Today in Science (1015)

Events

1951 - Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesizes the first oral contraceptive

1997 - The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.

2001 - NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.

Births

1608 - Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist

1829 - Asaph Hall, American astronomer

1909 - Jesse Leonard Greenstein, American astronomer

1940 - Peter Doherty, Australian immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate

Deaths

1980 - Mikhail Lavrentyev, Russian physicist and mathematician

2000 - Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate

2003 - Bertram N. Brockhouse, Canadian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate