| JULY 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Joseph F. Engelberger | |
 Born 26
July 1926
American engineer who, with George Devol, developed the first industrial robot in the United States, the Unimate, in the 1950's. Engelberger is often referred to as the "Father of Robotics." When he and his partner founded Unimation in 1956, the company was the first major manufacturer of industrial robotic arms in the U.S. By 1962, they had installed their first industrial robots at the auto manufacturer, General Motors.« |
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| John R. Whinnery | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1916
John Roy Whinnery is an American electrical engineer known for his work on microwave theory and laser experimentation. He worked on the problem of He-Ne laser modulation, the transmission of laser light for optical communication and photo thermal effects. Later he changed his research field to quantum electronics and opto-electronics. He co-authored the classic textbook, Fields and Waves in Communication Electronics, before he had a doctoral degree while working 6 days a week in microwaves at General Electric during WW II. His current research interest is communications applications of lasers, with emphasis on short-pulse phenomena. |
| Reuben Leon Kahn | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1887; died 1979.
Major Reuben L. Kahn was an American immunologist best known for his investigations of blood reactions, while a member of the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps, which led him to develop a procedure that became an efficient test for syphilis (1918). This is now the standard serological test. |
| Paul Walden | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1863; died 24 Jan 1957
Paul Walden was a Russian-German chemist. While teaching at Riga, he discovered the famous Walden inversion of malic acid, by which two varieties of the malic acid molecule could be formed. One would rotate light passed through it polarized in a clockwise fashion, and the other form would do so counterclockwise. He also, in later life, published a book on the history of chemistry (1949). |
| Carl Jung | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1875; died 6 Jun 1961
Dr. Carl (Gustav) Jung was a Swiss psychologist. He met and collaborated with Freud in Vienna in (1907-13), but then developed his own theories, which he called "analytical psychology" to distinguish them from Freud's psychoanalysis or Adler's individual psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of the extroverted and introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. The "father" of psychoanalysis, his work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion. He held chairs at Basel and Zürich. |
| Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1859; died 1940.
Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla was a French engineer who was an early advocate of the building of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama and chief organizer of the project. He was instrumental in getting the waterway routed through Panama instead of Nicaragua. He was a leader in the conspiracy that successfully wrested Panama from Colombia. As minister of the new Panamanian republic, he negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty (18 Nov 1903) that gave the U.S. perpetual use and control of the waterway in the Canal Zone for $10,000,000 and an annual fee of $250,000. Image: Signature page of Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty. |
| Robert Remak | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1815; died 29 Aug 1865.
Robert Remak was a German embryologist and neurologist, born in Posen. While in medical practice, he researched unpaid at university. (As a Jew, he was barred from teaching.) He discovered the fibres of Remak (1830), nonmedullated nerve fibres (1838), and named the three germ layers he discovered of the early embryo: the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm (1842). In 1844 he discovered the nerve cells in the heart now called Remak's ganglia and provided the first illustration of the 6-layered cortex. He was a pioneer in the use of electrotherapy for the treatment of nervous diseases. He finally became the first Jew to teach at university (1847), but even promotion to assistant professor in 1859 did not reflect his eminence. |
| Isaac Babbitt | |
(source) |
Born 26
July 1799; died 26 May 1862.
American inventor of an alloy (babbitt's metal: tin 89%,antimony 7%, copper 4%.) widely used for friction reducing babbitt bearings. In 1924, he founded a company that has become Reed & Barton, the nation's oldest independent silversmiths. From 1834, he was superintendent of Alger's Foundry and Ordnance Works (South Boston Iron Works), where he cast the first brass cannon made in the U.S. He patented his successful invention of a journal box for train axles 17 Jul 1739, which suggested the bearings alloy. |
| JULY 26 - DEATHS | |
| William A. Mitchell | |
(source) |
 Died
26 July 2004 (born 21 Oct 1911)
American food scientist who invented Pop Rocks candy, Cool Whip, the orange drink mix Tang, and quick-set Jell-O Gelatin. He developed a tapioca substitute during WW II since tapioca itself was limited in supply. For 35 years, he worked worked as a chemist for General Foods Corp, and held more than 70 patents. Pop Rocks - exploding candy - was patented in 1956, but not marketed until 1975. Its novelty quickly caught the public's attention. It was an accidental discovery while experimenting to produce an instant soft drink. It is a hard candy manufactured by pressurizing carbon dioxide at 600 psi in a candy syrup at 150 °C. When cooled and solidified it traps small pockets of carbon dioxide that "explode" in a person's mouth. |
| Kunihiko Kodaira | |
(source) |
Died
26 July 1997 (born 16 Mar 1915)
Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 for his work in algebraic geometry and complex analysis. Kodaira's work includes applications of Hilbert space methods to differential equations which was an important topic in his early work and was largely the result of influence by Weyl. Through the influence of Hodge, he also worked on harmonic integrals and later he applied this work to problem in algebraic geometry. Another important area of Kodaira's work was to apply sheaves to algebraic geometry. In around 1960 he became involved in the classification of compact, complex analytic spaces. One of the themes running through much of his work is the Riemann-Roch theorem. He won the 1985 Wolf Prize. |
| Benjamin Whorf | |
(source) |
Died
26 July 1941 (born 24 Apr 1897)
Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American anthropologist and linguist, who originally trained as a chemical engineer (1918), and began work as a fire prevention engineer. As an avocation, he pursued anthropology and studied native American languages. He became well known for his study of the Hopi language. With Sapir, he developed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis concerning the way that language affects thought. This theory proposed that the language a person speaks (independent of the culture in which he or she resides) affects the way that he or she thinks, meaning that the structure of the language itself affects cognition. His studies, though not all were proven, helped future linguists in their studies. He died at only 44 years old, due to cancer.« |
| Henri-Léon Lebesgue | |
| Died
26 July 1941 (born 28 Jun 1875)
French mathematician whose generalization of the Riemann integral revolutionized the field of integration. He was maître de conférences (lecture master) at the University of Rennes until 1906, when he went to Poitiers, first as chargé de cours (assistant lecturer) of the faculty of sciences and later as... |
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| Francis Edward Elmore | |
 |
Died
26 July 1932 (born 9 Nov 1864)
British technologist who, with his brother Alexander Stanley Elmore, jointly developed floatation processes to separate valuable ore, such as copper, from the gangue (worthless rock) with which it is associated when mined. In 1898, they obtained a patent for the first practical equipment (British patent No. 21,948). Pulverized ore is mixed with water and brought into contact with thick oil. The oil entraps the metallic constituents, which are afterwards separated, and gangue passed away with the water. They installed their equipment at mines in north Wales, northern England, and at the Broken Hill lead and zinc mines in Australia. Today, floatation methods remain vital in the mining industry, processing millions of tons of ores each year.  |
| Gottlob Frege | |
(source) |
Died
26 July 1925 (born 8 Nov 1848)
(Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician and logician, founder of modern symbolic logic and first to put forward the view that mathematics is reducible to logic. He extended Boole's work by inventing logical symbols (symbols for "or"," if-then", etc.) that improvedon the syllogistic logic it replaced. He also worked on general questions of philosophical logic and semantics. His theory of meaning, based on makig a distinction between what a linguistic term refers to and what it expresses, is still influential. Frege tried to provide a rigorous foundation for mathematics on the basis of purely logical principles, but abandoned the attempt when Bertrand Russell, on whose work he had a profound influence, pointed out a paradox that made the system inconsistent. |
| John Friend | |
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(source) |
Died
26 July 1728 (born 1675)
English physician and politician. Though he was not one of the really great physicians, professionally he was highly esteemed by his contemporaries both in his own country and on the continent, He was not only an elegant scholar but a man of genuine learning, as shown in his History of Physic. Friend dabbled in politics and planned the above work while committed to the Tower of London on a charge of high treason, a charge of which he was innocent. Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister at the time, suffered much from renal calculi and called in Mead, a great friend of Friend. Mead refused to treat Walpole until Friend was released, and this was speedily arranged! It is thought that he suggested the creation of the Christ Church Science Laboratory at Oxford Univeristy. At the time, he was physician to Queen Caroline. He gave a course in Chemistry at Oxford University in 1704. He died in London. |
| JULY 26 - EVENTS | |
| Moon rock sampled | |
(source) |
In 1969, scientists had a first look at the 46
pounds of rocks
that Apollo 11 astronauts brought back from the moon in SRC's: sample return
containers. A "rock box" was opened for the first time in the Vacuum Laboratory
of the Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory, bldg 37,
at 3:55 p.m., July 26, 1969. Image: A close-up view of Apollo 11 lunar
sample no.10046.
The rock has glass-lined pits and vugs throughout the surface area. Scientists
have labeled it a microbreccia, with lithic fragments up to a few millimeters
in size. Photographed 08/04/69. |
| First Los Angeles smog | |
(source) |
In 1943, Los Angeles, California, suffered a smog
so bad that visibility downdown was limited to three blocks. The noxious
smog appeared during a heat wave, causing discomfort to throats and stinging
eyes. A butadiene manufacturer was blamed, and temporarily closed, but
it became clear it was not the primary source as smog conditions continued.
From Oct 1943, the Smoke and Fumes Commission appointed by the city studied
the problem. The causes it named were many: locomotive smoke, diesel truck
fumes, back-yard rubbish burning plus the mountain topography, stagnant
winds and atmospheric temperature inversions. On 14
Oct 1947, the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District, the
first in the nation, was created.« [Image:
The first recorded photograph of LA smog, 26 July 1943] |
| Curie marriage | |
1904 |
In 1895, Pierre Curie married Marie Sklodowska (Curie) in Sceaux, France.
In 1896, Marie Curie decided to investigate the Becquerel discovery of
the radiactivity of uranium, as a research topic for her doctoral thesis.
In 1897 she gave birth to a daughter, Irène. Pierre subsequently
followed her into research into radioactivity (1898). |
| Benjamin Franklin | |
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In 1775, Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General. |
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