History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | June 17, 2007
Events
1178 - Five Canterbury monks see what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed.
1858 - Charles Darwin receives from Alfred Russel Wallace a paper that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own. This prompts Darwin to publish his theory.
1983 - STS-7, Sally Ride (above) becomes the first American woman in space.
Births
1845 - Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, French physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1886 - Alexander Wetmore, American ornithologist
1918 - Jerome Karle, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1928 -…
jlynch | June 16, 2007Births
1714 - César-François Cassini de Thury, French astronomer
1832 - Sir William Crookes, English physicist and chemist
1898 - Carl Hermann, German physicist
1920 - François Jacob, French biologist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1940 - Arthur Harden, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1996 - Thomas Kuhn, American philosopher of science
2001 - Donald J. Cram, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | June 15, 2007
I finally got to watch the final two Sopranos episodes. For the record, I thought the ending was perfect. I do realize that people seem to be complaining, but I can’t see why. What were they expecting to happen? Tony get killed? Or he flips? Let me know if I’m wrong.
Best moments in the last episode? The cat. Phil Leotardo getting rubbed out (I waited seasons for that). Agent Harris saying "Yes, we’re gonna win this thing!" when he hears about Leotardo’s death.
I’m going to miss it. Only damned thing on TV - other that ASU football - that I made time to watch.
jlynch | June 15, 2007
Events
1963 - Vostok 6 Mission, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
Births
1591 - Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Italian physician, mathematician, and music theorist
1633 - Jean de Thévenot, French traveler and scientist
1801 - Julius Plücker, German mathematician and physicist
1806 - Edward Davy, English physician, chemist, and inventor
1826 - Constantin von Ettingshausen, Austrian geologist and botanist
1880 - Otto Eisenschiml, Austrian-American chemist
1897 - Georg Wittig, German chemist, Nobel laureate
1902 - Barbara McClintock, American geneticist, Nobel…
jlynch | June 14, 2007Events
1667 - The first human blood transfusion is administered by Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.
2002 - Near earth asteroid 2002 MN misses our planet by 75,000 miles (120,000 km) about one third the distance to the moon. EVERYBODY PANIC!
Births
1755 - Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist
1915 - Thomas Huckle Weller, American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1917 - John Fenn, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1917 - Kristian Birkeland, Norwegian physicist
1941 - Otfrid Foerster…
jlynch | June 13, 2007Events
1822 - Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables."
1951 - UNIVAC I is dedicated by U.S. Census Bureau.
1962 - The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris - later becoming the European Space Agency.
1967 - Mariner 5 is launched toward Venus.
Births
1726 - James Hutton, Scottish geologist
1736 - Charles Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist
1864 - Alois Alzheimer, German physician
1868 - Karl Landsteiner,…
jlynch | June 12, 2007Events
1983 - Pioneer 10 becomes the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
Births
1773 - Thomas Young, English scientist
1831 - James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
1876 - William Sealey Gosset, English chemist
1894 - Leo Kanner, Austrian-American physician
1911 - Luis Alvarez, American physicist, Nobel laureate
1911 - Erwin Müller, German-born physicist
1928 - John Forbes Nash, American mathematician, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1881 - Josef Skoda, Czech physician
1931 - Shibasaburo Kitasato, Japanese physician
1972 - Georg von Békésy, Hungarian biophysicist, recipient of the…
jlynch | June 11, 2007Events
1967 - Venera 4 (the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data) is launched
Births
1577 - Paul Guldin, Swiss astronomer and mathematician
1812 - Edmond Hébert, French geologist
1899 - Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1986)
1942 - Bert Sakmann, German physiologist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1982 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | June 10, 2007
Events
2004 - Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of Phoebe (above)
Births
1723 - Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer
1876 - Alfred L. Kroeber, American anthropologist
1915 - Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American mathematician, physicist and computer scientist
1937 - Robin Warren, Australian pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1903 - Nikolai Bugaev, Russian mathematician
1934 - Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist
jlynch | June 10, 2007Jason has been running a series about Tom Woodward’s recent talk at the Discovery Institute in Washington [1, 2, 3, 4]. This caught my eye:
Woodward closed by setting the date for the end of Darwinism’s reign as the dominant paradigm at ...wait for it...2025. Later he suggested that it might be within ten years that evolution as we know it suffers a decisive failure. And then he predicted a severe nosedive for evolution in the next six to twelve months as Behe’s book soaks into the public consciousness.
There’s the timetable, folks: 2008 a severe nosedive, 2017 decisive failure, and 2025 end…
jlynch | June 10, 2007Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has unearthed a piece by Bertrand Russell on agnosticism. Russell starts out by differentiating atheism and agnosticism:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time. ... An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment,…
jlynch | June 9, 2007
Events
2003 - The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Births
1706 - John Dollond, English optician
1710 - James Short, Scottish mathematician
1803 - Henry Darcy, French scientist
1804 - Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist
1861 - Pierre Duhem, French physicist
1929 - E. O. Wilson, American biologist (above)
Deaths
1836 - André-Marie Ampère, French physicist
1944 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist
jlynch | June 8, 2007Births
1812 - Johann Gottfried Galle, German astronomer
1875 - Henry Hallett Dale, English scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1937 - Harald Rosenthal, German biologist
Deaths
1875 - Gérard Paul Deshayes, French geologist
1959 - Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1989 - George Wells Beadle, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | June 8, 2007
Alicia Boole Stott was born today in 1860 in Cork (Ireland), the daughter of George Boole. Despite receiving no formal education, in 1914 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Groningen for her work on four-dimensional geometry, work which (while published in 1900 & 1910) was conducted in her late teens and early twenties. She is probably best known for coining the term "polytope" to refer to a convex solid in four dimensions. You can read more here about her first paper, On certain series of sections of the regular four-dimensional hypersolids (1900).
jlynch | June 7, 2007Births
1625 - Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian scientist
1724 - John Smeaton, English civil engineer
1745 - Caspar Wessel, Danish mathematician
1851 - Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval, French physicist
1860 - Alicia Boole Stott, Irish mathematician
1916 - Francis Crick, English molecular biologist; Nobel laureate
1918 - John D. Roberts, American chemist
1930 - Robert Aumann, German-born Israeli mathematician; Nobel laureate
1936 - Kenneth G. Wilson, American physicist, Nobel laureate
1947 - Eric F. Wieschaus, American biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1835 - Gian Domenico…
jlynch | June 6, 2007Births
1811 - James Young Simpson, British obstetrician
1862 - Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1877 - Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1896 - Robert S. Mulliken, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1826 - Joseph von Fraunhofer, German physicist
1954 - Alan Turing, British mathematician and computer scientist
1967 - Anatoly Maltsev, Russian mathematician
1978 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | June 5, 2007Events
1969 - The first Internet connection was created when network control protocol packets were sent from the data port of one IMP to another
Births
1436 - Regiomontanus, German mathematician
1519 - Andrea Cesalpino, Italian philosopher, physician, and botanist
1580 - Godefroy Wendelin, Flemish astronomer
1850 - Karl Ferdinand Braun, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1857 - Aleksandr Lyapunov, Russian mathematician
1906 - Max August Zorn, German-born mathematician
1918 - Edwin G. Krebs, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1933 - Heinrich Rohrer…
jlynch | June 4, 2007
Events
1981 - The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
1995 - Bose-Einstein condensate is first created.
Births
1553 - Bernardino Baldi, Italian mathematician
1646 - Elena Cornaro Piscopia, Italian mathematician
1757 - Pierre Jean George Cabanis, French physiologist
1819 - John Couch Adams, English mathematician and astronomer
1862 - Allvar…
jlynch | June 4, 2007Today is my birthday, so don't expect any postings from me ... I'm going to relax for the day. I however dutifully present your events for the day ...
Events
1783 - The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière
Births
1787 - Constant Prévost, French geologist
1877 - Heinrich Wieland, German biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1916 - Robert F. Furchgott, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1973 - Maurice René Fréchet, French mathematician
jlynch | June 3, 2007Events
1965 - Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew.
1965 - For 21 minutes, Edward H. White floats free outside the space vehicle Gemini 4 for the first time.
Births
1659 - David Gregory, Scottish astronomer
1723 - Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, Italian-born naturalist
1726 - James Hutton, Scottish geologist
1873 - Otto Loewi, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate
1879 - Raymond Pearl, American biologist
1899 - Georg von Békésy, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate
1923 - Igor Shafarevich, Russian mathematician
1924 - Torsten Wiesel, Nobel Prize…