History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | April 12, 2007Births
1771 - Richard Trevithick, English engineer and inventor
1780 - Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer
1802 - Leopold Fitzinger, Austrian zoologist
1850 - Arthur Matthew Weld Downing, British astronomer
1887 - Gordon S. Fahrni, Canadian physician and President of the Canadian Medical Association
1909 - Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, Polish mathematician
1941 - Michael Stuart Brown, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1855 - Henry De la Beche, English geologist
1880 - Robert Fortune, Scottish botanist
1941 - Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer
jlynch | April 11, 2007Events
1633 - The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins.
1937 - Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft
1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in space.
Births
1748 - Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist
1852 - Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician
1884 - Otto Meyerhof, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate
Deaths
1971 - Igor Tamm, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1997 - George Wald, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | April 10, 2007Events
1905 - Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity.
Births
1705 - William Cookworthy, English chemist
1755 - James Parkinson, English physician
1798 - Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist
1953 - Andrew Wiles, British mathematician who found a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem
Deaths
1626 - Marin GetaldiÄ, Croatian mathematician
1926 - Luther Burbank, American botanist
jlynch | April 9, 2007
Births
1651 - Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, German mathematician
1755 - Samuel Hahnemann, German physician
1762 - Giovanni Aldini, Italian physicist
1887 - Bernardo Houssay, Argentine physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1917 - Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1927 - Marshall Warren Nirenberg, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1813 - Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Italian-born mathematician
1920 - Moritz Cantor, German mathematician
1955 - Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and theologian
1999 - Heinz…
jlynch | April 9, 2007People are discussing the Nisbet & Mooney "Framing Science" paper, but due to real life getting in the way, I haven't been able to either read the (short) paper or the (long) blogospheric coverage. I will however note that Greg Laden makes a great point over at Pharyngula:
In the manner of Dale Carnegie, I'll say it and I'll say it again and again: Let's try to drop the "theory" from "evolutionary theory"... this word is doing so much work out there in normal language, it DOES NOT MATTER that scientists think "theory" means a certain thing. It does not. that is not how language works. The…
jlynch | April 8, 2007
Events
1959 - Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven" (see above).
1967 - The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) takes its maiden flight.
Births
1770 - Thomas Johann Seebeck, German physicist
1806 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer
1930 - F. Albert Cotton, American chemist
1932 - Jim Fowler, American zoologist
Deaths
1626 - Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher and formative influence on the Royal Society of London
1889 - Michel Eugène Chevreul, French chemist
1951 - Vilhelm…
jlynch | April 7, 2007
Births
1541 - Michele Mercati, Italian physician
1818 - August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist
1865 - Charles W. Woodworth, American entomologist
1869 - Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon
1911 - Melvin Calvin, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate for discovering the Calvin Cycle (see above)
Deaths
1461 - Georg Purbach, German mathematician and astronomer
1919 - Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist
1936 - Robert Bárány, Austrian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1984 - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1992 -…
jlynch | April 6, 2007
Events
1827 - John Walker sells the first friction match. He had invented it in the previous year.
1938 - LSD is first synthesized (see above)
1964 - IBM announces the System/360.
1969 - The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.
2001 - Mars Odyssey is launched.
Births
1727 - Michel Adanson, French botanist
1890 - Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American conservationist and writer
1936 - Jean-Pierre Changeux, French neuroscientist
Deaths
1761 - Thomas Bayes, English mathematician
1789 - Petrus Camper, Dutch anatomist
1823 - Jacques Charles, French chemist
1885 - Carl Theodor…
jlynch | April 5, 2007
Events
648 BC - Earliest solar eclipse recorded by the Ancient Greeks.
1938 - Teflon is discovered.
1965 - Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
1973 - Launch of Pioneer 11 (current position above)
Births
1613 - Stjepan GradiÄ, Croatian philosopher and scientist
1851 - Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer
1911 - Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1920 - Edmond H. Fischer, Swiss-American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1928 - James…
jlynch | April 4, 2007Births
1622 - Vincenzo Viviani, Italian mathematician
1827 - Joseph Lister, English surgeon
1869 - Sergei Chaplygin, Russian physicist and engineer
1929 - Ivar Giaever, Norwegian physicist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1900 - Joseph Louis François Bertrand, French mathematician
1967 - Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist, Nobel laureate
1970 - Alfred Henry Sturtevant, American geneticist
1979 - Eugène Gabritschevsky, Russian biologist and artist
2004 - Heiner Zieschang, German mathematician
jlynch | April 3, 2007
Events
1969 - Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.
1983 - Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space (STS-6).
1996 - Comet Hyakutake was imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous and the Hubble Space Telescope (see above).
Births
1688 - Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, French astronomer
1842 - Edouard Lucas, French mathematician
1949 - Shing-Tung Yau, Chinese mathematician
Deaths
1609 - Charles de L'Ecluse, Flemish botanist
1617 - John Napier, Scottish mathematician
1807 - Joseph Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande, French astronomer…
jlynch | April 2, 2007
Births
1529 - Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer
1683 - Mark Catesby, English naturalist
1693 - George Edwards, English naturalist
1715 - William Watson, English physician and scientist
1764 - John Abernathy, English surgeon
1934 - Jane Goodall, English zoologist, who since 1960 has been studying chimpanzees at Gombe (Tanzania)
Deaths
1717 - Jacques Ozanam, French mathematician
1827 - Ernst Chladni, German physicist
1932 - Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1998 - Mary Cartwright, English mathematician
jlynch | April 1, 2007
Births
1618 - Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist
1923 - G. Spencer-Brown, English mathematician
1934 - Paul Joseph Cohen, American mathematician
Deaths
1742 - James Douglas, Scottish physician and anatomist
1827 - Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus, German physician and naturalist
1922 - Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychologist (see above)
1928 - Theodore William Richards, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1995 - Hannes Alfvén, Swedish physicist
jlynch | March 31, 2007
Events
1826 - Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
Births
1578 - William Harvey, English physician who described the flow of blood though the human body (see above)
1776 - Sophie Germain, French mathematician
1856 - Acacio Gabriel Viegas, Indian physician
1865 - Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, Austrian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Abraham Maslow, American psychologist
1919 - Joseph Murray, American surgeon, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1933 - Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1947 - Alain Connes, French…
jlynch | March 31, 2007
I spent this afternoon giving a public talk to the Greater Phoenix Mensa Regional Gathering. The topic was the history of anti-evolutionism (largely Intelligent Design) in this country over the past twenty years. Slides (without my soft Irish accent) are available here for those that care.
The slide player is a little funky and seems to skip certain parts of the slideshow, but it's probably enough to give you the gist of what I said. Props go to Nick Matzke at NCSE for providing some of the material.
jlynch | March 30, 2007
Events
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1994 - Bill Kimbel, Don Johanson and Yoel Rak report the finding in Ethiopia of the first fairly complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (AL 444-2, see above)
Births
1596 - René Descartes, French mathematician
1730 - Ãtienne Bézout, French mathematician
1777 - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist
1778 - Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist
1847 - Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician
1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel laureate
1906 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga…
jlynch | March 29, 2007
Events
240 BC - 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Crawford Long.
1951 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
Births
1894 - Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer
1910 - Józef Marcinkiewicz, mathematician
Deaths
1559 - Adam Ries, German mathematician
1783 - William Hunter, Scottish anatomist
1949 - Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1965 - Philip Showalter Hench, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or…
jlynch | March 28, 2007
Events
1807 - The asteroid Vesta is discovered.
1974 - NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury (see above)
Births
1824 - Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher and physician
1873 - Tullio Levi-Civita, Italian mathematician
1927 - John Robert Vane, English pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1941 - Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., American astrophysicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate
1965 - Emilios T. Harlaftis, Greek astrophysicist
Deaths
1772 - Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher and mathematician
1873 - Francesco Zantedeschi,…
jlynch | March 27, 2007Births
1793 - Henry Schoolcraft, American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist
1892 - Corneille Heymans, Belgian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1914 - Kenneth Richard Norris, Australian entomologist
1928 - Alexander Grothendieck, German mathematician
1930 - Jerome Isaac Friedman, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1946 - Wubbo Ockels, Dutch physicist and astronaut
Deaths
1794 - Marquis de Condorcet, French mathematician, philosopher, and political scientist
1874 - Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer
1982 - William Giauque, Canadian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 26, 2007
Events
1969 - Mariner 7 is launched.
Births
1712 - Claude Bourgelat, French veterinary surgeon
1817 - Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli, Swiss biologist
1845 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1847 - Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1847 - Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1857 - Karl Pearson, English statistician
1897 - Douglas Hartree, English mathematical physicist
1942 - John E. Sulston, British chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1850 - Wilhelm Beer, German astronomer
1910 - Alexander…