| AUGUST 17 - BIRTHS | |
| Hazel Bishop | |
(source) |
 Born 17
Aug 1906; died 5 Dec 1998.
Chemist and cosmetic executive, Hazel Gladys Bishop was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. She made an indelible mark on the cosmetics industry by inventing non-smear ("stays on you not on him") kissproof lipstick. During WW II, as senior organic chemist with Standard Oil, she discovered the cause of deposits affecting superchargers of aircraft engines. She never married. In 1949, after a long series of home experiments, in a kitchen fitted out as a laboratory, she perfected a lipstick that stayed on the lips longer than any other product then available, and began its manufacture. It was introduced at $1 a tube in the summer of the following year. In 1951, a partner forced her out of the $10 million company she created. |
| Walter Noddack | |
 |
Born 17
Aug 1893; died 7 Dec 1960.
Walter Karl Friedrich Noddack was a German chemist who discovered the element rhenium (Jun 1925) in collaboration with his wife Ida Tacke. In 1922, he began a long search for undiscovered elements. After three years, the careful fractionation of certain ores yielded element 75, a rare heavy metallic element that resembles manganese. Named rhenium after the Rhine River, it was the last stable element to be discovered. Noddack is also remembered for arguing for a concept he called allgegenwartskonzentration or, literally, omnipresent concentration. This idea, reminiscent of Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, assumed that every mineral actually contained every element. The reason they could not all be detected was they existed in too small quantities. |
| Paul Kammerer | |
(source) |
Born 17
Aug 1880; died 23 Sep 1926.
Austrian biologist, he claimed to have produced experimental evidence that acquired traits could be inherited. Almost all of Kammerer's experiments involved forcing various amphibians to breed in environments that were radically different from their native habitat to demonstrate Lamarkian inheritance. (This is the idea that what one acquires during one's lifetime is passed on to that person's offspring. If you play guitar, your children will have nimble fingers. Each generation builds upon the past and continues to improve.) When later accused of faking exceptional results with the midwife toad, during a time of depression, he shot himself. |
| Frederick Fuller Russell | |
(source) |
Born 17
Aug 1870; died 29 Dec 1960.
American scientist who developed the first successful U.S. typhoid fever vaccine. Russell earned his medical degree in 1893 and was commissed in 1898 as first lieutenant and assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. In summer 1908, the U.S. Army Surgeon General sent him to Europe to study the experience of the British and German armies in anti-typhoid vaccination. In 1909, Major Russell prepared a laboratory the Army Medical Museum for manufacturing vaccine, and vaccinated volunteers, the first of whom came from the museum and the medical school. By the end of 1910, 10,841 volunteers had been vaccinated. This was made compulsory for military personnel the next year. The reduction in the incidence of the disease was dramatic. |
| Thomas Hodgkin | |
(source) |
Born 17
Aug 1798; died 5 Apr 1866.
English physician who early described (1832) the malignant disease of lymph tissue that bears his name. He was the most prominent British pathologist of his time and a pioneer in preventive medicine. At Guy's Hospital, he was responsible for the introduction of the systematic arrangement of pathological and anatomical specimens for teaching purposes. In a strange contrast to his great popularity, above all in London, stands the fact that Hodgkin was denied a professional advancement. More and more disappointed by medicine he became an Oriental traveller, making important contributions. He devoted much of his life to philanthropic causes such as the relief of suffering in under-developed countries and the freeing of slaves. |
| Bernard de Jussieu | |
(source) |
Born 17
Aug 1699; died 6 Nov 1777.
French botanist whose method of plant classification was based on anatomical characteristics of the plant embryo. Although he first studied medicine, in 1722 he became subdemonstrator of plants in the Jardin du Roi, Paris. In 1758, Louis XV made him superintendent of his royal garden at Trianon near Paris, which was to contain specimens of all plants cultivated in France. It was here that he devised his system to arrange and catalogued the plants of Trianon. He did not arrange the genera systematically in groups according to a single characteristic, but after consideration of all the characteristics, which, however, are not regarded as of equal value. His brothers, Antoine and Joseph, and nephew Antoine-Laurent, were also botanists.« |
| Pierre de Fermat | |
(source) |
Born 17
Aug 1601; died 12 Jan 1665.
French mathematician, often called the founder of the modern theory of numbers. Together with Rene Descartes, Fermat was one of the two leading mathematicians of the first half of the 17th century. He anticipated differential calculus with his method of finding the greatest and least ordinates of curved lines. He proposed the famous Fermat's Last Theorem while studying the work of the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus. He wrote in pencil in the margin, "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain," that when the Pythagorean theorem is altered to read an + bn = cn, the new equation cannot be solved in integers for any value of n greater than 2. |
|
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| AUGUST 17 - DEATHS | |
| Robert Rowe Gilruth | |
(source) |
 Died
17 Aug 2000 (born 8 Oct 1913)
American aerospace scientist, engineer, and a pioneer of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. He developed the X-1, first plane to break the sound barrier. Gilruth directed Project Mercury, the initial program for achieving manned space flight. Under his leadership, the first American astronaut orbited the Earth only a little over 3 years after NASA was created. In 1961, President Kennedy and the Congress committed the nation to a manned lunar landing within the decade. Gilruth was named the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center and assigned the responsibility of designing and developing the spacecraft and associated equipment, planning and controlling missions, and training flight crews. He retired from NASA in 1973. |
| Otto Stern | |
| Died
17 Aug 1969 (born 17 Feb 1888)
German-born scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1943 for his development of the molecular beam as a tool for studying the characteristics of molecules and for his measurement of the magnetic moment of the proton. |
|
| Henry Joseph Round | |
(source) |
Died
17 Aug 1966 (born 2 Jun 1881)
English electronics engineer whose numerous inventions contributed to the development of radio communications. He joined the Marconi Company in 1902, and for his earliest work he devised the elements of direction-finding equipment. Round became Chief of Marconi Research in 1921. He was a prolific inventor. Amongst other inventions he designed the Straight Eight Gramophone Recording System, a large audience public address system which was used to relay King George's speech at the Wembley Exhibitions. A talking picture system he invented was used to record sound on to film during the 1930's cinema boom. In total he produced 117 patents. The last was "Pressure Wave Transmission Arrangements" (1964), at age 83. |
| Sir John Marshall | |
(source) |
Died
17 Aug 1958 (born 19 Mar 1876)
English archaeologist who was director general of the Indian Archaeological Survey (1902-31). His aim was to bring to life Indian culture in the past by uncovering all possible details of her cities, tools, ornaments, laws and customs. In the 1920's, Marshall he began a systematic program of excavations that revealed Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, the two largest cities of the previously unknown Indus Valley Civilization, which he firmly believed was comparable in every way with the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. He excavated Taxila, Vaisali, Nalanda, Rajagriha and Sarnath; enacted the Ancient Monuments Act (1904), built up a library, reorganised publications and recruited Indians to high positions in the Survey. |
| (Erik) Ivar Fredholm | |
| Died
17 Aug 1927 (born 7 Apr 1866)
Swedish mathematician who founded modern integral equation theory. |
|
| Aleksandr Butlerov | |
(source) |
Died
17 Aug 1886 (born 6 Sep 1828)
Russian chemist whose theory of organic chemistry structure was an important step towards the modern understanding of organic chemistry. In 1861, he read a paper to a congress of German scientists in which he defined "chemical structure" as the "chemical bond of capicity for the mutual union of atoms into a complex substance." Furthermore, "the chemical nature of a compound molecule is determined by the nature of its component parts, by their quantity and their chemical structure." In his rules for determining the chemical structure of molecules, he recognized the character of radicals to retain their own structure. In his investigation of unsaturated compounds, he supported the idea of multiple bonds. He also worked distinguishing isomers.« |
| Matthew Boulton | |
(source) |
Died
17 Aug 1809 (born 3 Sep 1728)
British manufacturer and engineer who financed and introduced James Watt's steam engine. On inheriting his father's silver-stamping business he produced buttons and buckles, and later, other goods of silver and ormolu (a sort of gilded bronze) for the up and coming mercantile classes. After meeting James Watt he became fascinated by the development of steam power and produced steam engines which sold all over the world. In 1786, Boulton established the first steam powered coining presses at his mint at Soho, Birmingham. In 1786 Boulton applied steam power to his coining presses in the Soho works. This replaced hand processes in which workers placed blanks into a hand operated screw-press. |
| Johannes Nikolaus Tetens | |
(source) |
Died
17 Aug 1807 (born 16 Sep 1736)
German natural philosopher whose empirical approach strongly influenced the work of Immanuel Kant, and later in his life, Tetens became interested in mathematics, especially in actuarial applications. From 1760, as a teacher of natural philosophy he wrote on diverse topics but later began the development of the field of developmental psychology in Germany. He wrote Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung (1777) on the origin and structure of knowledge. He changed career after 1789 to the civil service during which time he pursued mathematics. As a statistician he produced an Introduction to the Calculation of Life Annuities (1785) and On the Tetens Mortality Curve (1785).« |
| AUGUST 17 - EVENTS | |
| Double Eagle II balloon crossed Atlantic | |
|
In 1978, the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by balloon was completed
when three Americans, Ben Abruzzo,
Maxie
Anderson
and Larry
Newman, landed their Double
Eagle II in France. Their 3,100-mile flight began on 11
Aug 1978 from Presque Isle, Maine and ended 137-hr 6-min later. The
helium balloon Double Eagle II was 112- ft high, 65-ft diam., capacity
160,000 cu.ft. with a 15x7x4½-ft passenger gondola named The
Spirit of Albuquerque. The underside of the gondola was a twin-hulled
catamaran to provide emergency flotation for any unplanned water landing.
Double
Eagle II was built
by Ed Yost. The history of transatlantic balloon crossing included seventeen
prior unsuccessful attempts and seven lives lost.« [Image:
Double
Eagle II gondola] |
| First UK pedestrian killed by car | |
|
In 1896, the first pedestrian
killed by a motor vehicle in Britain was Mrs Bridget Driscoll of Croydon,
Surrey. While on a terrace in the grounds of Crystal Palace, London, she
was knocked down by a car travelling at 4 mph, and died minutes later of
head injuries. The car, owned by the Anglo-French Motor Car (Roger-Benz)
Company, was giving demonstration rides to the public, driven by employee
Arthur Edsell. It was said that he was talking to the young lady passenger
beside him. He had had been driving for only 3 weeks, and had tempered
with a belt to cause the car to travel faster. After a six-hour inquest,
the jury's verdict was "Accidental Death," and no prosecution resulted
against the driver or the company. The first car-driver crash fatality
in Britain occurred on 12 Feb 1898.« |
|
| Car electric starter | |
|
In 1891, the automobile electric self-starter was patented. |
|
| Phobos discovered | |
|
In 1877, Asaph Hall discovered Mars' moon Phobos. |
|
| Balloon air mail | |
|
In 1859, the first air mail in the U.S. took off from Lafayette, Indiana,
in a balloon. |
|
| Wrench patent | |
|
In 1835, the wrench was patented by Solymon Merrick of Springfield, Massachusetts. |
|
