| SEPTEMBER 14 - BIRTHS | |
| Ferid Murat | |
(source) |
 Born 14
Sep 1936
American co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering that a gas, nitric oxide, acts as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. This work, performed in the 1980's, uncovered an entirely new mechanism for how blood vessels in the body relax and widen. It led to the development of the anti-impotence drug Viagra and potential new approaches for understanding and treating other diseases. He was a co-worker with Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro. |
| Robert S. Dietz | |
1938 (source) |
Born 14
Sep 1914; died 19 May 1995
Robert Sinclair Dietz was an American geophysicist and oceanographer who presented a theory of seafloor spreading in which new crustal material continually upwells from the Earth's depths along the mid-ocean ridges and spreads outward at a rate of several centimetres per year (1961). While a student Dietz identified the Kentland structure in Indiana as a meteoric impact site. He later achieved prominence by studying meteorite craters and demonstrated that asteroid and meteor impacts have been important geological processes acting for billions of years on both the Moon and the Earth. |
| Sir Peter Scott | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1909; died 29 Aug 1989
Sir Peter Markham Scott, son of Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic), was a British naturalist, conservationist, artist, and author. He was a founder of both the Severn Wildfowl Trust (1946, now renamed as the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust) and the World Wildlife Fund. From 1953 to 1970 he hosted the environmental television series Look for the British Broadcasting Corporation. (In 1978, he gave the Loch Ness Monster a scientific name, Nessiteras rhombopteryx. Scottish Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn later anagrammed it: "Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S." ) |
| Karl Taylor Compton | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1887; died 22 June 1954
American educator and physicist who directed development of radar during WW II. His research included the passage of photoelectrons through metals, ionization and the motion of electrons in gases, fluorescence, the theory of the electric arc, and collisions of electrons and atoms. In 1933, President Roosevelt asked him to chair the new Scientific Advisory Board. When the National Defense Research Committee was formed in 1940, he was chief of Division D (detection: radar, fire control, etc.) In 1941, he was in charge of those divisions concerned with radar within the new Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Afterwards he was cited for personally shortening the duration of the war. (Brother of Arthur H. Compton.) |
| Alexander Meissner | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1883; died 3 Jan 1958
Austrian engineer whose work in antenna design, amplification, and detection advanced the the development of radio telegraphy. In 1907 he joined the Telefunken Company of Berlin, where he conducted research on radio problems. He improved the design of antennas for transmitting at long wavelengths, devised new vacuum-tube circuits and amplification systems, and developed the heterodyne principle for radio reception. In 1911 Meissner designed the first rotary radio beacon to aid in the navigation of the Zeppelin airships. In 1913 he was the first to amplify high-frequency radio signals by using feedback in a vacuum triode; this principle made it possible to build radio receivers more sensitive than any earlier type. |
| Margaret Sanger | |
(EB) |
Born 14
Sep 1879; died 6 Sep 1966.
(neé Maragret Louisa Higgins) American birth-control champion who founded the first U.S. birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York (1916), where she had witnessed firsthand the interaction of poverty, uncontrolled fertility, and deaths from botched abortions, together with high rates of infant and maternal mortality. She became an international leader, and is credited with originating the term "birth control." |
| Maurice Fréchet | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1878; died 4 June 1973.
René-Maurice Fréchet was a French mathematician known chiefly for his contribution to real analysis. He is credited with being the founder of the theory of abstract spaces, which generalized the traditional mathematical definition of space as a locus for the comparison of figures; in Fréchet's terms, space is defined as a set of points and the set of relations. In his dissertation of 1906, he investigated functionals on a metric space and formulated the abstract notion of compactness. In 1907, he discovered an integral representation theorem for functionals on the space of quadratic Lebesgue integrable functions. He also made important contributions to statistics, probability and calculus. |
| Ivan Petrovich Pavlov | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1849; died 27 Feb 1936
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a physiologist, born in Ryazan, Russia, who was a pioneer in psychology. (Nobel 1904). The work that made Pavlov a household name in psychology actually began as a study in digestion. He performed a series of experiments on dogs to show how digestive secretions are regulated. Digestive secretions are influenced by three stimuli. Pavlov noted that dogs began to salivate if they were able to see, smell, or taste food. Pavlov suspected that digestion must be partly controlled by sensory stimuli. In 1903 Pavlov published his results calling this a "conditioned reflex," different from an innate reflex, such as yanking a hand back from a flame, in that it had to be learned. He worked actively in the lab until his death at age 87. [born 26 Sep 1849 on the Russian new style calendar] |
| William Edward Ayrton | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1847; died 8 Nov 1908.
English physicist, inventor and pioneer in technical education. He collaborated with John Perry, and their numerous inventions include an electric tricycle (1882), the first practical portable ammeter, voltmeter and other instruments for electrical measurement. Earlier in his career, he had spent five years with the Indian Telegraph Service during which time he developed techniques for fault detection in order to maintain the telegraph system.« |
| Pavel Yablochkov | |
1880 (source) |
Born 14 Sep 1847; died 31 Mar 1894
Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (also called Paul Jablochkov) was a Russian electrical engineer who invented an improved arc lamp, known as the Yablochkov candle (1876). Being cheap and relatively inexpensive, it was used in public buildings and to light streets for several decades before the advent of incandescent lighting which required much less maintenance. A brilliant white light was produced by an electric arc between two parallel carbon rods, using alternating current to ensure that the rods vaporised at equal rates. Yablochkov candles were used from 1877 in Paris, and were installed in London along Victoria Embankment (1878), followed by Billingsgate fish market, the Mansion House and Holborn Viaduct.« [Image right: Yablochkov candle.] |
| John Gould | |
c.1849 (source) |
Born 14 Sep 1804; died 3 Feb 1881.
English ornithologist whose life work produced 41 lavishly illustrated volumes on birds from all over the world, containing in all about 3,000 plates, all lithographed and hand-painted. Of these, his Birds of Australia was particularly significant (1840-69) as the first comprehensive record of the continent's birds and mammals. With its plates of the birds were descriptions, notes on their distribution and adaptation to the environment. He assisted Charles Darwin with identification of the specimens collected during the voyage of the Beagle. By informing Darwin that the finches belonging to separate species, he provided essential information giving Darwin insight leading to his later development of the theory of evolution.« [Image right: Plate from Vol III of Birds of Australia showing a male and two young Dusky Robins, Petroica Fesca.] |
| Alexander von Humboldt | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1769; died 6 May 1859
(Baron) Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a German natural scientist, archeologist, explorer and geographer, who made two major expeditions to Latin America (1799-1804) and to Asia (1829). During the first, equipped with the best scientific instruments, he surveyed and collected geological, zoological, botanical, and ethnographic specimens, including over 60,000 rare or new tropical plants. He charted and made observations on a cold ocean current along the Peruvian coast, now named, the Humboldt Current. In geology, he made pioneering observations of stratigraphy, structure and geomorphology; he understood the connections between volcanism and earthquakes. Humboldt named the Jurassic System. |
| Charles Du Fay | |
(source) |
Born 14
Sep 1698; died 16 Jul 1739.
Charles François de Cisternay Du Fay was a French chemist who made early experiments in electricity. In 1733, he distinguished electrical fluid in two types he named "vitreous electricity" and "resinous electricity" depending on the objects that produced the charge (subsequently called "positive" and "negative" by Benjamin Franklin). Du Fay discovered that objects with like charges repel each other, but oppositely charged objects repel. He also noted the effect of electricity shock on his body, and visible spark when making contact with a highly charged object. He observed that electricity may be conducted in the gaseous matter (now called plasma) adjacent to a red-hot body. Du Fay was also a pioneer in crystal optics.« |
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| SEPTEMBER 14 - DEATHS | |
| Rudoph Carnap | |
 Died
14 Sep 1970 (born 18 May 1891)
German-born American philosopher, who also made important contributions to logic, the analysis of language, the theory of probability and the philosophy of science. |
|
| Sir Arthur Percy Morris Fleming | |
 |
Died
14 Sep 1960 (born 16 Jan 1881)
English engineer who was a major figure in developing techniques for manufacturing radar components. During WW I, he made important advances in submarine-detection equipment. In 1920, as a pioneer in the development of radio, he established in Manchester the second British transmitting station to broadcast programs on a daily basis. His work on demountable, high-power thermionic tubes made it possible to establish radar stations in Great Britain by the time WW II began in 1939. |
| Émile Argand | |
| Died
14 Sep 1940 (born 6 Jan 1879)
Swiss geologist who studied the structure of the Alps. He produced a map of the Dent Blanche massif (1908) with a description of his investigation of the strata. In 1915, he coined the term embryotectonics for a new line of research which analyzed the sequential evolution of geological structures back to its origins as a sedimentary terrain.« |
|
| Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1926 (born 13 Feb 1852)
Danish astronomer who compiledthe New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, (NGC) in 1888. When he became Director of the Armagh Observatory in 1882, financially it was destitute, with no prospect of replacing its aging instruments. Though Dreyer obtained a new 10-inch refractor by Grubb, the lack of funding for an assistant, precluded him from a continuation of traditional positional astronomy. Instead he concentrated on the compilation of observations made earlier. The NGC he listed 7840 objects and in its supplements (1895, 1908) he added a further 5386 objects. It still remains one of the standard reference catalogs. |
| Pierre(-Maurice-Marie) Duhem | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1916 (born 10 June 1861)
French physicist, mathematician, and philosopher of science who emphasized a history of modern science based on evolutionary metaphysical concepts. He had a wide variety of mathematical interests from mechanics and physics to philosophy and the history of mathematics. Duhem studied magnetism following the work of Gibbs and Helmholtz and also worked on thermodynamics and hydrodynamics producing over 400 papers. He maintained that the role of theory in science is to systematize relationships rather than to interpret new phenomena. |
| Charles Valentine Riley | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1895 (born 18 Sep 1843)
British-born American entomologist who pioneered the scientific study of insects for their economic impact in agriculture. He was a keen observer of relationships in nature, and enhanced his written observations with drawings. He initiated biological control. After studying the parasites and predators of the cottony cushion scale, which was destroying the citrus industry in California, he introduced (1888) a natural enemy of the scale from Australia. The effectiveness of the Vedalia cardinalis beetle in reducing the populations of the cottony cushion scale promoted the study of biological control of pests. He helped establish the Division of Entomology of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.« |
| Georges Leclanché | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1882 (born 1839)
French engineer who invented the wet cell Leclanché battery (1866), ancestor of the familiar carbon-zinc dry cell batteries used to power portable electric lights and electronic devices. His wet cell, provided an e.m.f. of about 1.5 volts. A porous pot containing manganese dioxide and a carbon rod as current collector was immersed in an electrolyte of ammonium chloride solution with a negative terminal of zinc metal. From 1867, Leclanché gave full-time attention to his invention, which was adopted the following year by the Belgian telegraph service. He opened a factory to manufacture the battery. In 1881, J.A. Thiebaut had the idea of packing the chemicals in a zinc cup. Carl Gassner made the first commercially successful "dry" cell.« |
| Giovanni Domenico Cassini | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1712 (born 8 June 1625)
(a.k.a. Gian Domenico Cassini) Italian-born French astronomer who in 1675 discovered Cassini's division, the dark gap subdividing Saturn's rings into two parts. He stated that Saturn's ring, believed by Huygens to be a single body, was actually composed of small particles. Cassini also discovered four of Saturn's moons: Iapetus (Sep 1671), Rhea (1672) and on 21 Mar 1684,* Tethys and Dione. He compiled new tables (1662) on the annual motion of the Sun. He observed shadows of four Galilean satellites on Jupiter (1664), and measured its rotation period by studying the bands and spots on its surface. He determined the period of rotation of Mars (1666), and attempted the same for Venus. His son Jacques was also an astronomer.« |
| Pierre Vernier | |
(source) |
Died
14 Sep 1637 (born c. 1580)
French mathematician who invented the vernier scale, which enabled instruments to make more accurate linear or angular measurements. He first described it in a work entitled La construction, l'usage et les propriétés du cadran nouveau (1631)*. It consists of a small graduated scale or arc made to slide along a larger fixed scale or arc to enable determining the increment between two graduations of the larger scale. The ten divisions of the smaller, vernier scale are equal to nine of the fixed scale. For example, calipers with a larger scale graduated in tenths of inches can be read by use of the vernier scale to within one-hundredths of an inch. Vernier scales are also used on sextants and mercury column barometers.« [Image: An angle scale reading of 19.8 degrees. The black arrow is the index mark showing the measurement on the fixed scale. "19" (not quite "20") is read at the left red arrow, ".8" from the right red arrow on the vernier scale, which graduation best aligns with a graduation on the fixed scale.] |
| SEPTEMBER 14 - EVENTS | |
| Moon probe | |
In 1959, the first space probe to strike the moon was the Soviet Luna
2, which crashed east of the Sea of Serenity. Thirty-six hours after
its launch, it was the first man-made object reach a celestial body. |
|
| Lobotomy | |
|
In 1956, the first U.S. prefrontal lobotomy surgery was performed. Surgeons
J.W. Watts and Walter Freeman operated on a 63-year-old woman at the George
Washington University Hospital. |
|
| RAC | |
|
In 1905, the oldest car race still run was first held on the Isle of Man,
Great Britain for the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy. |
|
| Typewriter ribbon patented | |
(USPTO) |
In 1886, the first U.S. patent for a typewriter ribbon was issued to George
Kerr Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee (No. 349,026). His invention was to
provide portions near the ends of a ribbon with a colour contrasting from
that of the body of the ribbon. This was intended to notify the operator
of the machine to manually change the direction of the ribbon feed. Although
the typed result near the end of a ribbon would be in a different colour,
it was not lost. Before, in uses such as stenographic work, if a ribbon
stopped at the end of its reel, the result gave a rapidly fading imprint
while there may still be a need to finish a line before stopping to reverse
the ribbon. |
| First U.S. lighthouse | |
(source) |
In 1716, Boston
Light, the first lighthouse in America was first lighted just before
sunset. Located on Little Brewster Island to mark the entrance to Boston,
Massachusetts, harbour, has guided ships since then. Building it was authorized
23 Jul 1715 by the Boston
Light Bill. In the 1600s, treacherous rocks caused countless loss of
lives. False signal fires lit in the wrong places by "wreckers" lured ships
aground to plunder. Boston Light was blown up by the British in 1776, but
rebuilt in 1783 by Governor John Hancock. The lighthouse is also the last
remaining manned station in the U.S. |
