| SEPTEMBER 20 - BIRTHS | |
| G. Kingsley Noble | |
 |
 Born 20
Sep 1894; died 9 Dec 1940.
Gladwyn Kingsley Noble was an American biologist and zoologist. After WW I, he began his life's work at the American Museum of Natural History, specializing in herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians) and experimental biology investigations using techniques of endocrinology and neurology. In an article published in Nature on 7 Aug 1926, Noble debunked Paul Kammerer's claim that he had induced nuptial pads on midwife toads that were hereditary. After Noble examined a preserved specimen, he revealed the pad was simulated with injected Indian ink. This set off an academic bombshell. He died at the very height of his ability, at age 47, from a streptococcus infection of the throat. |
| David Marine | |
(source) |
Born 20
Sep 1888; died 6 Nov 1976.
American pathologist whose substantial research on the treatment of goiter with iodine led to the iodizing of table salt. During 1917-22 he ran a trial on a large group of schoolgirls to show that an iodine supplement dramatically reduced the incident of goiter (a major swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck). His results clearly showed the important of iodine in the diet. Dr. David.M. Cowie promoted the production of iodized table salt, first sold on 1 May 1924, and later throughout the U.S., greatly reducing the incidence of goiter. Marine worked on salt iodization for the World Health Organization, further spreading its benefits. (As early as 1821 French chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault had observed that iodine-rich salt could treat goiter.)« |
| Sir James Dewar | |
(source) |
Born 20
Sep 1842; died 27 Mar 1923.
British chemist and physicist. Blurring the line between physics and chemistry, he advanced the research frontier in several fields at the turn of the century, and gave dazzling lectures. His study of low-temperature phenomena entailed making an insulating double-walled flask of his own design by creating a vacuum between the two silvered layers of steel or glass (1892). This Dewar flask that has been named for him led to the domestic Thermos bottle. In June 1897, The Scientific American reported that "Dewar has just succeeded in liquefying fluorine gas at a temperature of -185 degrees C." He obtained liquid hydrogen in 1898. Dewar also invented cordite, the first smokeless powder. |
| Sir Richard John Griffith | |
| Born 20
Sep 1784; died 1878.
1st Baronet. Irish geologist and civil engineer who has sometimes been called the "father of Irish geology", born in Dublin. He studied civil engineering in London and Edinburgh, returned to Ireland in 1808, and became mining engineer to the Royal Dublin Society in 1812 and a government inspector of mines. He published a geological map of Ireland in 1835. |
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| SEPTEMBER 20 - DEATHS | |
| Gherman S. Titov | |
(source) |
 Died
20 Sep 2000 (born 11 Sep 1935)
Russian cosmonaut who was pilot of the Vostok 2 spacecraft on its 6-7 Aug 1961 orbital flight of 25 hrs 18 min. His spacecraft carried life-support equipment, radio and television for monitoring the condition of the cosmonaut, tape recorder, telemetry system, biological experiments, and automatic and manual control equipment. After Yuri Gagarin, Titov was the second human to orbit the Earth but was the first person to orbit more than once, the first to spend more than a day in space, and the first to sleep in space. He died holding the record as the youngest person in space (age 25). Titov was selected for cosmonaut training in 1960. After his spaceflight, Titov held senior positions in the Soviet space programme until his retirement in 1992.«  I
am Eagle, by Gherman S. Titov |
| Paul Erdös | |
(source) |
Died
20 Sep 1996 (born 26 Mar 1913)
Hungarian mathematician, who was one of the century's top math experts and pioneered the fields of number theory and combinatorics. The type of mathematics he worked on were beautiful problems that were simple to understand, but notoriously difficult to solve. At age 20, he discovered a proof for a classic theorem of number theory that states that there is always at least one prime number between any positive integer and its double. In the 1930s, he studied in England and moved to the USA by the late 1930s when his Jewish origins made a return to Hungary impossible. Affected by McCarthyism in the 1950s, he spent much of the next ten years in Israel. Writing his many hundreds of papers made him one of history's most prolific mathematicians. |
| Arthur Holmes | |
(source) |
Died
20 Sep 1965 (born 14 Jan 1890)
English geologist and petrologist was one of the foremost geologists of the twentieth century, who made major contributions to the geochronology of Africa, the genesis of igneous rocks, and physical geology. He developed a method of determining the age of the earth based on measurement of uranium decay in igneous rocks (which invalidated William Thomson Kelvin's hypothesis that the earth's age can be established on the basis of the planet's cooling from a initial molten state). Holmes' method proved to be remarkably accurate and laid the foundation of isotope geology. This was the first quantitative time scale for geology based on measuring the radioactive constituents of rocks.  The
Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth by
Cherry Lewis |
| Ernest Goodpasture | |
(source) |
Died
20 Sep 1960 (born 17 Oct 1886)
Ernest (William) Goodpasture was a research scientist, the founder of mumps vaccine, Professorof Pathology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Noted for research in virology, particularly the isolation and identification of viruses, the pathogenesis and pathology of viral diseases. He discovered the first practical method for developing uncontaminated viruses in chick embryos, which made possible the mass-production of vaccines for such diseases as smallpox, influenza, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and other illnesses caused by agents that can be propagated only in living tissue. Also known for describing Goodpasture's disease (1919), an uncommon condition which typically causes rapid destruction of the kidneys. |
| Giovanni Battista Donati | |
(source) |
Died
20 Sep 1873 (born 16 Dec 1826)
Italian astronomer who, on 5 Aug 1864, was first to observe the spectrum of a comet (Tempel 1864 II), showing not merely reflected sunlight but also spectral lines from luminous gas forming the comet tail when near the Sun. Earlier, he discovered the comet known as Donati's Comet at Florence, on 2 Jun 1858. When the comet was nearest the earth, its triple tail had an apparent length of 50°, more than half the distance from the horizon to the zenith and corresponding to the enormous linear figure of more than 72 million km (about 45 million mi). With an orbital period estimated at more than 2000 years, it will not return until about the year 4000.« |
| Pierre Mechain | |
(source) |
Died
20 Sep 1804 (born 16 Aug 1744).
Pierre (-François-André) Méchain was a French astronomer and hydrographer at the naval map archives in Paris recruited by Jean Delambre. He was a mathematical progidy. In 1790, they were chosen by the National Assembly to establish a decimal system of measurement based on the meter. Since this was defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance between the Earth's pole and the equator, Mechain led a survey of the meridian arc from Dunkirk, France, to Barcelona, Spain. Through his astronomical observations, Mechain discovered 11 comets and provided 26 additions to Messier's catalog. He calculated the orbits of the two comets he found in 1781. Mechain died of yellow fever while making further surveys for the meridian measurement.« |
| Juan José D'Elhuyar | |
(source) |
Died 20 Sep 1796 (born 15 Jun 1754)
Spanish chemist and mineralogist who, assisted his younger brother Faustus, separated tungsten metal from its wolframite ore (1783). Two years earlier, Swedish chemist Carl Scheele discovered tungstic acid, though did not isolate the elemental form, from a mineral known since about 1758 as tung sten (Swedish, heavy stone; which is now known as scheelite). The Elhuyar brothers, working at the Seminary of Bergara, succeeded in extracting the metal by reducing tungstic acid with charcoal. For the first time, Basque scientists entered the history of science. Each became a directorof a school of mines, but in different countries. Although Juan José discovered tungsten metal, Fausto became better known.« [Image right: wolframite] |
| SEPTEMBER 20 - EVENTS | |
| FORTRAN | |
(source) |
In 1954, the first FORTRAN computer program was run. Fortran is the dominating
language for technical and scientific applications. John Backus at IBM
supervised the development
of the programming language that would allow uses to express their problems
in commonly understood mathematical formulae - later to be named FORTRAN.
By 1958 the language was expanded to Fortran II, which included subroutines,
functions and common blocks, and in 1962 IBM introduced the extended Fortran
IV. |
| DNA | |
(source) |
In 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase published a report confirming
DNA holds hereditary data. Their experiment
used the T2 bacteriophage, which, like other viruses, is just a crystal
of DNA and protein. It can reproduce when inside a bacterium such as E.
coli. When the new T2 viruses are ready to leave the host E. coli cell
(and go infect others), they burst the E. coli cell open, killing it (hence
the name “bacteriophage”). Hershey and Chase were seeking an answer to
the question, “Is it the viral DNA or viral protein coat (capsid) that
is the viral genetic code material which gets injected into the E. coli?”
Their results indicated that the viral DNA, not the protein, is its genetic
code material. |
| Wire glass patent | |
(source) |
In 1892, wire glass was patented by Frank Schulman. Wire
glass, as the name suggests, is simply a wire mesh inserted during
the plate glass manufacturing process to create a single monolithic glass
with properties useful where fire safety requirements apply. |
| Electric Range | |
|
In 1859, the electric range, invented by George B. Simpson of Washington,
D.C., was patented on this date. Mr. Simpson called his invention, an "electroheater."
Heat was generated by passing electricity through wire coils |
|
| Elevator | |
(source) |
In 1853, Elisha Graves Otis sold his first
safety elevator equipment, having started his business earlier in the year
to sell the safety elevator system he had invented the year before. His
customer was Benjamin Newhouse in New York City who used it for moving
freight. Shortly thereafter, in May 1854, at the Crystal Palace in New
York City, Otis created public interest with a daring demonstration. He
was hoisted high in the air on a platform fitted with his safety feature.
When he called for the rope to be cut, the safety device stopped his fall.
By 1857, he installed the first department store passenger elevator
at E.V. Haughwout & Co. in New York City. In 1889 he applied the electric
motor to power elevators.« |
| AAAS founded | |
|
In 1848, the first meeting of the American Association For The Advancement
of Science was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. |
|
| Patent leather | |
(source) |
In 1819, the first patent leather manufactured in the U.S. was produced
in Newark, N.J., by Seth
Boyden (17 Nov 1788-31 Mar 1870) at the tannery he had established
in 1813. At first, the varnish was dried in the heat of the sun, but was
later dried in a wam room. In 1820, Boyden made an oven able to hold 16
skins. This leather, treated with a coating based on linseed-oil to give
it a high gloss finish, was mostly used for fancy work and for shoes. Boyden
is remembered for a variety of other inventions, including malleable cast
iron, a nail-making machine, a cut-off switch for steam engines, a method
for producing zinc from its ore and developed a hybrid strawberry.« |
