| JULY 28 - BIRTHS | |
| Gerd Faltings | |
(source) |
Born 28 July 1954
Gerd Faltings is a German mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal, the highest honour that a young mathematician can receive, in 1986, primarily for his proof of the Mordell Conjecture which he achieved using methods of arithmetic algebraic geometry. He has also been closely linked with the work leading to the final proof of Fermat's Last Theorem by Andrew Wiles. In 1983 Faltings proved that for every n > 2 there are at most a finite number of coprime integers x, y, z with xn + yn = zn. This was a major step but a proof that the finite number was 0 in all cases did not seem likely to follow by extending Falting's arguments. However, Faltings was the natural person that Wiles turned to when he wanted an opinion on the correctness of his repair of his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 1994. |
| Baruch S. Blumberg | |
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Born 28 July 1925
American research physician whose discovery of an antigen that provokes antibody response against hepatitis B led to the development by other researchers of a successful vaccine against the disease. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 with D. Carleton Gajdusek for their work on the origins and spread of infectious viral... |
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| Jacques Piccard | |
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Born 28 July 1922
Jacques (-Ernest-Jean) Piccard is a Swiss oceanic engineer, economist, and physicist, who helped his father, Auguste Piccard, build the bathyscaphe for deep-sea exploration and who also invented the mesoscaphe, an undersea vessel for exploring middle depths. Made deepest ocean dive ever at 35,800 feet in 1960. |
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| Charles Townes | |
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Born 28 July 1915
Charles Hard Townes is an American physicist, joint winner with the Soviet physicists Aleksandr M. Prokhorov and Nikolay G. Basov of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964 for his role in the invention of the maser and the laser. eb |
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| Sir Grahame Douglas Clark | |
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Born 28 July 1907; died 12 Sep 1995
Sir (John) Grahame Douglas Clark was a British archaeologist and authority on the prehistoric age in northwestern Europe known as the Mesolithic Period (8000-2700 BC) |
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| Earl S. Tupper | |
(source) |
Born 28 July 1907; died 5 Oct 1983
American manufacturer Earl Tupper, inventor of Tupperware, was born in New Hampshire. In the 1930's, Tupper invented a flexible, lightweight material that was used to make plastic gas masks during World War II. He then turned his attention to consumer products and created Tupperware - a line of plastic, airtight food storage containers. Sales languished in stores until it was discovered that home demonstrations better proved the value of the product, and thus, the Tupperware Party was born. It has since become a global institution in more than 100 countries. |
| Charles Dillon Perrine | |
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Born 28 July 1867
U.S. astronomer who discovered the sixth and seventh moons of Jupiter in 1904 and 1905, respectively. In 1904 he published a calculation of the solar parallax (a measure of the Earth-Sun distance) based on observations of the minor planet Eros during one of its close approaches to the Earth. |
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| JULY 28 - DEATHS | |
| Francis Crick | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 2004 (born 8 June 1916)
Francis Harry Compton Crick was a British biophysicist, who, with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, received the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their determination of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the chemical substance ultimately responsible for hereditary control of life functions. Crick and Watson began their collaboration in 1951, and published their paper on the double helix structure on 2 Apr 1953 in Nature. This accomplishment became a cornerstone of genetics and was widely regarded as one of the most important discoveries of 20th-century biology.  What
mad pursuit: A personal view of scientific discovery,
by Francis Crick. |
| Abraham Pais | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 2000 (born 19 May 1918)
Dutch-American physicist and science historian whose research became the building blocks of the theory of elemental particles. He wrote Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, which is considered the definitive Einstein biography. In Holland, his Ph.D. in physics was awarded on 9 Jul 1941, five days before a Nazi deadline banning Jews from receiving degrees. Later, during WW II, while in hiding to evade the Gestapo, he worked out ideas in quantum electrodynamics that he later shared when working with Niels Bohr (Jan - Aug 1946). In Sep 1946, he went to the U.S. to work with Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton, where Pais contributed to the foundations of the modern theory of particle physics. |
| Roger Tory Peterson | |
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Died 28 July 1996 (born 28 Aug 1908)
American ornithologist, author, conservationist, and wildlife artist whose field books on birds, beginning with A Field Guide to the Birds (1934; 4th ed. 1980), did much in the United States and Europe to stimulate public interest in bird study. |
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| Colin Macmillan Turnbull | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 1994 (born 23 Nov 1924)
English-born naturalized (1959) American anthropologist who gained fame with his book The Forest People (1962), a detailed study of the Mbuti Pygmies, a tribe in Zaire with whom he lived in affectionate intimacy for several years. In 1972, he wrote his most controversial book, The Mountain People, describing the Ik, an obscure nomadic tribe of hunters on the Kenya-Uganda border. They were living on the brink of starvation and cultural extinction, surviving (in diminishing numbers). Within one generation they had changed to a gross ethic of selfishness, having discarded love and morality. After the death of his African-American partner of 30 years, Turnbull retreated to a Buddhist monastery where he lived out his remaining years. 
"In
the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull" by
Roy Richard Grinker |
| Otto Hahn | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 1968 (born 8 Mar 1879)
German chemist who, with the radiochemist Fritz Strassmann, is credited with the discovery of nuclear fission. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 and shared the Enrico Fermi Award in 1966 with Strassmann and Lise Meitner. Element 105 carries the name hahnium in recognition of his work. |
| Sir Flinders Petrie | |
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Died 28 July 1942 (born 3 June 1853)
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist who made valuable contributions to the techniques and methods of field excavation and invented a sequence dating method that enabled reconstruction of history from the remains of ancient cultures. He studied ancient British remains at Stonehenge (1875-80), then investigated pyramids at Giza and other Egyptian antiquities (1880-1914). He developed a principle of sequence dating by potsherds (1890). In 1895, he discovered remains of a prehistoric race at Nagada (1895). The stele of Merneptah he uncovered at Thebes in 1896 contained the earliest known Egyptian reference to Israel. He wrote The Formation of the Alphabet (1912). |
| William James Mayo | |
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Died 28 July 1939 (born 29 Jun 1861)
American surgeon who co-founded the Mayo Clinic with his brother. |
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| Joseph Lee | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 1937 (born 7 Mar 1862)
Inventor and "Father of the American playground movement," who introduced the first contemporary neighborhood playground in the U.S. Born to a wealthy Boston family, Lee believed that with fortune comes responsibility. To counter social problems of the time, he promoted recreation activities as nurturing experiences. A Boston charity, copying a German practice, established sand-pile play areas among the Boston tenements. In the early 1890’s, Lee extended this idea by establishing his own playground for research and demonstration purposes. In speeches and articles Lee supported the spread of the playground movement across the U.S. |
| Jan Evangelista Purkinje | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 1869 (born 17 Dec 1787)
Czech pioneer of experimental physiology whose investigations in the fields of histology, embryology and pharmacology helped to create a modern understanding of the eye and vision, brain and heart function, mammalian reproduction and the composition of cells. In 1837, Purkinje described not only clusters of beautiful drop-like cells, but also subtle elongated fiber-like processes in their vicinity, which seemed to be peculiar to the nervous system. Purkinje was the first to use the microtome, potassium bichromate and Canada balsam in the preparation of histological slides for microscopy. Purkinje introduced the scientific terms plasma, a component of blood, and protoplasm, used to describe young animal embryos. |
| Gaspard Monge | |
(source) |
Died 28 July 1818 (born 9 May 1748)
French mathematician who was one of the founders of descriptive geometry (the mathematics of projecting solid figures onto a plane, upon which modern engineering drawing is based) and the application of the techniques of analysis to the theory of curvature. The latter ultimately led to the revolutionary work of Georg Riemann on geometry and curvature. He became a close friend of Napoleon and was appointed minister for the navy (1792-93), but was stripped of all honours on the restoration of the Bourbons. He died in poverty. |
| John Speed | |
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Died 28 July 1629
Cartographer, died London. |
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| JULY 28 - EVENTS | |
| Trans-Alaska pipeline | |
In 1977, the 799-mile trans-Alaska pipeline began full operation as the
first oil from Prudhoe Bay arrived at Valdez at 11:02 p.m. |
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| Mailbox patent | |
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In 1942, L.A. Thatcher of Stamford, CT received a patent this day - by
mail. Appropriately, Mr. Thatcher had patented a coin-operated mailbox.
When money was inserted, a meter stamped the envelope. |
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| Tricycle crosses English Channel | |
(source) |
In 1883, Mr. Ferry pedalled a water
tricycle across the English Channel. He started from Dover about nine
o"clock in the morning, and arrived at Calais in less than eight hours.
The distance as the crow flies was twenty miles, but on account of the
currents, the effort required was considerably increased. The construction
of his vehicle was illustrated in La Nature. Bulky paddlewheels
(probably needing more displacement than shown) replace wheels of a land
tricycle. The small wheel behind acted as a rudder. The event was reported
in Science, 14 Dec 1883. |
| Metric system | |
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In 1866, the metric system was authorized for the standardization of weights
and measures throughout the United States this day. |
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| Alkali Works Act | |
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In 1863, in consequence of the injury to vegetation produced by the alkali
works in the English counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, the Alkali Works
Act was passed "for the more effectual condensation [95 per cent] of muriatic
acid gas" (or hydrochloric acid). It came into operation 1 Jan 1864, and
proved successful. It was re-enacted in 1868, and amended 1874, 1881 and
1892. [*
p.40] |
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| Fingerprints ID | |
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In 1858, fingerprints were used as a means of identification for the first
time. |
| First eclipse photo | |
(source) |
In 1851, a total solar eclipse was first captured
on a daguerreotype photograph by Busch and Berkowski, at the Royal Observatory
in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia). It showed a slight
but distinct impression of the corona duringthe total eclipse. Berkowski,
a local daguerrotypist whose first name was never published, observed at
the Royal Observatory. A small 6-cm refracting telescope was attached to
a 15.8-cm Fraunhofer heliometer and a 84-second exposure was taken shortly
after the beginning of totality.« [Image:
Fraunhoffer heliometer at the Royal Observatory of Königsberg c. 1851
which was used to make first photograph of a total solar eclipse.] |
| Potatoes | |
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In 1586, Sir Thomas Harriot introduced potatoes to Europe. |
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