History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | March 9, 2007March 10th
1585 - Death of Rembert Dodoens, Flemish physician and botanist
1628 - Birth of Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician
1670 - Death of Johann Rudolf Glauber, German chemist
1709 - Birth of Georg Steller, German naturalist
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call.
1891 - Almon Strowger patents the strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1923 - Birth of Val Logsdon Fitch, Physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1942 - Death of William Henry Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1966 - Death of Frits…
jlynch | March 9, 2007March 9th
1564 - Birth of David Fabricius, German astronomer
1758 - Birth of Franz Joseph Gall, German neuroscientist
1851 - Death of Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish physicist
1900 - Birth of Howard Aiken, American computing pioneer
1923 - Birth of Walter Kohn, Austrian-born physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1934 - Birth of Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut
1954 - Death of Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer
1974 - Death of Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1983 - Death of Ulf von Euler, Swedish physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
2006…
jlynch | March 8, 2007March 8th
1618 - Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
1712 - Birth of John Fothergill, English physician
1886 - Birth of Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1914 - Birth of Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Russian physicist
1918 - The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating pandemic.
1923 - Death of Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch Nobel Prize laureate
2005 - Death of César Lattes, Brazilian physicist
jlynch | March 7, 2007March 7th
1625 - Death of Johann Bayer, German astronomer
1788 - Birth of Antoine César Becquerel, French physicist
1792 - Birth of John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer
1837 - Birth of Henry Draper, American physician and astronomer
1857 - Birth of Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Austrian neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1904 - Death of Ferdinand André Fouqué, French geologist
1922 - Birth of Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya, Russian mathematician
1928 - Death of Robert Abbe, American surgeon
1938 - Birth of David Baltimore, American biologist…
jlynch | March 6, 2007March 6th
1787 - Birth of Joseph von Fraunhofer, German physicist
1866 - Death of William Whewell, English scientist, philosopher, and historian of science
1869 - Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
1900 - Gottlieb Daimler, German engineer and industrialist
1939 - Death of Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician
2005 - Death of Hans Bethe, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
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 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 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 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, 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, 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…
jlynch | February 26, 2007February 26th
1638 - Death of Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician
1786 - Birth of François Arago, French mathematician
1799 - Birth of Émile Clapeyron, French engineer and physicist
1814 - Birth of Charles Joseph Sainte-Claire Deville, French geologist
1935 - Robert Watson-Watt carried out a demonstration near Daventry which led directly to the development of RADAR in the United Kingdom.
1852 - Birth of John Harvey Kellogg,American surgeon, advocate of dietary reform
1857 - Birth of Émile Coué, French psychologist
1903 - Birth of Giulio Natta, Italian chemist, Nobel…
jlynch | February 25, 2007February 25th
1682 - Birth of Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Italian anatomist
1919 - Birth of Karl H. Pribram, Austrian neuroscientist
1950 - Death of George Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1953 - Death of Sergei Winogradsky, Russian scientist
1971 - Death of Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1999 - Death of Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
2006 - The world's estimated population reaches 6.5 billion.
jlynch | February 23, 2007February 24th
1799 - Death of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist
1810 - Death of Henry Cavendish, English scientist
1812 - Death of Etienne-Louis Malus, French physicist and mathematician
1856 - Death of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician
A relatively quiet day. But in related news Abe Vigoda ,who was born today in 1921, is still alive.
jlynch | February 23, 2007Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley briefly mentions a quote that William F. Buckley has been mumbling for aeons now.
"I'm taken with the reply of an elderly scientific scholar to an exuberant young skeptic. 'I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.'"
When I first heard it in the 1997 Firing Line Debate, I wondered who the "elderly scientific scholar" and "exuberant young skeptic" were. According to this Time article from 1960, they were Thomas Henry Huxley and John Tyndall. If you know anything about this two,…
jlynch | February 23, 2007February 23rd
1583 - Birth of Jean-Baptiste Morin, French scientist
1603 - Death of Andrea Cesalpino, Italian philosopher, physician, and botanist
1855 - Death of Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
1922 - Death of Albert Victor Bäcklund, Swedish physicist
1924 - Birth of Allan McLeod Cormack, South-African born physicist, Nobel laureate
1941 - Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Glenn T. Seaborg.
1954 - The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins.
1973 - Death of Dickinson W. Richards, American physician, recipient of the Nobel…
jlynch | February 22, 2007February 22nd
1632 - Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1705 - Birth of Peter Artedi, Swedish naturalist
1731 - Death of Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist
1796 - Birth of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician
1817 - Birth of Carl Wilhelm Borchardt, German mathematician
1849 - Birth of Nikolay Yakovlevich Sonin, Russian mathematician
1857 - Birth of Heinrich Hertz, German physicist
1875 - Death of Sir Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist
1878 - Birth of Walter Ritz, Swiss physicist
1879 - Birth of Johannes Nicolaus…
jlynch | February 21, 2007February 21st
1554 - Death of Hieronymus Bock, German botanist
1721 - Birth of John McKinly, American physician
1895 - Birth of Carl Peter Henrik Dam Danish biochemist, Nobel laureate
1901 - Death of George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician
1918 - The last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
1926 - Death of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1938 - Death of George Ellery Hale, American astronomer
1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of DNA.
1968 - Death of Howard Walter Florey, Australian-born pharmocologist…
jlynch | February 20, 2007February 20th
1762 - Death of Tobias Mayer, German astronomer
1771 - Death of Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist
1844 - Birth of Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist
1907 - Death of Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1937 - Birth of Robert Huber, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1962 - While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.
1972 - Death of Maria Goeppert-Mayer, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1983 - Death of Fritz Köberle, Austrian-Brazilian…