jlynch | March 4, 2007March 5th
1575 - Birth of William Oughtred, English mathematician
1748 - Birth of Jonas C. Dryander, Swedish botanist
1827 - Death of Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician
1827 - Death of Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist
1904 - Nikola Tesla describes the process of ball lightning formation.
1910 - Birth of Józef Marcinkiewicz, Polish mathematician
1915 - Birth of Laurent Schwartz, French mathematician
1925 - Death of Johan Jensen, Danish mathematician
1927 - Death of Franz Mertens, German mathematician
1958 - Explorer 2 spacecraft launches but fails to reach Earth orbit.
1970…
jlynch | March 4, 2007The New York Times is featuring a discussion of the evolution of religious belief. While the article is largely a discussion of Scott Atran's work, Dawkins, Dennett and Harris ("They have been portrayed as an unholy trinity of neo-atheists, promoting their secular world view with a fervor that seems almost evangelical") also get a
mention. The article also notes that 6 in 10 Americans believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death, while 92% believe in a personal God.
Update: James and Razib both offer their thoughts on the…
jlynch | March 3, 2007March 4th
1675 - John Flamsteed appointed first Astronomer Royal of England.
1774 - First sighting of Orion Nebula by William Herschel.
1822 - Birth of Jules Antoine Lissajous, French mathematician
1835 - Birth of John Hughlings Jackson, English neurologist
1847 - Birth of Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist
1853 - Death of Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist
1854 - Birth of Napier Shaw, British meteorologist
1859 - Birth of Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist
1862 - Birth of Jacob Robert Emden, Swiss astrophysicist and meteorologist
1871 - Birth of Boris Galerkin, Russian…
jlynch | March 3, 2007
On February 25th, the STEREO B spacecraft captured a lunar transit across the face of the Sun. Click here for the impressive QT movie.
jlynch | March 2, 2007
The Lay of the Trilobite
May Kendall (1861 - 1943)
A mountain's giddy height I sought,
Because I could not find
Sufficient vague and mighty thought
To fill my mighty mind;
And as I wandered ill at ease,
There chanced upon my sight
A native of Silurian seas,
An ancient Trilobite.
So calm, so peacefully he lay,
I watched him even with tears:
I thought of Monads far away
In the forgotten years.
How wonderful it seemed and right,
The providential plan,
That he should be a Trilobite,
And I should be a Man!
And then, quite natural and free
Out of his rocky bed,
That Trilobite he spoke to me
And…
jlynch | March 2, 2007March 3rd
1703 - Death of Robert Hooke, English scientist
1800 - Birth of Heinrich Georg Bronn, German geologist
1845 - Birth of Georg Cantor, German mathematician
1918 - Birth of Arthur Kornberg, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1988 - Death of Sewall Wright, American evolutionary biologist
1999 - Death of Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 2, 2007
Arizonans won't see the full lunar eclipse scheduled for Saturday because it reaches totality around 4:20 p.m. here, two hours before the sun will set.
Ah well. We'll just have to wait for August 27th.
jlynch | March 2, 2007Ann Coulter's one woman crusade to bring civility back to American politics took a turn for the worst today. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, she had this to say:
I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I -- so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards.
Stay classy, Ann.
jlynch | March 1, 2007March 2nd
1729 - Death of Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist
1779 - Birth of Joel Roberts Poinsett, American statesman and botanist
1791 - Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris
1830 - Death of Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, German physician
1840 - Death of Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer
1862 - Birth of Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist
1962 - Death of Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, Belgian mathematician
1969 - The first test flight of the Concorde is conducted.
1972 - The Pioneer 10…
jlynch | February 28, 2007As Razib notes, Arthur Schlesinger has died at the age of 89. I like this quote from his New York Times obit, if only because I feel the same way and used to spend a lot of time as a kid wondering in the same way:
Mr. Schlesinger saw life as a walk through history. He wrote that he could not stroll down Fifth Avenue without wondering how the street and the people on it would have looked a hundred years ago.
jlynch | February 28, 2007March 1st
1597 - Birth of Jean-Charles de la Faille, Belgian mathematician
1610 - Birth of John Pell, English mathematician
1697 - Death of Francesco Redi, Italian physician
1862 - Death of Peter Barlow, English mathematician
1884 - Death of Isaac Todhunter, English mathematician
1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity
1910 - Birth of Archer John Porter Martin, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1911 - Death of Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1926 - Birth of Seymour Papert, South African mathematician and artificial intelligence researcher
1943…
jlynch | February 27, 2007February 28th
1704 - Birth of Louis Godin, French astronomer
1857 - Death of André Dumont, Belgian geologist
1878 - Birth of Pierre Fatou, French mathematician
1896 - Birth of Philip Showalter Hench, American physician, Nobel laureate
1901 - Birth of Linus Pauling, American chemist, Nobel laureate
1915 - Birth of Peter Medawar, Brazilian-born scientist, Nobel laureate
1929 - Death of Clemens von Pirquet, Austrian physician
1930 - Birth of Leon Neil Cooper, American physicist, Nobel laureate
1935 - Nylon is discovered by Wallace Carothers.
1936 - Death of Charles Nicolle, French…
jlynch | February 27, 2007The New York Times is reporting that in 24 states beekeepers are noticing that
their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation's most profitable. ...
Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling…
jlynch | February 27, 2007
GrrlScientist had this first, but it is such a perfect encapsulation of the sheer stupidity and arrogance of the current administration that it is worth posting again. Olbermann on Rice's statement on Fox News that rewriting the 2002 Congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq
would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.
Notre Dame and the Graduate School of International Studies at…
jlynch | February 27, 2007February 27th
1899 - Birth of Charles Best, Canadian medical scientist
1904 - Birth of Yulii Borisovich Khariton, Russian physicist
1923 - Birth of David H. Hubel, Canadian neuroscientist, Nobel Prize laureate
1930 - Birth of Paul von Ragué Schleyer, American chemist
1936 - Death of Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1940 - Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14
1942 - Birth of Robert H. Grubbs, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1989 - Death of Paul Oswald Ahnert, German astronomer
1989 - Death of Konrad Lorenz, Austrian…