jlynch | January 27, 2007
Today in 1967, Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.
jlynch | January 27, 2007
I am: Arthur C. Clarke Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.
Which science fiction writer are you?
PZ made me do it.
jlynch | January 27, 2007
As I noted earlier, today is the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Willis in 1621. Willis is remembered as the father of modern neurology with his publication in 1664 of Cerebri Anatomi. He was also co-founder of the Royal Society of London in 1662 and discoverer of the circle of Willis (pictured above).
Our very own Carl Zimmer has written a fantastic book (Soul Made Flesh) which not only deals with Willis and the Royal Society but is wonderfully evocative of the era.
jlynch | January 27, 2007Rush Limbaugh yesterday had the following to say about women serving in the US military:
So what does it tell you they of the military? Its nothing but a little social playground for experimentation, by the way since they're liberals they'd love to weaken it and love to tear it apart and cause all kinds of controversy and strife, and they do it under the guise of women's rights, I'm sure there are some imminently qualified women in the military I am not talking about their ability to do, I am talking about the institution and what it says about a cultured civilized society that it will
round…
jlynch | January 27, 2007January 27th
1621 - Birth of Thomas Willis, English physician
1851 - Death of John James Audubon, French-American naturalist, ornithologist, and painter
1860 - Death of János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician
1880 - Thomas Edison files a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
1888 - The National Geographic Society is founded.
1903 - Birth of John Carew Eccles, Australian neuropsychologist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1926 - John Logie Baird demonstrates the first television broadcast.
1936 - Birth of Samuel C. C. Ting, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1967 - Apollo 1 astronauts Gus…
jlynch | January 26, 2007January 26th
1630 - Death of Henry Briggs, English mathematician
1697 - Death of Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician
1823 - Death of Edward Jenner, English physician
1904 - Birth of Ancel Keys, American scientist
1911 - Birth of Polykarp Kusch, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1942 - Death of Felix Hausdorff, German mathematician
1943 - Death of Harry H. Laughlin, American eugenicist
1943 - Death of Nikolai Vavilov, Russian botanist
jlynch | January 25, 2007
Widgeon
For Paul Muldoon
It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box -
like a flute stop
in the broken windpipe -
and blew upon it
unexpectedly
his own small widgeon cries.
Seamus Heaney
jlynch | January 25, 2007January 25th
1627 - Birth of Robert Boyle, Irish chemist
1736 - Birth of Joseph Louis Lagrange, Italian-born mathematician
1794 - Birth of François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist
1796 - Birth of William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist
1881 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
1900 - Birth of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian-American geneticist and biologist
1915 - Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. transcontinental telephone service.
1917 - Birth of Ilya Prigogine, Russian-born physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate…
jlynch | January 24, 2007Darren Naish ("Tetrapod Zoology") has joined our merry band. Wander over, say "Hi", and learn about the evolution of vampires.
jlynch | January 24, 2007
A few of my SciBlings have posted on the frilled shark (Chlamysoselachus anguineus) that turned up off Japan. Shelley and PZ have two different videos to check out. A CNN story notes that the species "sometimes referred to as a 'living fossil'
because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times." This is a somewhat controversial statement. A few paleontologists claim that the species is a living cladodont shark, but while some of its features (teeth in particular) are like the cladodonts that occupied Devonian seas, Chlamysoselachus has numerous neoselachian…
jlynch | January 24, 2007
This little beauty is a new species of Pemelodus catfish. P. tetramerus was described from the Rio Tapajos and Rio Tocatins in Brazil. It is related to the Pictus catfish that are available in many fish stores.
jlynch | January 24, 2007Our HPS lab meeting discussed historian Peter Dear's The Intelligibility of Nature today and will be continuing to do so next week. One of Dear's statements regarding Darwin is so wrong it is not even funny:
[Darwin] never paused to ask whether the very meaning of the category 'species' might have been radically changed by his theory, in such a way that earlier taxonomic practices would have to be called into question. [p. 96]
This is merely a lead in to me pointing out that John Wilkins has a wonderful post on species that you should check out if you want to know how biologists and…
jlynch | January 24, 2007January 24th
1877 - Death of Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist
1928 - Birth of Desmond Morris, British anthropologist and author of the pop-sci work The Naked Ape.
1939 - Death of Maximilian Bircher-Benner, Swiss physician and nutritionist
1966 - Death of Homi J. Bhabha, Indian physicist
jlynch | January 23, 2007January 23rd
1556 - The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits resulting in a death toll perhaps as high as 830,000.
1719 - Birth of John Landen, English mathematician
1785 - Death of Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician
1840 - Birth of Ernst Abbe, German physicist
1857 - Birth of Andrija MohoroviÄiÄ, Croatian seismologist
1862 - Birth of David Hilbert, German mathematician
1872 - Birth of Paul Langevin, French physicist
1876 - Birth of Otto Diels, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1907 - Birth of Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize laureate…
jlynch | January 22, 2007
Scanning electron photomicrographs of two fossil embryo specimens from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation in South China.
From EurekaAlert:
A decade ago, Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues discovered thousands of 600-million-year-old embryo microfossils in the Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng'an, South China. In 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a tubular coral-like animal that might be a candidate for parenthood.
In the February issue of Geology, the journal of the Geological Society of America, Xiao will…
jlynch | January 22, 2007I'm going to be a bit distracted until the weekend and maybe even longer. My annual self-evaluation is due to our Personnel Committee fairly soon, and I also have book reviews, letters of recommendation, student theses, and a few lesser service requirements to clear off my desk. And of course there are class preps to be done.
I have scheduled some posts, but don't expect anything major for a few days.
(The only respite is that I'm going to see The Chieftains play tomorrow night.)
jlynch | January 22, 2007January 22nd
1561 - Birth of Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher
1592 - Birth of Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
1767 - Death of Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German mineralogist and geologist
1779 - Death of Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyor and astronomer
1840 - Death of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist
1908 - Birth of Lev Landau, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1922 - Death of Camille Jordan, French mathematician
1936 - Birth of Alan J. Heeger, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate