| SEPTEMBER 28 - BIRTHS | |
| Seymour R. Cray | |
 |
 Born 28
Sep 1925; died 5 Oct 1996.
American electronics engineer who pioneered the use of transistors in computers and later developed massive supercomputers to run business and government information networks. He was the preeminent designer of the large, high-speed computers known as supercomputers. |
| Julian Lowell Coolidge | |
| Born 28
Sep 1873; died 5 March 1954.
U.S. mathematician and educator who published numerous works on theoretical mathematics along the lines of the Study-Segre school. Coolidge received a B.A. at Harvard (1895), then in England he graduated (1897) with a B.Sc. from Balliol College Oxford. (It is interesting that this degree from Oxford was in natural science and it was the first natural science degree ever awarded by Oxford.) He taught at Groton School, Conn. (1897-9) where one of his pupils was Franklin D Roosevelt, the future U.S. president. From 1899 he taught at Harvard University. Between 1902 and 1904, he went to Turin to study under Corrado Segre and then to Bonn where he studied under Eduard Study. His Mathematics of the Great Amateurs is perhaps his best-known work. |
|
| Edward Herbert Thompson | |
|
(source) |
Born 28 Sep 1856; died 11 May 1935.
American archaeologist who revealed much about Mayan civilization from his exploration of the city and religious shrine of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán. Cenote is the Spanish equivalent of the Yucatec Maya word for a water-filled limestone sinkhole. In Mexico's northern Yucatán Peninsula, where there are few lakes or streams, cenotes provided a stable supply of water for the ancient Maya people who settled there. The great city of Chichén Itzá was built around a cluster of these natural wells, including the one known as the Cenote of Sacrifice. On 5 Mar 1904, Thompson, began dredging the Cenote of Sacrifice. He verified legends that this was a repository for the precious objects and human victims offered to the gods by the ancient Maya.  The
City of the Sacred Well, by T. A. Willard. |
| Adam Sedgwick | |
| Born 28
Sep 1854; died 27 Feb 1913.
English zoologist, a grandnephew of the geologist Adam Sedgwick, who is best known for his researches on the wormlike organism Peripatus, which he recognized as the zoologically important connecting link between the Annelida, or segmented worms, and the Arthropoda, such as crabs, spiders, and insects. |
|
| Henri Moissan | |
(source) |
Born 28
Sep 1852; died 20 Feb 1907.
French chemist who received the 1906 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of the highly reactive gaseous element fluorine, and the development of the Moissan electric furnace. In 1884, he began studying fluorine compounds, and separated fluorine two years later when he electrolyzed a solution of potassium fluoride in hydrofluoric acid. Having isolated fluorine, he was then able to determine its physical and chemical properties. From 1892, with an electric arc furnace he designed, Moissan began experimenting with reactions possible at much higher temperatures than before and discovered many new compounds and was able to vaporize substances previously impossible. He developed the furnace for industrial production of acetylene. |
| Arnold Henry Guyot | |
(source) |
Born 28
Sep 1807; died 8 Feb 1884.
Swiss geologist, geographer and educator. With glaciologist Louis Agassiz, he studied the glaciers of his native Switzerland and proved that they were moving - building a foundation for the theory of ice ages. Upon moving to the United States (1848), Guyot began the first systematic instruction in geology at Princeton University. Later, as head of the meteorological department at the Smithsonian Institution, he set up a system of weather observatories that utimately grew into the U. S. Weather Bureau. Using a barometer to measure altitude, he proved that Newfound Gap is the lowest pass through Appalachia's Great Smoky Mountains. The guyot, a flat-topped volcanic peak rising from the ocean floor, is named after him.«  |
| Richard Bright | |
(source) |
Born 28
Sep 1789; died 16 Dec 1858.
British physician, sometimes called the "Father of Nephrology, who was the first to describe the clinical manifestations of the kidney disorder known as Bright's disease, or nephritis. Richard Bright's research interests included not only renal disease, but also pulmonary diseases, various fevers, abdominal tumors, heart disease, liver, pancreas, and duodenum. He and Thomas Addison lectured at Guy's on the "Theory and Practice of Medicine" for twenty years, and in 1839 published the first volume of Elements of the Practice of Medicine. |
| Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis | |
(source) |
Born 28
Sep 1698; died 27 July 1759.
French mathematician, biologist, and astronomer. In 1732 he introduced Newton's theory of gravitation to France. He was a member of an expedition to Lapland in 1736 which set out to measure the length of a degree along the meridian. Maupertuis' measurements both verified Newton's predictions that the Earth would be an oblate speroid, and they corrected earlier results of Cassini. Maupertuis published on many topics including mathematics, geography, astronomy and cosmology. In 1744 he first enunciated the Principle of Least Action and he published it in Essai de cosmologie in 1850. Maupertuis hoped that the principle might unify the laws of the universe and combined it with an attempted proof of the existence of God. |
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| SEPTEMBER 28 - DEATHS | |
| Willard Harrison Bennett | |
(source) |
 Died
28 Sep 1987 (born 13 June 1903)
American physicist who discovered (1934) the pinch effect, an electromagnetic process that may offer a way to magnetically confine a plasma at temperatures high enough for controlled nuclear fusion reactions to occur. He proposed (1936) the tandem Van de Graaff accelerator, which later became widely used in nuclear research. He invented a radio-frequency mass spectrometer, developed in 1950. Since it required no heavy magnet, it was the first launched into space to measure the masses of atoms. Sputnik III carried the first R-F mass spectrometer into space. It was the only space instrument used by the Russians and credited to an American inventor in their own Russian-language publications. |
| George Harrison Shull | |
 |
Died
28 Sep 1954 (born 15 Apr 1874)
American botanist and geneticist known as the father of hybrid corn (maize). A leader in developing the multiple allele concept of genes, Shull's work with maize led him to develop the first hybrid corn, ancestor of today's sweet corn and a boon to commercial farmers. Shull’s approach was to study the effects of inbreeding and subsequent cross-fertilization in corn. In 1909, he published A Pure Line Method of Corn Breedingin which he outlined – with remarkable insight – the basics of breeding hybrid corn. As a result of his researches, corn yields per acre were increased 25 to 50 percent. He developed a method of corn breeding that made possible the production of seed capable of thriving under various soil and climatic conditions. |
| Edwin Hubble | |
(source) |
Died
28 Sep 1953 (born 20 Nov 1889)
American astronomer, born in Marshfield, Mo., who is considered the founder of extragalactic astronomy and who provided the first evidence of the expansion of the universe. In 1923-5 he identified Cepheid variables in "spiral nebulae" M31 and M33 and proved conclusively that they are outside the Galaxy. His investigation of these objects, which he called extragalactic nebulae and which astronomers today call galaxies, led to his now-standard classification system of elliptical, spiral, and irregular galaxies, and to proof that they are distributed uniformly out to great distances. Hubble measured distances to galaxies and their redshifts, and in 1929 he published the velocity-distance relation which is the basis of modern cosmology. |
| Charles E. Duryea | |
(source) |
Died 28 Sep 1938 (born 15 Dec 1861).
Charles Edgar Duryea was an American inventor who with his brother J. Frank Duryea built the first automobile with multiple copies manufactured in the U.S. On 28 Nov 1895, Frank drove their car to win $2,000 in the first American Automobile Race in Chicago, sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald. They travelled 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois and back, in just over 10 hours. In 1896, they set up the Duryea Motor Wagon Co. in Springfield, Mass. to manufacture multiple units of a gasoline-powered vehicle. Their production of 13 identical machines that year is considered to be the first serial production of American cars, earning them recognition as "Fathers of the American Automobile Industry".« [Image: the Duryea automobile of 1893.] Charles
E. Duryea: Automaker, by George W. May. |
| Nicolas Desmarest | |
(source) |
Died
28 Sep 1815 (born 16 Sep 1725)
French geographer whose discovery of the volcanic origin of basalt disproved the Neptunist theory that all rocks were formed by sedimentation from primeval oceans. Studying the Auvergne of central France (1763-74), he found large basalt deposits that he traced as lava flows from nearby ancient volcanoes. He further showed that many valleys are formed by the erosion of the rivers that flow in them. From 1757, Desmarest was employed by the government to help spread better manufacturing methods throughout France. By 1788 he had risen to the post of inspector general and director of manufactures. In 1792, during the French Revolution, Desmarest was imprisoned and narrowly escaped execution. Image: Basalt rock of the Devil's Tower, South Dakota, USA, is an ancient volcanic intrusion left over after all of the overlying material has been eroded away. |
| Louis Pasteur | |
 |
Died
28 Sep 1895 (born 27 Dec 1822)
French chemist who became a founder of microbiology. He began as a chemist working on the optical properties of tartaric acid and its stereochemistry (1849). He moved into microbiology when he discovered the role of bacteria in fermentation - that it was micro-organisms in yeast causing the formation of alcohol from sugar - and proved that the growth of microorganisms was not spontaneously generated from non-living matter. This led to understanding of the germ theory of infection, and his method of killing harmful bacteria in liquids by holding them for a time at a given temperature, which is now known as pasteurisation. He created and tested vaccines for diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever, plague, rabies, anthrax, and tuberculosis.« The
Private Science of Louis Pasteur, by Gerald L. Geison. |
| SEPTEMBER 28 - EVENTS | |
| Murchison meteorite | |
(source) |
In 1969, a meteorite fell over Murchison, Australia. Only 100-kg of this
meteorite have been found. Classified as a carbonaceous chondrite, type
II (CM2), this meteorite
is suspected to be of cometary origin due to its high water content (12%).
An abundance
of amino acids found within this meteorite has led to intense study
by researchers as to its origins. More than 92 different amino acids have
been identified within the Murchison meteorite to date. Nineteen of these
are found
on Earth. The remaining
amino acids have no apparent terrestrial
source. |
| Earth first TV pictures | |
|
In 1959, Explorer VI satellite (launched 7 Aug 1959) revealed an intense
radiation belt around Earth and took the first remote
imaging TV pictures of Earth meteorological conditions. |
|
| Fessenden wireless patent | |
|
In 1901, Prof. R. A. Fessenden applied for a U.S. patent for "Improvements
in apparatus for the wireless transmission of electromagnetic wave, said
improvements relating more especially to the transmission and reproduction
of words or other audible signals." According to Important Events in
Radiotelegraphy, a U.S. Dept of Commerce publication
(1916), "It appears that in connection with this apparatus there was contemplated
the use of an alternating current generator having a frequency of 50,000
per second." Prof. Fessenden was granted a number of United States patents
between 1899 and 1905 covering devices used in connection with radiotelegraphy. |
|
| First English female doctor's license. | |
(source) |
In 1865, Elizabeth Anderson (née Garrett, 9 Jun 1836 - 17 Dec 1917)
became the first female licensed physician in Britain. The daughter of
a Whitechapel paenbroker, she had studied medicine privately after being
refused admission to medical schools. On 28 Sep 1865, she was examined
orally in medicine, midwifery and medical pathology, and was one of three
out of the seven candidates to receive a Final Certificate, entitling her
to practice as a qualified physician and surgeon. A year after being licensed,
she became a general medical attendant to St. Mary's Dispensary, London,
later known as New Hospital, where she instituted medical courses for women.
New Hospital was renamed in her honour (1918) as the Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson Hospital. |
| Donati's comet | |
 |
In 1858, Donati's comet (discovered by Giovanni Donati, 1826-1873) became
the first to be photographed. It was a bright comet that developed a spectacular
curved dust tail with two thin gas tails, captured
by an English commercial photographer, William Usherwood, using a portrait
camera at a low focal ratio. At Harvard, W.C. Bond, attempted an image
on a collodion plate the following night, but the comet shows only faintly
and no tail can be seen. Bond was subsequently able to evaluate the image
on Usherwood's plate. The earliest celestial daguerreotypes were made in
1850-51, though after the Donati comet, no further comet
photography took place until 1881, when P.J.C. Janssen and J.W. Draper
took the first generally recognized photographs of a comet.* |
