| AUGUST 20 - BIRTHS | |
| Simon Kirwan Donaldson | |
(source) |
 Born 20
Aug 1957
British mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for his work in topology. Nearly all his work falls in the two realms of (1) differential geometry of holomorphic vector bundles and (2) applications of gauge theory to 4-manifold topology. Remarkably, Donaldson has solved problems of mathematics by using ideas from physics (wheras most mathematics in usually applied to physics). From the Yang-Mills generalizations of James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic equations, Donaldson used special solutions to these equations, called instantons, to look at general four-manifolds. After being awarded the Fields Medal, Donaldson continued his exploitation of ideas from physics with applications to mathematics. |
| Roger Wolcott Sperry | |
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1913; died 17 Apr 1994
American neurobiologist, corecipient with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1981 for their investigations of brain function, Sperry in particular for his study of functional specialization in the cerebral hemispheres. He was responsible for overturning the widespread belief that the left brain is dominant by showing that several cognitive abilities were localized in the right brain. He also provided experimental proof for the specificity of the reconnection of regenerating severed neurons in newts, which later led to new theories on how neurons grow. After 1965, his work turned more to psychology and philosophy. |
| Jerome L. Murray | |
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1912; died 7 Jan 1998.
American inventor of the peristaltic pump that made open-heart surgery possible. It met the need to pump blood without damaging the cells through a method of expansion and contraction that imitates the way that peristalsis moves the contents of the digestive tract. In addition, the pump was adapted for kidney dialysis and for food processing (to pump soup into cans without crushing the peas or the celery). He decided to invent the airplane boarding ramp when on a day in 1951 at the Miami International Airport he saw passengers having to walk in the rain to the terminal. In all, he held 75 patents including a television antenna rotator, electric carving knife, high-speed dentist drill, power car seat and an audible pressure cooker. [Image: Peristaltic pump showing tubing and rotor that moves blood.] |
| Valentin Petrovich Glushko | |
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1908; died 10 Jan 1989
Soviet rocket scientist who was a pioneer developer of rocket engines (1946-74). From 1929, he worked in Leningrad in GDL - the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, the military rocket research organization, founded in 1921. He worked with renowned rocket designer Sergey Korolyov (1932-1966). In Aug 1957, they successfully launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile and in October of the same year, sent the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. He became chief designer for the Soviet space program in 1974, helping to oversee development of the Mir space station. During his life, he designed the most succesessful rocket engines in the Soviet space program. |
| Werner Forssmann | |
(source) |
Born 20 Aug 1904; died 1 Jun 1979
German surgeon who shared with André F. Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1956. Forssmann was a pioneer in the development of cardiac catheterization, a procedure in which a tube is inserted into a vein at the elbow and passed through the vein into the heart. In 1929, while a young surgical resident in a small German hospital in Eberswalde, Forssmann anesthetized his own elbow, inserted a catheter in his antecubital vein and, catheter dangling from his arm, proceeded to a basement x-ray room where he documented the catheter's position in his right atrium - proving that a catheter could be inserted safely into a human heart. It was believed at the time that any entry into the heart would be fatal.  Mavericks,
Miracles, and Medicine: The Pioneers Who Risked Their Lives...,
by Julie M. Fenster. |
| Salomon Bochner | |
|
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1899; died 2 May 1982.
Galician-born American mathematician and educator responsible for the development of the Bochner theorem of positive-definite functions and the Bochner integral. |
| Eduard Suess | |
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1831; died 26 Apr 1914
Austrian geologist, born in England, who helped lay the basis for paleogeography and tectonics--i.e., the study of the architecture and evolution of the Earth's outer rocky shell. He was an authority on structural geology, especially of mountains, and postulated the existence of the giant land mass Gondwanaland. While he was a professor (1857–1901) at the Univ. of Vienna, he also served for more than 20 years in the Austrian parliament. His Austrian-born son, Hans Suess, became a geochemist who pioneered radiocarbon dating techniques and was a founding faculty member of the University of California, San Diego. Image from Austrian commemorative stamp of 26 Apr 1989. |
| Jöns Jacob Berzelius | |
(source) |
Born 20
Aug 1779; died 7 Aug 1848
Jöns Jacob Berzelius was a Swedish scientist, one of the founders of modern chemistry. He is especially noted for his determination of atomic weights, the development of modern chemical symbols, his electrochemical theory, the discovery and isolation of several elements, the development of classical analytical techniques, and his investigation. |
|
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| AUGUST 20 - DEATHS | |
| Sir Fred Hoyle | |
(source) |
 Died
20 Aug 2001 (born 24 June 1915)
English mathematician and astronomer, best known as the foremost proponent and defender of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds both that the universe is expanding and that matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant. He became Britain's best-known astronomer in 1950 with his broadcast lectures on The Nature of the Universe, and he recalled coining the term "Big Bang" in the last of those talks. Although over time, belief in a "steady state" universe as Hoyle had proposed was shared by fewer and fewer scientists because of new discoveries, Hoyle never accepted the now most popular "Big Bang" theory for the origin of the universe. 
"A
Different Approach to Cosmology" by Fred Hoyle (Author),
et al |
| George Adamson | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1989 (born 1906)
Conservationist who, with his wife Joy, pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife. He was a British game warden who had worked in Kenya as a gold prospector, goat trader, and safari hunter from 1924 when he married Joy in 1944. She wrote internationally successful books on African wildlife, especially a trilogy describing how the couple raised a lion cub, Elsa, and returned it to its natural habitat. She founded the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal (1961), an international group that financed conservation and education projects. They separated in 1971. Joy was murdered by a disgruntled employee (1980). At her funeral, Adamson promised to carry on her work. George and two of his assistants were killed by animal poachers (1989). |
| Theodore Christian Schneirla | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1968 (born 23 Jul 1902)
Theodore Christian Schneirla was the foremost American comparative psychologist of the mid-1900's (the American Museum of Natural History) whose empirical work was based on observations on the behaviour patterns of army ants. He went so far in his "biphasic A-W theory" as to reduce all behavior to two simple responses: approach and withdrawal. We approach what causes pleasure, and we withdraw from what causes unpleasure or pain. His Principles of Animal Psychology (1935, with N. R. F. Maier) was the leading text in its field. |
| Percy Williams Bridgman | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1961 (born 21 Apr 1882)
American experimental physicist noted for his studies of materials at high temperatures and pressures. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1946 for his "invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics." He was the first Harvard physicist to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics. His first experimental work on static high pressures beginning in 1908 at first yielded pressures of about 6,500 atmospheres. Eventually, he reached about 400,000 atmospheres. During studies of the phase changes of solids under pressure, he discovered several high-pressure forms of ice. Bridgman also wrote eloquently on matters of general interest in the physics of his day. |
| Edward Weston | |
(EB) |
Died
20 Aug 1936 (born 9 May 1850)
British-born American electrical engineer and industrialist who founded the Weston Electrical Instrument Company. He moved to America as a young medical student in 1870. In the next few years, he revolutionized the electro-plating industry by inventing and manufacturing a highly successful electroplating dynamo, which far surpassed the efficiency of storage batteries. He patented the dynamo and a nickel-plating anode in 1875. From then until about 1917, Weston was granted 334 U.S patents. After early experiments with designs of incandescent lamps, he distinguished himself with the invention and manufacture of a series of precision electronical measuring instruments. |
| Herbert Hall Turner | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1930 (born 13 Aug 1861)
English astronomer who pioneered many of the procedures now universally employed in determining stellar positions from astronomical photographs. After serving as chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory for nine years, he spent most of his career as Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University. One of the leaders in the worldwide effort to produce an astrographic chart of the sky, he developed improved methods for obtaining both positions and magnitudes from photographic plates. Most of his later work was in seismology; he compiled and published worldwide earthquake data starting in 1918, and he discovered the existence of deep-focus earthquakes in 1922. |
| Vilfredo Pareto | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1923 (born 15 Jul 1848)
Italian economist and sociologist, known for his application of mathematics to economic analysis and for his theory of the 'circulation of elites'. His initial five-year course in civil engineering, graduating in 1870, gave him a grounding in mathematics. While working as an engineer, he studied philosophy and politics and wrote many periodical articles in which he was one of the first to analyse economic problems with mathematical tools. Pareto's first work, Cours d'economie politique (1896-97), included his famous 'law' of income distribution, a complicated mathematical formulation attempting to prove the distribution of incomes and wealth in society is not random and that a consistent pattern appears throughout history, in all parts of the world and in all societies. |
| Adolf von Baeyer | |
| Died
20 Aug 1917 (born 31 Oct 1835)
German research chemist who synthesized indigo (1880) and formulated its structure (1883). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1905. |
|
| Paul Ehrlich | |
| Died
20 Aug 1915 (born 14 Mar 1854)
German bacteriologist and immunologist who was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1908 (with Élie Metchnikoff). Ehrlich made medical scientist known for his pioneering work in hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy and for his discovery of the first effective treatment for syphilis. He received jointly with the |
|
| Carlos Juan Finlay | |
(source) |
Died
20 Aug 1915 (born 3 Dec 1833)
Cuban epidemiologist who contributed to the etiology and pathology of yellow fever. He pioneered the recognition of the mosquito as the agent of transmission from infected to healthy humans, which idea he published in 1881. This disease can cause horrible deaths in epidemic numbers. His experimental work pointed to the mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Despite the publication of his significant work in 1886, his ideas were ahead of their time, and ignored by the medical community until 20 years later, then 14 years after his death. His work was taken up by the Reed Commission in 1900. Finlay served in Cuba as the chairman of the commission on infectious diseases, Havana (1899-1902) and chief sanitary officer (1902-09).« |
| Baha ad-din Muhammad ibn Husayn, al-Amili | |
| Died
20 Aug 1620 (born 20 Mar 1546)
Syrian-born Iranian (a.k.a. Shaykh Baha'i) who was a theologian, mathematician and astronomer. He became a very learned Muslim whose genius touched every field of knowledge from mathematics and philosophy to architecture and landscape design. He revived the study of mathematics in Iran. His treatise on the subject, Khulasat al-hisab ("The Essentials of Arithmetic"), and translations from the original Arabic was in use as a textbook until the end of the 19th century. His treatise in astronomy, Tashrihu'l-aflak ("Anatomy of the Heavens") summarised the works of earlier masters. He was born within a year of William Gilbert in England and Tycho Brahe in Denmark, and was still a child when his family left Syria to escape religious persecution.« |
|
| AUGUST 20 - EVENTS | |
| Voyager 2 | |
(source) |
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 2, on a Titan-Centaur rocket. It
was an unmanned spacecraft to explore the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune, where it also discovered and photographed many previously
unknown moons, rings and other features of the planets. A 12-inch copper
phonograph record carried on board contained greetings in dozens of languages,
samples of music and sounds of nature. Voyager
1 was launched similarly one month later, on 5 Sep 1977. |
| First animals return from space flight | |
(source) |
In 1960, USSR recovered two dogs, Belka and Strelka ("Squirrel" and "Little
Arrow" in Russian), the first live Russian dogs to be recovered from orbit.
In preparation for manned spaceflight, Korabl-Sputnik-2 (Spaceship
Satellite-2, also known as Sputnik 5), launched 19
Aug 1960, also carried 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants. After
a day in orbit, its retrorocket was fired and the landing capsule returned
to Earth. The
dogs
were the first living organisms to return from space. Earlier,
on 3 Nov 1957, the USSR lauched
Sputnik
2, with a stray Siberian husky, Laika ("Barker"). By design, it
did not return to Earth; Laika
died in space a few days later. On 12
Apr 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin became the first man in space.« |
| Soviet H-bomb | |
|
In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen
bomb. |
|
| Television patent | |
 |
In 1930, Philo Farnsworth patented a television system (U.S. 1,773,980).
This was his first patent, with a description of his image dissector tube,
which was his most important inventive contribution to the development
of television. He had begun working on this concept at an early age, gained
some financial support for his research, and worked in a small laboratory
with limited assistance. |
| Television demonstration | |
|
In 1930, the first demonstration telecast of home television in the U.S.
was received in New York City. A half-hour program was hosted by the cartoonist
Harry Hirschfeld, and demonstrated on screens placed in a store in the
Hotel Ansonia, the Hearst building, and a home at 98 Riverside Drive. The
signal travelled about six miles, the greatest distance for TV transmission
to date. The performers were in the studios were the Jenkins W2XCR (Jersey
City, NJ) and the de Forest W2XCD (Passaic, NJ). This program was the first
demonstration of home reception, but home sets had been set up in homes
beginning on 13 Jan 1928. |
|
| Stainless steel | |
|
In 1913 stainless steel was first cast in Sheffield.* |
|
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1912, Thomas A. Edison received U.S. patent No. 1036470 for a "Phonographic
Apparatus," and No. 1036471 for a "Storage Battery." |
|
| Telegram | |
|
In 1911, the first cable message sent around the world from the U.S. by
commercial telegraph was transmitted from New York City. It read "This
message sent around the world," left the New York Times building at 7:00
pm and was received at 7:16 pm after travelling nearly 29,000 miles through
16 relays via the Azores, Gibraltar, India, Phillipines, Midway, Guam,
Hawaii and San Francisco. |
|
| Malaria | |
|
In 1897, physician Sir Ronald Ross made a key breakthrough when he discovered
malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquit. The day became known as Mosquito
Day.* |
|
| Electric train signalling | |
|
In 1872, William Robinson was issued a U.S. patent No.130,661 for electric
train signalling. |
|
