| SEPTEMBER 9 - BIRTHS | |
| D. Carleton Gajdusek | |
(source) |
 Born 9
Sep 1923
American physician and research virologist who shared (with Baruch S. Blumberg) the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious dieases." He solved the puzzle of the cause of kuru, an unusual disease that was rife among some isolated people, the Fore tribe in New Guinea. The disease resulted in a slow degeneration of the brain, and was eventually fatal. He realized the funeral ritual in which the Fore tribe honoured their dead by eating their brains, was a mode for the viral infection to spread; and also that kuru was similar to scrapie in sheep with a years-long incubation period. Eventually he pinpointed a new group of viruses - the slow-moving virus.« |
| Hans Georg Dehmelt | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1922
German-born American physicist who "for the development of the ion trap technique" shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics (with the German physicist Wolfgang Paul and Norman Ramsey) Their methods enabled the study of a single electron or a single ion with extreme precision. Delmelt's electromagnetic device, the Penning trap, in 1973 successfully observed a single electron in the trap. In 1975, he introduced a technique for "cooling" the electron. Later in the 1970's, Dehmelt together with P. Toschek were able to observe a single ion in a trap. This led to single-ion spectroscopy, a new type of spectroscopy.« |
| Kurt Lewin | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1890; died 12 Feb 1947.
German-born American social psychologist who originated the field theory of behaviour. He was among the first to apply laboratory techniques to everyday behavior. He would always formulate a problem in terms of a theory to be tested in experiments. His approach was to study the forces leading to action. Thus he described behaviour as the outcome of positive and negative forces affecting the individual at a given moment. This needed consideration of two kinds of factors, those of the person and those of his psychological environment. Thus his field theory is an approach to the study of human behavior, rather than a theory which has content which can be used for explanatory, predictive, or control purposes.«  The
Complete Social Scientist: A Kurt Lewin Reader, by Kurt
Lewin and Martin Gold. |
| Pierre Marie | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1853; died 13 Apr 1940.
French neurologist who made fundamental contributions to endocrinology. He trained at the Salpetriere under Jean Martin Charcot, and hia assistant. Marie developed an early interest in nervous diseases. His doctoral thesis was on Basedow’s disease and its characteristic tremour in extended arms and fingers. In 1982 he published a series of lectures he had given on diseases of the spinal cord. He studied and was the first (1886-1891) to describe acromegaly, a form of gigantism of the extremities (Gr. akron, extremity; megas, large). Marie’s discovery that growth disorders result from a disorder of the pituitary gland was a fundamental contribution to the emerging field of endocrinology.« |
| John Henry Poynting | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1852; died 30 Mar 1914.
British physicist who introduced a theorem (1884-85) that assigns a value to the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy known as the Poynting vector, introduced in his paper On the Transfer of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field (1884). In this he showed that the flow of energy at a point can be expressed by a simple formula in terms of the electric and magnetic forces at that point. He determined the mean density of the Earth (1891) and made a determination of the gravitational constant (1893) using accurate torsion balances. He was also the first to suggest, in 1903, the existence of the effect of radiation from the Sun that causes smaller particles in orbit about the Sun to spiral close and eventually plunge in. |
| Oscar Montelius | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1843; died 4 Nov 1921.
Swedish archaeologist who sought to establish foundations for prehistoric chronology, especially that of the Bronze Age in the British Isles and Europe northward to Scandinavia. He developed a relative chronological dating method, known as Swedish seriation. During the early ages of archaeology, accurate records were sometimes kept, sometimes not. His technique dated artifacts based on geography and comparisons from artifacts within a certain geographical area. Montelius’ method looked at individual artifacts and placed them using contemporary written records on a timeline specific to the location. Based on the absolute date of that artifact, other artifacts of that geographical region are compared and dated. |
| Elliott Coues | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1842; died 25 Dec 1899.
American army surgeon and ornithologist whose Key to North American Birds (1872) was the first work of its kind to present a taxonomic classification of birds according to an artificial key and promoted the systematic study of North American. Beginning the U.S. army as a medical cadet during the Civil War (1862), he became an assistant surgeon (1864-81). His interest in the study of birds began while a boy. He met many naturalists at the Smithsonian Institution and published his first technical paper at age 19. As his army assignments took him to various locations throughout the West, he continued studying the bird life in each new area, and found new species. He also did valuable work in mammalogy and wrote a book, Fur-Bearing Animals (1877).« Elliott
Coues: Naturalist and Frontier Historian, by Paul Russell
Cutright, Michael J. Brodhead. |
| Joseph Leidy | |
1863 (source) |
Born 9
Sep 1823; died 30 Apr 1891.
American zoologist, who made significant contributions in a remarkably wide range of earth and natural science disciplines, including comparative anatomy, parasitology, and paleontology. As the Father of American Vertibrate Paleontology, he described not only the first relatively complete dinosaur skeleton, but the diversity of fossil finds in the American West. His knowledge of comparative anatomy enabled him to make sense of even fragmentary fossil remains. He was also a competant microscopist, scientific illustrator, and published papers in human biology and medicine. His microscopic examination of parasite cysts in cooked ham and microorganisms in housefly mouthparts enabled him to improve public heath.« Joseph
Leidy: The last man who knew everything, by Leonard Warren. |
| William Lonsdale | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1794; died 11 Nov 1871.
English geologist and paleontologist whose study of coral fossils found in Devon, suggested (1837) certain of them were intermediate between those typical of the older Silurian System (408 to 438 million years old) and those of the later Carboniferous System (286 to 360 million years old). Geologists Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick agreed. They named (1839) this new geologic system after its locale - the Devonian System. Lonsdale's early career was as an army officer (1812-15) and later he became curator and librarian of the Geological Society of London (1829-42). He recognised that fossils showed how species changed over time, and more primitive organisms are found in lower strata. Darwin used this to support his evolution theory.«  [Image:
Coral-rich limestone from Petitor, Devon.] |
| William Cranch Bond | |
(source) |
Born 9
Sep 1789; died 29 Jan 1859.
American astronomer who, with his son, George Phillips Bond (1825-65), discovered Hyperion, the eighth satellite of Saturn, and an inner ring called Ring C, or the Crepe Ring. While W.C. Bond was a young clockmaker in Boston, he spent his free time in the amateur observatory he built in part of his home. In 1815 he was sent by Harvard College to Europe to visit existing observatories and gather data preliminary to the building of an observatory at Harvard. In 1839 the observatory was founded. He supervised its construction, then became its first director. Together with his son he developed the chronograph for automatically recording the position of stars. They also took some of the first recognizable photographs of celestial objects. Image: The Harvard College Observatory's 15-inch telescope known as "The Great Refractor", installed 1846. |
| Luigi Galvani | |
(EB) |
Born 9
Sep 1737; died 4 Dec 1798.
Italian physicist, physician, born in Bologna. He established bioelectric forces exist within living tissue. Italian physician and physicist who investigated the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue. His discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic pile, a kind of battery that makes possible a constant source of current electricity. |
|
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages: Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages: Today in Science History Science Store Click here to browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| SEPTEMBER 9 - DEATHS | |
| Marthe Vogt | |
(source) |
 Died
9 Sep 2003 (born 8 Sep 1903)
German-born British pharmacologist who left Nazi Germany for Britain and became a leading authority on neurotransmitters in the brain. In 1936 she co-authored a classic paper proving that acetylcholine from nerves originating in the spinal cord triggers movement in muscles. She later showed that the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine help brain cells communicate.Her classic paper on sympathin, published in 1954, helped to pave the way to transforming the lives of the mentally ill. Modern anti-depressant drug therapy is grounded in increasing the availability of amines, predicated on the idea that amines are present and active in the brain in the first place, something which Vogt did much to establish. |
| Edward Teller | |
|
Died
9 Sep 2003 (born 15 Jan 1908)
Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. After studying in Germany he left in 1933, going first to London and then to Washington, DC. He worked on the first atomic reactor, and later working on the first fission bombs during WW II at Los Alamos. Subsequently, he made a significant contribution to the development of the fusion bomb. His work led to the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb (1952). He is sometimes known as "the father of the H-bomb." Teller's unfavourable evidence in the Robert Oppenheimer security-clearance hearing lost him some respect amongst scientists. |
| Jacques Lacan | |
(source) |
Died
9 Sep 1981 (born 13 Apr 1901)
French psychoanalyst who gained an international reputation as an original interpreter of Sigmund Freud's work. Probably the most controversial figure in French psychiatry, Jacques Lacan dedicated himself to getting strictly back to Freud by way of structural linguistics. After being expelled in 1953 from the International Psychoanalytic Association for unorthodox analytical practices, Lacan, along with Daniel Lagache, created the Societe Francaise de Psychoanalyse. As his theoretical positions continued to develop, Lacan and his followers went on to found the Ecole Freudienne in Paris in 1964. His Ecrits (1966) gained Lacan international attention. Leading intellectuals flocked to his seminars and he exercised a cryptic but powerful influence on the French cultural scene of the 1970s. Concerned that the Ecole was losing its integrity, Lacan dissolved it in 1980. |
| Sir Eric Thompson | |
(source) |
Died
9 Sep 1975 (born 31 Dec 1898)
Sir J(ohn) Eric S(idney) Thompson was a leading English ethnographer of the Mayan people. Thompson devoted his life to the study of Mayan culture and was able to extensively decipher early Mayan glyphs, determining that, contrary to prevailing belief, they contained historical as well as ritualistic and religious records. Sir Eric Thompson believed that Maya society was organized around religion, specifically star-worship. He thought that the Maya lived peacefully in villages and were ruled by priests that were more concerned with making astronomical calculation than political competition for power. With the discovery during the 1980's of how to decipher the Maya language, it was learned that almost every aspect of the traditional view of the Maya was wrong. Maya
Archaeologist, by John Eric Sidney Thompson. |
| Hermann Staudinger | |
(source) |
Died
9 Sep 1965 (born 23 Mar 1881)
German chemist who received the 1953 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery of the structure of polymers as long-chain molecules. In 1910, he developed a new, simple synthesis for isoprene, the basic molecular unit in synthetic rubber. By the 1920's, Staudinger had formed his view that polymer molecules could be very long chain of repeating units joined by normal chemical bonds, rather than the prevailing view that polymers were merely a disorderly aggregation of smaller molecules held together by some other forces. He coined the term "macromolecule" (1922). Eventually X-ray crystallography confirmed his long-chain structure of polymers. His work was a major contribution to molecular biology.« |
| Edward H. Johnson | |
| Died
9 Sep 1917 (born 4 Jan 1846)
Edward Hibberd Johnson was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He spent many years in various business projects with Thomas Edison, including being the vice-president of the Edison Electric Light Company.* Johnson created the first electric lights on a Christmas tree on 22 Dec 1882.« |
|
| Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper | |
(source) |
Died
9 Sep 1901 (born 12 May 1856)
German botanist whose Pflanzentogeographie (1898) was one of the first and finest mapping of the floral regions of the continents. He coined (1885) the term chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that conduct photosynthesis), and distinguished them from chromatophores (pigment-containing cells found in many marine animals). In 1880, he proved that starch is the source of stored energy for plants. His explorations included Florida, the West Indies, South America, and Indonesia. On the Valdivia expedition (1898) he studied the oceanic plankton of numerous oceanic islands and coastal Africa. His father, Wilhelm Philipp Schimper was an expert on mosses and whose cousin Karl Friedrich Schimper studied plant morphology.« |
| Bernard Siegfried Albinus | |
(source) |
Died 9 Sep 1770 (born 24 Feb 1697)
German anatomist who was the first to show the connection of the vascular systems of the mother and the fetus. He is best known for the excellent drawings in his Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani (1747; "Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body"). Together with Hermann Boerhaave, he edited the works of the physicians Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey. (source) |
| SEPTEMBER 9 - EVENTS | |
| Ozone hole over city | |
(NASA) |
In 2000, the hole
in the ozone layer over Antarctica stretched over a populated city for
the first time, after ballooning to a new record size. For two days, Sept.
9-10, the hole extended over the southern Chile city of Punta Arenas, exposing
residents to very high levels of ultra violet radiation. Too much UV radiation
can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food
chain. Previously, the hole had only opened over Antarctica and the surrounding
ocean. Data from the U.S. space agency NASA showed the hole covered 11.4
million square miles - an area more than three times the size of the United
States. Image, compiled from
NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer instrument onboard the Earth Probe
satellite, reveals how the ozone hole (in deep blue) has extended as far
as southern Chile. |
| Saturn V Test | |
|
In 1967, a Saturn V rocket was launched on the first successful test flight.« |
|
| First panda cub born in captivity | |
(source) |
In 1963, the first ever live birth
in captivity of a giant panda in the world took place at Beijing Zoo, China,
when the male Ming Ming was born to the mother Li Li. Attempts to breed
pandas in captivity began in China in 1955. « [Image:
panda cub born in China in 2006, This baby weighed 218 grams at birth,
the heaviest panda born in captivity. Usual birth weight is between 83
to 190 grams] |
| Computer bug | |
|
In 1945, the first "bug" in a computer program was discovered by Grace
Hopper, a moth was removed with tweezers from a relay and taped into the
log. |
|
| Sound barrier broken by rocket | |
|
In 1934, the first rocket fired in America to break the sound barrier was
lanched by the American Rocket Society
from Marine Park, Staten Island, New York. The rocket, named ARS-4, had
a single thrust chamber with four canted nozzles. Its flight reached a
top speed of 700 mph, a maxium height of 400-ft,1,600-ft horizontal range
and ended in New York Bay.*
On an earlier attempt, 10 Jun 1934, it did not fly because the fuel ports
were too small. The society was founded
on 4 Apr 1930, originally named
the American Interplanetary Society. Their pioneering work
designing and testing several liquid-fuelled rockets led the way to the
U.S. space program.«
Blazing
The Trail: The Early History Of Spacecraft And Rocketry, by
Mike Gruntman. |
|
| Konel alloy | |
|
In 1929, the discovery of Konel, a new metal alloy was announced by Erwin
Foster Lowry, of the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co. research department
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The name reflects the cobalt (ko-)
and nickel (-kel) in the alloy. An interesting characteristic is
that konel grows stronger at high temperatures, whereas other metal becomes
weaker with heat. For example, at 600ºC, konel has twice the tensile
strength of chrome nickel steel. When used in oxide-coated filaments
for radio vacuum tubes (replacing expensive platinum), konel gives much
better electron emission. Other uses include turbine blades; also car engine
valve stems and pistons. Its composition
is 73% Ni; 17.5% Co; 6.5% Fe; 2.5% Ti; 0.2% Mn.« |
|
| NBC | |
(source) |
In 1926, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was created
by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), shortly after the acquistion
(May 1926) of the radio network operations of AT&T, which had decided
to withdraw from radio. The new NBC network was publicized with full-page
ads in many publications. The new network's debut broadcast was transmitted
on 15 Nov 1926. The network assets bought from AT&T with stations in
major cities of several states became the NBC-Red network (a designation
reflecting its origin when the inter-city circuit charts were marked
with telephone links between network radio stations in red pencil. The
smaller existing network of the buyer became NBC-Blue.« |
| Diagnostic public heath laboratory | |
Biggs (source) |
In 1892, the New York City health department established the first diagnostic
public heath laboratory in the U.S. as its Division of Pathology, Bacteriology
and Disinfection.*
It was spurred by the scare of Asiatic cholera at the time. In 1887, Drs.
Hermann
M. Biggs and
T. Mitchell Prudden had been able to isolate cholera vibri from passengers
on a ship of immigrants. Biggs
lobbied
for the establishment of a laboratory
for the purpose, and was able to use this new diagnosis when he was made
director of the new Division. From the testing of suspected cholera cases
he initiated, he was able to make positive identification of several among
them. In 1893, the laboratory expanded its work to test for diphtheria
and tuberculosis.
The
Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health, by
John Duffy |
| Ice cream freezer | |
(USPTO) |
In 1843, a U.S. patent was issued, antedated to 29 Jul 1843, for a hand-cranked
ice-cream freezer invented by Nancy M. Johnson (No.
3,254). In previous designs, the ice-cream mixture was held in an inner
container, which vessel was itself was rotated within an outer container
of ice and salt. Her invention was to add a vertical shaft with curved,
perforated paddles within the inner vessel, and reaching nearly to its
inside wall. Stirring in one direction would carry the the liquid or semi-fluid
mass from the centre to the circumference. Turning in the opposite direction
would scrape frozen material and carry it from the inner walls to the centre
of the freezer. Thus fresh matter continuously reached the freezing surface.«
[Image:
detail from patent diagram showing inner container and its paddle.] |
| First glass plate photo | |
(source) |
In 1839, John Herschel made the
first (remaining) photograph on glass plate. The image he captured was
of the 40-foot, 48" aperture telescope
used by his father William Herschel,
in Slough, England. It had sat decades without use, and was dismantled
a short time later. Twenty years earlier, in 1819, Herschel published the
results of his experiments with silver and salts. A chance comment about
Daguerre's experiments in a letter to his wife on 22 Jan 1839 from a friend
prompted
John into new activity, and within a few days, he had prepared some photographs.
In papers he published in 1840-42, he coined the new words “emulsion”,
“positive” and “negative” and reinforced Stenger's earlier introduction
of the word “photography.”« |
| First steam engine in US | |
(source) |
In
1753, the first steam engine imported into the American colonies landed
at New York City on the S.S. Irene, which left London on 6 Jun 1753.
It was installed to pump water from a copper mine owned by Col. John Schuyler
in New Barbadoes Neck (now North Arlington), New Jersey. It arrived there
on 25 Sep 1753, was erected, and in operation on 12 Mar 1755. Josiah Hornblower,
25, who came with it from England, superintended the engine, becoming America's
first steam engineer. Arent Schuyler, who had owned a large tract of land
since 1695, started the copper mine after a slave turned up green copper
ore while plowing. He exported the ore to England. His son John later took
over managing the mine after his death.*«
[Image:
Schematic of the Newcomen engine, or atmospheric engine, of the period
which was already in use in the tin mines of Cornwall. The building in
which it was housed is not shown.] |
