| SEPTEMBER 23 - BIRTHS | |
| Clifford G. Shull | |
 Born 23
Sep 1915
American physicist who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physics with Canadian physicist Bertram N. Brockhouse. Shull's part of the award was for his development of neutron-scattering techniques, especially the neutron diffraction process that gave scientists a new tool to investigate the atomic structure of matter.« |
|
| Sir John Boyd Orr | |
(source) |
Born 23
Sep 1880; died 25 Jun 1971.
Scottish scientist and authority on nutrition and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1949 for his efforts to eliminate world hunger. In 1936, he published a report, Food, Health and Income, a dietary survey by income groups made during 1935. It showed that the cost of a diet fulfilling basic nutritional requirements was beyond the means of half the British population and that 10 percent of the population was undernourished. This and other reports conducted by the Rowett Research Institute formed the basis of the British food-rationing system during WW II. He was director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (1945-48). |
| Typhoid Mary | |
(source) |
Born 23
Sep 1869; died 11 Nov 1938
byname of Mary Mallon, famous typhoid carrier in the New York City area in the early 20th century. Fifty-one original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attributed), although she herself was immune to the typhoid bacillus (Salmonella typhi). The outbreak of Typhus in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1904 puzzled the scientists of the time because they thought they had wiped out the deadly disease. Mallon's case showed that a person could be a carrier without showing any outward signs of being sick, and it led to most of the Health Code laws on the books today. She died not from typhoid but from the effects of a paralytic stroke dating back to 25 Dec 1932.  Typhoid
Mary, by Judith Walzer Leavitt |
| Alexandre Yersin | |
(source) |
Born 23
Sep 1863; died 1 Mar 1943.
Swiss-born French bacteriologist and a co-discoverer of the plague bacillus, Pasteurella pestis (also called Yersinia pestis and Bacillus pestis). With Pierre Roux he discovered the diphtheria toxin (1889). Yersin discovered the plague bacillus simultaneously with Shibasaburo Kitasato (1894) in Hong Kong, where he had been sent by the French government. The Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato had arrived days earlier and had secured priority to the limited facilities. Nevertheless, Yersin gained a sample of pus excised from a plague victim, and was able almost immediately isolate the plague bacillus. Yersin then set out to attenuate the bacillus and develop an anti-plague serum. He successfully treated his first plague patient, a Chinese student, in 1896. Plague:
A Story of Rivalry, Science, and the Scourge That Won't Go Away,
by Edward Marriott. |
| Robert Bosch | |
| Born 23
Sep 1861; died 9 Mar 1942.
German engineer and industrialist who was responsible for the invention of the spark plug and magneto for automobiles and whose firm produced a wide range of precision machines and electrical equipment in plants throughout the world. |
|
| William Stewart Halsted | |
(source) |
Born 23
Sep 1852
American surgeon who established the first U.S. surgical school. In 1884, he was first to describe injection of cocaine into the trunk of a sensory nerve to block pain transmission. From 1886, he joined research at a pathological laboratory newly-formed in Baltimore, Md. where he developed strict aseptic surgical techniques with fine silk sutures in small stitches and careful tissue handling that gave safer, more effective results. In 1890, Halsted began use of rubber gloves, the year he was appointed first surgeon-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Halsted created there subspecialty divisions such as orthopedics, otolaryngology and urology. His successful training of surgeons was spread as those he taught took up careers at other institutions.« |
| Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau | |
(source) |
Born 23
Sep 1819; died 18 Sep 1896.
French physicist who was the first to measure the speed of light successfully without using astronomical calculations (1849). Fizeau sent a narrow beam of light between gear teeth on the edge of a rotating wheel. The beam then traveled to a mirror 8 km/5 mi away and returned to the wheel where, if the spin were fast enough, a tooth would block the light. Knowing this time from the rotational speed of the wheel, and the mirror's distance, Fizeau directly measured the speed of light. He also found that light travels faster in air than in water, which confirmed the wave theory of light, and that the motion of a star affects the position of the lines in its spectrum. With Jean Foucault, he proved the wave nature of the Sun's heat rays by showing their interference (1847). |
| Johann Franz Encke | |
| Born 23
Sep 1791; died 26 Aug 1865.
German astronomer who in 1819 established the period of the comet now known by as Encke's Comet. At at 3.3 years it has the shortest period of any known. |
|
| Maximilian, Prinz (Prince) zu Wied-Neuwied | |
| Born 23
Sep 1782
German aristocratic naturalist, ethnographer, and explorer whose observations on a trip to the American West in the 1830s provide valuable information about the Plains Indians at that time. |
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| SEPTEMBER 23 - DEATHS | |
| Sigmund Freud | |
1927 (source) |
 Died
23 Sep 1939 (born 6 May 1856)
Austrian father of psychoanalysis, best known for such works as Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933). In the publication of these, and numerous other works, he revolutionized the field of psychotherapy, so much so that often later workers have failed to recognize forebearers prior to him. Throughout his work he emphasized the role of unconscious and nonrational functioning, going against much of contemporary thought by suggesting that dreams and "mistakes" may also have meaning. Freud battled cancer of the jaw from 1923 until his death in 1939 in London - after 16 operations. |
| Richard Zsigmondy | |
(source) |
Died
23 Sep 1929 (born 1 Apr 1865)
Austrian chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1925 for "his demonstration of the heterogenous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry." Colloids are composed of submicroscopic particles dispersed within another substance. To conduct his research on colloids he invented the ultramicroscope (1903), with which he could view particles with a diameter of one 10-millionth of a millimetre not visible in a conventional microscope. It used an intense beam of light oriented in a position perpendicular to the microscope's optical axis. As particles scattered the incident light, their movements could be seen as flashes against a dark background.« Colloids
and the ultramicroscope, by Richard Zsigmondy. |
| Paul Kammerer | |
(source) |
Died
23 Sep 1926 (born 17 Aug 1880)
Austrian biologist, he claimed to have produced experimental evidence that acquired traits could be inherited. Almost all of Kammerer's experiments involved forcing various amphibians to breed in environments that were radically different from their native habitat to demonstrate Lamarkian inheritance. (This is the idea that what one acquires during one's lifetime is passed on to that person's offspring. If you play guitar, your children will have nimble fingers. Each generation builds upon the past and continues to improve.) When later accused of faking exceptional results with the midwife toad, during a time of depression, he shot himself. |
| Friedrich Wohler | |
(source) |
Died
23 Sep 1882 (born 31 Jul 1800)
Friedrich Karl Wöhler was a German chemist who co-discovered vanadium. Having studied first medicine, then mineralogy, it was chemistry that became his primary interest. He found a method in 1827 for the production of metallic aluminum in the form of a grey powder by heating aluminum chloride with potassium. In 1828, he succeeded in the isolation of beryllium as a black-grey powder as well as of yttrium and (1856) crystalline silicon. He is most well-known for the synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate (1828), which created an organic compound from an inorganic one, showing there was no absolute distinction between the two areas of chemical study. In 1862, he produced acetylene from calcium carbide. |
| Matthew Baillie | |
(source) |
Died
23 Sep 1823 (born 27 Oct 1761)
Scottish pathologist whose Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body (1793) was the first publication in English on pathology as a separate subject and the first systematic study of pathology ever made. It established morbid anatomy as an independent science. Baillie gave the first clinical descriptions of gastric ulcer and chronic obstructive pulmonary emphysema and presented one of the clearest descriptions ever written on the pulmonary lesions of tuberculosis. The first American edition was published in Albany in 1795. |
| SEPTEMBER 23 - EVENTS | |
| Mars probe lost | |
In 1999, the Mars Climate Observer apparently burned up as it was about
to go into orbit around the Red Planet. |
|
| Teletext | |
|
In 1973, the world's first Ceefax teletext service began on BBC Television. |
|
| Truman announces Soviet A-bomb | |
|
In 1949, President Truman shocked America with a terse announcement:
"We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred
in the USSR." The alarm stimulated activity in scientific and political
circles, and an arms race was the clear response when on 31 Jan 1950, President
Harry S. Truman announced
a program to develop the American hydrogen bomb. "I have directed ... work
on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so called hydrogen or superbomb.
Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is ... consistent
with the overall objectives of our program for peace and security ... until
a satisfactory plan for international control of atomic energy is achieved." |
|
| Flashbulb patented | |
 |
In 1930, Johann Ostermeyer of Athegnenber, Germany, patented his "Improvements
in flash lights used for photographic purposes." (UK patent 324,578).
The modern photographic safety flash bulb evolved from this design, which
used aluminium wire or foil in oxygen. Unfortunately, all too frequently,
these versions exploded! The flashbulb was introduced to the American market
in 1930 by General Electric. Flash cubes came along in 1966, and the percussively
ignitable "Magicube" in 1970. |
| Hearing aid | |
|
In 1879, Richard S. Rhodes invented the Audiophone, the first hearing aid. |
|
| Neptune discovered | |
 |
In 1846, the German astronomer Johan
G. Galle discovered Neptune after only an hour of searching, within
one degree of the position that had been computed by Urbain-Jean-Joseph
Le Verrier. Independently of the English astronomer John C. Adams, Le
Verrier had calculated the size and position of a previously unknown
planet, which he assumed influenced the irregular orbit of Uranus, and
he asked Galle to look for it. |
