jlynch

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April 30, 2007
Events 1753 - Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, 1930 - The "planet" Pluto is officially named. 1956 - The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public. Births 1852 - Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroscientist, Nobel laureate 1881 - Pierre Teilhard de…
April 29, 2007
Events 1006 - Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appears in the constellation Lupus. 1993 - The World Wide Web was born at CERN. Births 1723 - Mathurin Jacques Brisson, French naturalist 1777 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician 1829 - Ferdinand von…
April 28, 2007
"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living." Births 1854 - Henri Poincaré,…
April 27, 2007
Births 1765 - Sylvestre François Lacroix, French mathematician 1868 - Georgy Voronoy, Russian mathematician 1900 - Jan Oort, Dutch astronomer 1906 - Kurt Gödel, Austrian mathematician 1928 - Eugene M. Shoemaker, American astronomer 1941 - K. Barry Sharpless, American chemist, Nobel laureate…
April 26, 2007
Events 2002 - The last successful telemetry from NASA space probe Pioneer 10. Births 1755 - Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician 1791 - Samuel F. B. Morse, American inventor 1820 - Herbert Spencer, English philosopher and social evolutionist 1913 - Philip Hauge Abelson, American physicist…
April 26, 2007
So I noticed that visits to the blog ramped up after 2100 EST tonight with traffic increasing ten-fold. And the reason? Grey's Anatomy mentioned this little blighter.
April 26, 2007
I was going to post a note on Shelly's run-in with the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture regarding fair-use of a published graph. I was going to run a copy of the offending graph. But all seems to be ok now and the journal has backed down, blaming the issue on "a misunderstanding…
April 25, 2007
Events 1962 - Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. 1994 - Physicists announce first evidence of the top quark subatomic particle. Births 1774 - Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist 1785 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator 1879 - Owen Willans Richardson,…
April 25, 2007
I'll admit to spending way too much time lurking at Fark.com. Today the site underwent a re-design and the punters aren't happy. The new layout is ugly (particularly on a wide screen), it loads slooooow, and Firfox extensions no longer work. People on this thread are complaining and things are…
April 24, 2007
Events 1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA. Births 1710 - James Ferguson, Scottish astronomer 1849 - Felix Klein, German mathematician 1874 - Guglielmo…
April 23, 2007
Events 1967 - Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 becoming the first human to die during a space mission. 1990 - STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery. Births 1899 - Oscar Zariski, Russian-born mathematician 1947 - Roger D. Kornberg, American chemist Deaths…
April 22, 2007
Events 1827 - William Rowan Hamilton presents his Theory of systems of rays. Births 1628 - Johann van Waveren Hudde, Dutch mathematician 1746 - Félix Vicq-d'Azyr, French physician and anatomist 1775 - William Turner, English ornithologist 1792 - John Thomas Romney Robinson, Irish astronomer and…
April 21, 2007
Events 1993 - The web browser Mosaic version 1.0 is released. Births 1692 - James Stirling, Scottish mathematician 1876 - Robert Bárány, American physician, Nobel laureate 1884 - Otto Rank, Austrian psychologist 1891 - Harold Jeffreys, English astronomer 1904 - Robert Oppenheimer, American…
April 21, 2007
Another semester is drawing to a close. Readers will notice that I've been more-or-less AWOL for the past few months - a combination of deadlines (hit and missed) and teaching have kept me busy beyond belief. The good news is that I expect things to ease off starting sometime next week and to…
April 21, 2007
Events 1994 - Confirmation of the first extrasolar planets (around pulsar PSR B1257+12) is announced by Alexander Wolszczan. Births 1652 - Michel Rolle, French mathematician 1774 - Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist 1882 - Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist, Nobel laureate 1889 - Paul…
April 19, 2007
Roll call is reporting that the FBI has raided a business tied to Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) as part of an ongoing investigation into the lawmaker. Knowledgeable readers may remember that there are suspicions that Paul Charlton, the former U.S. Attorney in Arizona, was deep-sixed by Alberto Gonzalez…
April 19, 2007
Events 1862 - The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard. 1902 - Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride. Births 1745 - Philippe Pinel, French physician 1904 - George Stibitz, American scientist 1918 - Kai Siegbahn, Swedish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate 1927…
April 18, 2007
Events 1971 - Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station. Births 1874 - Ernst Rüdin, Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist, and eugenicist 1883 - Richard von Mises, Austrian-born mathematician 1912 - Glenn Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1567 - Michael Stifel, German…
April 17, 2007
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation…
April 16, 2007
I don't really have much to add to what people are saying about the terrible tragedy in Virginia. Suffice it to say, that any of us involved in education felt the sheer mindless unexplainable stupidity of it. As I stood in-front of my class of 150 (mostly) soon-to-be graduating seniors at 3pm…
April 16, 2007
Births 1598 - Giovanni Riccioli, Italian astronomer 1794 - Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist 1798 - Ãtienne Bobillier, French mathematician 1863 - Augustus Edward Hough Love, English mathematician 1866 - Ernest Starling, British physiologist 1946 - Georges J.F. Kohler, German…
April 15, 2007
Events 1943 - Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD. Births 1495 - Petrus Apianus, German mathematician 1660 - Hans Sloane, British collector and physician 1728 - Joseph Black, Scottish chemist 1823 - Ferdinand Eisenstein, German mathematician Deaths 1783 - Christian Mayer, Czech…
April 15, 2007
Events 1923 - Insulin first became generally available for use by diabetics. Births 1452 - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance polymath (above) 1552 - Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician 1641 - Robert Sibbald, Scottish physician 1707 - Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician 1710 - William…
April 13, 2007
Requiem When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here. Kurt Vonnegut
April 13, 2007
Events 1956 - Videotape is first demonstrated at the NARTB (now NAB) convention 1958 - The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. 1970 - One of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks explodes, causing a cancelled moon mission. 1981 - The first operational space shuttle…
April 13, 2007
About the only thing I bother to make time to watch on the TV is The Sopranos which has just entered its final season of nine episodes. Here's what has happened in the previous seasons:
April 12, 2007
Births 1771 - Richard Trevithick, English engineer and inventor 1780 - Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer 1802 - Leopold Fitzinger, Austrian zoologist 1850 - Arthur Matthew Weld Downing, British astronomer 1887 - Gordon S. Fahrni, Canadian physician and President of the Canadian Medical…
April 11, 2007
Events 1633 - The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins. 1937 - Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft 1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in space. Births 1748 - Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist 1852 -…
April 11, 2007
This is sad. Kurt Vonnegut has died. Pessimist, existentialist and damn great writer. As he said in God Bless You Mr Rosewater: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years…
April 10, 2007
Events 1905 - Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity. Births 1705 - William Cookworthy, English chemist 1755 - James Parkinson, English physician 1798 - Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist 1953 - Andrew Wiles, British mathematician who found a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem Deaths 1626 - Marin…