| JULY 21 - BIRTHS | |
| Rudolph A. Marcus | |
(source) |
 Born 21
July 1923
Canadian-born American chemist, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the theory of electron-transfer reactions in chemical systems. The Marcus theory describes, and makes predictions concerning, such widely differing phenomena as the fixation of light energy by green plants (photosynthesis), cell metabolism, photochemical production of fuel, chemiluminescence ("cold light"), the conductivity of electrically conducting polymers, corrosion, the methodology of electrochemical synthesis and analysis, and more. |
| George Frederick Dick | |
CDC Poster (source) |
Born 21
July 1881; died 10 Oct 1967.
American physician and pathologist who, with his wife, Gladys Henry Dick, isolated the hemolytic streptococcus that was the cause of, and developed an immunization to treat, the dangerous scarlet fever (1924). They also developed the Dick test (1925) a test to determine susceptibility or immunity to scarlet fever by an injection of scarlet fever toxin. They purified a soluble extoxin from hemolytic Streptococccus pyogenes and use it as a diagnostic. They use Koch's postulates to show that scarlet fever is caused by streptocoocci, recover the bacteria from all cases of the disease and infect others with cultures of the bacterium. The Dick test, an in vivo skin test, is rarely used today, measures host antibody response. |
| Milan Stefánik | |
Czechoslovakia |
Born 21
July 1880; died 1919.
Milan (Rastislav) Stefánik Slovakian astronomer and general who, with Tomás Masaryk and Edvard Benes, from abroad, helped found the new nation of Czechoslovakia by winning much-needed support from the Allied powers for its creation as a post-WWI republic, (1918-19). Before the war, the famous observatory in Meudon near Paris sent a scientific expedition to the 4810m high Mont Blanc. He joined the expedition, which was paid for by the French government to go to the roof of Europe. |
| Henri-Victor Regnault | |
Steam (Data) |
Born 21
July 1810; died 19 Jan 1878.
French chemist and physicist noted for his work on the properties of gases. His invaluable work was done as a skilful, thorough, patient experimenter in determining the specific heat of solids, liquids, gases, and the vapour-tensions of water and other volatile liquids, as well as their latent heat at different temperatures. He corrected Mariotte's law of gases concerning the variation of the density with the pressure, determined the coefficients of expansion of air and other gases, devised new methods of investigation and invented accurate instruments. Two laws governing the specific heat of gases are named after him. |
| Georg Brandt | |
 |
Born 21
July 1694; died 29 Apr 1768.
Swedish chemist who was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times which he isolated and named cobalt (1730). He published (1733) findings on the composition and solubility of arsenic compounds then researched antimony, bismuth, mercury, and zinc. His work on methods of producing hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric acids was published in 1741 and 1743. One of the first chemists to completely forswear alchemy, he devoted his later years to exposing fraudulent alchemical processes for producing gold. Ancient Egyptians used tiny amounts of cobalt to make their glass blue. Cobalt is added to steel to make it harder and have a higher melting point. Traces of it are found in meat and dairy products as vitamin B-12. [Note: Brandt's birthdate is given as 21 Jul 1694 in Dictionary of Scientific Biography and Encyclopedia Britannica, but as 26 Jun 1694 in The Discovery of the Elements by Mary Elvira Weeks (1934).] |
| Jean Picard | |
|
Born 21
July 1620; died 12 July 1682.
Astronomer, born La Flêche, France. Picard is regarded as the founder of modern astronomy in France. He introduced new methods, improved the old instruments, and added new devices, such as Huygens' pendulum clock to record times and time intervals. Jean Picard was the first to put the telescope to use for the accurate measurement of small angles, making use of Gascoigne's micrometer. His most important work was the first measurement of the circumference of the earth. He used the method of Eratosthenes, but with greater accuracy. The concept behind neon signs began in 1675, when astronomer Jean Picard observed a glow in a barometer. |
| JULY 21 - DEATHS | |
| Edward B. Lewis | |
(source) |
 Died
21 July 2004 (born 20 May 1918)
American developmental geneticist who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the functions that control early embryonic development with co-winners Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric F. Wieschaus who identified and classified 15 key genes that determine the body plan and formation of body segments of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Lewis studied the next step, the homeotic genes that govern the development of a larval segment into a specific body segment. (Homeotic means that something has been changed into the likeness of something else.) Lewis found a co-linearity in time and space between the order of the genes in the bithorax complex and their effect regions in the segments. |
| Alan Shepard | |
(source) |
Died
21 July 1998 (born 18 Nov 1923)
Alan (Bartlett) Shepard, Jr. was America's first man in space and one of only 12 humans who walked on the Moon. Named as one of the nation's original seven Mercury astronauts in 1959, Shepard became the first American into space on 5 May 1961, riding a Redstone rocket on a 15-minute suborbital flight that took him and his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule 115 miles in altitude and 302 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, FL. (His flight came three weeks after the launch of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who on 12 Apr 1961, became the first human space traveler on a one-orbit flight lasting 108 minutes.) Although the flight of Freedom 7 was brief, it was a major step for the U.S. in a race with the USSR. |
| Yrjo Vaisala | |
(source) |
Died
21 July 1971 (born 6 Sep 1891)
Finnish meteorologist and astronomer regarded as the "father of space research in Finland," As early as 1946, he had suggested that geodetic triangulation at that time being done with rockets or balloons with onboard flashes could better be accomplished by artificial satellites. By the next year he was talking about artificial satellites being used for solar system exploration. In the 1950's he founded Tuorla Observatory and went on to build a tunnel under the hill at Tuorla Observatory to enable making interference measurements to accurately define the length standard for geodesy. He was outstanding in his ability to produce excellent optics for telescopes. Vaisala, together with Liisa Oterman at Tuorla, outpaced the rest of the world in their discovery of minor planets.« |
| Sir Herbert Atkinson Barker | |
1908 (source) |
Died 21 July 1950 (born 21 Apr 1869)
English osteopath and manipulative surgeon, who treated knee pain and cartilage problems in top sports players as well as the general public. Barker treated patients on his yacht in the Channel Isles. He maintained that a knee cartilage operation was unnecessary in a very large proportion of cases and he claimed that manipulation was sufficient without any surgery. The community of Montego Bay, Jamaica, credits the genesis of its tourist trade to the famous chiropractor Sir Herbert Barker in England because he promoted the sea water as having curative powers at the Doctor's Cave bathing club there. (That site had been donated it to the town in 1906 for that purpose by the eccentric physician, Dr. Alexander McCatty.)« [Image right (source) ] |
| Washington Roebling | |
(source) |
Died
21 July 1926 (born 26 May 1837)
U.S. civil engineer under whose direction the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, was completed in 1883. The bridge was designed by Roebling with his father, John Augustus Roebling, from whom he had gained experience building wire-rope suspension bridges. Upon his father's death, he superintended the building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1869-83). He was disabled by decompression sickness after entering a caisson in 1872. He was brought out nearly insensible and his life was saved with difficulty. Because of resulting poor health, he directed operations from his home in Brooklyn overlooking the site. Though he continued to head the family's wire-rope manufacturing business for several years, medical problems forced retirement (1888).  Builders
of the Bridge: The Story of John Roebling and His Son,
by David Barnard Steinman. |
| JULY 21 - EVENTS | |
| Tau neutrino | |
(source) |
In 2000, an international collaboration of scientists at the Department
of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced
the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino,
the third kind of neutrino
known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino
interacting with an atomic nucleus to produce a charged particle called
a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino. The tau (rhymes with "now")
neutrino is the third neutrino of the Standard
Model of elementary particles, a theoretical description that groups
all particles into three generations. Experimenters identify them by recording
neutrino interactions. First generation electron neutrinos were created
in 1956, and second generation muon neutrinos in 1962. |
| Three Mile Island nuclear accident | |
(source) |
In 1982, the first look at
the Three Mile Island Unit 2 partial core meltdown
was recorded by a mini-TV camera. This was the first inspection of the
core made since the nuclear power plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, first
experienced a serious accident
on 28 Mar 1979, due to a loss of water coolant. With the camera nothing
was seen until five feet down - signifying that five feet of the core was
gone. Many fuel rods had melted causing the tubes to break, spilling uranium
to the bottom of the pressure vessel. Thus out of reach of the control
rods, the uranium fission continued. Fifty percent of the core
was destroyed or molten and an estimated twenty tons of uranium pellets
had travelled to the bottom of the pressure vessel.« [Image:
Damage to core showing broken tubes from video camera.]
Three
Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective,
by J. Samuel Walker |
| Mars 4 | |
(source) |
In 1973, the USSR launched Mars
4, on a Proton SL-12/D-1-e booster. It was one of several
Soviet Mars probes - Mars 4, 5,
6,
and 7 - launched in Jul-Aug 1973.
The Mars 4 reached Mars on 10 Feb 1974. Its intended mission was
to be an orbiting station. Sadly, retro-rockets failed to fire, due to
a flawed computer chip, and it flew past within only 2200-km of the planet.
A limited series of pictures and data were returned, including the first
detection of the nightside ionosphere. Equipment on board for its intended
mission included instruments to detect atmospheric hydrogen, carbon dioxide,
ozone, water, magnetic field and surface temperature. The craft remained
in solar orbit, and transmitted interplanetary data back to Earth.« |
| Aswan Dam | |
(source) |
In 1970, the Aswan
High Dam in Egypt was completed after 18 years of work. It is a huge
rockfill dam that lies just north of the border between Egypt and Sudan.
It captures the world's longest river, the Nile, in the world's third largest
reservoir, Lake Nasser. Built with Soviet aid at a cost of $1 billion,
it now produces hydroelectricity meeting 50% of Egypt's power needs. It
holds several years of irrigation reserves, assists multi-cropping, has
increased productivity 20-50%, enormously increased Egypt's arable land,
and overall, increased Egypt's agricultural income by 200%. The embankment
is 111 metres high, with a width of near 1,000 metres. Lake Nasser is 480
long and up to 16 km wide. [Image:
Aswan High Dam, North side.] |
| Moon mission ends | |
(source) |
In 1969, Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin blasted
off from the moon after 21 1/2 hours on the surface and returned to the
command module piloted by Michael Collins. The Lunar
module was comprised of two stages. The decent stage had the landing
gear, and was used as a launch pad for the ascent stage. The ascent stage
was mainly the cabin, and had a fixed thrust engine (15,500-Newton-thrust)
to propel it to 2000 m/s in Lunar orbit for docking. The lunar module's
lower section, left behind, has a plaque mounted upon it, reading, "Here
men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D.
We came in peace for all mankind." |
| Ultrasound diagnosis | |
(source) |
In 1955, Ian Donald made his first investigation
of the use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis. At the research department
of the boiler makers Babock and Wilcox at Renfrew, Scotland, he used an
industrial ultrasonic metal flaw detector to image tumours from human organs.
He knew sonar from his service in WW II. This was a similiar use of reflected
ultrasound to image the internal structure of the sample tissues. With
other engineers, he developed the idea to for practical applications in
the hosital where he worked, including the life-saving diagnosis of a huge,
easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others
as having inoperable stomach cancer which he published
the in The Lancet (7 Jun 1958).« |
| First jet launch from ship | |
(source) |
In 1946, an aviation first took place with the first U.S.
test of the adaptability of jet aircraft to shipboard operations. An
XFD-1 Phantom, piloted by Lieutenant Commander James Davidson made successful
landing and take-offs (deck launched without catapults) from a ship-based
launching platform - the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. The ship had been launched
the previous year, then the biggest ship in the World. |
| Atomic nucleus recoil | |
(source) |
In 1904, a letter
in the journal Nature*, Harriet Brooks
pointed out a peculiar type of volatility shown by an active deposit of
radium immediately after its removal from the emanation. Hahn and Russ
and Markower later showed (1909) that "the effect was due to the recoil
of radium B from the active surface accompanying the expulsion of an alpha-particle
from Radium A. This method of the separation of the elements by recoils
ultimately proved of much importance in disentangling the complicated series
of changes in the radioactive bodies," according to Rutherford (1933).
Thus, Harriet Brooks was probably the first person to observe the recoil
of the atomic nucleus as nuclear particles were emitted during radioactive
decay.
(*vol. 70, p. 270)
Harriet
Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist, by M.F. & G.W.
Rayner-Canham |
| Trans-Siberian railway | |
(source) |
In 1904, after 13 years of work, the 4,607-mile Trans-Siberian
railway was completed and opened
up Siberia to large-scale colonization.Thus the gap was reduced between
the industrial development of Russia and that of Europe and also expanded
the Russian industrial proletariat, which was concentrated in a few large
cities. The railway linked European Russia with the Pacific coast. Its
construction began in 1891, on the initiative of Count
Sergei Yulyevich Witte (1849–1915), and was completed in 1905. The
longest railroad in the world, the 8000 km (5000 mi) Trans-Siberian crosses
a vast area made up mostly of the Asian part of the former Soviet Union. |
