TODAY IN SCIENCE

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------21 JUN

2004 - First privately funded spaceflight launched.

Ian Kluft

SpaceShipOne, built by Paul Allen and designed by Burt Rutan launched from a launch plane, White Knight and became the first privately owned manned vehicle to enter space. The pilot, Mike Melvill became the first civilian astronaut.

1994 - William Wilson Morgan died.

Morgan was an American astronomer who invented the cD classification system of galaxy clusters. He also produced the first direct evidence the Milky Way Galaxy was a spiral arm galaxy.

1957 - Johannes Stark died.

Stark was a German physicist who was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields (the Stark Effect) and discovering the Doppler effect in canal or anode rays.

1857 - Louis-Jacques Thénard died.

Wikimedia Commons

Thénard was a French chemist who discovered the element boron with Guy-Lussac. He also discovered hydrogen peroxide, sodium peroxide and made discoveries into esters and bile.

1876 - Willem Hendrik Keesom was born.

Keesom was a Dutch physicist who was the first to freeze helium into a solid. He compressed and cooled helium down to -457.6° F (-272° C) to form solid helium. He also produced the first mathematical description of dipole-dipole interactions between molecules. These interactions are known as Keesom interactions in his honor.

1874 - Anders Jonas Ångström died.

Ångström was a Swedish physicist who was a pioneer in spectroscopy. He investigated the change in spectra due to heat and the spectra of the sun and aurora borealis. The Ångström (Å) unit of distance, named in his honor, is equal to 10-10 meters and is often used in spectroscopy to measure wavelengths of light.

1863 - Albert Sauveur was born.

Sauveur was a pioneer of modern metallurgy. He determined the metal structures of materials through microscopic and photomicroscopic techniques. He also investigated the effects of heat-treating materials.

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1958 - Kurt Alder died.

Alder was a German chemist who shares the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Otto Diels for their development of diene synthesis, otherwise known as the Diels-Alder reaction. A diene is a hydrocarbon with two double bonds. The Diels-Alder reaction converts dienes and alkenes into ring molecules. It is important in the synthesis of many polymers, steroids and alkaloids.

1920 - Dmitry Iosifovich Ivanovsky died.

Wikimedia Commons

Ivanovsky was a Russian microbiologist who was the first to discover viruses. He was studying the mosaic disease of tobacco and found microscopic organisms he believed to be bacteria. Viruses would be independently discovered a few years later by Dutch botanist M.W. Beijerinck, but credit for the discovery was given to Ivanovsky.

1861 - Frederick Gowland Hopkins was born.

Nobel Prize Foundation

Hopkins was an English biochemist who shares the 1929 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Christiaan Eijkman for the discovery of vitamins. He also discovered the amino acid tryptophan.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------19 JUN

1922 - Aage Niels Bohr was born.

Bohr is a Danish nuclear physicist who shares the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ben Mottelson and James Rainwater for their explanation of the asymmetrical shapes of particular atomic nuclei. They discovered the shape was determined by the rotational motion of the individual nucleons

1910 - Paul John Flory was born.

Flory was an American physical chemists who was a pioneer in the chemistry of polymers and macromolecules. He investigated the kinetics of polymer reactions in solutions and wrote the standard textbook on polymer chemistry, Principles of Polymer Chemistry. He was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in honor of his theoretical and experimental achievements in polymer and macromolecular chemistry.

1906 - Ernst Boris Chain was born.

Chain was a German-English biochemist who shares the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Howard W. Florey and Alexander Fleming for their research and discoveries of the antibiotic penicillin. Fleming was the bacteriologist who discovered penicillin. Chain and Florey isolated and purified it and conducted the first human trials.

1897 - Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was born.

Hinshelwood was a British chemist who was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize with Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov for their work on the mechanisms of chemical reactions. Hinshelwood investigated the rates and mechanism of chain reactions such as the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen to form water. His later work was on the chemical changes that occur on bacterial cell walls that were important to future antibiotic research.

1783 - Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner was born.

Wikimedia Commons

Sertürner was a German pharmacist who first isolated morphine from opium. It was the first alkaloid to be extracted from a plant source. Morphine would become a widely used pain killer.

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1983 - US launches the first American woman astronaut.

NASA

The space shuttle Challenger lifted off taking the first American woman, Sally K. Ride as part of the five person crew into space. This launch was just over 20 years after the Soviets launched their first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova.

1971 - Paul Karrer died.

Karrer was a Swiss chemist who was awarded half the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2. Carotenoids are organic pigments in plants. His investigations were into beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A. Flavins are organic compound sources of riboflavin, or vitamin B2.

1932 - Dudley Robert Herschbach was born.

Herschbach is an American chemist who shares the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Yuan Lee and John Polanyi for their discoveries into the dynamics of chemical reactions. He and Lee used molecular beams that would cross each other and note the collisions and the reactions that took place. This research gave a basic understanding of chemical reactions and what it takes for two reagents to react with each other.

1926 - Allan Rex Sandage was born.

Sandage is an American astronomer who discovered quasi-stellar radio sources (quasars) with Thomas A. Matthews. Quasars are very distant stellar objects that emit strong radio frequency energy.

1918 - Jerome Karle was born.

Karle was and American chemist and crystallographer who shares the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Herbert A. Hauptman for their development of the direct method determining crystal structures. They found a mathematical method to determine a crystal's molecular structure from the crystal's x-ray diffraction pattern. This would lead to a method of three dimensional x-ray crystallography.

1905 - Per Teodor Cleve died.

Wikimedia Commons

Cleve was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered the elements holmium and thulium. He also discovered the element didymium was not an element at all, but two separate elements,neodymium and praseodymium.

1845 - Alphonse Laveran was born.

Nobel Prize Foundation

Laveran was a French physician who identified the cause for malaria as a protozoan while studying red blood cells of infected people. This discovery would earn him the 1907 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1799 - William Lassell was born.

Wikimedia Commons

Lassell was an English amateur astronomer. He built his own observatory and telescope in Liverpool and discovered Triton, Neptune's largest moon. He also discovered two moons of Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel. He independently discovered the moon Hyperion of Saturn.

1178 - Fire on the Moon reported

An English monk, Gervase of Canterbury, recorded an event witnessed by himself and five others where the upper part of the cresent of the moon split in two.

He wrote:
"From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out... fire, hot coals and sparks... The body of the moon, which was below writhed... throbbed like a wounded snake."

There is a debate as to what was witnessed. In 1976 it was suggested this was the birth of the crater Giodano Bruno. This would have produced a spectacular meteor shower, but no meteor shower was ever recorded by any other astronomers or witnesses. The current theory is a meteor entering the atmosphere and burning up that happened to line up with the monk's line of sight of the moon.

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1832 - William Crookes was born.

Henry Smith Williams/A History of Science (1904)

Crookes was an English chemist who discovered the element thallium. He also discovered negative electrical cathodes in low pressure emit 'cathode rays' or a stream of fast moving electrons. The Crookes radiometer, sold in many museum gift shops and novelty stores was an accidental invention while trying to weigh out samples in a partially evacuated scale. He noticed the scale would move when struck by sunlight. He built the device to investigate this phenomenon.

1800 - William Parsons was born.

William Pasons was the 3rd Earl of Rosse and Irish astronomer that built the largest telescope of the 19th century. The 72-inch Leviathan of Parsonstown was completed in 1845 using mirrors of his own construction. He was able to resolve images of distant armed objects that previously were seen only as clouds. These objects were identified as spiral galaxies. He also observed and named the Crab Nebula.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------JUN 16:

1963:The Soviet space program was looking for a woman to launch into space. In 1962, they started to look for candidates with two criteria: their lady had to be an accomplished parachutist or pilot and she had to be under 30 years of age. By the end of the year, they had pared the list from 58 candidates down to just four women. Their favorite of the candidates, Valentina Tereshkova would become the first woman in space.

On June 16, 1963, she was launched into space aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft. She would spend the next three days orbiting the Earth 48 times. The mission objective was to determine on the effect of spaceflight on the female body. Her performance was compared to a male cosmonaut, Valery F. Bykovsky, who was launched two days prior on the Vostok 5 rocket. He performed the same tasks and tests as Valentina. Both returned to Earth on June 19.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------JUN 15

1917 - Kristian Olaf Birkeland died.

Birkeland was a Norwegian physicist to first described the nature of the Aurora borealis. He discovered that a beam of electrons aimed at a magnetized terrella produced rings of light near the poles. He also invented the electromagnetic rail gun that uses magnetic fields to propel munitions, but did not pursue the invention. He developed the Birkeland-Eyde nitrogen fixation process that produced nitric acid from atmospheric nitrogen.

1917 - John Bennett Fenn was born.

Fenn is an American chemist who shares half the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Koichi Tanaka for their development of a mass spectrometry technique to analyze biological macromolecules. He developed the electrospray ionization technique to ionize macromolecules without fracturing the molecule.

1915 - Thomas Huckle Weller was born.

Weller was an American microbiologist who shares the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Frederick Robbins and John Enders for growing the poliomyelitis virus in a test tube from infected tissue. This made the virus easier to research, leading to eventual vaccines. He also cultivated the viruses responsible for herpes and for chicken pox.

1785 - Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier died.

de Rozier was a French aeronautical pioneer who, together with François Laurent d'Arlandes became the first men to fly in an untethered balloon. They flew in a Montgolfier balloon on November 21, 1783. He also has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the first casualty of manned balloon flight. He and Pierre Romain died when their balloon crashed while attempting to cross the English Channel.

1754 - Juan José D'Elhuyar was born.

Juan José D'Elhuyar was a Spanish mineralologist who, together with his brother Faustus D'Elhuyar, isolated the element tungsten from wolfram ore. Carl Scheele had discovered tungsten two years earlier in the form of tungstic acid, but did not separate the tungsten metal from the acid. The D'Elhuyar brothers reduced the acid through charcoal and removed the metal.

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1946 - John Logie Baird died.

Wikimedia Commons

Baird was a Scottish engineer who produced the first working television system in 1924. He was also the first to broadcast a television signal in color and the first to create a high definition television system.

1924 - James Black was born.

Black is a Scottish pharmacologist who invented the hypertension drug propranolol and synthesized the acid reducing drug cimetidine. This would earn him one third of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1868 - Karl Landsteiner was born.

Nobel Prize Foundation

Landsteiner was an Austrian physician who developed the modern blood type classification system by identifying the agglutinins in the blood. He later identified the Rh factor with Alexander S. Wiener to further refine this system. He also identified poliovirus with Erwin Popper. Landsteiner would win the 1930 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of blood types.

1862 - John Ulric Nef was born.

Nef was a Swiss-American chemist who identified carbon could have a valence of 2 as well as 4 which greatly advanced the understanding of organic chemistry. He also discovered the Nef reaction that describes the acid hydrolysis of a salt of a nitroalkane to a aldehyde and nitrous oxide.

1768 - James Short died.

Short was a British astronomer and optician who designed and created the first distortionless elliptical and parabolic mirrors for reflecting telescopes. His telescopes were highly prized and in demand all over the world.

1736 - Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born.

Portrait by Hippolyte Lecomte

Coulomb was a French physicist who discovered electrostatic force was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between charges. This is one of the bases of the study of electricity and magnetism. The SI unit of charge is named in his honor.







 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------June 13th is the birthday of two important scientists involved in the wave nature of light. Thomas Young was an English polymath who demonstrated light behaves like water waves. He showed light could be reflected and refracted. He also showed light set up interference patterns similar to water waves. James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist who managed to unite electricity, magnetism and optics all in one field. His famous Maxwell's equations showed how an electromagnetic wave could self-propagate through space at the speed of light. This led to the realization that light has properties of an electromagnetic wave.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------JUNE 12

The Venera 4 spacecraft was launched towards the planet Venus to become the first spacecraft to analyze the atmosphere of another planet and send back the data. It arrived on October 18, 1967 and decended into the atmosphere. It measured pressure, temperature and composition. It found an atmosphere comprised mostly of carbon dioxide under high pressure and high temperature. The lander was crushed 25 km from the surface.

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On this day in 1752, Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning, enabling him to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. He also invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships.

Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, to a candle and soap maker named Josiah Franklin, who fathered 17 children, and his wife Abiah Folger. Franklin's formal education ended at age 10 and he went to work as an apprentice to his brother James, a printer. In 1723, following a dispute with his brother, Franklin left Boston and ended up in Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer. Following a brief stint as a printer in London, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and became a successful businessman, whose publishing ventures included the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard'sAlmanack, a collection of homespun proverbs advocating hard work and honesty in order to get ahead. The almanac, which Franklin first published in 1733 under the pen name Richard Saunders, included such wisdom as: "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Whether or not Franklin followed this advice in his own life, he came to represent the classic American overachiever. In addition to his accomplishments in business and science, he is noted for his numerous civic contributions. Among other things, he developed a library, insurance company, city hospital and academy in Philadelphia that would later become the University ofPennsylvania.

Franklin died at age 84 on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia. He remains one of the leading figures in U.S. history