| MARCH 30 - BIRTHS | |
| Stefan Banach | |
(source) |
 Born 30
Mar 1892; died 31 Aug 1945.
Polish mathematician who founded modern functional analysis and helped develop the theory of topological vector spaces. In addition, he contributed to measure theory, integration, the theory of sets, and orthogonal series. In his dissertation, written in 1920, he defined axiomatically what today is called a Banach space. The idea was introduced by others at about the same time (for example Wiener introduced the notion but did not develop the theory). The name 'Banach space' was coined by Fréchet. Banach algebras were also named after him. The importance of Banach's contribution is that he developed a systematic theory of functional analysis, where before there had only been isolated results which were later seen to fit into the new theory. |
| Arthur William Sidney Herrington | |
(source) |
Born 30
Mar 1891; died 6 Sep 1970.
American engineer and manufacturer who developed a series of military vehicles, the best known of which was the World War II jeep. During World War I, he started to work on a new design for military trucks for rough terrain, the smallest of which was the quarter-ton jeep with four-wheel drive that became the prototype for various models built in the 1930s and 1940s. The Jeep served in WW II as a litterbearer, machine gun firing mount, reconnaissance vehicle, pickup truck, front line limousine, ammo bearer, wire-layer and taxi. |
| Mary Whiton Calkins | |
(source) |
Born 30
Mar 1863; died 26 Feb 1930.
As an educator and psychologist, she was the first American woman to attain distinction in these fields of study. Calkins studied psychology at Harvard as a "guest," since women could not officially register. After completing all requirements for a doctorate at Harvard, and with the strong support of William James and her other professors, Harvard still refused to grant a degree to a woman. She established the first psychology laboratory at a women's college (Wellesley). She developed the paired-associate procedure for studying verbal memories. One of her main findings was that repeated pairings of words increased memory. Calkins was interested in a wide variety of research topics, including perception, personality, emotion, and dreaming. |
| James Theodore Bent | |
(source) |
Born 30
Mar 1852; died 5 May 1897
British explorer and archaeologist who excavated the magnificent Iron Age ruined city named the Great Zimbabwe, an ancient site in SE Africa that inspired the name of the country Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). The word Zimbabwe traces to the Bantu dzimbahwe; i.e., stone houses, or chiefs' graves. The earliest habitation is dated to about 400 AD, with inhabitation by Shona cattleherders from about 500 AD. Between the 12th to 15th centuries, stone structures still visible were built. The site lies within the Victoria region of modern state of Zimbabwe, which lies between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. The outer elliptical wall measures 830-ft’ circumference, varied height, up to 40’ and up to 17-ft thick. |
| Jethro Tull | |
(source) |
Baptised 30 Mar 1674; died 21 Feb 1741.
English writer and pioneer agronomist, who invented a horse-drawn drill around 1701. He promoted sowing seeds in rows rather than broadcast (simply casting the seeds around), so that weeds could be controlled by hoeing regularly between the rows. For this purpose, he devised his seed drill, which could planted three rows atthe same time. A blade cut a groove in the ground to receive the seed, and the soil was turned over to cover the sewn seed. A hopper distributed a regulated amount of seed. Because of the internal moving parts, it has been called the first agricultural machinery. Its rotary mechanism became part of all sowing devices that followed. Tull also invented a four-coultered plow to make vertical cuts in the soil before the plowshare.« [Image right: Tull's seed drill] 
 Jethro
Tull : A Berkshire Life, by George F. Tull. |
| MARCH 30 - DEATHS | |
| Manolis Andronicos | |
(source) |
 Died
30 Mar 1992 (born 23 Oct 1919)
Greek archaeologist who discovered ancient royal tombs in northern Greece, possibly belonging to the Macedonian King Philip II, the father of Alexander III the Great. In autumn 1977, an Andronicos discovered the unplundered royal tomb containing works of art of astounding richness and exquisite craftsmanship at Vergina in Macedonia. His suggestion that the tomb's occupant was probably Philip, son of Amyntas, king of the Macedonians, created understandable sensation, and aroused world-wide interest. Image: Small ivory-head, portrait of Philip II, found in the royal tomb at Vergina The
Acropolis, by Manolis Andronicos. |
| Philip Showalter Hench | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1965 (born 28 Feb 1896)
American physician who was one of the leaders in American rheumatology. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects (with Edward C. Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein of Switzerland). In 1948, Hench was working at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. He noticed that during pregnancy and in the presence of jaundice the severe pain of arthritis may decrease and even disappear. With Kendall, he successfully applied an adrenal hormone (later known as cortisone) in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. |
| Fritz Wolfgang London | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1954 (born 7 Mar 1900)
German-American physicist who, with Walter Heitler, devised the first quantum mechanical treatment of the hydrogen molecule, while working with Schrödinger at the University of Zurich. In a seminal paper (1927), they developed a wave equation for the hydrogen molecule with which it was possible to calculate approximate values of the molecule's ionization potential, heat of dissociation, and other constants. These predicted values were reasonably consistent with empirical values obtained by spectroscopic and chemical means. This theory of the chemical binding of homopolar molecules is considered one of the most important advances in modern chemistry. The approach is later called the valence-bond theory. Fritz
London: A Scientific Biography, by Kostas Gavroglu. |
| Friedrich Bergius | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1949 (born 11 Oct 1884)
German chemist, who invented converting coal dust and hydrogen directly into gasoline and lubricating oils without isolating intermediate products, (Stuttgart, 25 June 1921). Bergius succeeded, during distillation of coal, in forcing hydrogen under high pressure to combine chemically with the coal, transforming more carbon from the coal into oils than is possible with conventional distillation. To solve heat distribution and temperature regulation problems, Bergius invented treating a mixture of pulverized coal in oil with the gas under high pressure. For his work in developing the chemical high pressure hydrogenation method necessary for this process he shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Carl Bosch of Germany. |
| Sir Charles Vernon Boys | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1944 (born 15 Mar 1855)
English physicist and inventor of sensitive instruments. He graduated in mining and metallurgy, self-taught in a wide knowledge of geometrical methods. In 1881, he invented the integraph, a machine for drawing the antiderivative of a function. Boys is known particularly for his utilization of the torsion of quartz fibres in the measurement of minute forces, enabling him to elaborate (1895) on Henry Cavendish's experiment to improve the values obtained for the Newtonian gravitational constant. He also invented an improved automatic recording calorimeter for testing manufactured gas (1905) and high-speed cameras to photograph rapidly moving objects, such as bullets and lightning discharges. Upon retirement in 1939, he grew weeds. |
| John Henry Poynting | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1914 (born 9 Sep 1852)
British physicist who introduced a theorem (1884-85) that assigns a value to the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy known as the Poynting vector, introduced in his paper On the Transfer of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field (1884). In this he showed that the flow of energy at a point can be expressed by a simple formula in terms of the electric and magnetic forces at that point. He determined the mean density of the Earth (1891) and made a determination of the gravitational constant (1893) using accurate torsion balances. He was also the first to suggest, in 1903, the existence of the effect of radiation from the Sun that causes smaller particles in orbit about the Sun to spiral close and eventually plunge in. |
| Ellen Swallow Richards | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1911 (born 3 Dec 1842)
(née Ellen Henrietta Swallow) American chemist and founder of the home economics movement in the United States. She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduated with a B.S. in 1873, and stayed on as a chemistry assistant. She set to work analyzing Boston's water supply. In Nov 1876, she created the Woman's Laboratory at MIT where women could learn the rudiments of science. In 1884, MIT made Richards its first woman faculty member. She helped develop a new curriculum in air, water, and sewage chemistry. However, she also saw the home and child-rearing as complex and important work, saying the women who did it should be educated. She spent thirty years developing the concept of domestic science. |
| Antoine Jérôme Balard | |
|
Died
30 Mar 1876 (born 30 Sept 1802)
French chemist who in 1826 discovered the element bromine, determined its properties, and studied some of its compounds. Later he proved the presence of bromine in sea plants and animals. This discovery was a by-product of a more general chemical investigation of the sea and its life forms. Bromine had an atomic weight that was close to the arithmetic mean of two other known halogens, chlorine and iodine, suggesting they formed a "chemical family." He also researched the inexpensive extraction of salts from seawater. He discovered oxamic acid by using heat to decompose ammonium hydrogen oxylate. He studied and named amyl alcohol. Pasteur and Berthelot were two of his students. |
| Benedict Augustin Morel | |
| Died
30 Mar 1873 (born 22 Nov 1809)
Austrian-born French psychologist who introduced the term dementia praecox to refer to a mental and emotional deterioration beginning at the time of puberty. The disorder was renamed schizophrenia in 1908 by the Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler. Morel developed a psychiatric theory of causality based on hereditary weakness. In his 700-page magnum opus, Traité des dégenerescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine (1857), Morel developed a detailed method of discovering the great variety of "stigmata of degeneration " to be found among the mentally sick. These were mostly physical signs - various malformations - but also various intellectual and moral deviations from the normal. |
|
| Auguste Bravais | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1863 (born 23 Aug 1811)
French physicist and mineralogist, best remembered for his work on the lattice theory of crystals. Bravais lattices are named for him. In 1850, he showed that crystals could be divided into 14 unit cells for which: (a) the unit cell is the simplest repeating unit in the crystal; (b) opposite faces of a unit cell are parallel; and (c) the edge of the unit cell connects equivalent points. These unit cells fall into seven geometrical categories, which differ in their relative edge lengths and internal angles. In 1866, he elaborated the relationships between the ideal lattice and the material crystal. Sixty years later, Bravais' work provided the mathematical and conceptual basis for the determination of crystal structures after Laue's discovery of X-ray diffraction in 1911. |
| Stephen Groombridge | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1832 (born 7 Jan 1755)
English merchant and astronomer, who compiled of a star catalog known by his name. A Catalog of Circumpolar Stars, Reduced to January 1, 1810 was published posthumously in 1838, edited by G. Biddell Airy. Groombridge began observations at Blackheath, London, in 1806 and retired from the West Indian trade in 1815 to devote full time to the project. The catalog eventually listed 4,243 stars situated within 50° of the North Pole and having apparent magnitudes greater than 9. He was a founder of the Astronomical Society (1820). [Image: GroombridgeTransit Circle, London, 1806] |
| William Hunter | |
(source) |
Died
30 Mar 1783 (born 23 May 1718)
British obstetrician, educator, and medical writer whose high standards of teaching and medical practice took obstetrics from the hands of the midwives and established it as an accepted branch of medicine. He built up a distinguished clientèle (including members of the Royal Family) and made a collection of anatomical and pathological specimens related to his medical work. Hunter began public lectures on anatomy in 1746 and became a member of the corporation of surgeons in 1746. With the lack of training spaces in hospitals, the demand for private anatomy schools increased rapidly. He became one of the most successful anatomy teachers of his time. Hunter was still teaching anatomy in his Great Windmill Street Institute until his death. |
| MARCH 30 - EVENTS | |
| Einstein | |
In 1953, Einstein announced his revised unified field theory. |
|
| Phototransistor | |
|
In 1950, the invention of the phototransistor
was announced. This was a transistor operated
by light rather than electric current, invented by Dr. John Northrup Shive
of the Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, N.J. It used a tiny
chip of germanium, a semiconductor material, but only a single collector
wire. The tip of this wire rests in a small dimple ground into one side
of the germanium disk. At this point the germanium disk is only three thousandths
of an inch thick. Light focussed on the opposite, un-dimpled side of the
disk can control the flow of current in the wire, thus making a control
device similar in function to a photo-electric cell. |
|
| Circumnavigation by liner | |
|
In 1923, the Cunard liner Laconia arrived in New York City, becoming
the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days. |
|
| Queensboro Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1909, the first significant double-deck bridge in the U.S. was opened
to traffic. The Queensboro
Bridge is one of the greatest cantilever bridges
in the history of American bridge design. A collaboration
between the famed bridge engineer Gustav Lindenthal (1850-1935) and architect
Henry Hornbostel, the Queensboro’s massive, silver-painted trusses span
the East River between 59th Street in Manhattan and Long Island City in
Queens. The opening of the Queensboro Bridge was one of, if not the, most
important feature to stimulate the continuing development of Long Island
City and Queens in general. Before it, Long Island City was isolated and
unevenly developed. Image: a
period illustration which shows a steamer and a sailing ship passing under
the bridge. |
| Horseshoe | |
(USPTO) |
In 1899, black American inventor James Ricks was issued a patent for a
patent for "Improvements in the "Rough-Shoeing of Horses," which was an
overshoe or sleet shoe clamped with a wire band over the ordinary shoe
(No.338,781). A V-shaped iron or steel plate was designed with sharpened
downward points at the heel and toe ends for traction. At each heel end,
projections lapped over the common horseshoe underneath. A screwdriver
was used to tighten the screw-threaded bolt and nut on the integral metal
band clamp that passed around the heel and a toe loop. Later, he held a
patent for a rubber "Overshoe for Horses" (6 Jun 1899, U.S. No. 626,245).
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Pencil with eraser | |
(source) |
In 1858, the first U.S. patent
for a combination lead pencil and eraser was issued to Hyman L. Lipman,
of Philadelphia, Pa. (No. 19,783). The pencil was made in the usual manner,
with one-fourth of its length reserved inside one end to carry a piece
of prepared india-rubber, glued in at one edge. Thus cutting one end prepared
the lead for writing, while cutting the other end would expose a small
piece of india rubber. This eraser was then conveniently available whenever
needed, and not subject to being mislaid. Further, the eraser could be
sharpened to a finer point to make a more precise erasure of fine lines
in a drawing, or cut further down if the end became soiled.
 The
Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. Henry Petroski |
| Egg incubator | |
|
In 1843, the first U.S. patent for an egg incubator was issued to Napoleon
E. Guerin of New York City (No. 3,019). It described a "mode of distributing
steam heat, purifying air, etc." for hatching chickens by artificial heat. |
|
| Anesthetic | |
(source) |
In 1842, physician Dr. Crawford W. Long of Jefferson, Georgia, first used
ether as an anesthetic during a minor operation. He placed an ether-soaked
towel over the face of James Venable and removed
a tumour from his neck. This event predated Morton's public demonstration
of ether by four years, but was not disclosed until 1849 in the Southern
Medical Journal, which was after
Morton's widely publicized feat. However, Dr. Long's accomplishment in
1842 is now widely considered to represent the discovery of surgical anesthesia.
He was the subject on a U.S. stamp
issued 8 Apr 1940. This is Doctor's Day in his honor. |
| Metre defined | |
|
In 1791, after a proposal by the Académie des sciences (Borda, Lagrange,
Laplace, Monge and Condorcet), the French National Assembly finally chose
that a metre would be a 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the north
pole and the equator. |
|
| Classification of geological eras | |
Arduino (source) |
In 1759, Italian geologist Giovanni
Arduino (1714-1795) dated a letter
to Professor A.Vallisneri the younger, in which Arduino proposed a classification
of Earth's surface rocks according to four brackets of successively younger
orders: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. These are the four
geological eras used today. The volcanic rocks without fossils which he
saw in the Atesine Alps that formed the cores of large mountains he called
Primary. Overlying them, the fossil rich rocks of limestone and clay that
were found on the prealpine flanks of the mountains he called Secondary.
The less consolidated fossil-bearing rocks of the subalpine foothills,
he named Tertiary, and the alluvial rock deposits in the plains were the
Quaternary.« |
| Halley's Comet | |
(source) |
In 239, B.C., was the first recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
by Chinese astronomers in the Shih Chi and Wen Hsien Thung Khao chronicles.
Its highly elliptical, 75-year orbit carries it out well beyond the orbit
of Neptune and well inside the orbits of Earth and Venus when it swings
in around the Sun, travelling in the opposite direction from the revolution
of the planets. It was the first comet that was recognized as being periodic.
An Englishman, Edmond Halley predicted in 1705 that the comet that appeared
over London in 1682 would reappear again in 1759, and that it was the same
comet that appeared in 1607 and 1531. When the comet did in fact reappear
again in 1759, as correctly predicted, it was named (posthumously) after
Halley. [Image: Charcoal on
board illustration published 21 May 1910 in Harper's Weekly. It
was drawn by Elizabeth Shippen Green in 1909 in anticipation of the 1910
appearance of the comet.] |
