| SEPTEMBER 5 - BIRTHS | |
| Susumu Tonegawa | |
(source) |
 Born 5
Sep 1939
Japanese molecular biologist and immunologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1987 for his fundamental discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity in the body. Antibodies are produced by a special kind of white blood cells which are called B lymphocytes. In a pioneering study (1976) Tonegawa could through a series of ingenious experiments show how parts of the genome of the cell (DNA) is redistributed under its differentiation from an embryonic cell to an antibody producing B lymphocyte. Thus, he finally answered the question how the gene material in B cells could suffice to create the structures of a seemingly endless number of different antibodies. |
| Viktor Ambartsumian | |
(source) |
Born 5
Sep 1908; died 12 Aug 1996.
Viktor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist who founded the school of theoretical astrophysics in the Soviet Union. Most of his research was devoted to invariance principles applied to the theory of radiative transfer, inverse problems of astrophysics, and the empirical approach to the problems of the origin and evolution of stars and galaxies. He was first to suggest that T Tauri stars are very young and to propose that nearby stellar associations are expanding. He also showed that evolutionary processes such as mass loss are occurring in galaxies. He worked on radio galaxies and active galactic nuclei. Bruce Medal winner in 1960. |
| Therkel Mathiassen | |
(source) |
Born 5
Sep 1892; died 14 Mar 1967.
Danish archaeologist and ethnographer laid the groundwork for the scientific study of arctic archaeology. His excavations (1921-23) of the Thule prehistoric Eskimo culture were the first scientific archaeological investigations in the Canadian Arctic. Mathiassen, as a member of the Danish Fifth Thule Expedition (1922), excavated ruins at Naujan (called Nauyat by local people), one of the most important sites of its time period. He uncovered and mapped a dozen sod house ruins, tent rings, graves, meat caches, kayak stands, and a refuse heap almost larger than the houses. His work defined the culture of the people who had lived in there. The Thule (pronounced Too-lee) people are ancestors of the modern Inuit.« [source for date of death] |
| Frank Jewett | |
(image) |
Born 5
Sep 1879; died 18 Nov 1949.
Frank Baldwin Jewett was the U.S. electrical engineer who directed research as the first president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., (1925-40). Jewett believed that the best science and technology result from bringing together and nurturing the best minds. Under his tenure Bell Labs laid the foundation for a new scientific discipline, radio astronomy, and transformed movies by synchronizing sound to pictures. Bell Labs was the first to transmit television over a long distance in the U.S. and designed the first electrical digital computer. Bell Labs won its first Nobel Prize in physics for fundamental work demonstrating the wave nature of matter. |
| Frederick George Donnan | |
(source) |
Born 5
Sep 1870; died 16 Dec 1956.
British chemist, born in Ceylon, whose research contributed to the development of colloid chemistry. He is remembered for his investigation of the Donnan Effect (1911) which advanced the understanding of the living cell. This is the effect of a semi-permeable membrane between two electrolytes and the electrical potential thereby produced. In other work with soap solutions, he related the efficiency of hydroxyl ions in the emulsification of oils to the formation of soaps on the surface of the drops. In wartime, he worked on the industrial-scale synthesis of ammonia and nitric acid. He was blind in one eye.« |
| Eugen Goldstein | |
(source) |
Born 5
Sep 1850; died 25 Dec 1930
German physicist who discovered and named canal rays (1886) which emerge through holes in the anodes of low-pressure electrical discharge tubes (later shown to be positively charged particles). Earlier, he coined the term "cathode ray" (1876) emitted from a cathode. He was the first to see that they could cast a shadow, and were emitted at right angles to the surface. He also investigated the wavelengths of light emitted by metals and oxides when canal rays impinge on them. When the Berlin Urania, opened in 1889 it had five scientific departments and a "science theatre", it was Goldstein who had recommended the "hall of physics in which the visitor could experiment on his own". Students of his that continued his work included Wien and Stark.« Image: The tube with which Goldstein discovered canal rays in 1886. |
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| SEPTEMBER 5 - DEATHS | |
| Dennis Robert Hoagland | |
 Died
5 Sep 1949 (born 2 Apr 1884)
American plant physiologist and authority on plant and soil interactions. He recognized early that the complex problems of soil and plant interrelations must be studied with rigid experimental control and the isolation of individual variables. Thus, he perfected the water-culture technique for growing plants without soil, which nutrient solution is still in plant physiology research. He collected much data on the influence of oxygen, temperature, light, and other factors on ion absorption by roots. In the late 1930's, he adopted radioactive isotopes as tracers. In his fieldwork on soil chemistry he studied zinc, potassium, and phosphate deficiencies of fruit trees in California. He influenced further intensive study of aspects of micronutrients (trace elements). |
|
| Ales Hrdlicka | |
(source) |
Died
5 Sep 1943 (born 29 Mar 1869)
Czechoslovakian-American physical anthropologist known for his studies of Neanderthal man and his theory of the migration of American Indians from Asia. He worked gratis as a field anthropologist (1899-1903) under Fredric Ward Putnam, in four intense anthropometric studies of the Indians of the American Southwest and northern Mexico. In 1903, Hrdlicka joined the Smithsonian Institute, where during the next forty years, he compiled the most complete collection of human bone material in the world. He was the one of the first scientists to argue the Americans originated in Asia and came across the Bering Strait, and participated in numerous archeological expeditions which contributed a great amount of information and physical evidence. |
| David Hendricks Bergey | |
(source) |
Died 5 Sep 1937 (born 27 Dec 1860)
American bacteriologist who was lead author of Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, which work remains a widely used international reference work for bacterial taxonomy. He was chairman of a committee to devise a classification scheme for all known bacteria suitable for identifying species. With four other bacteriologists, he first published the Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology in 1923, followed by revised editions every few years to keep pace with the discovery of new bacterial species and other changes. His research included tuberculosis, food preservatives, phagocytosis, and anaphylaxis. He distinguished the several organisms in a class called Schizomycetes.«  Bergey's
Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, by Bergey, et al. |
| Johann Georg Hagen | |
(source) |
Died
5 Sep 1930 (born 6 Mar 1847)
Jesuit priest and astronomer who made a catalog of variable stars (1890-1908). Working at the Vatican Observatory he reexamined for accuracy the listing of all of the NGC (New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters) objects north of about -30 degrees. He published lists of errata in the NGC. During his observations, he observed dark nebulae, tenuous dark clusters of interstellar matter sometimes known as Hagen's clouds. These strange clouds have not been recorded by others, and are now attributed to optical illusions associated with visual observations. Jesuits have been involved in astronomy since 1551 when Fr. Christoph Clavius, SJ, a mathematician and astronomer helped Pope Gregory XIII reform the calendar.« |
| Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann | |
|
Died
5 Sep 1906 (born 20 Feb 1844)
Physicist who founded statistical mechanics. After obtaining his doctorate, he became an assistant to his teacher Josef Stefan. Boltzmann's fame is based on his invention of statistical mechanics, independently of Willard Gibbs. Their theories connected the properties and behaviour of atoms and molecules with the large scale properties and behaviour of the substances of which they were the building blocks. He also worked out a kinetic theory of gases, and the Stefan-Boltzmann law concerning a relationship between the temperature of a body and the radiation it emits. His firm belief and defense of atomism (that all matter is made of atoms) against hostile opposition to this new idea, may have contributed to his suicide in 1906. Boltzmann's
Atom: The Great Debate That Launched A Revolution In Physics, by
David Lindley |
| Rudolf Virchow | |
 |
Died
5 Sep 1902 (born 13 Oct 1821)
German pathologist and statesman who originated the concept that disease arises in the individual cells of a tissue and, with publication of his Cellular Pathology (1858), founded the science of cellular pathology. Virchow also worked on improving sanitary conditions in Berlin, and believed that environmental factors such as poor living conditions could be as much a cause of disease as germs. He also helped develop the science of anthropology in Germany and to make Berlin a European centre of medicine. Virchow encouraged his friend Heinrich Schliemann in his determination to discover the site of Homer's Troy and actually worked on the dig at Hissarlik in 1879. 
Collected
Essays on Public Health & Epidemiology, by Rudolf
Virchow. |
| William MacGillivray | |
| Died
5 Sep 1852 (born 25 Jan 1796)
Scottish botanist and zoologist. From 1831-41, he was Conservator at the Royal College of Surgeons Museum in Edinburgh, and thereafter Professor of Natural History at Aberdeen until his death. He is best known to botanists for his one-volume abridgment of Withering's Botanical Arrangement. He assisted Audubon in the technical part of his Birds of America. MacGillivray authored five volumes of a History of British Birds. He also wrote other manuals in botany, geology and conchology. Through extensive dissections, he made a thorough study of the internal structure of birds. His eldest son, John Macgillivray, accompanied Captain Stanley as naturalist in the voyage of the Rattlesnake.« [Image: engraving, considered to be a poor likeness, from self-portrait in oils, retouched after his death by a local artist. Published in Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides, plate ii, by Harvie-Brown and Buckley.] |
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| SEPTEMBER 5 - EVENTS | |
| Voyager 1 | |
(source) |
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard
a Titan-Centaur rocket. Voyager 2
had been launched similarly the previous month, on 20 Aug 1977. |
| Gas (petrol) pump | |
|
In 1885, Sylvanus Bowser, inventor of the first U.S. gas pump, made his
initial sale to Jake Gumper, owner of a service station in Fort Wayne,
Indiana. The pump held one barrel of gasoline, and used marble vales and
a wooden plunger. It was built in Bowser's barn, and patented in 1887. |
|
| Great Zimbabwe | |
(source) |
In 1871, Karl Mauch, a German geologist,
arrived at the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in what is now southern Zimbabwe
in sub-Saharan Africa. Local Karanga tribesmen led Mauch to the wooded
savanna location where he viewed 100 acres of granite enclosures. The sinuous
coursed granite walls were built without mortar and stood up to 32 feet
high. Maunch was the first European to investigate the ruins, but centuries
earlier João de Barros had written what he had heard about them
(but not himself seen) in his Da Asia (1552) record of Portuguese
conquests. Subsequent investigators were inept, racist and attributed the
construction to whites, until David
Randall-MacIver wrote his account in 1906 of their true native African
origin.« [Image: aerial
view of the Great Zimbabwe ruins.] |
| Record balloon ascent | |
(source) |
In 1862, a balloon ascent to a height of 7 miles was made by metereologist
James
Glaisher and his pilot Henry Tracey Coxwell. Although this was the
greatest height then achieved by passengers in a balloon, its precise altitude
is unknown because Glaisher lost consciousness and was unable to read the
barometer. Death was narrowly avoided by the courageous efforts of the
pilot. The height was estimated by extrapolating measurements already recorded
on the ascent. Between 1862-66, Glaisher made balloon ascents,
many of which were arranged by a committee of the British Association.
Their objective was to carry out scientific observations
such as the variation in temperature and humidity of the atmosphere at
high elevations.«
Travels
in the air, by James Glaisher. |
| Charles Darwin | |
|
In 1857, Charles Darwin, now
48 years old, had not yet published his theory of evolution. On this day,
he sent a letter to Asa Gray, a Harvard
botanist, discussing his theory. The encouragement which followed from
Gray and others, and new knowledge that Alfred Wallace had independently
developed the same theory, prompted Darwin to end 20 years of indecision
and publish his ideas. |
|
| Charles Darwin | |
|
In 1831, Charles Darwin first met Captain Robert
Fitzroy, commander of HMS Beagle, who would be his cabinmate
on a the historic five-year expedition (1831-36). During that voyage, Darwin
visited the Galapogos Islands which inspired his theory of evolution. |
|
