History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | May 2, 2007Births
1713 - Alexis Clairault, French mathematician
1768 - Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist
1860 - John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist
1860 - Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician
1874 - V. Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer
1892 - George Paget Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1902 - Alfred Kastler, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1905 - Werner Fenchel, German mathematician
1933 - Steven Weinberg, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1779 - John Winthrop, American astronomer
1988 - Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Russian…
jlynch | May 1, 2007Births
1802 - Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist
1939 - Sumio Iijima, Japanese physicist
Deaths
1683 - Stjepan GradiÄ, Croatian philosopher and scientist
1927 - Ernest Starling, British physiologist
1979 - Giulio Natta, Italian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1997 - John Carew Eccles, Australian neurophysiologist, Nobel laureate
jlynch | April 30, 2007Events
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 Chardin, French palaeontologist and philosopher
1918 - Gersh Budker, Russian physicist
Deaths
1772 - Gottfried Achenwall, German statistician
1899 - Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher and physician
jlynch | 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 Hochstetter, Austrian geologist
1876 - Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist
1916 - Claude Shannon, American engineer and mathematician
Deaths
1696 - Robert Plot, British naturalist
1865 - Robert Fitzroy, English admiral, meteorologist, and captain of HMS Beagle (above)
jlynch | 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, French mathematician and physicist (source of above quote)
Deaths
1768 - Georg Brandt, Swedish chemist and minerologist
1793 - John Michell, English scientist
1798 - Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus, German entomologist
1916 - Jørgen Pedersen Gram, Danish mathematician
jlynch | April 27, 2007Births
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
Deaths
1858 - Johannes Peter Müller, German physiologist
1946 - Louis Bachelier, French mathematician
1999 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | April 26, 2007Events
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, Nobel Prize laureate
1920 - Mark Krasnosel'skii, Russian-Ukrainian mathematician
1927 - Karl Alexander Müller, Swiss physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1932 - Gian-Carlo Rota, Italian-born mathematician and philosopher
Deaths
1936 - Karl Pearson, English statistician and biometrician
1952 - Guido…
jlynch | April 25, 2007Events
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, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1900 - Charles Richter, American geophysicist
1932 - Michael Smith, English-born chemist, Nobel laureate
1933 - Arno Allan Penzias, German-born physicist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1920 - Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician
1940 - Carl Bosch, German chemist…
jlynch | 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 Marconi, Italian inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics
1900 - Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1903 - Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov, Russian mathematician
1918 - Gerard Henri de Vaucouleurs, French astronomer
1931 - Felix Berezin, Russian mathematician…
jlynch | April 23, 2007Events
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
1656 - Thomas Fincke, Danish mathematician and physicist
1960 - Max von Laue, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1964 - Gerhard Domagk, German bacteriologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (declined)
jlynch | April 22, 2007Events
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 physicist
1858 - Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1867 - Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, Danish scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1901 - E.B. Ford, British ecological geneticist
Deaths
1895 - Carl Ludwig, German physician
jlynch | April 21, 2007Events
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 physicist
1907 - Ivan Efremov, Russian paleontologist and author
1909 - Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist, Nobel laureate
1910 - Norman Steenrod, American mathematician
1919 - Donald J. Cram, American chemist, Nobel laureate
1922 - Wolf V. Vishniac, American microbiologist
Deaths
1758 -…
jlynch | April 21, 2007Events
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 Karrer, Swiss chemist, Nobel laureate
1951 - Michael Hartley Freedman, American mathematician
Deaths
1557 - Petrus Apianus, German mathematician
1719 - Philippe de la Hire, French mathematician and historian
1825 - Johann Friedrich Pfaff, German mathematician
1965 - Edward Victor Appleton,…
jlynch | April 19, 2007Events
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 - Karl Alexander Müller, Swiss physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1928 - Gerald S. Hawkins, English astronomer
Deaths
1831 - John Abernethy, English surgeon
1918 - Karl Ferdinand Braun, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1932 - Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician
2003 - Bernard Katz, German-…
jlynch | 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 mathematician
1739 - Nicholas Saunderson, English mathematician
1831 - Johann Gottlieb Friedrich von Bohnenberger, German mathematician
1854 - Robert Jameson, Scottish naturalist
1882 - Charles Darwin, English biologist (above)
1906 - Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1914 - Charles…
jlynch | 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 spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
Births
1838 - Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, French scientist
1905 - George H. Hitchings, American scientist, Nobel laureate
1940 - Joseph L. Goldstein, American scientist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1674 - John Graunt, English statistician
1796…
jlynch | April 16, 2007Births
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 biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1790 - Benjamin Franklin, American inventor
1942 - Jean Perrin, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1976 - Henrik Dam, Danish biochemist, Nobel laureate
1994 - Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, Nobel laureate
jlynch | April 15, 2007Events
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 astronomer
1788 - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French naturalist
1888 - Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski, Polish physicist
1914 - George William Hill, American astronomer
1958 - Rosalind Franklin, British chemist
jlynch | 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 Cullen, Scottish physician
1793 - Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, German astronomer
1794 - Jean Pierre Flourens, French physiologist
1809 - Hermann Grassmann, German mathematician
1874 - George Harrison Shull, American plant geneticist, and Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel laureate
1896…
jlynch | April 13, 2007Events
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, Columbia, lands at Edwards Air Force Base after its first test flight.
2003 - Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
Births
1629 - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician
1927 - Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist, Nobel laureate…