| AUGUST 14 - BIRTHS | |
| Richard R. Ernst | |
(source) |
 Born 14
Aug 1933
Swiss researcher and teacher who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy." As NMR spectroscopy developed into on of the most important instrumental measuring technique within chemistry, Ernst continued to improve both the sensitivity and the resolution of the instrument. NMR spectroscopy is now applied to determination of molecular structure in solution, to study interactions between different molecules (ex. enzyme - substrate, soap - water), to investigate molecular motion, to get information on the rate of chemical reactions and many other problems in chemistry, physics, biology and medicine.«  Principles
of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance..., by Richard R. Ernst,
et al. |
| Richard Darwin Keynes | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1919
British physiologist who did pioneering work on the mechanisms underlying the conduction of the action potential along nerve fibres. Early in his career, he worked with the giant nerve fibers of squid, which would help discover how nerve impulses are transmitted in all animals. In later resarch, he determined how electric eels project electric fields outside their bodies. Keynes was the first to use radioactive sodium and potassium tracer atoms to follow the movements of these atoms when an impulse is transmitted along a nerve fibre. He has written extensively about the life and work of his great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, beginning with The Beagle Record (1979).« Nerve
and Muscle, by Richard Darwin Keynes, David John Aidley. |
| Edward W(inslow) Gifford | |
1936 (source) |
Born 14
Aug 1887; died 16 May 1959.
U.S. self-taught anthropologist and archaeologist. After high school, he became an assistant with the California Academy of Sciences, and on its expedition to the Galapagos Islands (1905-06) he observed and later described hoe the Pallid Tree Finch used a thorn or twig pry insects out from tree bark. He became assistant curator (1912) then curator (1925) at the University of California Museum of Anthropology. He made ethnographical field studies of native culture in California, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia and Yap. He succeeded Professor Alfred L. Kroeber as the museum director in 1947. Gifford developed the museum into a major U.S. collection, and wrote over 100 treatises related to ethnology, folklore and museum collections.« California
Indian Nights Entertainment, by Edward Gifford, Gwendoline
Gifford. |
| Arthur Jeffrey Dempster | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1886; died 11 Mar 1950.
Canadian-American physicist who in 1918 built the first mass spectrometer (based on the invention of Francis W. Aston) and discovered isotope uranium-235 (1935). The mass spectrometer is an instrument that uses electric and magnetic fields to separate and measure a sample's atoms according to their mass and relative quantity. In 1935, he discovered that naturally occurring uranium, though mostly uranium-238, contained 0.7% U-235 (later used as the primary fuel in atomic bombs and reactors after Niels Bohr predicted it could be used to produce a chain reaction releasing huge amounts of nuclear fission energy). During WW II, Dempster worked with the secret Manhattan Project that developed the world's first nuclear weapons.« |
| Ernest Everett Just | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1883; died 27 Oct 1941.
African-American embryologist who pioneered understanding of cell division, researching fertilized egg cells, experimental parthenogenesis, hydration, cell division, dehydration in living cells, and the effect of ultra violet rays on egg cells. In 1915, he was awarded the first Spingarn Medal, the highest honor given by the NAACP. His research during summers 1909-30, at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Mass, included thousands of experiments on marine mammal cell fertilization. Outside MBL, he experienced discrimination. Seeking more opportunities, he spent most of the 1930s in various European countries. WW II hostilities caused him to return to the U.S. in late 1940, but he died of pancreatic cancer the next year.« Black
Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just, by
Kenneth R. Manning. |
| Paul Bartsch | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1871; died 24 Apr 1960.
German-American zoologist who was an authority on molluscs, but had broad interests in natural history including plants and birds. He began his career as assistant curator of marine invertebrates at the US National Museum, Washington, DC., but then worked until retirement for the Smithsonian Institution (1896-1942). He represented that organisation on numerous zoological expeditions. In 1902, he initiated a systematic, scientific bird banding program (credited as the first in North America since John James Audubon) by banding 23 Black-crowned Night-herons at Washington, DC. During WW I, he invented a gas detector for the Chemical Warfare Service in 1918. Bartsch organized the first Boy Scout troop in Washington.« |
| Daniel Cowan Jackling | |
(source) |
Born 14 Aug 1869; died 13 March 1956.
American mining engineer and metallurgist who founded the Utah Copper Company and with an economical method to process low-grade porphyry copper ores, below 2% copper. As electicity use expanded in the early 20th century, so demand for copper rose, and the need to exploit even low-grade ore. Such ore was obtained by open-pit mining then loaded by steam shovels into railroad cars and transported to concentrating mills. Jackling developed improved extraction/flotation processes to produce a higher-grade concentrate for smelting. By the time Jackling died, over 60% of the world's copper production took advantage of his low-grade ore processing methods. His Bingham Canyon Mine, now a huge pit, still produces copper.« [Image right: Bingham Mine] |
| Ernest Thompson Seton | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1860; died 23 Oct 1946.
Anglo-American naturalist, writer and illustrator who applied these skills in over forty books on wild life, woodcraft, Indian lore and animal-fiction stories. As a capable naturalist, in his field observations he made detailed studies of morphology, physiology, distribution, and behaviour. His fame as author began with Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) - still in print a century later. Over a period of twenty years he delivered over three thousand lectures. Believing in promoting the values of ethology and ecology, he was chairman of the committee that established the Boy Scouts in the U.S. (1910). Seton envisioned the North American Indian as a model for the movement, but Baden-Powell's military structure was adopted as in Britain.« 
Wild
Animals I Have Known, by Ernest Thompson Seton. |
| Jean-Gaston Darboux | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1842
French mathematician whose work on partial differential equations introduced a new method of integration (the Darboux integral) and contributed to infinitesimal geometry. He wrote a paper in 1870 on differential equations of the second order in which he presented the Darboux integral. In 1873, Darboux wrote a paper on cyclides and between 1887-96 he produced four volumes on infinitesimal geometry, including a discussion of one surface rolling on another surface. In particular he studied the geometrical configuration generated by points and lines which are fixed on the rolling surface. He also studied the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a surface.« |
| Richard von Krafft-Ebing | |
(source) |
Born 14
Aug 1840; died 22 Dec 1902
(baron) German neuropsychiatrist who opened the field of sexual psychopathology. He was recognized as an authority on deviant sexual behavior and its medicolegal aspects. He was the first to write on the subject in his Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). It contained 51 case histories out of the hundreds of medical and court reports he had collected. Therein, he also coined the terms sadism and masochism derived from the names of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895). He also introduced therm "paranoia." His work provided a foundation for the work of Sigmund Freud two decades later.«  Stepchildren
of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity,
by Harry Oosterhuis. |
| John Jeremiah Bigsby | |
| Born 14
Aug 1792; died 10 Feb 1881
English physician and geologist whose extensive geologic studies of Canada and New York revealed much of the structure of the underlying rock strata and uncovered many new species of prehistoric life. |
|
| Hans Christian Oersted | |
| Born 14
Aug 1777; died 9 Mar 1851
Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric current in a wire can deflect a magnetized compass needle, a phenomenon the importance of which was rapidly recognized and which inspired the development of electromagnetic theory. |
|
| AUGUST 14 - DEATHS | |
| Enzo Ferrari | |
(source) |
 Died
14 Aug 1988 (born 18 Feb 1898)
Italian automobile manufacturer, designer, and racing-car driver whose Ferrari cars often dominated world racing competition in the second half of the 20th century. In 1947, as a former racecar driver, Ferrari built cars under his own name for the first time. Within five years, his powerful 12-cylinder cars dominated racing. Within a decade, the road models had become status symbols. Individually crafted, their fenders were pounded into shape against tree trunks, their engines were cast like statues. Enzo
Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine,
by Brock Yates. |
| Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil | |
| Died
14 Aug 1961 (born 28 Feb 1877)
French archaeologist especially noted as an authority on prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa. |
|
| Frederic Joliot-Curie | |
(source) |
Died
14 Aug 1958 (born 19 Mar 1900)
French physical chemist, husband of Irène Joliot-Curie, who were jointly awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discovery of artificially prepared, radioactive isotopes of new elements. They were the son-in-law and daughter of Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie. |
| Hugo Eckener | |
| Died
14 Aug 1954 (born 10 Aug 1868)
German pioneer dirigible expert and Zeppelin commander. |
|
| Paul Sabatier | |
(source) |
Died
14 Aug 1941 (born 5 Nov 1854)
Organic chemist who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1912 with Victor Grignard. Sabatier researched in catalytic organic synthesis, and discovered the use of finely divided nickel as a catalyst in hydrogenation (the addition of hydrogen to molecules of carbon compounds). The margarine, oil hydrogenation, and synthetic methanol industries grew out of this work. He found that increasing the surface area of catalysts such as copper and nickel by finely dividing them greatly increases their effectiveness. Sabatier did wide-ranging research of the use of catalysts in organic chemistry syntheses, revealing metals other than nickel, though less effective, can also behave as catalysts. |
| Florian Cajori | |
| Died
14 Aug 1930 (born 28 Feb 1859)
Swiss-born U.S. educator and mathematician whose works on the history of mathematics were among the most eminent of his time. |
|
| Frederic Ward Putnam | |
(source) |
Died
14 Aug 1915 (born 16 Apr 1839)
American archeologist, naturalist and museum administrator who played a major role in the popularization of anthropology, its acceptance as a university study, and instigated more anthropological museums. After entering Harvard College as a student (1856), he was much influenced Louis Agassiz. As Curator of the Peabody Museum (1875-1909), Putnam organized numerous pioneering expeditions in Southwest and Central American archeology. As director of the anthropological section of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1891-93), he mounted an impressive exhibit. It created wide-spread interest in anthropology, and subsequently became the nucleus of the great collections of the Field Museum in Chicago.« |
| Richard Jefferies | |
(source) |
Died
14 Aug 1887 (born 6 Nov 1848)
(John) Richard Jefferies, born near Swindon was a naturalist, novelist, and essayist. He began his literary career as a local reporter in Wiltshire, and from then on he wrote many works of natural history and country life, and essays in journals and magazines. Jefferies relied greatly on 'field notebooks', where he entered his meticulous observations on the life of the countryside. Wild Life in a Southern Country, in which the author, sitting on a Wiltshire down, observes in ever widening circles the fields, woods, animals, and human inhabitants below him, was published with success in 1879. He wrote his autobiography, Story of My Heart (1883). His vision was unappreciated in his own Victorian age but has been increasingly recognized and admired since his death. |
| George Combe | |
(source) |
Died 14 Aug 1858 (born 21 Oct 1788)
Scottish lawyer who turned to the promotion of phrenology and published several works on the subject. He followed Johann Spurzheim who coined the word "phrenology" and promoted it in Europe and Britain, elaborating on "cranioscopy" he learned from Franz Josef Gall in Paris. Gall was a French physician who identified a number of areas on the surface of the head that he linked with specific localizations of cerebral functions and the underlying attributes of the human personality. Combe established the first infant school in Edinburgh and gave evening lectures. He studied the criminal classes and lunatic asylums wishing to reform them. Andrew Combe, physiologist, was his younger brother.« [Image right: Diagram of the Craniometer from Elements of Phrenology, by Combe, 1834.] Reminiscences
of Dr. Spurzheim and George Combe and ...Phrenology...,
by Nahum Capen. |
| AUGUST 14 - EVENTS | |
| Uranus rings | |
In 1994, the Hubble space telescope photographs Uranus with rings. |
|
| Whiffle ball invented | |
|
In 1953, the whiffle ball, a ball that curved when it was thrown, was invented
by David Mullany Sr. for his 13-year-old son. |
|
| Flying boat air mail | |
|
In 1919, A U.S. aeromarine flying boat carries the first air mail delivery
at sea. |
|
| First wireless communication | |
Lodge |
In 1894, the first wireless transmission
of information using Morse code was demonstrated
by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the
British Association at Oxford. A message was transmitted about 150 yards
(50-m) from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the University Museum. However,
as he later wrote
in his Work of Hertz and Some of his Successors, the idea did not
occur to Lodge at the time that this might be developed into long-distance
telegraphy. "Stupidly enough, no attempt was made to apply any but the
feeblest power, so as to test how far the disturbance could really be detected."
Nevertheless this demonstration predated the work of Guglielmo
Marconi, who began his experiments in 1896.« |
| Electric meter patented | |
|
In 1888, Oliver B. Shallenberger, of Rochester, PA, received a patent for
the electric meter. |
|
| First Japanese patent | |
|
In 1885, the first Japanese patent
was issued. It was to Zuisho Hotta for his formulation of an antifouling
paint for ship hulls made of lacquer, powdered iron, red lead, persimmon
tannin, and other ingredients. Although a patent law in Japan was first
established much earlier, in 1871, it had been abandoned in the next year.
On 18 Apr 1885, the Patent Monopoly Act was enacted marking the effective
beginning
of the Japan Patent Office. Antifouling paint was first patented in Britain
by William Beale on 31 Aug 1625.
The first U.S. patent for an antifouling paint was issued on 3
Nov 1863 to James G Tarr and Augustus Wonson.« |
|
| First Eye Infirmary | |
|
In 1820, the first U.S. eye hospital, was founded in New York City in two
rooms at 45 Chatham Street. A young physician, Dr. Edward Delafield (17
May 1794 - 13 Feb 1875), conceived the idea to establish an institution
for the exclusive treatment of diseases of the eye. He was assisted by
his friend, Dr. John Kearney Rodgers (1793-1851), and others. In 1821,
it was organized as the The New York Eye Infirmary. Hundreds of people
were saved from blindness at a time that certain affections of the eye
had been regarded as incurable. The charity's 35th Annual Report recorded
serving 2,652 patients with diseases of the eye and 400 with diseases of
the ear. From 30 Apr 1864, it was named the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.« |
|
 in elements previously believed to have uniform atomic weights. The precise weight of the isotopes is the basis for calculating the energy set free in nuclear reactions. Prof. Dempster also achieved a reputation as the principal American authority on positive rays. &credit=University of Chicago Dept. of Public Relations, AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives&photoDate=null&storePublished=Y&color=null&names=Dempster, Arthur Jeffrey&contactID=null){kind=link}