| AUGUST 13 - BIRTHS | |
| Frederick Sanger | |
(source) |
 Born 13
Aug 1918
English biochemist who was twice the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He was awarded the prize in 1958 for his work on the structure of proteins, especially the determination of the structure of the insulin molecule. He shared the prize (with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert of the United States) in 1980 for his contribution concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids. |
| Salvador Luria | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1912
Italian-born American biologist who (with Max Delbrück and Alfred Day Hershey) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1969 for their discoveries concerning "the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses." From around 1940, they had investigated bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects bacteria, rather than ordinary cells. These offered as simple a living system as possible to research fundamental life processes, especially self-replication. Eventually, they demonstrated the role of nucleic acid as the carrier of the genetic information of the virus. Because of the short reproduction time, further information came from bacteriophages more quickly than work with other virus material.«  A
Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube: an Autobiography, by
Salvador Edward Luria. |
| Felix Wankel | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1902; died 9 Oct 1988.
German engineer who invented the first rotary internal combustion engine. His first job (1921-4), was with a scientific book publisher, but Wankel preferred tinkering. In 1924, he opened his own workshop and conceived the idea of a rotary engine. By 1927 he had drawn up the shape of his rotary piston engine. Although he received his first patent in 1929 (DRP 507,584), it was Feb 1957 before the first truly functional Wankel rotary engine was ready. Instead of moving pistons, the Wankel engine uses an orbiting rotor shaped as a curved equilateral triangle. Thus it needs few moving parts, is lightweight and compact. He stayed active throughout his life, filing a patent in 1987, a year before his death.« Wankel
Rotary Engine: A History, by John B. Hege. |
| Detlev (Wulf) Bronk | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1897; died 17 Nov 1975.
American scientist credited with formulating the modern theory of the science of biophysics. He pioneered use of electro-microscopy to monitor human nerve network and was a leader in the study of human physiology in aeronautics. During WW II, he coordinated a group physiologists, located on air bases at home and abroad, who developed the Army Air Force altitude training and night vision training programs for pilots. Meanwhile, he studied the effects of low oxygen pressure on human performance. After the war, he became president of Rockefeller Institute/University (1953-68) and was prominent in scientific and governmental organizations including the National Science Foundation and the Presidential Science Advisory Committee.« |
| John Logie Baird | |
(source) |
Born 13 Aug 1888; died 14 Jun 1946
Scottish engineer, who was the first man to televise outline pictures of objects (1924) followed the next year by recognizable human faces. By 1926, he was able to demonstrate TV for moving objects at the Royal Institution, London, and colour TV in 1928. In 1936, the BBC started the world’s first regular high-definition service from Alexandra Palace using the Baird system, though it was abandoned one year later in favour of a system developed by Marconi-EMI. By 1939, 20,000 television sets were in use in Great Britain. In 1940, Baird gave a demonstration of a high-definition full colour stereo television. Baird continued experimenting, and was reported to have completed his researches on stereoscopic television in 1946. Television
And Me: The Memoirs of John Logie Baird, by John Logie
Baird, Malcolm Baird. |
| Richard Willstätter | |
| Born 13
Aug 1872
German chemist whose study of the structure of chlorophyll and other plant pigments won him the 1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. |
|
| Giovanni Agnelli | |
| Born 13
Aug 1866
Founder of the Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) automobile company and the leading Italian industrialist of the first half of the 20th century. |
|
| Herbert Hall Turner | |
| Born 13
Aug 1861
English astronomer who pioneered many of the procedures now universally employed in determining stellar positions from astronomical photographs. |
|
| Johann Friedrich Miescher | |
| Born 13
Aug 1844
Swiss student of cell metabolism and discoverer of nucleic acids. |
|
| Sir George Gabriel Stokes | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1819; died 1 Feb 1903.
(1st Baronet) British mathematical physicist who studied viscous fluids and formulated his law of viscosity for the speed of a solid sphere falling in a fluid. Other laws and mathematical work for which he is known includes Stokes's theorem, in the field of vector analysis. Stokes also worked in optics, the wave theory of light, diffraction (1849), the ultraviolet spectrum and other spectrum analysis. He investigated the nature of fluorescence and was a founder of the field of geodesy with his study of variations in gravity (1849). From 1849 until his death in 1903, he held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (held earlier by Isaac Newton, and currently by Stephen Hawking). He came from a family with generations of scientists, mathematicians and engineers.« 
The
Correspondence between Sir George Gabriel Stokes and Sir William Thomson,
editted by David B. Wilson. |
| Anders Angstrom | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1814; died 21 Jun 1874.
Anders Jonas Ångström was a Swedish physicist whose pioneering use of spectroscopy is recognised in the name of the angstrom, a unit of length equal to 10-10 metre. In 1853, he studied the spectrum of hydrogen for which Balmer derived a formula. He announced in 1862 that analysis of the solar spectrum showed that hydrogen is present in the Sun's atmosphere. In 1867 he was the first to examine the spectrum of aurora borealis (northern lights). He published his extensive research on the solar spectrum in Recherches sur le spectre solaire (1868), with detailed measurements of more than 1000 spectral lines. He also published works on thermal theory and carried out geomagnetical measurements in different places around Sweden.« |
| Johann Christoph Denner | |
(source) |
Born 13
Aug 1655; died 20 Apr 1707.
German inventor, maker of musical instruments and inventor of the clarinet. He made improvements to the chalumeau, the first true single reed instrument, of the late 1600's. He and his son Jacob are attributed with innovating the speaker key which gave the clarinet a larger register. The clarinet overblows at the 12th. That is, when playing a C without the speaker key, then add the speaker key, the note that sounds is a G, which is the interval of a twelfth. The other woodwind instruments overblow at the octave. The clarinet bore is cylindrical, whereas every other woodwind instrument has a conical bore (even the flute!). This is why the clarinet overblows at the twelfth and is so laden with overtones, which contributes to its unique sound. |
| Erasmus Bartholin | |
| Born 13
Aug 1625; died 4 Nov 1698
Danish physician, mathematician, and physicist who discovered the optical phenomenon of double refraction. |
|
|
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| AUGUST 13 - DEATHS | |
| Jack Ryan | |
(source) |
 
Died 13 Aug 1991 (born 12 Nov 1926)
John W. "Jack" Ryan was an American inventor who for 20 years designed best-selling toys for Mattell Inc., including the Barbie doll, Hot Wheels and Chatty Cathy talking doll. His "space-aged savvy" and knowledge of materials came from his earlier employment, working as an engineer for the Raytheon Company designing the Navy's Sparrow III and Hawk guided missiles for the Navy. Ryan's association with Mattell began as a self-employed consultant for several years prior to becoming its vice president for research and design. Ryan invented the joints that allowed Barbie to bend at the waist and the knee. He also introduced the pull-string, talking voice boxes for Mattel's dolls.« [Image right: Barbie doll.] |
| John Ulric Nef | |
(source) |
Died
13 Aug 1915 (born 14 June 1862)
Swiss-American chemist whose studies demonstrated that carbon can have a valence (i.e., affinity for electrons) of two (such as quinone) as well as a valence of four, thus greatly advancing the understanding of theoretical organic chemistry. He provided a basis for the modern system of chemical notation. He studied tautomerism, especially of nitroparaffins, and discovered what is now called the "Nef reaction"; the acid-catalyzed conversion of primary and secondary nitroalkanes to aldehydes and ketones, respectively. His major research was on bivalent carbon, including isonitriles, carbon monoxide, fulminates and methylene. In later years, he studied the complex reactions of sugars in alkali and acid. |
| Hermann Karl Vogel | |
| Died
13 Aug 1907 (born 3 Apr 1842)
German astronomer who discovered spectroscopic binaries (double-star systems that are too close for the individual stars to be discerned by any telescope but, through the analysis of their light, have been found to be two individual stars rapidly revolving around one another). He pioneered the study of light from distant stars, and introduced the use of photography in this field. |
|
| Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis | |
(source) |
Died
Aug 1865 (born 1 Jul 1818)
German-Hungarian physician who discovered the cause of puerperal ("child bed") fever and introduced antisepsis into medical practice. While originally a student of law, he attended an anatomy lecture with a friend, resulting in Semmelweis changing his career. He observed that puerperal fever killed as many as 3 out of 10 of the offspring of mothers who gave birth in hospitals, yet it was rare among mothers who delivered at home. Against the prejudice of other doctors, Semmelweis proposed they were themselves transmitting the disease themselves. Semmelweis insisted that those working under him wash their hands in strong chemicals between patient examinations, with the result that deaths from fever were significantly reduced. The
Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac
Semmelweis, by Sherwin B. Nuland. |
| Rene Laënnec | |
| Died
Aug 1826 (born 17 Feb 1781)
René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec was a French physician who invented the stethoscope and is generally considered the father of chest medicine. Using a foot-long wooden cylinder that he placed on the chests of his patients, he was able to hear the various sounds made by the lungs and heart. For three years he studied patients' chest sounds and correlated them with the diseases found in autopsy. He described his methods and findings in the classic De l'auscultation médiate (1819; "On Mediate Auscultation"). Laënnec made numerous other contributions to the literature of respiratory and heart disease. |
|
| Jean Robert Argand | |
| Died
13 Aug 1822; (born 18 Jul 1768)
Swiss mathematician who was one of the earliest to use complex numbers, which he applied to show that all algebraic equations have roots. He invented the Argand diagram - a geometrical representation of complex numbers as a point with the real portion of the number on the x axis and the imaginary part on the y axis.« |
|
| AUGUST 13 - EVENTS | |
| Oldest bird fossil | |
In 1987, fossil bones discovered in Texas in 1984 were proclaimed to be
the remains of possibly the world's oldest birds. |
|
| Youngest heart-lung transplant | |
|
In 1985, Jamie Gavin, age 3, of Dublin, Ireland, became the world's youngest
heart and lung transplant
patient in a four-hour operation at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, England.
He suffered from a congenital heart disease which had also progressively
damaged his lungs. The surgeon, Britain's leading transplant specialist,
was Egyptian-born Magdi Yacoub, who had previously performed 19 similar
procedures. When Jamie died in Jul 1992, he was believed to be the world's
longest-surviving heart and lung transplant recipient. In 1986, a 30-month-old
boy became the youngest to have a heart-lung transplant.« |
|
| Balloon telecommunications | |
|
In 1960, the first two-way telephone conversation by satellite took place
with the help of Echo 1, a balloon satellite. |
|
| First stainless steel cast | |
(source) |
In 1913, the first true stainless steel was cast
in Sheffield, England. It was a steel alloy that contained 0.24% carbon
and 12.8% chromium. English metallurgist, Harry Brearley was developing
a more erosion-resistant steel for rifle barrels. In order to examine the
grain structure of the steel he needed to etch samples with acid before
examining them under the microscope. The etching reagents he used were
based on nitric acid, and he found that this new steel strongly resisted
chemical attack. He then exposed samples to vinegar and other food acids
such as lemon juice and found the same result. Brearley realized that this
new steel could also revolutionise the cutlery industry. |
| Helium ions from radium | |
|
In 1903, the journal Nature reported
that helium gas is produced by the radioactive decay of the radium. This
key discovery by William Ramsay and Frederick Soddy helped to reveal the
structure of atoms. In 1908, Rutherford confirmed that alpha rays and these
radium emanations were one and the same: the nuclei of helium atoms, bearing
a positive electrical charge. Each were future Nobel laureates in Chemistry.
Ramsey won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his discovery of the noble gases.
Rutherford was recognized in 1908 for his investigations into the disintegration
of the elements. Soddy was honoured in 1921 for his pioneering contributions
to understanding the chemical properties of radioactive elements such as
radium and uranium. [Ref: Ramsay,
W. & Soddy, F. Experiments in radio-activity, and the production of
helium from radium. Nature, 68, 354 - 355, (1903)] |
|
| Coin-operated telephone | |
|
In 1889, William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut, received a patent for a
coin-operated telephone |
|
| Mars polar cap | |
|
In 1642, Christiaan Huygens discovered the Martian south polar cap. |
|
