History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | January 25, 2008Births
1891 - Wilder Penfield, American-born Canadian neurosurgeon
1904 - Ancel Keys, American scientist
1911 - Polykarp Kusch, German-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1823 - Edward Jenner, English physician
1943 - Harry H. Laughlin, American eugenicist
1946 - Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer
jlynch | January 25, 2008Events
2004 - Opportunity Rover (MER-B) lands on surface of Mars.
2006 - Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.
Births
1627 - Robert Boyle, Irish chemist
1794 - François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist
1796 - William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist
1917 - Ilya Prigogine, Russian scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
1949 - Paul Nurse, English biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1957 - Kiyoshi Shiga, Japanese…
jlynch | January 24, 2008Births
1928 - Desmond Morris, British zoologist
Deaths
1877 - Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist
1966 - Homi J. Bhabha, Indian physicist
jlynch | January 23, 2008Births
1840 - Ernst Abbe, German physicist
1857 - Andrija MohoroviÄiÄ, Croatian seismologist
1872 - Paul Langevin, French physicist
1876 - Otto Diels, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1907 - Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1918 - Gertrude B. Elion, American scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
1919 - Hans Hass, Austrian zoologist
1929 - John Charles Polanyi, Canadian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1937 - Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist
1971 - Fritz Feigl, Austria-born chemist
1988 - Charles Glen King, American biochemist
jlynch | January 22, 2008By way of Sage Ross, a graduate student in history of science at Yale:
Spontaneous Generations is a new online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The journal aims to establish a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and debate about issues that concern the community of scholars in HPS and related fields.
Apart from selecting peer reviewed articles, the journal encourages a direct dialogue among academics by means of short editorials and focused discussion papers which highlight…
jlynch | January 22, 2008Events
2003 - Last successful contact with Pioneer 10.
Births
1561 - Francis Bacon, English philosopher
1592 - Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
1796 - Karl Claus, Russian chemist
1903 - Fritz Houtermans, Polish physicist
1908 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1936 - Alan J. Heeger, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1767 - Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German minerologist and geologist
1779 - Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyor and astronomer
1840 - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist
jlynch | January 21, 2008Births
1912 - Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1926 - Camillo Golgi, Italian physician
jlynch | January 19, 2008Events
1969 - The first pulsar is discovered.
Births
1775 - André-Marie Ampère, French physicist
1910 - Joy Adamson, Austrian naturalist and writer
1931 - David Lee, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1973 - Lorenz Böhler, Austrian physician
2005 - Miriam Louisa Rothschild, British zoologist, entomologist, and author
jlynch | January 19, 2008Events
2006 - The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.
Births
1851 - Jacobus Kapteyn, Dutch astronomer
Deaths
1878 - Henri Victor Regnault French physicist and chemist
1954 - Theodor Kaluza, German scientist
jlynch | January 18, 2008
Events
1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium (Legionella pneumophila, above) as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires’ disease.
Births
1856 - Daniel Hale Williams, African-American surgeon
1892 - Paul Rostock, German surgeon
1918 - Gustave Gingras, French Canadian physician
Deaths
1878 - Antoine César Becquerel, French physicist
1995 - Adolf Butenandt, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | January 16, 2008Births
1501 - Leonhart Fuchs, German physician and botanist
1560 - Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist
1761 - James Hall, Scottish geologist
Deaths
1705 - John Ray, English naturalist
1884 - Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist
1997 - Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer
2005 - Albert Schatz, American microbiologist
jlynch | January 16, 2008
Events
1909 - Ernest Shackleton’s expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107. It disintegrates 16 days later on re-entry.
Births
1477 - Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (above)
1838 - Franz Brentano, German philosopher and psychologist
1875 - Leonor Michaelis, German biochemist
1932 - Dian Fossey, American zoologist
Deaths
1547 - Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (above)
1856 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist
1967 - Robert J. Van de Graaff, American nuclear physicist
2006 -…
jlynch | January 15, 2008Events
2005 - ESA’s SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.
Births
1842 - Josef Breuer, Austrian psychologist
1885 - Lorenz Böhler, Austrian physician
1895 - Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist
Death
1804 - Dru Drury, English entomologist
jlynch | January 14, 2008Events
2005 - Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan.
Births
1684 - Johann Matthias Hase, German scientist
1806 - Matthew Fontaine Maury American oceanographer
Deaths
1742 - Edmond Halley, English scientist
1905 - Ernst Abbe, German physicist
2001 - Burkhard Heim, German physicist
jlynch | January 13, 2008Elliot Sober has a new book coming out this year, Evidence and Evolution; The Logic Behind the Science. The book is divided into four sections: The Concept of Evidence, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, and Common Ancestry. Below are the contents of the section on ID:
Darwin and intelligent design
Design arguments and the birth of probability theory
William Paley: The stone, the watch, and the eye
From probabilities to likelihoods
Epicureanism and Darwin’s theory
Three reactions to Paley’s design argument
The no-designer-worth-his-salt objection to the hypothesis of…
jlynch | January 13, 2008Events
1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, 4th moon of Jupiter.
Births
1861 - Max Nonne, German neurologist
1864 - Wilhelm Wien, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1927 - Sydney Brenner, South African biologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1796 - John H. D. Anderson, Scottish scientist and inventor
1906 - Alexander Popov, Russian physicist
1924 - Georg Hermann Quincke, German physicist
1934 - Paul Ulrich Villard, French physicist
jlynch | January 11, 2008Events
1808 - The organizational meeting that led to the creation of the Wernerian Natural History Society is held.
2005 - Deep Impact (space mission) launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2 rocket.
Births
1792 - Johan August Arfwedson, Swedish chemist
1797 - Gideon Brecher, Austrian physician
1899 - Paul Hermann Müller, Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1905 - James Bennett Griffin, American archaeologist
Deaths
1732 - John Horsley, British archaeologist
1997 - Charles B. Huggins, Canadian-born cancer researcher and Nobel Prize laureate
2003 - Dean Amadon, American…
jlynch | January 10, 2008Events
1787 - William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
1922 - First use of insulin to treat diabetes in a human patient.
Births
1788 - William Thomas Brande, English chemist
1800 - Anyos Jedlik, Hungarian physicist
1842 - William James, American psychologist and philosopher
1845 - Albert Victor Bäcklund, Swedish physicist
1906 - Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist
1924 - Roger Guillemin, French neuroendocrinologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1882 - Theodor Schwann, German physiologist
1968 - Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1991…
jlynch | January 9, 2008
Births
1573 - Simon Marius, German astronomer
1638 - Nicolas Steno, Danish geologist
1729 - Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist
1890 - Grigory Landsberg, Russian physicist
1916 - Sune Bergström, Swedish biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1936 - Robert Woodrow Wilson, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1778 - Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist
1949 - Erich von Drygalski, German geographer, geophysicist, and polar scientist
1951 - Yoshio Nishina, Japanese physicist
1997 - Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd, Scottish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | January 8, 2008
Births
1823 - Johannes Friedrich August von Esmarch, German surgeon
1868 - S. P. L. Sørensen, Danish chemist
1879 - John Broadus Watson, American psychologist
1922 - Har Gobind Khorana, Indian physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1757 - Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientist
1848 - Caroline Herschel, German-born astronomer
1911 - Edvard Rusjan, Slovene flight pioneer
1918 - Ãmile Reynaud, French scientist
1998 - Kenichi Fukui, Japanese chemist and Nobel Prize laureate