| SEPTEMBER 15 - BIRTHS | |
| Murray Gell-Mann | |
(source) |
 Born 15
Sep 1929
American theoretical physicist who predicted the existance of quarks, for which he won the 1969 Nobel Prize. His first major contribution to high-energy physics was made in 1953, when he demonstrated how some puzzling features of hadrons (particles responsive to the strong force) could be explained by a new quantum number, which he called "strangeness". In 1964, he (and Yuval Ne'eman) proposed the eightfold way to define the structure of particles. This led to Gell-Mann's postulate of the quark, a name he coined. |
| Jean-Pierre Serre | |
| Born 15
Sep 1926
French mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Fields medal for his work in algebraic topolgy. |
|
| Francis Simpson | |
(source) |
Born 15
Sep 1912; died 10 Nov 2003.
Francis William Simpson was an English naturalist, conservationist and chronicler of the countryside and wild flowers of his native Suffolk. His love of nature began in school, when one of his teachers gave him a flora, a descriptive list of the region's plants. He became a botanist at Ipswich Museum, where he worked until his retirement in 1977. In 1938, he saved a small meadow, famous for its snakeshead fritillaries, from being drained and ploughed into farmland. Using donations amounting to £75, he was able to purchase the field, Mickfield Meadow, for the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves. Today, it is one of the oldest nature reserves in the country, protecting the meadow flowers in this small area now surrounded by farmland. [Image: snakeshead fritillaries] |
| Sir Donald Coleman Bailey | |
| Born 15
Sep 1901; died 5 May 1985
British engineer who invented the Bailey bridge, which was of great military value in World War II |
|
| Paul Lévy | |
(source) |
Born 15
Sep 1886; died 15 Dec 1971
Paul Pierre Lévy was a French mining engineer and mathematician. He contributed to probability, functional analysis, partial differential equations and series. He also studied geometry. In 1926 he extended Laplace transforms to broader function classes. He undertook a large-scale work on generalised differential equations in functional derivatives. |
| Ettore Bugatti | |
| Born 15
Sep 1881; died 21 Aug 1947
Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti was an Italian builder of racing and luxury automobiles Shortly after establishing a factory at Molsheim, Alsace in 1909, he produced a highly successful low-powered racer for the Le Mans. The most meticulously built of his cars. the Type 41, "Golden Bugatti" or "La Royale" was one of the most costly cars, of which only six to eight were ever manufactured. His eldest son, his presumed heir, died before him and the Bugatti firm did not survive long after Ettore Bugatti's death. |
|
| Frank Eugene Lutz | |
(source) |
Born 15
Sep 1879 (died 27 Nov 1943)
American entomologist, museum curator, educator, conservationist, and writer who was probably the leading U.S. entomologist of the first half of the twentieth century. He who taught that insects were an integral part of the environment. As a boy, his fascination as a boy watching a caterpillar shedding its skin developed into a lifelong interest in insects. In 1909, he joined the American Museum of Natural History and became (1921) the first curator of the newly created Department of Entomology, where he remained for the rest of life. He created popular museum exhibits, including the first insect dioramas and "insect zoos" featuring live specimens. In the 1920s, established the country's first guided nature trail in Harriman State Park, New York. [Image: Monarch caterpillar shedding skin] |
| Jan Ernst Matzeliger | |
| Born 15
Sep 1852; died 24 Aug 1889
Dutch Guianian-American inventor, best known for his shoe-lasting machine that mechanically shaped the upper portions of shoes. He settled in Lynn, Massachussetts, at about age 25, where he became interested in lasting shoes by machines. Over a period of six months, he made a wooden model and received a patent for his invention on 20 Mar 1883. Within two years, the machine quickly replaced hand methods in Lynn. He continued to develop shoe-manufacturing machinery. |
|
| R.H. Codrington | |
| Born 15
Sep 1830; died 11 Sep 1922
R(obert) H(enry) Coddrington was an English Anglican priest and anthropologist who made the first systematic study of the Melanesian society and culture. The reports of his observation remain classics in ethnography. |
|
| Moritz Lazarus | |
| Born 15
Sep 1824; died 13 Apr 1903
Prussian-born Jewish philosopher and psychologist, who was a founder of comparative psychology. He held that humanity must be studied from the historical, comparative viewpoint, analyzing the elements that constitute the fabric of society, with its customs, its conventions, and the main tendencies of its evolution. He was a leading opponent of anti-Sematism in his time. |
|
| Jean-Sylvain Bailly | |
| Born 15
Sep 1736; died 12 Nov 1793
French astronomer who is noted for his computation of an orbit for Halley's Comet (1759) and for his studies of the four satellites of Jupiter then known. He was the first Mayor of Paris (1789-91). He died by execution there. |
|
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| SEPTEMBER 15 - DEATHS | |
| Willy Messerschmitt | |
 |
 Died
15 Sep 1978 (born 26 June 1898)
German aircraft engineer and designer, born Frankfurt-am-Main. Messerschmitt. He studied at the Munich Institute of Technology, and in 1926 joined the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke as its chief designer and engineer. In 1938 the company became the Messerschmitt-Aitken-Gesellschaft, producing military aircraft. His Me109 set a world speed record in 1939, and during World War 2 he supplied the Luftwaffe with its foremost types of combat aircraft. In 1944 he produced the Me262 fighter, the first jet plane flown in combat.  |
| John Desmond Bernal | |
Died
15 Sep 1971 (born 10 May 1901)
Irish physicist and X-ray crystallographer who studied the atomic structures of solid compounds. He also performed researched into molecular biology, the origin of life and the structure and composition of the Earth's crust. |
|
| Alfred Blalock | |
(source) |
Died
15 Sep 1964 (born 5 Apr 1899)
American surgeon who (with pediatric cardiologist Helen B. Taussig) devised a surgical treatment for infants born with the "blue baby" syndrome (tetralogy of Fallot), which consists of a hole in the wall between the heart's two major chambers (ventricles). Earlier in his career he did pioneering work on the nature and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. He demonstrated that surgical shock resulted primarily from the loss of blood, and he encouraged the use of plasma or whole-blood transfusions as treatment following the onset of shock. By 29 Nov 1944, he made the first operation on a cyanotic infant with blue-baby syndrome using his procedure, known as the subclavian-pulmonary artery anastomosis.  "Partners
of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work With Alfred Blalock" by
Vivien T. Thomas |
| William Coblentz | |
(source) |
Died
15 Sep 1962 (born 20 Nov 1873)
William W(eber) Coblentz was an American physicist and astronomer whose work lay primarily in infrared spectroscopy. In 1905 he founded the radiometry section of the National Bureau of Standards, which he headed for 40 years. Coblentz measured the infrared radiation from stars, planets, and nebulae and was the first to determine accurately the constants of blackbody radiation, thus confirming Planck's law. |
| Wilhelm Roux | |
(source) |
Died
15 Sep 1924 (born 9 June 1850)
German zoologist who was a founder of experimental embryology, by which he studied how organs and tissues are assigned their structural form and functions at the time of fertilization. In the 1880s, he experimented with frog eggs. He thought that mitotic cell division of the fertilized egg is the mechanism by which future parts of a developing organism are determined. He destroyed one of the two initial subdivisions (blastomeres) of a fertilized frog egg, obtaining half an embryo from the remaining blastomere. It seemed to him that determination of future parts and functions had already occurred in the two-cell stage and that each of the two blastomeres had already received the determinants necessary to form half the embryo. His theory was later negated by Hans Driesch. |
| William Seward Burroughs | |
(source) |
Died
15 Sep 1898 (born 28 Jan 1855)
American inventor of the first recording adding machine and pioneer of its manufacture. It was because Burroughs began his career as a bank clerk that he was inspired to invent such a mechanical device. On 10 Jan 1885 he submitted his first patent (issued 399,116 on 21 Aug 1888) for his "calculating machine," In 1886, Burroughs and several St. Louis businessmen formed the American Arithmometer Co. to market the machine. Burroughs was dissatisfied with the durability of this first model. His 1892 patent not only improved the machine but added a printer. The company later became Burroughs Corporation (1905) and eventually Unisys. |
| Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne | |
(source) |
Died
15 Sep 1875 (born 17 Sep 1806)
French neurologist, born in Boulogne, who studied at Douai and Paris. He was first to describe several nervous and muscular disorders and, in developing medical treatment for them, created electrodiagnosis and electrotherapy. In 1858, he was the first to describe locomotor ataxia. In 1862, he mapped 100 facial muscles and pointed out that false, or even half-hearted, smiles involved only muscles of the mouth. But "the sweet emotions of the soul," he said, activate the pars lateralis muscle around the eyes. He first described Tabes dorsalis in 1885, which is also known as Duchenne's disease. |
| Isambard Kingdom Brunel | |
 |
Died
15 Sep 1859 (born 9 Apr 1806)
English civil and mechanical engineer of great originality and productivity who designed the first transatlantic steamer, the Great Western. In 1823, he began work with his father, Marc Brunel, on the Thames Tunnel, and later became the resident engineer at the site. In 1829, Brunel designed a suspension bridge to cross the River Avon at Clifton. In 1831, he was appointed chief engineer at the Bristol Docks, and Brunel later designed the Monkwearmouth Docks and others at Plymouth, Cardiff, Brentford and Milford Haven. In 1833, age 27, he was appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, the line that linked London to Bristol. He further built bridges, viaducts, and three steam ships: the Great Western, Great Britain and Great Eastern.« Brunel:
The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, by Angus
Buchanan |
| SEPTEMBER 15 - EVENTS | |
| This site adds 366th day | |
In 2002, this was the 366th day to be added to the Today in Science
History site, now providing a web page for every day of the year. The
project began on 18 Jun 1999, and new entries are continuing to be added.« |
|
| Jupiter's rings | |
|
In 1998, the rings around the planet Jupiter were declared to be made of
dust from the impacts of cosmic bodies that crashed into Jupiter's moons.
The idea came from studies of the rings made by scientists at several institutions. |
|
| Fenfluramine | |
|
In 1997, two popular diet drugs, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, were
withdrawn from the market by their manufacturers after the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) established a possible link between heart-valve
damage and these drugs - often used in combination with another appetite
suppressant, phentermine |
|
| Bacteriophage | |
|
In 1917, the term "bacteriophage" ("eater of bacteria") was coined in a
note from Dr. Félix d'Hérelle to the French Academy of Sciences. |
|
| Cosmic radiation | |
|
In 1910, cosmic radiation was the subject of a paper published in Physikalische
Zeitchrift by Theodor Wulf, a priest and amateur physicist. He reported
the result of four days of observations he made the previous Spring from
the top of the Eiffel Tower. He suggested that Earth was under constant
bombardment from radiation from outer space, from sources other than the
sun. |
|
| Weather balloon | |
(source) |
In 1904, the first balloon used for meteorologic research in the
U.S. was released in St. Louis, Missouri. The balloon carried instruments
that would return to Earth when the balloon burst. Since this first launch,
literally millions of weather balloons have been launched by the National
Weather Service and its predecessor organizations. Meteorologic data is
gathered by a variety of observational and analytical instruments on the
surface of the Earth, in balloons, and now instruments are carried in satellites.
[Image:
from The Principles of Aerography by Alexander McAdie, 1917] |
| Typesetting machine | |
|
In 1857, a U.S. patent was issued for the design of a typesetting machine
invented by Timothy Alden of New York (No. 18,175). This is the first such
machine that actually operated. The type was arranged in cells around the
circumference of a horizontal wheel. As the wheel revolved, several receivers
also started to rotate. The desired type was picked up and dropped in proper
order in a line. |
|
| Stephenson railway | |
 |
In 1830, the Liverpool to Manchester line was ceremonially opened
in England. It was built by George
Stephenson, a principal inventor
of the railroad locomotive. His famous Rocket locomotive, winner
(1829) of the Rainhill trials as the fastest locomotive. This line was
the world's first intercity passenger railway operated solely by steam
locomotives. The Rocket and six similar engines, all built by Stephenson,
formed a procession, each drawing four carriages. In addition, the Northumbrian
in the lead pulled a special carriage for the dignitaries. A total of 600
persons were carried. The event was marred by a fatal accident.
William
Huskisson, a statesman, stumbled in front of the passing Rocket
which
ran over his leg. He died that evening.« |
| First railway fatality | |
(source) |
In 1830, William
Huskisson (1770-1830), a British statesman became the first railway
fatality while observing the ceremonial procession of locomotives at the
opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway.
He was one of the dignitaries riding in a special carriage pulled by the
leading locomotive, the Northumbrian. Partway along the line, while
the
Northumbrian stopped to take on water, the passengers stood
by the rails to observe the procession of other locomotives passing on
the parallel line. Huskisson stumbled and fell in the path of the Rocket
locomotive. With severe injuries to his leg and thigh, he died later that
evening. Among other government positions, he had been colonial secretary
and leader of the House of Commons.«
 The
Last Journey of William Huskisson, by Simon Garfield |
| U.S. iron mill | |
(source) |
In 1817, the first U.S. mill to roll and puddle iron was opened. Plumstock
Rolling Mill, built by pioneer ironmaster Isaac
Meason (15 Aug 1743 - 23 Jan 1818), stood at Redstone Creek, Pennsylvania.
A puddling furnace reduces the carbon content in cast iron to produce malleable
iron. The mill produced wrought iron by roll milling rather than than hammer
forging. It was destroyed by floods in 1824. Meason had led the iron and
steel industry since 1791 when he establishing the first commercially successful
iron furnace and forge west of the Alleghenies. A rich
man, he eventually owned 20,000 acres of land, six iron furnaces, toll
ferries and bridges, two sawmills, grist mills, the entire town of New
Haven and property in Kentucky.« [Image:
Isaac Meason commissioned architect Adam Wilson to build his Georgian-style
mansion (1802), which is now a National Historic Landmark.] |
| First balloon flight in Britain | |
(source) |
In 1784, the first successful balloon ascent
to be made in England was demonstrated by an Italian, Vincenzo Lunardi
before a crowd of onlookers in London that included the Prince of Wales
and other eminent statesmen. He lifted off from the Artillery Ground in
a brightly decorated, hydrogen balloon accompanied by a dog, a cat and
a pigeon. Because of the impatience of the crowd, he left before the balloon
was fully inflated, thus needing to leave behind his friend George Biggin
who had planned to travel with him. Lunardi's flight covered a distance
of 24 miles, and he descended at Ware. It was only in the previous year
that the Montgolfier brothers
made the first hot-air balloon ascent on 5
Jun 1783.« |
