| AUGUST 6 - BIRTHS | |
| Jon Postel | |
(source) |
 Born 6
Aug 1943; died 16 Oct 1998.
Jonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who played a pivotal role in creating and administering the Internet. In the late 1960s, Postel was a graduate student developing the ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet for use by the U.S. Dept. of Defense. As director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which he formed, Postel was a creator of the Internet's address system. The Internet grew rapidly in the 1990s, and there was concern about its lack of regulation. Shortly before his death, Postel submitted a proposal to the U.S. government for an international nonprofit organization that would oversee the Internet and its assigned names and numbers. He died at age 55, from complications after heart surgery. |
| Sir Alexander Fleming | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1881; died 11 Mar 1955.
Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish bacteriologist, born in Darvel, Strathclyde, who discovered penicillin. In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he observed that mould had developed accidently on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He experimented further and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. The active substance, which he named penicillin, initiated the highly effective practice of antibiotic therapy for infectious diseases. Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who both (from 1939) continued Fleming's work.  Alexander
Fleming: The Man and the Myth, by Gwyn MacFarlane. |
| James Henry Greathead | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1844; died 21 Oct 1896.
English civil engineer, born in South Africa, who improved tunneling shield methods which he applied during construction of the London Underground. The technique was originated by Marc Brunel and subsequently modified by Peter W. Barlow as a smaller shield of circular cross section. Having learned its use from Barlow, Greathouse utilized the shield with his own further improvements to complete the Tower Subway (1869) under the River Thames near the Tower of London. He adopted screw jacks to push the shield forward while the tunnel behind it was lined with cast-iron rings, and pioneered the use of compressed air to prevent flooding during the lining installation. His statue beside the Royal Exchange was erected in 1994.« |
| Adolph Bandelier | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1840; died 18 Mar 1914.
Swiss-American anthropologist, historian, and archaeologist who was among the first to study the American Indian cultures of the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Peru-Bolivia. He was one of the first to use the methodology of participant observation, by living with the Indians and studying their culture, artifacts and the ruins on their land. He followed their ancestors' migration from northern Mexico, down the Rio Grande Valley, to central Mexico. Even though Bandelier was criticized for being untrained and forming premature conclusions, he proved that working and training in the field was just as effective as going to school. With many archaeological sites, the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico was named after him. Bandelier:
The Life and Adventures of Adolph Bandelier, by Lange
and Riley |
| George James Symons | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1838; died 10 Mar 1900.
British meteorologist who strove to provide reliable observational data by imposing standards of accuracy and uniformity on meteorological measurements and by substantially increasing the number of reporting stations from 168 to 3,500. He was elected to Royal Meteorological Society (1856) when only 17 years old. He established the British Rainfall Organization (1860) and issued annual rainfall reports (1860-98). Symons's Monthly Meteorological Magazine first appeared in 1866. He wrote hundreds of articles and several books, and he amassed the UK's most comprehensive collection of meteorological books, many of great historical interest. |
| Andrew Taylor Still | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1828; died 12 Dec 1917.
U.S. founder of osteopathy , who believed that remedies for disease are available in the correctly adjusted body, obtained through manipulative techniques and concomitant medical and surgical therapy. He followed his father as a physician, and later served as a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War. By the early 1870's Still criticized the misuse by doctors of drugs common to the day. Still supported a different philosophy of medicine: he advocated the use of osteopathic manipulative treatment. Still's philosophy focused on the unity of all body parts. He identified the musculoskeletal system as a key element of health. He recognized the body's ability to heal itself and stressed preventive medicine, eating properly, and keeping fit. |
| William Hyde Wollaston | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1766; died 22 Dec 1828.
English scientist who discovered palladium (1803) and rhodium (1804), during his investigation of platinum ore. He developed a method of forming platinum - powder-metallurgy - and was the first to produce malleable and ductile platinum on a commercial scale. He made his method public at the Royal Society on 28 Nov 1828, shortly before his death. In 1801 he proved experimentally that frictional and current electricity are the same. He is particularly noted for being the first to observe dark lines in the spectrum of the sun which eventually led to the discovery of the elements in the Sun. He constructed the Wollaston prism, a polarizing beam splitter (now applied in the CD player), and invented the camera lucida.« |
| Johann Bernoulli | |
(source) |
Born 6
Aug 1667; died 1 Jan 1748.
Swiss mathematician (also known by first name Jean) who is noted for his discovery of the exponential calculus (1691). The previous year, he had found the equation of the catenary. Johann's first publication was on the process of fermentation in 1690, but from the next year, he studied and taught mathematics of the rest of his life, becoming professor of mathematics at Basle after his brother Jacques. He was the first to use "g" to represent the acceleration due to gravity. He applied the then new calculus to the measurement of curves, to differential equations, and to mechanical problems. He introduced the famous brachistochrome problem. "Archimedes of his age" was inscribed on his tombstone. The mathematician Daniel Bernoulli was his son. |
|
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 |
| AUGUST 6 - DEATHS | |
| Peter Hodgson | |
(source) |
 
Died 6 Aug 1975 (born 15 Aug 1912)
Peter (Calvert Leary) Hodgson was a marketing executive and entrepreneur who named "Silly Putty" and promoted it as a toy. It was a lump of rubber-like material could be stretched, rolled into a bouncing ball, or used to transfer colored ink from newsprint. The popularity of the product made him a millionaire. The original discovery was made in 1943 by James Wright who combined silicone oil and boric acid at the laboratories of General Electric while trying to make synthetic rubber. No significant application existed for the material. However, it was passed around by company employees as a curiosity. When Hodgson saw a sample, he realized its potential simply for entertainment. He sold it in one-ounce lumps packaged in plastic eggs.« [Image right: (source)] |
| David Grandison Fairchild | |
1889 (source) |
Died
6 Aug 1954 (born 7 Apr 1869)
American botanist and plant explorer who supervised the introduction of over 20,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the U.S., including soya beans, mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, horseradish, and flowering cherries. He spent 37 years seeking new and useful plants by travelling the world including the South Sea Islands, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Japan, China, the Persian Gulf, Africa, the West Indies, and South America. In 1898 he set up a small plant introduction garden on a six-acre plot near Miami, Florida, especially interested in aesthetically valuable or economically useful exotic fruits and plants. He managed the Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction program of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (1906-28).« David
Fairchild's the World Was My Garden, by David Fairchild |
| Joseph-Achille Le Bel | |
(source) |
Died
6 Aug 1930 (born 21 Jan 1847)
French chemist who was the first to present a theory on the relationship between molecules and how they absorb or reflect light. Born into a family wealthy in petroleum holdings, he was able to build his own laboratory to pursue his work. He theorized (1874) that optical activity - the presence of two forms of the same organic molecule, one a mirror image of the other - is due to an asymmetric carbon atom bound to four different groups. For this contribution he is regarded as the cofounder of stereochemistry, with J. H. van't Hoff. His interests also included petrochemistry, cosmology, and biology. |
| Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro | |
(source) |
Died
6 Aug 1925 (born 12 Jan 1853)
Italian mathematician instrumental in the development of the absolute differential calculus (also called the Ricci calculus), now known as tensor analysis. Ricci-Curbastro's early work was in mathematical physics, particularly on the laws of electric circuits and differential equations. He changed area somewhat to undertake research in differential geometry and was the inventor of the absolute differential calculus between 1884 and 1894. Ricci-Curbastro's absolute differential calculus became the foundation of tensor analysis and was used by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. As a councillor for his home town of Lugo, he was involved in many projects relating to the supply of water and to swamp drainage. |
| Florentino Ameghino | |
(source) |
Died
6 Aug 1911 (born 19 Sep 1853)
Argentine paleontologist and anthropologist who made significant contributions to the field of vertebrate paleontology and established the Pampas region of Argentina as a rich source of fossils. He discovered over 6,000 fossil species and classified 35 suborders of mammals. Ameghino's controversial discoveries of stone implements, carved bones, and other signs of a human presence in Argentina during the Pliocene, Miocene, and earlier periods served to increase his worldwide fame.« |
| Johann Von Lamont | |
(source) |
Died
6 Aug 1879 (born 13 Dec 1805)
Scottish-born German astronomer noted for discovering (1852) that the magnetic field of the Earth fluctuates with a 10.3-year activity cycle, but does not correlate it with the period of the sunspot cycle. From 1 Aug 1840, Johann von Lamont (as director of the Royal Astronomical Observatory in Munich) started regular and permanent observations of the earth's magnetic field. In the 1850's he started making regional magnetic surveys in the kingdom of Bavaria, later extended to other states in south Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Prussia and Denmark. His central European maps with isolines of geomagnetic elements, reduced to 1854, were the first worldwide. |
| AUGUST 6 - EVENTS | |
| Life on Mars? | |
In 1996, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announced the discovery of evidence
of a primitive life form on Mars. The evidence came from an alleged tiny
fossil found on a meteorite in Antarctica believed to have come from Mars
billions of years ago. |
|
| Artificial heart | |
(source) |
In 1986, William J. Schroeder of Jasper, Ind., the world's longest-surviving
recipient
of a permanent artificial heart, died
at age 53 after living 620 days with the Jarvik-7 man-made pump. He died
after a series of strokes impaired his ability to breathe. Schroeder was
the second Jarvik-7
recipient when the pump was implanted on 25 Nov 1985, at the Humana Heart
Institute in Louisville, Ky., by surgeon Dr. William
DeVries. He was the first patient to live outside the hospital with
the artificial heart, including being a parade grand marshal in Jasper,
his hometown, making a fishing trip with his sons and celebrating his 33rd
wedding anniversary at a Louisville restaurant. However after a stroke,
he was bedridden for his final seven months.«
The
Bill Schroeder Story, by Martha Barnette, Schroeder Family. |
| Atomic bomb | |
(source) |
In 1945, the first atomic bomb used in World War II was dropped on Hiroshima,
Japan. The weapon, code-named "Little Boy," was dropped from a United States
Air Force B-29 bomber, The Enola Gay.«
Shockwave:
Countdown to Hiroshima, by Stephen Walker. |
| Lost Pole balloonists found | |
 |
In 1930, Norwegian explorers on White Island (Kvitöa) discovered the
debris of the earliest balloon expedition to the North Pole. They also
found the remains of a balloonist, diaries and photos. In 1897, Dr. Salomon
August Andrée of Sweden and two companions had left Danes Island,
Spitsbergen in
a balloon, Eagle, which he had built himself, hoping to drift
over the North Pole. This was the first attempt by air to explore the Arctic.
Nothing was heard of them for 33 years. The diaries recorded that just
two days after their launch, an emergency landing on ice had been made.
They eventually met their end in the bitter cold on the island, still hundreds
of kilometres from the North Pole. |
| Australian flight over water | |
(source) |
In 1919, Harry
Butler (1889-1924) made the first air flight
over a major body of water in Australia. In his monoplane, the Red Devil,
with an 18-kg mailbag of postcards and letters, he was the first man to
fly across the Gulf to Yorke Peninsula, covering the distance of 67 miles
(108 km) from Adelaide to his home town, Minlaton, in 27 minutes, reaching
an altitude of 15,000 feet (4572 m). He reluctantly wore an inflated inner
tube as a primitive life jacket in case he came down over the water. A
strong head wind gave him trouble, and he varied his height varies from
as high as 4,500m to as low as 500m searching better conditions. On arrival,
he gave the waiting crowd of 6,000 people an aeronautical display before
landing.« [Image: Harry
Butler with his Red Devil monoplane in France 1914-18.] |
| Electric Chair | |
(source) |
In 1890, the electric
chair was used for the first time. William Kemmler was executed
with 1,300 volts of alternating current in Auburn, N.Y. for murdering a
woman with an axe. The state had legalized death by electricity on 4 Jun
1888, which was upheld despite a legal challenge. The Medico-Legal Society
was appointed to manage the technical details. Thomas Edison wished the
public to associate AC with danger and death, and promoted the electric
chair to discredit Tesla's AC system of electricity which competed with
his own DC system. The execution was botched. The first shock lasted only
17 seconds. As the body appeared to move, a much longer second jolt was
given until it produced a smell of burning flesh.« [Image
right: William Kemler.] |
| Lightning experimenter dies | |
 |
In 1753, Professor Georg Richmann of St. Petersburg, Moscow, was killed
by his experiment with lightning. One year after Benjamin Franklin's kite
experiment, Richmann attached a wire to the top of his house and led it
down to an iron bar suspended above "the electric needle" and a bowl of
water partly filled with iron filings*.
It was reported that during a storm, Richmann was struck while about a
foot from the bar, and closely observing the needle. "A globe of blue and
whitish fire about four inches diameter" from the bar struck Richmann's
forehead" with "an explosion like that of a small cannon." His assistant,
M. Sokolaw, who survived, was thrown to the floor feeling blows on his
back. He found marks of burning hot wire fragments on the back of his clothes.  |
| Supernova | |
Thm.jpg)
(source) |
In 1181, a supernova was observed by Chinese astronomers in the constellation
now known as Cassiopeia, and independently found one day later from Japan.
The "guest star" remained visible for 185 days (over 6 months). A supernova
remnant, 3C58, found by radio astronomers in the 1960's, was first proposed
to be the remnant of the supernova 1181 by F. Richard Stephenson. 3C58
is a filled-center supernova remnant, extends now about 9x5 arc minutes
and contains a pulsar which rotates about 15 times per second. In addition,
an extended X-ray source surrounding the pulsar has been observed,
thought to be produced by a cloud of high-energy particles about 20 light
years across.« [Image:
four-day X-ray observation of 3C58 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shown
in pseudo colour with red representing low energy X-rays and blue for high
energy.] |
