroy, with German transcendental anatomy. He gave us many of the terms still used today in anatomy and evolutionary biology, including "homology". In 1856, he was appointed Superintendent of the British Museum (Natural History). Image: Detail from portrait by William Holman Hunt.
Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth
Gawthorpe Hall (source)	Born 20 Jul 1804 (1st Baronet, original surname Kay) was a physician, public-health reformer, and chief founder of the English system of publicly financed elementary education. A medical graduate of Edinburgh University, he was also a cholera doctor in Manchester, a pioneer social scientist and town planner, an assistant Poor Law commissioner, the manager of a large landed estate (Gawthorpe Hall), a would-be politician and a novelist. His surname, Kay, changed in 1842 upon marriage to Janet Shuttleworth. His turbulent political, personal and family life is fascinating in itself and, in addition, sheds light on many aspects of nineteenth century social history.

Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages:

Today in Science History Science Store
Click here to browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books



JULY 20 - DEATHS

Guglielmo Marconi
(source)	Died 20 Jul 1937 (born 25 Apr 1874) Italian inventor, born in Bologna. He was a physicist, who invented the wireless telegraph in 1935 known today as radio. Nobel laureate (1909). In 1894, Marconi began experimenting on the "Hertzian Waves" (the radio waves Hertz first produced in his laboratory a few years earlier). Lacking support from the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, Marconi turned to the British Post Office. Encouraging demonstrations in London and on Salisbury Plain followed. Marconi obtained the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy, in 1897, and opened the world's first radio factory at Chelmsford, England in 1898. In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy."
Andrey Andreyevich Markov
(source)	Died 20 Jul 1922 (born 14 Jun 1856) Russian mathematician who helped to develop the theory of stochastic processes, especially those called Markov chains, sequences of random variables in which the future variable is determined by the present variable but is independent of the way in which the present state arose from its predecessors. (For example, the probability of winning at the game of Monopoly can be determined using Markov chains.) His work based on the study of the probability of mutually dependent events has been developed and widely applied to the biological and social sciences.
Albrecht von Gräfe
(source)	Died 20 Jul 1879 (born 22 May 1828) Albrecht Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst von Gräfe was a German eye surgeon, who is regarded as a founder of scientific opthalmology. He was also an authority in diseases of the nerve and brain. He diagnosed sudden visual loss due to retinal artery embolism, optic retinitis and was one of the first to treat glaucoma successfully. He described a large number of new findings, among them stase papillas in brain tumors, retardation of the eyelid in Basedow's disease and introduced a new operation for cataract - iridictomy. In his short career (he died at age 42), von Gräfe performed more than 10,000 eye operations, and was undoubtedly the most important ophthalmologist of the 19th century.«
John Playfair
(source)	Died 20 Jul 1819 (born 10 Mar 1748) Scottish mathematician, physicist, and geologist who is remembered for his axiom that two intersecting straight lines cannot both be parallel to a third straight line. His Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802) gave strong support to James Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, essential to a proper understanding of geology. Playfair was the first scientist to recognise that a river cuts its own valley, and he cited British examples of the gradual, fluvial origins of valleys, to challenge the catastrophic theory (based on the Biblical Flood in Genesis) that was still widely accepted. He was also the first to link the relocation of loose rocks to the movement of glaciers. Playfair published texts on geometry, physics, and astronomy.«



JULY 20 - EVENTS

Inventure Place
(source)	In 1995, Inventure Place, home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is dedicated in Akron, Ohio (opens to the public 3 days later). The National Inventors Hall of Fame was established in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and what is now the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations. The board of trustees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame decided on 3 Sep 1987 to relocate in Akron with a new building. According to their literature, "Inventure Place is dedicated to the creative process. We want to inspire you: through hands-on exhibits, interactive programs, special events, and every other fantastic experience we can dream up. At Inventure Place you are an artist, scientist, inventor, musician, tinkerer, film maker, discoverer, and creative genius. Discover the Inventor in You!"
Mars landing
(source)	In 1976, America's "Viking I Lander" spacecraft, launched 20 Aug 1975, made its successful, first-ever landing on Mars at Chryse Planitia, and began transmitting pictures. Later, a robot arm that could scoop up samples of material and deposit them into on-board experiments, investigated the hint of life on Mars. Both weathered top soil and deeper soil samples were tested. The image shows Chryse Planitia looking NW over the Viking 1 Lander. An antenna is at upper right. The wide, low plain is covered with large rocks, loose sand and dust. The image was taken on 30 August 1976, a little over a month after landing. Pictures from the mission included views of the Mars surface taken from the Viking 1 Orbiter from space.
Man walks on moon
(source)	In 1969, Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon, after their lunar module separated from the command module and landed on the lunar surface at 09:18 GMT/4:18 EDT on the Sea of Tranquillity. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin establish Tranquility Base while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface at 10:56 ET and proclaimed, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Internationally, nearly 700 million television viewers witnessed the event live as it happened.« [Image: Astronaut Edwin Aldrin setting up a seismometer on the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong took this picture, which shows the Lunar Module in the background.]
Polaris missile test
(source)	On 20 July 1960, the submerged USS George Washington off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Fla., executed the first test launch of a pair of Polaris missile from a submarine at sea. The target was more than 1,100 miles away. The Polaris has a designed range of 1,500 nautical miles and is capable of being launched when the submarine is hidden far below the surface. The George Washington was the first Fleet Balistic Missile submarine. Fitted with 16 tubes for Polaris A1 missile, the submarine was commissioned 30 Dec 1959, and de-commissioned 24 Jan 1985. The "Georgefish" and her crews made 55 deterrence patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in her 25 year career.