Dead Scientist of the Week

William Ferrel

2012-01-29T17:49:00.000-08:00

William Ferrel was born on January 29, 1817 in Bedford (what is now Fulton) County, Pennsylvania. His father, Benjamin Ferrel, was a farmer and operated a sawmill. Ferrel was the oldest of eight children, six boys and two girls. In 1829 the family moved to a farm in Berkeley County, Virginia (now in West Virginia). Ferrel was a shy boy and spent his youth working on his family farm. He got a minimal education in a one room school house for two winters. In 1832, at the age of 18, after observing a eclipse, he used farmer's almanacs and a geography book to compute a list of the dates of future eclipses. Aware of his lack of education he made trips to Martinsburg and Hagerstown in Maryland where he used what money he could make working on neighboring farms to purchase math and science books, solving geometry problems by drawing diagrams on the wooden doors of his father's threshing floor. He educated himself well enough that he could find work as a schoolteacher. He used money he earned teaching to attend Marshall and Bethany Colleges, graduating from Bethany in 1844 in its first graduating class.

After graduation Ferrel moved to Liberty, Missouri where he continued to work as a schoolteacher. In Liberty he purchased a copy of Newton's Principia which had been ordered by a earlier school teacher but never collected, which interested him in the actions of tidal forces. He stopped teaching for a while due to ill health and when he recovered he took another school teaching position in Allensville, Kentucky, where he taught from 1850 to 1854. In 1853, at the age of 36, after studying a translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace's work on celestial mechanics, Ferrel published his first scientific paper, contradicting Laplace and saying that the gravitational effects of the sun and moon on the tides tend to retard the rotation of the earth. A year later he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he set up his own school.

In Nashville Ferrel had a much greater access to scientific books and interaction with other men of science. His interests turned to the subject of meteorology and in 1856 he published an article entitled, "An Essay on the Winds and Currents of the Ocean" in which he described what have come to be known as Ferrel cells, circulating air currents of the middle latitudes that give rise to westerly winds between 30 and 60 degrees of latitude (see here for an interesting video describing Ferrel cells and their place in the three cell model of atmospheric circulation). With this publication he become the founder of the study of geophysical fluid dynamics.

In 1857 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and joined the staff of The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. In 1858 he published another important paper on the effects of the Earth's rotation on bodies in motion at its surface. In the currents of air or water moving horizontally in the northern hemisphere is deflected to the right. In the southern hemisphere it is deflected to the left. This is a description of how air and ocean currents are affected by the Coriolis effect which is caused by the rotation of the Earth. This effect was independently described by Dutch meteorologist Christoph Buys Ballot and is sometimes called the Buys Ballot law. Buys Ballot later acknowledged Ferrel's priority.

In 1867 Ferrel joined the U.S. Coastal and Geodetic Survey and moved to Washington D.C. While there he researched tides and developed a machine that determined tidal maxima and minima. Due to the lack of a capable machinist, it was not constructed until 1883. The machine, once constructed did the work of forty people carrying out hand calculations and remained in service for over 25 years. In 1882 Ferrel joined the U.S. Army Signal Corp. working in what would become the U.S. Weather Bureau. He remained working there for four years, retiring in 1886 at the age of seventy.

Initially he planned to spend his retirement living with his brother Jacob in Kansas City, Missouri, but unable to keep abreast of scientific advancements in 1889 he moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, where he died on September 18, 1891.

References:

Abbe, Cleveland; "A Biographical Sketch of William Ferrel: 1817-1891" in Biographical Memoirs Vol. 3; National Academy Press; 1895

Davis, William M.; "A Sketch of William Ferrel"; Popular Science Monthly (1892)40:686-695

O'Connor, J.J. and Robertson, E.F.; "Ferrel Biography"; 2002; at www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk

William Ferrel Wikipedia Entry

Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser

2012-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser was born on January 22, 1855 in Scheidnitz a town near Breslau, Prussia (now the Polish city of Worclaw). His father, Moritz Neisser was a well known Jewish physician and was widowed when Neisser was 1 year old. Consequently Neisser was raised by his stepmother. Neisser attended elementary school and then gymnasium in Breslau. At the gymnasium young Neisser met young Paul Ehrlich, beginning a lifelong friendship. He began attending the University of Breslau in 1872, but moved to Erlagen and the university there, graduating with a medical degree in 1877. Initially Neisser opted for a residency as an internist, but unable to get it he instead took a residency in dermatology. After completing his training he took a junior faculty position at the University of Leipzig in 1880.

It was during his residency that Neisser made both of his principal discoveries. At the time of his residency the practice of dermatology was combined with vernereology, the study of sexually transmitted diseases. In 1879, at the age of 24, Neisser published his first and most famous paper where he described "micrococci" in smears, stained with methyl violet, isolated from 25 men and 9 women with purulent urethritis and two patients with acute ophthalmia, but not from patients with syphilis or balanitis. At the time there was still confusion about the identities about the causative organisms of gonorrhea and syphilis and Neisser's discovery of what would be identified as the causative agent of gonorrhea was a step in alleviating this confusion. The "micrococci" isolated by Neisser would later be named Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Neisser's honor. Cocci (pronounced kok-see) is the word microbiologists use to describe generally spherically shaped bacteria.

Neisser's other important discovery was the co-discovery of the causative agent of leprosy. Before his discovery it was believed that leprosy was a combination of inherited and environmental factors. In 1874 Norwegian physician Armaur Hansen had isolated "staff like bodies, much like bacteria" from leprous tissue imperfectly stained with osmotic acid, but he was unsure if they were the cause the disease. In 1879 Neisser visited Norway and took home tissues from leprous patients, most of them given to him by Hansen, and using more advanced staining techniques he identified rod shaped bacilli that he and colleagues thought were a new species and possibly the cause of leprosy. Bacilli (pronounced buh-sil-ahy) is the word microbiologists use to describe rod shaped bacteria. Because in his paper Neisser did not ancknowledge Hansen's earlier finding there emerged a dispute over the priority of the discovery between Neisser and Hansen.Today Hansen is generally given the priority.

Nessier spent two years at the University of Leipzig after which he returned to the University of Breslau as associate professor and director of the dermatology clinic. Neisserr remained at the University of Breslau for the remaining 34 years of his life. Under his influence the Breslau clinic became an important center for dermatological research and Neisser made contributions to the understanding of many dermatological diseases including anthrax, actinomycosis, psoriasis, mycosis fungoides, and vitiligio. Neisser spent much effort to study syphilis, but was never able to isolate the causative agent. In 1892 in the attempt to give immunity to syphilis, without their knowledge or consent, he injected four young prostitutes with serum from syphilitic patients. All four subsequently developed syphilis and Neisser was condemned for "maliciously inoculating children with syphilis poison".

Through his work at the Breslau dermatology clinic Neisser was a staunch advocate for public health and promoted preventive and educational measures against sexually transmitted diseases. In 1899 he co-founded the German Dermatological Society and in 1902 the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease. In 1905 and 1906 Nessier traveled to Java to study the possible transmission of syphilis between apes and humans. He later co-operated with August Paul von Wassermann to develop a test for the causative agent of syphilis and worked with his school friend Paul Ehrlich in testing Salvarsan or "formula 606" an arsenic compound which was the first chemotherapeutic treatment for syphilis.

Neisser died of septicemia on July 16, 1916.

References:

Benedek, Thomas G.; "Albert L. Neisser (1855-1916), Microbiologist and Venerologist"; reprinted at microbe.org

Oriel, J.D.; "Eminent Venereologists: 1. Albert Neisser"; Genitourinary Medicine (1989)65:229-234

Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser Wikipedia Entry

William Prout

2012-01-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

William Prout was born on January 15, 1785 in Horton, in Gloucestershire, England, where his family had lived for generations. His father was a farmer and like most rural youths his early education was almost negligible, being over by the time he reached 13. At age 17, aware of his lack of education he pursued a path of systematic learning, first at a private academy in Sherston, where he learned the rudiments of Latin and Greek, then at Redland Academy, a seminary in Bristol, where he paid his tuition by teaching the younger students. He spent two years at Redland during which his interest in chemistry was excited and which remained with him throughout his life. With the intention of a career in medicine, in 1808, at the age of 23, he began at the University of Edinburgh (Oxford or Cambridge were out of the question due to Prout's low social status). He graduated with his M.D. in 1811.

After graduation Prout went to London and took rooms off of Leicester Square. In order to gain experience in medical practice he walked the wards of the United Hospitals of St. Thomas' and Guy's. He was licensed by the Royal College of Physicians in 1812 and set up a practice. Each day he would rise early so that he could conduct chemical research before he breakfasted at 7, and then saw patients during the day. Prout was not primarily a clinician and was lax in charging his patients, but he spared no expense in devising apparatus for his chemical experiments, which was why he was not as financially successful as many of his medical colleagues. Prout was part of the medical revolution of the early 19th century, understanding the causes of disease, rather than just the symptoms.

Prout's chemical research made many breakthroughs in the understanding of the importance of chemistry in human physiology. In 1817 Prout isolated purified urea (the nitrogenous waste product in urine) and described its reactions. In 1823 he showed that hydrochloric acid is the acidic component of gastric juice. In 1827 he proposed a classification of food substances, including sugars and starches, oily bodies, and albumins, which today we classify as carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Prout's belief in the importance of chemistry in physiology put him at odds with the vitalists, who believed that chemistry did not play an important role in physiology, and this disagreement played out in the medical journals of the day.

Despite his his many advances in the science of physiology Prout's most famous discovery was in physical chemistry and not physiological chemistry. In 1815, observing the tables of elemental atomic weights that were available, he anonymously hypothesized that atomic weights of the elements were multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen and that the hydrogen atom was a fundamental particle (which he called the protyle) of which the other elements were built. While we know now that atomic weights used today are not exact multiples of the weight of hydrogen (due to the mass converted into binding energy holding nuclei together and the averaging of isotopic weights), Prout's insight was so important that in 1920 Ernest Rutherford chose to name the newly discovered proton, giving credit to Prout.

Honors won by Prout include election into the Royal Society in 1819 and the Copely Medal, the oldest and most prestigious award given by the Royal Society, in 1827. As Prout aged he became increasingly hard of hearing, eventually going totally deaf. It was this deafness that caused Prout to drop out of scientific circles and discontinue his researches.

Prout died on April 9, 1850.

References:

Brock, W.H.; "The Life and Work of William Prout"; Medical History(1965)9:101-126

Rosenfeld, Louis; "William Prout: Early 19th Century Physician-Chemist"; Clinical Chemistry(2003)49:699-705

William Prout Wikipedia Entry

Sir Frank Watson Dyson

2012-01-08T00:23:00.000-08:00

Frank Watson Dyson was born on January 8, 1868 in Measham, England. His father, Watson Dyson, was a baptist minister. He spent his youth in Yorkshire and attended Bradford Grammar School. Dyson was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied astronomy and mathematics, earning the Sheepshanks Exhibition in Astronomy in 1888 and second wrangler the following year. As a fellow at Cambridge he began researching problems in gravitational attraction and in 1891 he was awarded the Smith's Prize. In 1892 he became the second Isaac Newton student.

In 1894 at the age of 26 he was appointed to be the chief assistant at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The appointment of such a young man to this lofty position gave rise to some criticism, but time showed that Dyson was up to the task. At the time Dyson started at Greenwich work on the Astrographic Catalogue was already underway and Dyson played an important part in this research measuring the movements of stars. Dyson remained at the Greenwich Observatory until 1905 when he was appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland. In Edinburgh he worked on observing polar double stars, that were not observable from Greenwich.

In 1910 Dyson was appointed Astronomer Royal, and he returned to Greenwich, where he remained until his retirement in 1933. During his time as Astronomer Royal Dyson devoted himself to the advancement of practical astronomy, stressing the importance of having observations made with the greatest possible care. Innovations attributed to Dyson include the "six pips", the six tones broadcast by many BBC stations to signal the start of each hour. Dyson is also responsible for organizing the expeditions to observe the 1919 solar eclipse which demonstrated the effect of gravity on light, providing proof of Einstein's theory of relativity. With the sun's light blocked out by the moon, the stars in the region behind the sun were observed to have moved, caused by the effect of the sun's gravitational field on their light.

Honors won by Dyson during his career include election to the Royal Society in 1901, the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1921, the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1922 and a knighthood in 1915. He served as the president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1911 to 1913 and president of the British Astronomical Society from 1916-1918. He has a crater on the moon and a asteroid named after him.

Dyson died on May 25, 1939, while traveling back to England from Australia, and was buried at sea.

References:

Aitken, R.G.;"Frank Watson Dyson 1868-1939"; Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific(1939)51:336-338

Jackson, J., Obituary: Frank Watson Dyson; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
(1940)100:238-246

Frank Watson Dyson Wikipedia Entry

Eugene-Anatole Demarcay

2012-01-01T14:24:00.000-08:00

Eugene-Anatole Demarcay was born in Paris France on January 1, 1852. His grandfather, General Marc-Jean Demarcay, fought with Napoleon and played a role in the success of the Battle of Austerlitz. Demarcay began attending the Ecole Polytechnique, then located in the Latin quarter of Paris, at age 18, first as a student and then as an assistant. He studied under chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas. In his early 20s he gave up the academic life to make a tour of Algeria, Egypt and India to study the geology and culture of foreign lands. After he returned to Paris he worked in the laboratory of August Cahours studying organic chemistry. He moved on from organic chemistry, becoming interested in organo-metallic chemistry and then inorganic chemistry. When experimenting with nitrogen sulfides his apparatus exploded, leaving him blind in one eye.

Damacay established a private laboratory in Paris where he became an expert reading the spectra of inorganic elements. It was said that, he could read a spectra "like the score of an opera". He built an spark spectrum instrument which allowed him to purify and study rare earth elements. Rare earth elements are a group of metallic elements which include scandium, yttrium, and the entire lanthanide series of elements. Despite their name they are relatively common (with the exception of promethium which is radioactive) but because of their geo-chemical properties they are not found in large, economically exploitable amounts. Today China is the world leader in the production and export of these elements, which are used in the manufacture of electronics.

In 1898 when Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element polonium, they saw that the sample from which it had been removed remained radioactive. The Curies took their remaining radioactive sample to Demarcay for analysis. Demarcay examined the spectra of the sample and determined that there was a spectral line unaccounted for and told the Curies there was an new element in their sample. This spectral line was caused by radium in their sample, which the Curies were eventually able to isolate in 1902.

Demarcay is most famous for the discovery of the rare earth element europium. In 1892 Paul Boisbaudran while working with a sample of the element samarium, which he had discovered, found a spectral line not accounted for. Demarcay examined spectra of samples of samarium and gadolinium and proposed that there was an undiscovered element between them on the periodic table. Using a crystallization technique of his own invention Demarcay was able to isolate the new element in 1902, which he named europium, after the continent of Eruope.

The date of his death in many references is incorrect. Demarcay died on March 5, 1903.

References:

Daintith, John, editor; "Demarcay, Eugene Anatole (1854-1904)" in Biographical Dictionary of Scientists Third Edition; CRC Press, 2008

Marshall, John L. and Marshall, Virginia R.; "Discovery of the Elements: Europium-Eugene Demarcay"; The Hexagon; Summer 2003, p.19-21

Eugene-Anatole Demarcay Wikipedia Entry

Gerhard Herzberg

2011-12-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg was born on December 25, 1904 in Hamburg, Germany. His father was a businessman and worked for a small shipping company. He died when Herzberg was still young. After his father's death he lived briefly with his uncle in Frankfurt, but he did poorly in school and was homesick so he returned to live with his mother. In Hamburg he attended the Realgymansium de Johanneums, where he had excellent teachers and developed an interest in astronomy and atomic physics. He studied astronomy by reading textbooks from public libraries and with a friend made a crude telescope, but he was unable to pursue a career in astronomy for financial reasons. With a fellowship from industrialist Hugo Stinnes he was able to attend the Technische Universtat Darmstadt, graduating with a Dr.Ing. in 1928. After graduation he did postdoctoral work at Gottengen University and Bristol University under James Franck, Max Born and John Lennard-Jones.

After completing his postdoc he returned to Technishche Universtat Darmstadt as a pirvatdozant (lecturer). In 1935 Herzberg was forced to flee Germany because of his Jewish wife, and he took a position as a guest lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which was almost immediately made permanent. Herzberg remained at the University of Saskatchewan until 1945 when he became professor of spectroscopy at Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, where he remained until 1948. In 1948 he returned to Canada as the principal research officer and then director of the Division of Physics at the Canadian National Research Council. In 1955 the Division of Physics of the Canadian National Research Council was split into two divisions, pure and applied physics and Herzberg remained president of the pure physics division. In 1969 he was made distinguished scientist of the recombined Division of Physics of the Canadian National Research Council.

Herzberg's research dealt with spectroscopy and determining molecular geometries using spectroscopy. From his doctoral thesis, on the spectrum of nitrogen gas, and throughout his career he determined spectra of various chemicals and from these data he was able to determine their geometry. Because of Herzberg's work spectroscopy is a tool that chemists can use to determine the identity of a chemical. Different molecules absorb and emit characteristic wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation determined by their structure. Chemists use these characteristic absorbancies and emissions to determine the structure and identity of molecules. At Yerkes Observatory Herzberg applied his knowledge of spectroscopy to determine the gasses present in planetary atmospheres. He is author of the four volume Molecular Spectroscopy and Molecular Structure which has been called the spectroscopist's bible. In 1971 Herzberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for "his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals".

Other honors won by Herzberg include election to the Canadian National Academy of Science in 1939 and the Royal Society of London in 1951. Other awards won by Herzberg include the Willard Gibbs Award from the American Chemical Society, the Order of Canada, and the Royal Medal from the Royal Society of London.

Herzberg died on March 3, 1999 at the age of 94.

References:

Interview of Gerhard Herzberg by Brenda J. Weinnwisser on February 28 and March 2, 1989, Niels Bohr Library and Archive, American Institute of Physics, aip.org.

Black, Harry; Canadian Scientists and Inventors: Biographies of People Who Made a Difference; Pembroke Publishers Ltd.; 1997

Devorkian, David; "Gerhard Herzberg, 1904-1999"; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society; (2000)35:1669-1670

Gerhard Herzberg Nobel Biography

Gerhard Herzberg Wikipedia Entry

Edwin Howard Armstrong

2011-12-18T18:26:00.000-08:00

Edwin Howard Armstrong was born on December 18, 1890 in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. His father was the president of the American office of Oxford University Press and his mother was a former school teacher. Armstrong was a shy child who was interested engines and other mechanical things. In 1902 he moved with his family to Yonkers, New York. A case of rheumatic fever left him with a tic in one eye. At age 14, inspired by the work of Guglielmo Marconi, Armstrong decided at he would be an inventor and built a wireless apparatus in the attic of his family's home and constructed a 125 foot tall antenna mast on his family's lawn. Armstrong attended public schools in Yonkers, graduating from Yonkers High School. After graduation he commuted by motorcycle to the engineering school at Columbia University.

At Columbia Armstrong studied under inventor Micheal Pupin and during his junior year invented the regenerative circuit. The regenerative circuit was an improvement on the audion, a radio tube circuit that was used in wireless receivers and invented by Lee DeForest. With the audion the receiver signal was weak and required the use of headphones in order to hear the broadcast. Armstrong's regenerative circuit amplified the signal and loudspeakers could be used to listen to the broadcast. The regenerative circuit could also be used to create radio transmitters. Armstrong graduated with a engineering degree in 1913 and filed for a patent for the regenerative circuit. After graduation he stayed at Columbia teaching and working as Pupin's assistant.

During the first world war Armstrong served in the United States Army Signal Corps. He was sent to Paris, France where he worked to intercept enemy shortwave radio signals setting up his receiver on the Eiffel Tower. While serving in the Army he developed his second major invention, the superheterodyne circuit, which made radio receivers easier to tune and is still used today. Armstrong rose to the rank of major and was awarded the French Legion of Honor ribbon. After the war he returned to Columbia where he eventually succeeded Pupin and in 1920 he sold the rights to his two inventions to Westinghouse. He also sold the rights for another invention, the super regenerative circuit, to newly founded RCA for a large block of stock.

As the 1920s wore on Armstrong increasingly became involved in patent infringement lawsuits. Lee DeForest filed a patent on the regenerative circuit a year after Armstrong's patent and sold the rights to AT&T. AT&T sued Armstrong and the case went through a dozen courts eventually reaching the United States Supreme Court, where Armstrong lost his case due to the justices' misunderstanding of technical details of the circuit. The Institute of Radio Engineers, which had awarded its first gold medal to Armstrong, refused to accept the verdict and take back its medal.

While the legal battle continued Armstrong was working on another invention. Instead of using radio wave amplitude modulation (AM radio) for tuning he developed a receiver that was tuned by radio wave frequency modulation (FM radio). Frequency modulation reduced background noise allowing for clearer reception. The great depression of the 1930s made it impossible for Armstrong to sell his new invention and it was not until 1940 that Armstrong built the first FM station in Alpine, New Jersey, but it was not for another two years that the Federal Communications Commission allocated frequencies to Armstrong.

FM radio did not take off until after World War II when Armstrong again found his patents infringed. Being ill, bereft of money, and facing another long legal battle Armstrong committed suicide on new years eve of 1954, jumping out the window of his New York City apartment.

References:

Curley, Robert, editor; "Edwin H. Armstrong"; The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time; Britannica Educational Publishing; The Rosen Publishing Group; 2009

Lessing, Lawrence P.; "Armstrong Bio" at users.erols.com; originally published in the American Dictionary of Biography published by Charles Scribner Sons; 1977

Edwin Howard Armstrong Wikipedia Entry

Annie Jump Cannon

2011-12-11T13:21:00.001-08:00

Annie Jump Cannon was born on December 11, 1863 in Dover, Delaware, the first of three daughters. Her father, Wilson Cannon, was a shipbuilder and a Delaware state senator. It was her mother, Mary Jump, Cannon's second wife, who sparked young Annie's interest in astronomy when she taught her the constellations. Cannon was hard of hearing, but she was able to attend Wilmington Conference Academy and then Wellesley College, in Wellesley Massachusetts where she studied physics and graduated in 1884. The cold weather of Massachusetts left Cannon often sick and one winter she suffered scarlet fever, which left her deaf in one ear. At Wellesley she also learned the new art of photography.

After graduation, with few jobs available to a woman and none that interested her, she returned home. In 1892 she traveled to Europe and with her box camera. The pictures that she took were used to make a book In the Footsteps of Columbus, that was sold as a souvenir at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. In 1894, after her mother's death, Cannon returned to Wellesly as a graduate student in astronomy. In 1895 she went to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts as student assistant. She received her M.A. from Radcliffe in 1907. In 1896 she was hired by Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard Observatory, to classify stellar spectra. Pickering was in charge of the project creating the Henry Draper Catalog, a catalog of stellar spectra and had hired a group of women, because their salaries were cheaper then men, to do the calculations necessary to determine the position of a star.

Not long after the project started there arose a question of how to classify stellar spectra. Williamena Fleming ,who was in charge of the group of women working for Pickering, wanted a simple classification system and Antonia Draper, the niece of Henry Draper, wanted a more complex system. Cannon incorporated the work of these women in developing her own system, which became the Harvard Stellar Classification System. The letters O,B,A,F,G,K,M (memorized by astronomy students using the mnemonic "oh be a fine girl/guy kiss me") are the classification system developed by Cannon, starting with O for the hottest, blue-white stars, B for blue stars, A for white stars, F for yellow-white stars, G for yellow stars, K for cooler orange stars and M for the coolest red stars. This system, with some modifications, is still used today. Her work, with classifications of 225,000 stars, was published in the 9 volumes of the Henry Draper Catalog.

In 1911 Cannon succeed Fleming as the curator of astronomical photographs at Harvard Observatory. In 1938 she was named the William Cranch professor of Astronomy. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in astronomy from Groningen University in 1921 and the first woman to receive a honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1925. In 1931 she received the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Science. She was the first woman elected as an officer in the American Astronomical Society and has a crater on the moon named for her. The Annie Jump Cannon prize is awarded every year by the American Astronomical Society for outstanding contribution by women astronomers, within five years of their doctorate. She retired in 1940 but continued working at Harvard Observatory.

She died on April 13, 1941.

References:

Hennessey, Logan; "Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941)"; available at Wellesly.edu

Kuiper, Kathleen, editor; "Annie Jump Cannon" in The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time, The Rosen Publishing Group; 2009

Annie Jump Cannon Wikipedia Entry

Benjamin Sillman Jr.

2011-12-04T11:22:00.001-08:00

Benjamin Sillman Jr. was born on December 4, 1816 in New Haven Connecticut. His father, Benjamin Sillman Sr. was a professor of chemistry at Yale College in New Haven and his grandfather was General Gold Selleck Sillman, who served in the American Revolution, winning distinguished service defending the southeast corner of Connecticut. Visiting scientists often came to the Stillman home and Benjamin Jr. grew up in a home with the atmosphere of scientific culture. As a child he collected minerals and became interested in chemical experiments. He attended the schools of New Haven and in 1833 he entered Yale College, graduating in 1937.

After graduating he worked for his father as an assistant and obtained his masters degree in 1840, after which he was made a lecturer and began teaching classes in addition to research. In 1838 with his father he became editor of the American Journal of Science and Arts a position he held until his passing. In 1846 he was made professor of chemistry and kindred sciences at Yale. With J.P. Norton he organized the School of Applied Chemistry in 1846, setting up a laboratory at their own expense in a house on the college grounds that had formally been the home of college presidents. The school was enlarged a year later and became the Yale Scientific School and later the Sheffield Scientific School. He remained teaching at Yale until his death.

Sillman's research involved applied chemistry and in 1855 he was given a sample of crude Pennsylvania rock oil by speculators to find out if it could be used for illumination. At the time coal oil and a diminishing supply of whale oil were used in lamps for light. Sillman fractionally distilled (a process invented by his father) the rock oil sample separating it into various samples which he tested for illumination power. Fractional distillation is used to separate constituents of a mixture that have evaporation points that are close together and a special column filled with glass beads or metal pieces that allow vapor to condensate is used. As the mixture is heated vapor moves up the column and the less volatile constituents of the mixture condensate on the glass or metal, allowing only the most volatile constituents to move to the top of the column. A second condensation column is then used to collect the components. Fractional distillation on an industrial scale is done today on crude oil to make gasoline and other fuels. Sillman's experiment produced a product that burned brighter than other fuels on the market at the same price. He described the crude oil to the investors as "a raw material from which...they may manufacture a valuable product." In his report he also said that the distillation products of rock oil might also be useful for lubrication. His report led to an oil boom in Pennsylvania.

With his report Sillman's advice was sought out as a mining consultant, a field in which he was not as successful. He served as secretary to the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists. The United States Congress named him as an original member to the National Academy of Sciences and he was in charge of the mineralogical and geological departments of the New York World's Fair in 1853.

He died on January 14, 1885.

References

Wright, Arthur W.;"Biographical Memoir of Benjamin Stillman Jr. 1816-1885"; Biographical Memoirs Vol. 7; National Academy Press; 1911

Anonymous; "Benjamin Stillman"; in Memorial Biographies of the New England Historical Genealogical Society: 1880-1889; New England Historical Genealogical Society; 1907

Benjamin Stillman Jr. Wikipedia Entry

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington

2011-11-27T12:52:00.001-08:00

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was born in Islington, London, England on November 27, 1857. Sherrington was the illegitimate son of Anne Brooks Sherrington and Caleb Rose, an imminent Ipswich surgeon. Caleb Rose and Anne Sherrington were married only in 1880 after the death of his wife. Rose was a patron of the arts and the house that Sherrington grew up in had many books and paintings. In 1871 Sherrington entered Ipswich school, where he played soccer and was an outstanding athelete. He began his medical training at the urging of his step-father at St. Thomas Hospital in 1876 and passed the preliminary medical examination of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1878. A year later he passed the examination for a fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1879 he went to Cambridge as a non-collegiate student and began studying physiology under Sir Michael Foster. The following year he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Sherrington was a good student and earned the highest marks in his class in botany, human anatomy and physiology. He earned membership in the Royal College of Surgeons in 1884 and earned a first class in the Natural Science Tripos and earned a M.B. Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1885. In 1886 he earned the title of Licentiate of the Royal Collage of Physicians. During the winter of 1884-5 he worked for German physiologist Friedrich Goltz in Strasbourg, Germany. In 1885 he served as part of a committee that went to Toledo, Spain to investigate a potential vaccine for cholera. The vaccine turned out to be ineffective. Later that year he went to Berlin to work for Rudolf Virchow, studying the cholera specimens gathered in Spain. Virchow sent Sherrington to Robert Koch for a class on technique. Sherrington stayed with Koch for a year and studied bacteriology. In 1886 Sherrington went to Italy to investigate a cholera epidemic.

In 1887 Sherrington was elected as a fellow at Caius College and appointed lecturer in systematic physiology at St. Thomas Hospital Medical School. In 1891 Sherrington was appointed superintendent of the Brown Institute for Physiological and Pathological Research at the University of London. Sherrington's research topics included leukocytes, the specific gravity of blood, the presence of bacteria in secretions and changes in blood in local inflammation. He was also able to cure his nephew from diphtheria by injecting him with anti-toxin. This is the first recorded case of the successful use of anti-toxin in diphtheria treatment in England. He also researched spinal reflexes, which laid the basis of the work for which he is most remembered. In 1895 he was appointed as the Holt Professor in physiology at Liverpool University. He continued his research into spinal cord innervation and the innervation of opposing muscles.

In 1906 Sherrington published The Integrative Action of The Nervous System, a book so important in neurophysiology that its influence has been compared to Newton's Principia's importance to physics. In the book he introduced the term synapse to describe the space between nerve cells. Nerve cells function to carry action potentials, a wave of electrochemical energy, that move down nerve cells. Synapses, the spaces in between nerve cells, carry the impulse from one cell to the next by means of a chemical neurotransmitter. When the action potential reaches the end of one nerve cell (called dendrites) that cell releases a neurotransmitter that signals the next cell to fire an action potential. The neurotransmitter diffuses across the synapse and is detected by receptors on the second nerve cell. In response to the neurotransmitter being detected by the receptor the second nerve cell fires, sending an action potential down the nerve. For his work in elucidating the structure and function of the nervous system Sherrington shared part of the 1932 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine.

In 1913 he was offered the Waynflete chair in physiology, where he remained until his retirement 1936. During World War I, when his classes were reduced he worked at a shell factory and studied fatigue, particularly industrial fatigue. Other honors won by Sherrington include election to the Royal Society in 1893 and he served as its president in the early 1920s. He won the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1905, the Knight of the Grand Cross in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1922 and Order of Merit in 1924.

He spent his retirement in a house he built in his boyhood home, Ipswitch, keeping an active correspondence with many of his former students. He died on March 4, 1952

References:

O'Connor, W.J.; British Physiologists 1885-1914: A Biographical Dictionary; Manchester University Press ND; 1991

Pearce, J.M.S.; "Sir Charles Scott Sherrington and the Synapse"; Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry(2004)75:544

Charles Scott Sherrington Wikipedia Entry

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington Nobel Biography

Edwin Powell Hubble

2011-11-20T10:09:00.001-08:00

Edwin Powell Hubble was born on November 20, 1889 in Marshfield, Missouri in the home of his maternal grandparents. A year later his parents John Powell and Virginia Lee Hubble moved to Marshfield. His father worked in insurance and often moved with his wife and children and rented out the family's house in Marshfield. In 1895 Hubble moved back into the family home in Marshfield with his mother and siblings, where he started school. In 1901 the family moved to Wheaton, Illinois, where Hubble went to middle and high school. In school Hubble was a good athlete and did well in all his subjects, excepting spelling. Young Hubble was an avid reader and enjoyed the novels of Jules Verne. In 1906 Hubble began at the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelors in mathematics and astronomy in 1910.

After finishing his bachelors Hubble went to England, where he studied law, at the insistence of his dying father, at Queens College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He remained in England for three years. Upon returning to the United States Hubble taught high school mathematics, physics and Spanish, also coaching basketball, for a year. After a year teaching he returned to his passion, astronomy, and began studying at the Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, finishing his Ph.D. in 1917. His dissertation was titled "Photographic Investigations of Faint Nebulae" Hubble served in the United States Army during World War I, rising to the rank of major. In 1919 Hubble accepted a position at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, in Pasadena, California, where he remained on staff until his death. During World War II Hubble worked for the Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Aberdeen, Maryland, where he worked on ballistics and for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit.

Hubble's arrival at the Mt. Wilson Observatory coincided with the instillation of the Hooker Telescope, a 2.5 meter telescope, which at the time was the largest in the world. At the time most astronomers believed that the Milky Way Galaxy was the extent of the universe and that the fuzzy objects called nebulae were contained within it. Using the Hooker Telescope, Hubble was able to show that some of these fuzzy objects contained stars and were much too distant to be inside of the Milky Way. Hubble showed that some of these objects were in fact galaxies and he devised a method of categorizing them based on their shape, called the Hubble Sequence, which is still used today classify galaxies. Hubble's most astonishing discovery came from studying the spectra of 46 galaxies in which he showed that the further galaxies were from each other the faster that they were moving away from each other. Based on this observation Hubble concluded that the universe was expanding at a constant rate (it later was determined that the rate of expansion is actually increasing). With his colleague Milton Humason, he estimated that the rate of expansion is 500 Km per second per megaparsec. So a galaxy one megaparsec away is receding from the Milky Way at a rate of 500Km/second (a mega parsec is one million parsecs, each 3.3 light years or about 3.08x10²²meters). This is called the Hubble Constant and astronomers have been refining the measurement ever since.

Honors won by Hubble include the Bruce Medal, awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Franklin Medal, awarded by the Franklin Institute, and Gold Medal, the highest honor of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain. He was never awarded the Nobel Prize because it was not till after his death that astronomy was considered a subject for which the Nobel Prize in physics could be awarded and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. In addition to the Hubble Space Telescope, a telescope orbiting the earth, an asteroid and a crater on the moon are also named after Hubble. In 2008 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Hubble.

Hubble died on September 23, 1953.

References:

Christianson, Gale E.; Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae; University of Chicago Press; 1996

Anonymous; Edwin Hubble Biography at edwinhubble.com

Anonymous: Edwin P. Hubble at Hubble Space Telescope Website (hubble.nasa.gov)

Edwin Hubble Wikipedia Entry

Edward Adelbert Doisy

2011-11-13T11:18:00.001-08:00

Edward Adelbert Doisy was born on November 13, 1893 in Hume, Illinois. His father, Edward, was a traveling salesman and his mother Ada was a homemaker. He went to the University of Illinois, where he earned his bachelors in 1914 and his masters in 1916, both in chemistry. From 1915 until 1917 he was a biochemistry assistant at Harvard University and from 1917 to 1919 he served in the U.S. Army Sanitary Corps. Starting in 1919 he taught biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and he finished his Ph.D., from Harvard University, in 1920, with his thesis research on methods of detecting nitrogen containing biochemicals in blood, including creatine, creatinine and uric acid. In 1923 he was named the head of the biochemistry department at St. Louis University, in St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained for the rest of his career.

With Edgar Allen, his research assistant, Doisy investigated the mouse estrous cycle and by 1936 they succeed in isolating all three estrogens (esterone, esterdiol and estratiol) from human urine (while collecting samples, one driver committed a traffic violation and was pulled over by a policeman, who when seeing the bottles of amber liquid in the car, believed that the driver was a bootlegger). Doisy followed the work of Danish researcher Henrick Dam, who had grown baby chickens on an artificial diet that contained no fats, and found that they were prone to hemmoraging. Dam also found this could be cured by a diet of hempseed, and was able to isolate the active principal. Doisy, with the assistance of graduate assistant Ralph McKee, was able to isolate two forms of this chemical (named K1 and K2).

Vitamin K, first reported by Dam, is short for Koagulationsvitamin, the German name given to it. Vitamin K functions to modify proteins by adding a carboxy group certain glutamine residues forming gamma-carboxyglutamate, which allows the protein to bind calcium. These modified proteins take part in the blood coagulation cascade and bone metabolism. Like other fat soluble vitamins (A and D) it is stored in fat tissue in the human body. Newborns are injected with a dose of vitamin K to prevent hemmoraging. It is found in green leafy vegetables such as spinach and Swiss chard and fruits including avacado, grapes, and kiwi fruit. For their work in discovering vitamin K, Doisy and Dam were awarded the 1943 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

Other awards won by Doisy include honorary degrees from Yale, Washington, Chicago, Illinois, St Louis, Gustavus Aldolphus College, and Paris Universities. He served on the League of Nations Committee for the Standardization of Sex Hormones in 1932 and 1935. He was president of the American Society of Biological chemists from 1943 to 1945, the Endocrine Society from 1948 to 1950 and the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine from 1950 to 1951. In 1955 the biochemistry department of St. Louis University was named after him. He retired in 1965.

He died on October 23, 1986.

References:

Carey, Charles W.; American Scientists; Infobase Publishing; 2006

Simoni, Robert D., Hill, Robert L., and Vaughn, Linda; "The Discovery of Esterone, Esterol, and Esterdiol and the Biochemical Study of Reproduction. The Work of Edward Aldebet Doisy"; The Journal of Biological Chemistry(2002)277:e7

Edward A. Doisy Nobel Autobiography

Edward Aldebert Doisy Wikipedia Entry

James Gregory

2011-11-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

James Gregory was born on November 6, 1638 inDrumoak, Scotland. His father was aminister and died when Gregory was thirteen. His mother, whose uncle was a professor of mathematics, schooled the boyin geometry and had him attend grammar school in Aberdeen, Scotland. With his father dead, his education was seento by his older brother David and he attended Marischal College in Aberdeen,graduating in 1657. Gregory studiedoptics and in 1663 published Optica Promota in which he described for the firsttime the construction of a reflecting telescope, also called a Gregoriantelescope, honoring Gregory. He was notable to construct one because he did not have the skills required to prepare the mirrors.

A reflecting telescope is an optical telescope that uses one or more curved mirrors to reflect light from the object being viewed. It was invented as an alternative to a refracting telescope, in which light passes through lenses. Refracting telescopes suffer from the problem of chromatic aberration, in which, due to the fact that different colors of light have different indices of refraction through glass, some details can be blurry and show color blotches. An index of refraction is the ratio of the speed of light through a vacuum over the speed of light through a particular medium, in this case glass, and can used to determine how far a light beam is bent when it travels through one medium to another. The effect of the differences in the indices of refraction is that different colors will have different focal lengths for a particular telescope. Today nearly all large research-grade telescopes are reflecting telescopes. Without lenses, they do not suffer from chromatic aberration and have a wider spectrum of color, due to the fact that some wavelengths of light (particularly UV light) are absorbed by glass lenses. Another advantage of reflecting telescopes is that they can be made larger than refracting telescopes. The largest lens that can be practically created is only 1 meter in diameter, whereas reflecting telescope mirrors have been created that exceed 10 meters in diameter.

In 1663 Gregory went to London, England where he met some members of the Royal Society, including John Collins, Robert Hooke, and Sir Robert Moray. These friends introduced him to an optician named Rieve, who attempted to construct a telescope using Gregory's design, but he was unable to make the parabolic mirror to work to Gregory's satisfaction. Isaac Newton read Gregory's book and the two later corresponded. At that time the European continent was considered the center of mathematics research so in 1664 he left London for Padua, in the Venetian Republic, where he studied mathematics and published two works on proto-calculus, which bolstered his reputation and got him into the Royal Society when he returned to London in 1668. In 1669, with the help of Robert Hooke, he was appointed to a new chair in mathematics at the University of St. Andrews. He taught at St. Andrews for 6 years but did not enjoy his time there. Suspicious of his new ideas and his interest in higher mathematics his masters at the school shunned him and eventually withheld his salary and servants.

In 1674 he accepted a new professorship at the University of Edinburgh. At Edinburgh the university officials were more generous and he had the money he needed to establish an astronomy program. Sadly, in October of 1675 he suffered a stroke while he was showing the moons of Jupiter to his students. He died a few days later at the age of 37.

References:

Chambers, Robert; "Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen"; Volume 2; Blackie and Son, 1835

O'Connor JJ and EF Roberson; "Gregory Biography"; at history.st-andrews.ac.uk

Anon; "Biographical Information" for Gregory, James, at nahste.ac.uk

James Gregory Wikipedia Entry

Daniel Nathans

2011-10-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

Daniel Nathans was born on October 30, 1928 in Wilmington, Delaware. He was the youngest of nine children of Russian immigrant parents. His father lost his business in the great depression and for some time was unemployed (he later learned that his parents sometimes went hungry in order to feed the children). His early education was in Wilmington public schools, working in the afternoon and weekends, and he attended the University of Delaware, hitchhiking to get to class, and graduating with a chemistry degree in 1950. Following his father's wishes Nathans went to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. During a summer job, working at a Delaware hospital he was bored with the routine nature of medical practice and when he returned to St. Louis he began working in the research lab of Oliver Lowery. He graduated medical school in 1954.

After graduating he did an internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and spent two years as a clinical associate at the National Cancer Institute where he cared for patients and researched the synthesis of immunoglobulins by myeloma tumors. He returned to Columbia-Presbyterian for two more years and then began his research career at the Rockefeller Institute working for Fritz Lippman in 1959, where he studied bacterial protein synthesis. Nathans began a Ph.D. program but did not complete it because he did not want to sit in any more lectures. In 1962 he moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and worked for Barry Wood, who had been his teacher in medical school at Washington University. In 1969 he went to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel to learn about animal viruses and while he was there he received correspondence from his colleagues at Johns Hopkins about a restriction endonuclease enzyme. When he returned to America, Nathans, with the assistance of his graduate student Kathleen Danna, continued work that further established the function of restriction endonuclease enzymes.

Restriction endonucleases or restriction enzymes are enzymes that cleave double stranded DNA molecules at specific base sequences. Each enzyme has its own specific recognition sequence, that is a particular sequence of base pairs where it cuts the DNA molecule. These enzymes are used by bacteria to protect themselves from viruses. The enzyme with cleave viral DNA but leave the host DNA, which is methylated, alone. Over 6000 restriction enzymes have been now been characterized. These enzymes have been used to study genetics and find the locations of particular genes. They are also used in genetic engineering and the insertion of genes into genomic DNA. For his work characterizing restriction enzymes Nathans was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Medicine, along with Hamilton Smith, who had made the initial discovery, and Werner Arber who had predicted the existence of restriction enzymes.

Other honors won by Nathans include election to the National Academy of Science and its U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular Biology. Johns Hopkins has honored him co-naming the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine after him as well as one of its medical school's colleges.

Nathans died on November 16, 1999.

References:

DiMaio, Daniel, "Daniel Nathans: October 30, 1928 - Novermber 16, 1999"; Biographical Memiors Vol. 79, National Academy Press (2001)

Brownlee, Christian; "Danna and Nathans: Restriction Enzymes and the Boon to Modern Molecular Biology"; Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2005)102:5909

Daniel Nathans Wikipedia Entry

Danile Nathans Nobel Autobiography

Felix Bloch

2011-10-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

Felix Bloch was born on October 23, 1905 in Zurich, Switzerland. His father, Gustav Bloch was a wholesale grain seller in Zurich. He entered public elementary school at age 6 and initially had trouble in school because he spoke Swiss German with an accent different than those of his peers. In 1918 he began attending gymnasium run by the canton of Zurich. Young Bloch excelled in mathematics and science and in 1924 he passed his "matura" an exam that allowed him to go on to an institution of higher learning. Initially planning to study engineering he entered Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. After a year he changed his mind and began to study physics and continued at the same institution, graduating in 1927.

After graduating he went to the University of Lepzig, where he studied under Werner Heisenberg, completing his Ph.D. in 1928. His doctoral thesis introduced the concept of Bloch waves to explain the behavior of electrons in crystals, developing the theory of metallic conduction. After finishing his doctorate he took a tour of the various centers of experimental physics in Europe working for Wolfgang Pauli at the University of Zurich, Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, and Enrico Fermi in Rome, before returning to the University of Lepzig as a lecturer in physics. In 1933, soon after Hitler came to power in Germany, he emigrated to the United States, taking a position at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Bloch became Stanford's first professor of theoretical physics in 1939. During World War II he worked on nuclear power at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory and on ways to interfere with radar at Harvard University. After the war he returned to Stanford.

Bloch is most famous for his work developing the theory of nuclear induction and magnetic resonance. Atoms that have an uneven number of protons and/or neutrons have an intrinsic magnetic moment and angular momentum. This is called spin. When placed into a magnetic field nuclei will emit electromagnetic radiation, as their spin lines up with the magnetic field. The frequency of this emission depends on the strength of the magnetic field and the isotope. By measuring these emissions it is possible to determine the chemical structure in which the atom resides. This technique is used by chemists to determine the structure of compounds and it is used in medical imaging and is called magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI (the name was changed to remove the word "nuclear"). For his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance Bloch won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1952, which he shared with Edward Mills Purcell who developed the theory simultaneously.

In 1952 Bloch became the first director of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and he formulated its early policies regarding atomic research. Because as director he had little time for research he returned to Stanford a year later. In 1965 he served as president of the American Physical Society.

Bloch died on September 10, 1983.

Bibliography:

Hofstader, Richard; "Felix Bloch"; Physics Today (1984)37:115-116

Hofstader, Richard; "Felix Bloch: 1905-1983" in Biographical Memoirs Vol. 64; National Academy Press; 1994

Felix Bloch Nobel Biography

Felix Bloch Wikipedia Entry

Max von Laue

2011-10-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

Max von Laue was born on October 9, 1879 in Pfaffendorf (nowpart of Koblenz), Germany. Von Laue'sfather was an official in the German military and his family moved often. His bookish nature was recognized by hisfamily and his grandfather gave him science books. A demonstration of the electrical depositionof metallic copper from a solution of copper sulfate fascinated young von Laue and pavedthe way for a career in physics. He attendedgymnasium school in Posen, Berlin, and Strasbourg. After a year of military service he attendedthe University of Strasbourg, the University of Gottingen, and the Universityof Munich, studying mathematics, chemistry and physics. He earned his doctorate under Max Planck atthe University of Berlin, graduating in 1903.

After finishing his doctorate he spent two years at theUniversity of Gottingen and then went back to work for Max Planck as anassistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Berlin. There von Laue met and became friends withAlbert Einstein and von Laue contributed to the development and acceptance ofEinstein's theory of relativity. In 1909he went to the University of Munich where he lectured on thermodynamics, optics, and relativity. In 1912 he was appointedprofessor of physics at the University of Zurich. In 1913 his father was raised to the ranks ofhereditary nobility and the "von" was added to his name. From 1914 to 1919 he was professor of physics at the University of Frankfurt and in 1916 he worked at the University of Wurzburg on vacuum tubes for use in military wireless communications. In 1919 he went till the University of Berlin, where he remained until 1943, when he became an emeritus, with his consent, one year before the mandatory retirement age.

Von Laue is most famous for the discovery of the diffraction of x-rays by crystals. The discovery originated from a discussion of the behavior of light moving through a regular crystalline medium. This caused von Laue to wonder what affect crystals would have on the much shorter wavelength x-rays. After the diffraction of x-rays by crystals was demonstrated von Laue worked the results out mathematically and published his results in 1912. This discovery paved the way for x-ray crystalography, the study of molecular structure of crystals using x-rays. For his discovery von Laue was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1914. Other honors won by von Laue include the Max Planck Medal in 1932 and being made and officer in the French Legion of Honor in 1957.

Von Laue opposed the rising National Socialism movement in Germany and worked to help Jewish scientists emigrate from Germany. When Germany invaded Denmark in 1940 von Laue's golden Nobel Prize was dissolved in aqua regia by Hungarian chemist Georg de Hevesy, who was working at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen where the prize was being kept, in order to prevent it falling into Nazi hands. Had the prize been discovered von Laue would have faced prosecution for exporting gold out of Germany. After the war de Hevesey found the solution, where he left it, of on the shelf of his laboratory. He precipitated the gold and returned it to the Nobel Society which recast the prize. After World War II von Laue was was seized by Operation Alsos, an Anglo-American operation to grab German nuclear scientists and materials, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets, and he was interred in Huntington, England at Farm Hill, a bugged house, with nine other German scientists. He returned to Germany in early 1946 and was the only German scientist invited to attend a conference on crystalography in London, where he was allowed to wander at will only four months after being released from internment. After the war von Laue worked to reestablish German science and he served as the director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical and Electrochemistry from 1951 to 1959.

On April 8, 1960, while driving to the laboratory, von Laue was involved in a automobile accident with a motorcyclist, who had just received his licence. Although he showed initial signs of recovery, he died on April 20th.

References:

Von Laue, Max; My Development as a Physicist: An Autobiography, at iucr.org

Max von Laue Nobel Biography

Max von Laue Wikipedia Entry

Thomas Hunt Morgan

2011-09-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born on September 25, 1866 in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the eldest son of Charlton Hunt Morgan who served as the American Consul in Messina, Sicily in 1860, where he assisted Garibaldi during the uprising that started his campaign of that year. He later joined the Confederate Army was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. Morgan as a boy was interested in natural history and spent several summers in the mountains near Oakland, Maryland where he collected fossils. When he grew older he spent his summers in the mountains of Kentucky doing geological and biological field work. He graduated with a BS from the University of Kentucky in 1886.

Morgan received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1890. After which he received the Bruce Fellowship which allowed him to study in Italy at the Marine Zoological Laboratory in Naples. In 1891 Morgan was appointed associate professor (and head of the biology department) at Bryn Mawr University, where he stayed until 1904. While at Bryn Mawr he met and married Lillian Vaughan Sampson, who would later contribute to his research. In 1904 Edmund Wilson, who Morgan had replaced at Bryn Mawr, invited him to Columbia University where he was appointed professor of experimental biology. He remained at Columbia until 1928 when moved to the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, where he was appointed professor of biology and director of the Kerckhoff Laboratories. While at Caltech he established a marine laboratory at Corona Del Mar, California. He remained at Caltech until 1945.

Morgan's research at Columbia, influenced by Wilson, looked at the role of cytology in influencing biological systems. He worked with fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to study genetics. Although he was initially skeptical of the theories of Gregor Mendel, Morgan used fruit flies to show how certain traits are linked, that is the genes which are responsible for them are located on the same chromosome. From his experiments he was able to make maps of the Drosophila chromosomes, showing the locations of various genes. Drosophila have become a common model organism used for studying genetics. For his work showing the importance of chromosomes in heredity Morgan was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Morgan was also interested in embryology and made important contributions to that field including demonstrating that gravity has no effect on a developing egg.

Other honors won by Morgan include membership in the National Academy of Sciences and foreign membership in the Royal Society. In 1924 he was awarded the Royal Society's Darwin Medal and he has honorary degrees from Johns Hopkins and the University of Kentucky.

Morgan died on December 4, 1945.

References:

Sturtevant, A. H. "Thomas Hunt Morgan: 1866-1945"; in Biographical Memiors; National Academy Press; 1959

Thomas H. Morgan Nobel Biography

Thomas Hunt Morgan Wikipedia Entry

Edwin Mattison McMillan

2011-09-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

Edwin Mattison McMillan was born on September 17, 1907 in Redondo Beach, California. His father Edwin McMillan was a physician. As a child McMillan was always building gadgets and living in Pasadena, California he was able to attend lectures and get to know the physicists at the nearby California Institute of Technology. After high school he attended the California Institute of Technology studying physics and chemistry and earning his B.Sc. in 1928 and his M.Sc. one year later. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1932. His thesis described the behavior of a beam of hydrogen chloride molecules in a non-homogeneous electric field.

After earning his Ph.D., McMillan won a National Research Council fellowship. At the invitation of Ernest Lawrence he went to the University of California at Berkley where he worked in Lawrence's Berkley Radiation Laboratory. He became a an instructor in the physics department at Berkeley in 1935, assistant professor in 1936, associate professor in 1941, and professor in 1946. During the World War II MacMillan worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developing radar, at the U.S. Navy Radar and Sonar Laboratory in San Diego California working on sonar, and he worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He returned to Berkley after the war and with the death of Lawrence in 1958 he became director of the Berkley Radiation Laboratory, later renamed after Lawrence. He remained director until his retirement in 1973.

McMillan is most remembered for his work in creating the first transuranic elements. Working at Berkley he used the newly invented cyclotron to bombard uranium with neutrons and deuterium to create neptunium and plutonium. These elements (atomic numbers 93 and 94) were the first elements created with more protons than uranium, which was thought to have the highest possible number. Like uranium these elements are subject to radioactive decay. McMillan and Glenn Seaborg, who finished MacMillan's work when he left Berkley to go to M.I.T., were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for "their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements". McMillan also used the cyclotron to create other non-naturally occurring radioactive elements including oxygen-18 and beryllium-10.

Other honors won by MacMillan include election to the National Academy of Science in 1947 (he served as its chairman from 1968 to 1971), the Atoms for Peace award in 1963, shared with Vladimir Veksler, for the creation of the synchrotron, and the National Medal of Science in 1990.

McMillan died on September 7, 1991.

References:

Jackson, David J. and Panofsky, W.K.H.; "Edwin Mattison McMillan: 1907-1991"; Biographical Memoirs Vol. 69; National Academy Press; 1996

Edwin McMillan Nobel Biography

Edwin McMillan Wikipedia Entry

Stanford Moore

2011-09-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

Stanford Moore was born on September 4, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Howard Moore, at the time was a law student at the University of Chicago. His mother was a graduate of Stanford University, where his parents met. It is alleged that this was the origin of Moore's first name. Moore began school at age 4 at a progressive school in Winnetka, Illinois. When he was six his father took a teaching position at the University of Florida Law School. Later he took a position at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. During these years Moore attended public schools. When his father took a position at the Vanderbilt University Law School, where he remained until his retirement in 1949, Moore attended the Peabody Demonstration School, which was attached to the George Peabody College for Teachers. Moore attended the school for seven years and was an outstanding student.

Moore attended Vanderbilt University and was initially torn between careers in chemistry and aeronautical engineering. In his third year he was influenced by Arthur William Ingersoll, and took an interest in organic chemistry and molecular structure. He graduated from Vanderbilt in 1935 with a BA in chemistry. He also won the Founder's Medal as the outstanding student in his class. Moore went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin where he worked for Karl Link and learned micro analytical techniques. He graduated in 1938 with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. His thesis project was a method for determining which monosacharides were in the polysacharides he was analyzing. After graduation he took a job as a research assistant working for Max Bergman at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. During World War II Moore worked for the Office of Scientific Research and Development researching therapeutic agents for mustard gas and other chemical warfare agents.

After the war he returned to the Rockefeller Institute and worked with William H. Stein on chromatographic methods of determining the amino acid sequence of proteins. Proteins are macromolecules composed of a sequence of amino acids bound together by peptide (amide) bonds. Moore and Stein, worked with Christian Anfinsin of the National Institutes of Health, determining the sequence of ribonuclease, an small enzyme of only 124 amino acid residues. From the determination of the sequence of the amino acids they were able to learn about the active site of the enzyme, where the chemical reaction takes place. Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions, speeding up the biochemical reactions in living organisms. For their work on the structure of ribonuclease Moore, Stein, and Anfinsen won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972.

Other honors won by Moore include honorary doctorates from the University of Brussels and the University of Paris, the American Chemical Society award for Chromatography and Electrophoresis, shared with Stein, and the Richards Medal from the American Chemical Society. Moore remained working at the Rockefeller Institute until his death.

Moore died on August 23, 1982.

References:

Smith, Emil L. and Hirs, C.H.W.; "Stanford Moore: September 4, 1913 - August, 23, 1982"; Biographical Memoirs Vol. 56; National Academy Press; 1987

Stanford Moore Nobel Biography

Stanford Moore Wikipedia Entry

George Hoyt Whipple

2011-08-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

George Hoyt Whipple was born on August 28, 1878 in Ashland, New Hampshire. His father, Ashley Cooper Whipple, and paternal grandfather, Solomon Mason Whipple, were both country doctors. When Whipple was two years old his father died of pneumonia and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. As a boy he enjoyed spending time out doors, hunting and fishing which he did throughout his life. Through prep school and college he earned money for his education during breaks and summers providing help and service to tourists to Squam Lake and Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire. He attended Andover Academy and Yale University, graduating with an A.B. in 1900.

Intending to become a physician like his father and grandfather he took a year off from school and earned money for medical school working at Dr. Holbrook's Military School in Ossining, New York, where he taught mathematics and science and served as an athletics coach. In 1901 he entered Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He did so well in his first year anatomy and physiology classes that he won the chance to serve as a student assistant in those classes in his second year. During medical school Whipple became fascinated with pathology, studying the effects of disease on tissues. He graduated medical school in 1905. Graduating fourth in a class of fifty four, he had his choice of internships and choose to stay at Johns Hopkins as a pathology assistant until 1907.

In 1907 Whipple went to Panama and worked as a pathologist at Ancon Hospital, later named Gorgas Hospital, during the building of the Panama Canal. In 1908 he returned to Johns Hopkins first as an assistant, and later an instructor, a associate and associate professor of pathology. In 1914 he was appointed professor of research medicine and director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research at the University of California. He was dean of the University of California Medical school from 1920 to 1921. In 1921 he became the dean of the then newly founded and yet to be built medical school at Rochester University. He he served as dean until 1954 and remained at Rochester University, as a professor of pathology, the rest of his life.

Whipple's research was concerned with anemia and the physiology and pathology of the liver. His experiments with anemic dogs revealed that a diet of liver reversed the effects of the anemia. Whipple found that diets of meat were more effective in curing anemia than vegetable diets, but cooked apricots were surprisingly effective. His research led William Murphy and George Minot to experiment with liver diets for people suffering from pernicious anemia, which cured it. Whipple, Murphy, and Minot were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934 for "their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia". Whipple was also the first to describe Whipple's disease, a rare infectious disease caused by the bacterium Tropheryma whipplei.

Whipple died on February 1, 1976.

References:

Miller, Leon L.; "George Hoyt Whipple: 1878-1976"; Biographical Memiors; National Academy Press; 1995

George Hoyt Whipple, Nobel biography

George Hoyt Whipple, Wikipedia entry

Jean Servais Stas

2011-08-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Jean Servais Stas was born on August 21, 1813 in Leuven, Belgium. His father was a locksmith. Due to his delicate health he was predisposed to an academic career. Initially he trained as a doctor at the University of Leuven, because at the time it was the only field of study at the university that taught laboratory science and he obtained a medical degree in 1835. After graduation he switched to chemistry, working for Jean-Baptiste Dumas. In Dumas' laboratory Stas assisted in the most accurate, at the time, determination of the atomic weight of carbon.

In 1840 Stas was appointed professor at the Royal Military School in Brussels. He continued measuring atomic weights, using Oxygen, at 16, as a standard. He proved that atomic weights for elements were not all multiples of 1, the atomic weight of hydrogen, disproving the theory of English physicist William Prout that all the atomic weights were multiples of that of hydrogen. These careful measurements by Stas helped form the basis of the periodic system developed by Dimitri Mendeleev and other chemists.

The atomic mass of an atom is equal to the number of protons and neutrons found in its nucleus minus a small amount of mass for binding energy. The atomic mass of elements used by chemists today are averages, weighted for the various naturally occurring isotopes of the element. For example chlorine has two naturally occurring isotopes, chlorine-35 and chlorine-37. About 76% of naturally occurring chlorine is chlorine-35, so the weighted average used for chlorine in chemical calculations is 35.45. And this is an example of why Stas, in his measurements, did not always get integer results.

Stas is also responsible for one of the world's first toxicology findings. In 1850 the Belgian authorities requested the help of Stas in providing evidence in the prosecution of Count Bocarme. Bocarme, in order to secure for himself the family fortune, had poisoned his brother-in-law by force feeding him nicotine that he had extracted from tobacco. Stas developed a method for isolating alkaloids from human tissues and was able to isolate nicotine from the corpse of Count Borcame's brother-in-law. Stas' evidence was used in the trial and helped convict Count Bocarme of murder. Honors won by Stas include induction into the Royal Society of London, as a foreign member and the Davy Medal, from the Royal Society, for his researches into atomic weights.

Stas died on December 13, 1891

References:

Stratmann, Linda; "Tobacco and Crime: Linda's Crime Notes"; at visart.be

Timmermans, Jean; "Jean Servais Stas"; Journal of Chemical Education(1938)15:353

Jean Servais Stas Wikipedia Entry

Arthur Jeffery Dempster

2011-08-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Arthur Jeffery Dempster was born on August 14, 1886 in Toronto, Canada. His parents were James and Emily (Cheney) Dempster. As a young man he had a wide field of interest, wining multiple scholarships in different subjects. He went to the University of Toronto, earning bachelors and masters degrees in 1909 and 1910 respectively. His first scientific publication was a paper on Darwin's tidal theory.

In 1911 Dempster went to Germany where he first spent a semester each at the Universities of Munich and Gottingen, then went on to spend two years at the University of Wurzburg studying under Wilhelm Wien. Wien was studying the deflection of positive ion beams by electric and magnetic fields. Dempster began to work on a Ph.D. thesis but his studies were interupted by the outbreak of the first world war. Being a British subject, Dempster was forced to flee Wurzburg and left on the last train carrying civilians before the general mobilization. Another Canadian student who made the choice to stay spent four years in an internment camp. Dempster decided to finish his doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he finished in 1916, graduating summa cum laude.

After briefly serving in the Army during World War I and being naturalized as a U.S. citizen he returned to the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1916 and was made full professor in 1927. Dempster remained at the University of Chicago until his death in 1950. Dempster continued studying positive ion rays and using the properties of these rays in 1918 he developed the first modern mass spectrometer. In 1912 J.J. Thompson had developed a mass spectrometer which he used to show that stable elements have can have multiple isotopes, but it was Dempster who perfected it. His mass spectrometer was over 100% more accurate than Thompson's.

A mass spectrometer is an instrument that seperates chemical species by their atomic weight. A sample put into a mass spectrometer is first vaporized and then ionized (electrons are removed making positive ions). After ionization it is seperated by atomic mass by means of electric and magnetic fields. Because the heavier elements are less easy to move using electric or magnetic fields they can be seperated from lighter elements. Using this instrument in 1935 Dempster discovered uranium-235, an isotope of uranium lighter than uranium-238, which made possible atomic energy. Uranium-235 has only a 0.7% abundance in naturally ocuring uranium.

From 1943 to 1946 Dempster was the chief physicist of the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, a laboratory specialy purposed to develop the materials neccessary for the production of atomic weapons. Honors won by Dempster include election to the National Academy of Science, a prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Lewis Award from the American Philisophical Society.

Dempster died from a heart attack while vacationing in Florida on March 11, 1950.

References:

Allison, Samuel King; "Arthur Jeffrey Dempster: 1886-1950"; Biographical Memoirs; National Academy Press (1952)

"Arthur Jeffrey Dempster, Physicist, 63, Dead"; New York Times; March 12, 1950

Arthur Jeffery Dempster Wikipedia Article

Germain Henri Hess

2011-08-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Germain Henri Hess was born on August 7, 1802 in Geneva, Switzerland. His family moved to Russia when his father, an artist, became a tutor for a rich family. He studied medicine at the University of Tartu, obtaining a M.D. in 1826. In school he also studied chemistry and geology and upon graduation traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to study under the chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius. Although Hess spent only one month in the lab of Berzelius, they became life-long friends and correspondents.

On his return to Russia, Hess took part in a geological expedition to the Urals. After the expedition Hess set up a medical practice in Irkutsk where he remained for two years. In 1830 Hess moved to St. Petersburg where he began teaching chemistry and doing research. Later he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. He remained in St. Petersburg for the remainder of his life.

Hess is most famous for the chemical law that bears his name: Hess's Law. The law is that the enthalpy of change for a chemical reaction that is carried out in a series of steps is equal to the sum of the enthalpies of change of each of the steps. Enthalpy is the heat generated or lost by a chemical reaction. Hess's law allows for the calculation of how much heat will be released or absorbed by a chemical reaction by summing up the enthalpies of each of the steps of the reaction. Hess's Law was an early law in thermochemistry, the study of energy and heat in chemical reactions.

Other discoveries made by Hess include the discovery that sugar when oxidised yields saccharic acid. The mineral Ag₂Te is named Hessite in his honor. Hess wrote the chemistry textbook that was the standard Russian chemistry text for several decades. He was forced to retire due to failing health in 1848.

Hess died in St. Petersburg on December 13, 1850.

References:

Culp, Bartlow; "Germain Henri Hess"; at chemistry.explained.com

Germain Henri Hesse Wikipedia Entry

Theobald Smith

2011-07-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

Theobald Smith was born on July 31, 1859 in Albany, New York. His father, a German immigrant, ran a small tailoring shop. His mother taught him to play the piano at an early age and he was a good student in math. Smith attended public schools in Albany and won a full tuition scholarship to Cornell University. While at Cornell he earned extra money playing a church organ. He graduated from Cornell in 1881.

After graduation Smith initially intended to go into teaching, but he was unable to find a teaching job. His second choice was medicine and so he attended Albany Medical College graduating in 1883. After two years of medical school he did not feel himself ready for clinical practice so he returned to Cornell for graduate school and began working for Daniel E. Salmon at the newly established Bureau of the Animal Industry, which had been set up by the U.S. Congress in 1884 to fight animal diseases. Without any training in microbiology Smith taught himself by reading the papers of Pasteur, Koch, and Virchow. While at the BAI Smith isolated for the first time what came to be called Salmonella (named after Daniel Salmon) and was able to prove that Texas fever, a debilitating cattle disease, was carried by ticks. This was the first discovery of an arthropod borne disease.

In 1895 Smith took over running the Massachusetts State State Antitoxin Laboratory and in 1896 became professor of comparative pathology at Harvard University. While in Boston he continued his research on animal diseases and established that if animals are repeatedly exposed to a bacteria they become hypersensitive to it. This phenomena is known as anaphylaxis. His work on vaccines established that killed bacteria could act to generate immunity to living bacteria and he established that diphtheria could be vaccinated against by combining diphtheria toxin with its anti-toxin in a vaccine. In 1915 Smith left Harvard for the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research as the head of the Department of Animal Pathology. He remained at the Rockefeller institute until his retirement in 1929.

Smith was considered on of the most notable figures in American medicine at the time. Honors won by Smith include the Copley Medal, awarded by the Royal Society in 1933 and eleven honorary degrees from prestigious universities.

Smith died on December 10, 1934.

References:

Schultz, Myron; "Theobald Smith"; Emerging Infectious Diseases 14:1940-1942 (2008)

Zinsser, Hans; "Biographical Memior of Theobald Smith: 1859-1934" in Biographical Memiors Vol. 17; National Academy Press 1936

Theobald Smith Wikipedia Entry

Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney

2011-07-24T14:35:00.001-07:00

Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney was born on July 24, 1843 in Derby, England. His father, Rev. Edward Abney, was vicar of St. Alkmund's in Derby. Abney attended Rossall School and the Royal Military Academy in Woolrich and joined the Royal Engineers at 18, after which he served in India for several years. From his father he inherited a interest in photography and he attended the Military School of Engineering in Chatham in order to learn about it. There he was put in charge of a photography laboratory and he was promoted to captain in 1873. He became and instructor at Chatham in 1874.

While at Chatham Abney participated in the photographic observation of the transit of Venus in 1874 and developed film for infrared photography. Using this film he was able to take a picture of a boiling kettle of water in a completely dark room. He also used it to study the infrared spectrum of stars and developed infrared photography to be used to study the infra red spectrum of organic chemicals.

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation that has a longer wavelength than visible red light (which is at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum). It is emitted by hot objects near room temperature. Infrared light is absorbed and emitted by organic molecules as they change their rotational and vibrational states and based on the wavelengths of these absorptions it can be used to identify various compounds.

Abney wrote many books on photography which were the standard texts of the day. He was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society once serving as president and was a member of the Physical Society of London, where he also served as president. He was a member of the Royal Society and was knighted in 1900.

He died on December 3, 1920.

References:

Obituary in the Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 81:250-254(1921)

Obituary in the British Journal of Opthamology 5:47-48(1921)

Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney Wikipedia Entry

Gilbert White

2011-07-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

Gilbert White was born on July 18, 1720 in the village of Selborne, England, while his parents were living in the house of his grandfather, also named Gilbert White, the vicar of Selborne. When White was one year old, his father and mother moved to a house in the village of Compton. Like any other country boy, Gilbert took many walks through nature, although he did not keep diary of his walks. The family moved back to Selborne when he was nine, after the death of his grandfather. At the age of thirteen or fourteen White went to Basingstoke where he studied under the Reverend Thomas Warton. In April 1740 he entered Oriel College, Oxford, graduating in 1743.

He spent the following year at Oriel attending lectures on mathematics and was elected fellow the following March. In April 1747 he received Deacon's orders and became the curate for his uncle Charles in Swarraton. In due time he was ordained priest by the bishop of Hereford. He was elected proctor and returned to Oxford for a year in 1753. He returned to Selborn in 1755, although he did not remain there permanently until he became curate in 1784. He remained in Selborne for the rest of his life.

White is most famous for his book, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789. The book is a compilation of a series of letters that White wrote to Thomas Pennant, a leading zoologist of the day and Daines Barrington a barrister and member of the Royal Society. In the letters, White describes his observations of nature, among other things describing the feeding habits of bats, the evening maneuvers of rooks and the improvement of horticultural soil by earthworms. In the work White identifies many species for the first time.

White is honored as the first English ecologist and the book, which has been in publication since its first printing, has been recognized as the fourth most published book in the English language, after the Bible, the Works of Shakespeare, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. White lived out his days in Selborne, passing away on June 26, 1793.

References:

Parkins, Keith;"Gilbert White"

Mabey, Richard; Gilbert White:A Biography of the Author of the Natural History of Selborne; University of Virginia Press; 2007

Gilbert White of Selborne; 1899

Gilbert White Wikipedia Entry

Theodore Maiman

2011-07-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Theodore Harold Maiman was born or July 11, 1927 in Los Angeles, California. The next year he moved to Denver, Colorado with his parents. His father, Abraham Maiman, was an electrical engineer and an inventor. Maiman was curious to how things work and was always taking things apart, to the dismay of his parents. In high school he worked in a electronics repair shop to earn money.

He earned a BS in engineering physics from the University of Colorado in 1949 and then went on to Stanford University where he earned a MS in electrical engineering in 1951 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1955 completing a thesis, under Willis Lamb, involving detailed optical measurements of the fine structure splittings in excited helium atoms

He then joined Hughes Laboratories where he worked on the stimulated emission of microwave energy. A MASER (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) had been invented earlier by Charles Townes working at Bell Laboratories. Townes and Arthur Schawlow in their paper suggest that their success, creating the MASER, could be repeated making a device that emits a coherent beam of light in the visual spectrum. This is called a LASER (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).

Maiman was the first to produce a working LASER, announcing his invention at a press conference on July 7, 1960. He published his results in the British journal Nature, after his paper was refused by Physical Review Letters because it was deemed to be to repetitive. Maiman left Hughes Laboratories in 1962 and went on to work for a series of different companies, some of his own founding, working on LASERs and their applications.

Maiman was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize and was a member of the National Academy of Science and National Academy of Engineering. He won the Oliver E Buckley Prize in 1966 and won the 1983/4 Wolf Prize for Physics. He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in also in 1984.

He died on May 5, 2007.

References:

Day, Lance; McNeil Ian; "Maiman, Theodore Harold" in Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology; Taylor & Francis; 1998

Martin Douglas; "Theodore Maiman Dies, 79; Demonstrated First Laser";New York Times; May 11, 2007

Wycoff, Edwin Britt; Laser Man: Theodore Maiman and His Brilliant Invention; Enslow Publishers Inc; 2007

Theodore Maiman Wikipedia Entry

Charles Schuchert

2011-07-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

Charles Schuchert was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 3, 1858 the oldest of six children of German emigrant parents, who had come to Cincinnati only a few years previously. His father, Philip, was a cabinetmaker and built up a successful business. At six, young Charles began attending Catholic parochial school, finishing at age twelve to go on to business school, to train as a bookkeeper for his father's business. While in school, Schuchert worked in his father's shop, first in the varnishing room. He did not last one year in business school, but continued working for his father, gradually working his way up to become general manager of his father's shop. In 1877 a fire destroyed the business, leaving Schuchert to support the family by working in other furniture factories.

Throughout his youth Schuchert collected fossils. In 1869 his father took him to see the museum of William Foster, who had a great quantity of fossil samples from around Cincinnati. Schuchert was amazed to learn that most of the fossils displayed were from under the sea that had once covered Ohio. In 1877 Schuchert met Edward Oscar Ulrich, who had a large collection of fossils and had done college work in paleontology. In 1881 Ulrich began publishing papers on local fossils and Schuchert helped him using lithography to illustrate his work. Ulrich began getting commissions to write and Schuchert helped him with the work. By this time Schuchert had collected a large collection of brachiopods, a phylum of marine animals with hard valves (shells), some collected on his own and some obtained from trading samples with Ulrich and other collectors.

In 1889 James Hall, the state paleontologist of New York came to Cincinnati in order to prepare a work on brachiopods. Hall met with Schuchert and impressed with his collection offered him a position as his assistant. Schuchert went to Albany, New York with Hall and assisted him in preparing his publications. After working in Albany, Schuchert briefly assisted N. H. Whinchel in Minneapolis, and then in 1893 joined the staff of the U.S. Geological survey in Washington. He worked for the Geological Survey until 1904, when he was appointed professor at Yale University. Shuchert remained at Yale until his retirement in 1926.

Schuchert's initial interest in brachiopods widened to the paleontolgic record as his career developed. From this resulted a series of paleogeographic maps, prepared by Schuchert, that showed the distribution of land and sea during the geologic past. In 1910 he published Paleogeography of the United States which was illustrated with a series of fifty maps. Schuchert continued working on these maps and by 1913 the number had grown to 85, eventually reaching 130. The closing years of Schuchert's life were spent preparing Historical Geography of North America, two volumes of which were published and one was in preparation at the time of his death.

Honors won by Schuchert include election as president of the Paleontological Society in 1910 and president of the Geological Society of America in 1922. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1911 and won the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the N.A.S. and the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America in 1934. He won honorary degrees from New York, Yale, and Harvard Universities. The Paleontological Society each year presents the Charles Schuchert Award each year to the person, under 40, whose work reflects excellence and promise in the field of paleontology.

Schuchert died on November 20, 1942.

References:

Knopf, Alfred;"Charles Schuchert: 1858-1942" in Biographical Memoirs (1952) National Academy Press

William Thompson, Baron Kelvin

2011-06-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

William Thompson was born on June 26, 1824 in Belfast, Ireland, of Scottish-Irish descent. His father, James Thompson was at the time a mathematics professor at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. His mother, Margaret Gardner, died in 1830 and in 1832 his father took his six children with him to Glasgow, Scotland, where he had been elected chair of mathematics at the University of Glasgow, his alma mater.

William, and his older brother James received their early education at home, from their father. He entered the University of Glasgow in 1834 at the age of ten. At 12 he won a prize for translating Lucian of Samosata's Dialogs of the Gods from Latin into English. His first scientific paper was published in 1841 and in that year he entered St. Peter's College, Cambridge to read for the mathematical tripos. During his time at Cambridge he rowed for his college and remained involved in nautical pursuits throughout his life. He graduated in 1845, second wrangler (the university examiner commented that the Senior Wrangler "was not fit to cut pencils for Thompson") and winning first place in the Smith's Prize competition. He was elected fellow, shortly thereafter.

At the time experimental physics was not taking place at Cambridge, so after graduation he took his fellowship to Paris, and he worked in the laboratory of Henri Regnault for a year, where he determined data on a number of physical constants. In 1846 the chair of natural philosophy at Glasgow University became vacant and Thompson was elected. He remained in the position for fifty-three years until his retirement in 1899, despite many invitations to leave and go elsewhere. He was an inexhaustible worker, producing almost six hundred papers, seventy patents, as well as a number of books during his tenure.

Thompson is most famous for his work on an absolute zero temperature, a temperature at which entropy is reduced to its lowest possible value. The Kelvin temperature scale, named after Thompson, has its zero at -273.15 degrees Celsius or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature nearly all molecular motion stops and pure substance form perfect crystals. It is not possible to reach absolute zero artificially, but there are techniques to get within a billionth of a degree using cooling lasers.

Thompson served as the electrical engineer during the laying of the first successful Transatlantic Telegraph Cable and was knighted for his services. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1851 and won the Copley Medal in 1883. His title, Barron Kelvin, bestowed on him in 1892, origninated from the River Kelvin which runs through the grounds of the University of Glasgow and he is the first scientist who served in the House of Lords.

He died on December 17, 1907.

References:

Fitzgerald, George Francis;Lord Kelvin: Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 1846-1899 with an Essay on His Scientific Work;J. MacLehose; 1899

McKie, Dr. Douglas;"William Thompson: Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)";New Scientist(1957)3:11-13

William Thompson, 1st Barron Kelvin Wikipedia Entry

John Couch Adams

2011-06-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

John Couch Adams was born on June 5, 1819, in Cornwall, England. His father was a tenant farmer and his mother had a small estate. His early companions were the library of books, some on astronomy, that his mother had inherited from her uncle. At a village school in Laneast he learned algebra before the age of 12. Through his teens he avidly read books on mathematics and astronomy and in 1839 he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1843. Soon after graduation he obtained a fellowship and stayed at St. John's as a tutor.

After graduation he directed his attention to the problem of the irregularities in the observed orbit of the planet Uranus. The planet Uranus, visible to the naked eye, had been known since ancient times, but due to its slow orbit it was presumed to be a star. It was not until 1781 that English astronomer William Herschel identified it as a planet. Subsequent observations of its orbit showed that it had an irregular orbit, deviating what had been predicted. Using Newton's law of gravitation, Adams showed that the irregularity in Uranus' orbit was due to the presence of another planet.

In Autumn of 1845 he communicated his finding to James Challis, the director of the Cambridge Observatory, and George Airy, the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, but neither acted upon his results until after Urbain LeVerrier, a French mathematician, published similar results the next summer. Airy attempted to find the planet but because he was using outdated star charts he failed to recognize it when he saw it, and it was instead first recognized by Johan Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest, working in Berlin, using LeVerrier's results. Precedence of the discovery was given to LeVerrier because Adams' results were not published until after the fact.

In 1851 Adams got a fellowship at Pembroke College, which he kept until his death. Also in 1851 he published corrections of the table of the moon's paralax. In 1858 he took a position of professor of mathematics at St. Andrew's University, but stayed for only one year before taking the Lowedean professorship for astronomy and geometry at St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1860 he replaced Challis as director of the Cambridge observatory. He remained at the observatory till his death. Honors won by Adams include the Copley Medal, from the Royal Society, in 1848 and though offered a knighthood during Queen Victoria's 1847 visit to Cambridge, he refused.

He died on January 21, 1892 at the Cambridge Observatory.

References:

Sheehan, William and Thurber, Steven; "John Couch Adams's Asberger syndrome and the British non-discovery of Neptune"; Records and Notes of the Royal Society(2007)61:285-299

"Prof. John Couch Adams"; Journal of the British Astronomical Association(1893)2:196-197

Obituary in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(1893)53:184-209

John Couch Adams Wikipedia Entry

Sir David Bruce

2011-06-01T14:03:00.001-07:00

David Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia on May 29, 1855 to parents from Scotland. He was educated at Stirling High School and the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1881. Two years later he entered the Army Medical Service and served in Malta and Egypt. While in Malta he isolated the organism responsible for Malta fever, later named Brucella Militensis, from goat's milk. His work was aided by his wife, Mary Elizabeth Bruce who assisted him in his laboratory work.

Bruce left Malta in 1889 and served as assistant professor of pathology at the British Army Medical School at Netley and in 1894 went to South Africa where he served in the South African War earning a special promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1900. In South Africa he studied many tropical diseases including cholera, dysentery, and sleeping sickness. During his investigation of sleeping sickness, called nagana in Africa, he sent the corpse of an infected dog to England, from which the causative organism Trypanasoma brucei was isolated.

Bruce was knighted in 1908 and published many articles published in tropical medicine journals. He served as the commandant of the Royal Army Medical School at Netley from 1904 to 1908.

He died on November 27,1931.

References:

"Sir David Bruce"; American Journal of Public Health (1932)22:179-180

"Sir David Bruce KCB, D.Sc., LL.D., M.B., F.R.C.P., F.R.S."; Canadian Medical Association Journal; (1932)26:216

Sir David Bruce Wikipedia Entry

Williamina Fleming

2011-05-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was born on May 15, 1857 in Dundee, Scotland to Robert Stevens and Mary Walker. Her father was made gilded picture frames and furniture and died when she was seven. "Mina", as she was called, attended public schools in Dundee and did well in school, advancing to become a student teacher when she was 14. In 1877, she married James Orr Fleming and they emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. Fleming abandoned his pregnant bride and when she looked for domestic work she was hired by Edward C. Pickering, the head of the Harvard Observatory to clean his home.

In 1880, Pickering was working on a project to classify stars based on their spectra and became upset with the low quality work produced by the young man he hired to do the work. Legend is that Pickering declared that his Scottish maid could do a better job and when she was given the chance she excelled. Fleming had the ability to separate stellar spectra based on their characteristics and do the calculations necessary to determine a star's position. She was made a permanent employee of the observatory in 1881 and was put in charge of the star project in 1886.

She and Pickering devised a system to classify stars based on their spectra and published in 1890. When Pickering wanted to make larger catalog of stars he put Fleming in charge of the group of women he hired to do the calculations. In addition to her work on stellar catalogs, Fleming also was the first to identify that variable stars, stars whose light intensity brightened and dimmed regularly over time, could be identified by bright lines in their spectra. In 1907 she published a list of 222 variable stars, many of which she discovered. During her work she discovered 59 gaseous nebula, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae.

At the time, Fleming was the foremost women astronomer in America. In 1906, she became the first American woman (and the sixth woman overall) to be made a honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Other honors she received include the Guadalupe Almendaro medal, given by the Astronomical Society of Mexico, for the discovery of new stars and she was made an honorary fellow in astronomy by Wellesly College. She also has a crater on the moon jointly named for her and Alexander Fleming.

She died of pneumonia on May 21, 1911 at the age of 54.

References:

Yount, Lisa; "Fleming, Williamina Paton Stevens" in A to Z of Women in Math and Science; Infobase Publishing; 2008

H. H. M.; Obituary in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(1912)72:261-264

Williamina Fleming Wikipedia entry

Cecilia Payne-Gaboschkin

2011-05-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

Cecilia Helena Payne was born on May 10, 1900 in Wendover, England. Her father (who died when she was 4) was a gifted musician and a London barrister. She attended St. Paul's Girls School and won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge to study natural sciences. Her interest in astronomy was sparked by attending a lecture by Sir Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition which confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Realizing that there would be no career for her in England other than teaching, she moved to America in 1922.

In America she worked for Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory. Shapley persuaded her to write a doctoral thesis, even though there was no Ph.D. program at Harvard at the time. In her thesis Stellar Atmospheres (1925) using Harvard's library of stellar spectrums she established that small elements (hydrogen and helium) composed 99% of the chemical composition of stars, earning her the first Ph.D. given at Harvard for work done at the Harvard Observatory. At the time it was believed that stars were composed of the same elements as the Earth, with heavier elements making up the majority and her discovery was thought incorrect. Later she was found to be right, but she had given up the study of stellar spectroscopy.

She became a United States citizen in 1931 and in 1933, on a tour of Europe she met Sergei Gaboschkin, a Russian born astronomer. He returned to the United States with her and they were married in 1934. Because she was a woman, Payne-Gaboschkin was often passed over for promotion and did not become a professor until 1956, at the time the first woman to advance to professorship at Harvard. She served as the head of the Harvard Astronomy Department from 1956-1960 and retired in 1966.

Honors won by Payne-Gaboschkin include the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, Membership in the Royal Astronomical Society, and many honorary degrees.

She died on December 7, 1979.

References:

Gingerich, Owen; "Cecilia Payne-Gaboschkin"; Royal Astronomy Society Quarterly Journal (1982)23:450-451

Smith, Eslke V.P.; "Cecilia Payne-Gaboschkin"; Physics Today (1980)33:64-65

Cecilia Payne-Gaboschkin Wikipedia Entry

Lawson Tait

2011-05-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Robert Lawson Tait was born on May 1, 1845 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the only surviving son of Archibald Campbell Tait a guild brother of Heriot's Hospital, a free school for orphans, in to which Tait was admitted when he was seven. A distinguished scholar, he won a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh and went through the curriculum of arts and then medicine, but did not graduate. In school Tait rebelled against the didactic style of his professors, spending time to learn to use the microscope, which was not often used at the time. He was a believer in the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, a stance that won him many critics.

In 1867, after passing his medical exams, he took a position as house surgeon at Wakefield Hospital. In 1870 he moved to Birmingham, England, taking his professional quarters with Dr. Bell Fletcher. In 1871 he was appointed lecturer on physiology and general biology at the Midland Institute, where he taught the theories of Darwin. In his first paper, in 1872 he reported his success performing ovariectomy, an operation that at the time was 90% fatal, losing only one of nine patients. In Birmingham he worked to found a women's hospital, which was established and where he served for twenty two years.

Tait wrote books on the diseases of women, winning the Hastings Gold Medal from the British Medical Association for his essay Diseases of the Ovaries, and he was the first to preform a salpingectomy (removal of the fallopian tubes) making ectopic pregnancy survivable. He also was an abdominal surgeon, being the first to remove an appendix and a gallbladder. Tait believed in asepsis, rather than antisepsis. He worked in perfectly clean conditions, rather than disinfecting with carbolic acid solution antisepsis, which became the common practice. Throughout his career he was opposed by conservative critics that disagreed with his beliefs on evolution and women's surgery. Tait was also a opponent of the practice of vivisection used in medical research.

In addition to his medical persuits, Tait also was involved in politics, serving on the Birmingham town council and writing for the journal of his political party. He also supported the arts as a part owner of a theater. In 1886 he served as president of the British Gynecological Society and in 1888 he was appointed professor of gyencology at Queens College. Honors won by Tait include the Cullen and Liston Memorial Prize given by the Edinburgh College of Physicians and honorary degrees.

Tait was mostly an invalid, for the last five years of his life, suffering from chronic nephritis. On June 13, 1899 he died of renal complications.

References:

Leyland, John; "Lawson Tate" in Contemporary Medical Men and Their Profesional Work; Provincial Medical Journal, 1888

Reed, Carles A. L.; "Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Lawson Tate"; Transactions of the American Association of Obsetricans and Gynecologists for the Year 1900; Volume 12 (1900)

Lawson Tate Wikipedia Entry

Ernest Starling

2011-04-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ernest Henry Starling was born on April 17, 1866 in London, England. His father, M. H. Starling, was a Clerk to the Crown in Bombay, India. His five children, of which Starling was the oldest, were brought up in London by their mother. He was educated at Kings College School and entered Guy's Hospital Medical School at the age of 16. Starling was a brilliant student, winning two thirds of the awards that were availible to him, enough to earn him a free studenship at Guy's and enough in scholarships to maintain himself. He graduated M.B. in 1889 and M.D. in 1890.

While at Guy's, Starling studied physiology under Leonard Woolridge, who acted as a mentor to him. Woolridge died in 1889 leaving a young widow, whom Starling married in 1891, and who became a supporting companion in all of Starling's efforts. At the time Germany was the world leader in the study of physiology and Starling made trips there to study under Wilhelm Kuhne. In addition to his work overseas, and at Guy's limited laboratory facilities, Starling was invited to work at University College, where he met William Bayless, who became a frequent collaborator.

Starling researched many areas of physiology, but he is best known for the Franck-Starling Law of the Heart, or simply Starling's Law. The law states that the stroke volume of the heart increases in response to an increase in the volume of the blood filling the heart. When a greater volume of blood fills the heart the muscle walls of the heart are streched. In response to this stretch the muscle walls contract with a greater force, forceing more blood out of the heart. Staring is also responsible for coining the term hormone, which he based on the Greek word for impetus. Also Starling, with Bayliss, first described the peristalsis of the digestive system.

Honors won by Starling include, election to the Royal Society (1899), The Royal Medal (1913), and the Baly Medal (1907). Although he had spent much time in Germany his opinion of the German Nation changed with the outbreak of the First World War, during which he served as a director of research to study defensive measures against gas warfare. By 1920 Starling's health began to decline, suffering from malaria, aquired on a trip to India. In 1927 Starling took a warm water cruise, in an effort to improve his health. He died, probably on April 20, 1927, as his ship aproached Kingston, Jamaca.

References:

O'Connor, W. J.; British Physiologists 1885-1914: A Biographical Dictionary; Manchester University Press ND; 1991

Fye, W. Bruce; "Erenest Henry Starling"; Clinical Cardiology (2006)29:181-182

Ernest Starling Wikipedia Entry

Bernardo Houssay

2011-04-10T11:49:00.001-07:00

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 10, 1887, one of eight children of Dr. Alberto and Clara Houssay, who had emigrated to Argentina from France. His father was a barrister. His early education was at a private school, the Colegio Britanico. He entered pharmacy school at the University of Buenos Aires at the age of 14, graduating in 1904. He continued into medical school, graduating in 1907. After graduating he took a position in the physiology department and completed his thesis on pituitary extracts, which won a university prize.

In 1910 he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the university's School of Veterinary Medicine. During this time he continued his hospital practice, becoming the Chief Physician at Alvear Hospital in 1913. In 1915 he took charge of the Laboratory of Experimental Pathology at the National Public Health Laboratory in Buenos Aires. In 1919 he became the chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1943 he was removed from his position by the Peronist Argentine government for expressing his opinion that Argentina should be more democratic. Although he recieved many invitations from overseas he remained in Argentina and continued his research, setting up the privately funded Instituto de Biologia y Medicina Experimental. In 1955 he was restored to his university position when a new government took power.

Although Houssay researched many aspects of physiology, his primary research was endocrine glands. Endocrine glands are a glands that secrete hormones directly into the blood without a duct. Endocrine glands include the pitutary gland, the pancreas, ovaries, testes, thyroid, and the adrenal glands. His studies of the anterior pituitary gland led him to discover the relationship between its hormones and carbohydrate metabolism.

In 1947 he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in Medicine, which he shared with Carl and Gerty Cori, for "his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary and the metabolism of sugar". Other honors won by Houssay include twenty five honorary degrees and membership in the Argentine National Academy of Medicine, the Academy of Letters, the National Academy of Sciences of Buenos Aires and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

He died on September 21, 1971.

References:

Parker, William Belmont; Argentines of Today, Hispanic Society of America, 1920

Bernardo Houssay Wikipedia Entry

Bernardo Houssay Nobel Biography

Katherine Esau

2011-04-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

Katherine Esau, the youngest of her parent's four children, was born on April 3, 1898 in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire, which is now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Her family were descendants of German Mennonites who had emigrated to Ukraine. Her father was a mechanical engineer and the city engineer of Yekaterinoslav. In 1918 her family fled to Germany to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Esau learned to read and write at home, before beginning school. When she was 11 she entered the gymnasium, which she graduated from in 1916, and before leaving Russia, Esau had completed one year at Moscow's Golitsin Women's College of Agriculture. In Berlin she continued her education at the Agricultural College of Berlin. From Berlin, Esau went to a estate in northern Germany, where she worked at a wheat seed breading station. In 1922 Esau's family emigrated to the United States, settling in Reedly, California, where there was a large Mennonite community. Esau took a job in Oxnard, California working for the Sloan Seed Company. Sloan Seed went bankrupt a year later and Esau took a job with the Spreckles Sugar Company in Spreckles, California, working on a cure for curly top, a viral disease of sugar beets. While working in Spreckles, Essau was visited by Wilfed Robbins, the Chairman of the Botoany school at University of California at Davis. Impressed with her work, he offered her a graduate assistantship. Esau took the offer and graduated with a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California at Berkeley (at that time U.C. Davis did not have a Ph.D. in Botany). After graduation Esau remained at Davis, first as an instructor and then as a professor of botany. She remained at Davis until 1963, going to U.C. Santa Barbara, where she used the electron microscope for research into plant anatomy. Esau's research involved using the electron microscope to study the development and structure of the phloem of plants. In plants there are two major types of vascular tissues, the phloem and the xylem. Plants use the phloem to transport glucose and other nutrients and use the xylem to transport water. Esau's publications included the textbook Plant Anatomy (1953), which had a great impact on the study of botany. Awards won by Esau include the National Medal of Science, awarded her in 1989, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and honorary degrees from Mills College and the University of California. Esau died on June 4 1997. References: Everet, Ray; "Katherine Esau, April 3 1898-June 4, 1997" at nap.edu Grinstein, Louise S., Biermann, Carol A., and Rose, Rose K.; Women in the Biological Sciences: a Bibliographic Sourcebook; Greenwood Publishing Group; 1997 "Remembering Katherine Esau"; U.C. Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter Fall 1997

John van Vleck

2011-03-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

John Hasbrouck van Vleck was born on March 13, 1899 in Middletown, Connecticut. Both his father and grandfather were university professors. Van Vleck, an only child, moved with his parents to Wisconsin when he was seven when his father became a professor at the University of Wisconsin. He was educated in the Madison, Wisconsin public schools and went on to the University of Wisconsin, where he played in the band. His undergraduate education included courses on railroads and French literature, in addition to physics. Although not an athlete, he was a fan of American football, remembering the scores of games years after they had been played. He graduated in 1920 with a degree in physics. He entered the graduate program at Harvard University and graduated with a Ph.D. in 1922 completing a thesis on the binding energy of a helium atom.

After his doctorate he stayed at Harvard for a year teaching, before taking a job at the University of Minnesota, where he taught graduate physics courses from 1923-1928 He returned to teach at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin from 1928-1934 and he taught at Harvard from 1934-1969. During World War II he worked on radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and participated in the Manhattan Project as part of a committee, with J. Robert Oppenheimer, that studied the feasibility of and designed the first atomic bombs. He also served on the Los Alamos Review Committee, which designed the firing mechanism for "Little Boy", the first atomic bomb used on Hiroshima, Japan.

Van Vleck's early research delt with diamagnetic and paramagnetic materials, and how their behavior could be understood when the new (at the time) field of quantum mechanics was applied. Paramagnetic materials, when exposed to an external magnetic field, are attracted to it, diamagnetic materials are slightly repelled. Neither of the materials retain a magnetic field when the external field is removed. The reason for these behaviors is the electron structures of the different materials, paramagnetic materials have unpaired electrons and diamagnetic do not. Van Vleck also worked on crystal field theory, a branch of chemistry that has to do with the complexes formed by transition metals. He showed that ligands (the atoms or groups of atoms that bond to transition metals) form covalent bonds, not just ionic bonds, with the central metal atom.

In 1977 van Vleck, along with Philip Anderson and Sir Nevil Mott, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems". Other awards won by van Vleck include the National Medal of Science in 1966 and the Lorentz Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974.

Van Vleck retired in 1969 and died in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home on October, 27 1980.

References:

Anderson, P.W.; "John Hasbrouk Van Vleck"; in Biographical Memoirs Vol. 56; National Academy Press; 1987

Carey, Charles W.; American Scientists; Infobase Publishing; 2006

John H. Van Vleck Nobel Autobiography

John Hasbrouck Van Veck Wikipedia Entry

Joseph von Fraunhofer

2011-03-06T13:40:00.000-08:00

Joseph von Fraunhofer was born on March 6, 1887 in Straubing, Bavaria. He was the youngest of eleven children of a poor glazier. As soon as he was of age, he began an apprenticeship under his father. His mother died when he was ten and his father when he was eleven, leaving him an orphan. Leaving his home he became the apprentice of Philipp Anton Weichelsberger, the court mirror and glass maker. Weicheslberger was a harsh master and did not allow young Fraunhofer time to study and read.

In 1801 the building that Fraunhofer and Weicheslberger were working in collapsed and both were rescued alive. The future king, Maximilliam Joseph IV was among the rescuers and helped the young man out giving him some money and appointing Joseph von Utzschneider to oversee his apprenticeship, allowing Fraunhofer books and study time. Fraunhofer tired of his apprenticeship and after writing Utzschnider he was offered a position at the Optical Institute at Benediktbeuern, this was a Benedictine monastery that had been converted into a research institute. Fraunhofer worked there, inventing ways to make the world's finest optical glass, surpassing the glass made in England. In 1818 he became the director of the institute.

In 1814 Franhofer invented the spectroscope allowing him to observe the spectral lines of the sun. Fraunhofer measured 574 dark lines in the sun's spectrum. Although these lines had been discovered earlier by William Hyde Wallaston, they are now known as Fraunhofer lines. Fraunhofer used his spectroscope to examine the emission spectrum of many elements and saw that they each had a unique spectrum. Fraunhofer also invented the diffraction grating, a series of thin lines on a lens, that causes a light source to be dispersed into its spectrum.

The dark lines Fraunhofer observed in the sun's spectrum are caused by the light absorbed by the outer layer of the sun. The chemical elements in the outer, cooler layer of the sun absorb certain wavelengths producing these dark lines in the sun's spectrum. Different stars, with different chemical elements in their atmospheres have different dark lines in their spectrums. The spectrum of the moon and the other planets in our solar system have similar dark lines to the sun's spectrum, because the light coming from them is the light of the sun reflected off of them.

Honors won by Fraunhofer include membership in the Bavarian Academy of Science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen. He is considered the founder of the German optical industry. He was knighted in 1824.

He died of tuberculosis on June 7, 1826.

References:

Kennelly, Colan; "Joseph Von Fraunhofer"; at.u.arizona.edu

"Joseph von Fraunhofer" at pioneers in optics (micro.magnet.fsu.edu)

Joseph von Fraunhofer Wikipedia Entry

Charles Best

2011-02-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

Charles Herbert Best was born on February 27, 1899 in West Pembroke, Maine. He was the only son of Luella Fisher and Dr. Herbert Best, who were Canadians from Nova Scotia. His father was a country doctor and restless with his country practice moved twice during Best's youth. Best went through public and high school in Pembroke, Maine. After a year at Harbord Collegiate, making up studies in French and Canadian history, he entered the University of Toronto in 1916. He joined the Canadian Army in 1918, after first being rejected because of a heart murmur. He was discharged in 1919, having not seen combat, and returned to the University of Toronto.

In 1921 Best, having just completed a bachelors with honors in physiology and biochemistry was assigned, along with his friend Clark Noble, to work as an assistant to Frederick Banting who wanted to conduct an experiment that involved blocking the pancreatic ducts of dogs. Blocking the pancreatic duct, through which pancreatic, digestive juices drain into the small intestine, has the effect of destroying most of the pancreas, leaving only the cells of the islets of Langerhans, specialized cells within the pancreas. Banting wanted to isolate these cells in order to look for a hormone that would relieve diabetes. Diabetes is a disease caused by the lack of the hormone insulin. Insulin causes cells to uptake sugar out of the blood stream, and without it blood glucose levels can rise to dangerous levels which cause damage.

Banting was only given limited laboratory space and could only accommodate one of his assistants, and there is an apocryphal story about Best and Noble flipping a coin to determine who would be Banting's assistant. Best assisted Banting in operating on dogs to remove their pancreata and then treating them with extracts they had obtained from isolated islet of Langerhans cells, which they called "Isletin". They had a great deal of trouble because their laboratory space, during the hot summer, was not very clean and many of the dogs died of infection. It was not until August that they were able to lower the blood sugar of a experimental dog with injections of isletin, whereas injections of liver and spleen extracts had no affect. By December, 1921 Banting and Best were able to obtain purified insulin by extracting beef pancreas with acidic alcohol. In 1923 Banting and John Macleod, who had arranged for the laboratory space, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of insulin". Best was not included because he had not yet finished his doctorate. Banting was upset by Best's exclusion from the prize and shared his prize money with him.

Best succeeded Macleod as professor of physiology at the University of Toronto in 1929 and during World War II he was involved with a program that obtained and used dried human serum. During his later years he served as an advisor for the medical research program of the World Health Organization. Honors awarded to Best include election to the Royal Society in Britian and the Royal Society of Canada, as well as 18 honorary degrees from universities around the world.

Best died on March 31, 1978.

References:

Best, Henry B. M.; Margaret and Charley: The Personal Story of Dr. Charles Best, the Co-Discoverer of Insulin; Dundurn Press Ltd.; 2003

Charles Herbert Best Wikipedia Entry

Rene Dubos

2011-02-20T18:48:00.000-08:00

Rene Jules Debos was born on February 20, 1901 in Saint-Brice-sous-Foret, a villiage north of Paris, France. He spent his youth in the village of Henonville, a village of about 450 on the border of Ile-de-France and Picardy. His father, Georges Alexandre Dubos, was a butcher and his parents ran butcher shops in both villages. When he was eight years old he suffered from rheumatic fever, which left him with a damaged heart. His reading of the novels of Jules Verne sparked his interest in science.

He attended high school and the National Institute of Agronomy in Paris, and then briefly served in the French Army, until he was discharged due to his heart condition. He emigrated to America in 1924 and in 1927 he obtained his doctorate from Rutgers University. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1938. Aside from the years 1942 through 1944 when he was a professor of tropical medicine at Harvard University, he spent his in entire scientific career at Rockefeller University.

Dubos' research dealt with microbiology and looking for products of soil bacteria that prevent the growth of pathogenic bacteria. This research culminated in the isolation of Bacillus brevis a soil bacteria that produces a substance he named tyrothricin which contains two substances he named gramicidin and tyrocidine. These antibiotics prevent protein synthesis in gram-positive bacterial, killing them. They have no effect on gram-negative bacterial. This was the first time an antibiotic was isolated from a microorganism. This discovery stimulated Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to research Alexander Flemming's penicillin and Selman Waksmen, Dubos' former teacher, to research what would be streptomycin.

In his later years Dubos wrote several books exploring the interplay of environmental forces on the physical, mental, and spiritual development of mankind and he is responsible for coining the phrase "think globally, act locally". The author of over twenty books, he won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1969 for his book "So Human an Animal". His other honors include election to the National Academy of Science in 1941, the Trudeau Medal from the National Tuberculosis Association in 1951 and he was awarded more than 20 honorary degrees.

He died, on his 81st birthday, February 20, 1982.

References:

Moberg, Carol L.; Rene Dubos, Rene Dubos, Friend of the Good Earth: Microbiologist, Medical Scientist, Environmentalist
; ASM Press (2005)

Montgomerey, Paul L.; "Rene Dubos, Scientist and Writer, Dead"; New York Times; February 21, 1982

"The Life of Rene Dubos: Choosing to be Human" from an exibition at the Rita an Frits Markus Library at library.rockafeller.edu

Rene Dubos Wikipedia Entry

C. T. R. Wilson

2011-02-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

Charles Thompson Rees Wilson was born of February 14, 1869 in Glencorse a parish near Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a sheep farmer who died in 1873, when Wilson was 4. His mother moved the family to Manchester, where with the help of an older brother from his father's previous marriage he was educated at a private school and then Owen's College, which is now the University of Manchester. At Owen's college he studied biology, making a study of beetles and hoping to become a medical student. Though he failed a scholarship test for Christ College, Cambridge he was awarded a scholarship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he became interested in the physical sciences, studying chemistry and physics.

In 1894 he was studying cloud formations at Ben Nevis, an observatory on the highest point in Scotland and he observed the coronas, the rings of color that form around the sun when it shines through clouds, and "glories", colored rings surrounding shadows cast upon clouds. Interested in this phenomena, he returned to Sidney Sussex and attempted to reproduce them in the laboratory, by rapidly expanding moist, dust free air. As the air expands the temperature drops and when it reaches the dew point the water vapor in the air condenses. Wilson noticed that water droplets formed in the air and he suspected that this was caused by water condensating on ionic nuclei. This prediction was verified when Wilson's "cloud chamber" was exposed to the newly discovered x-rays. The massive increase in water droplets after x-ray exposure coincided with the observation that air was made conductive by x-rays, which produced ions in the air.

This was the birth of the cloud chamber, a device which allows for the photographic recording of the paths of ionizing, nuclear particles. When ionizing nuclear particles fly through the air they colide with air molecules, producing ions. These ions can be observed in the cloud chamber because of the water that condenses on them. The water droplets form paths that can be observed and photographed. Cloud chambers have been used to record a number of nuclear phenomena. Wilson used his cloud chamber and in 1911 was the first person to observe and record the paths of alpha and beta particles and electrons.

For his invention of the cloud chamber Wilson shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics with Aurthur Compton. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1900. Other honors received by Wilson include the Copley Medal in 1935 and the Franklin Medal in 1929. After his retirement he moved to Edinburgh and then moved to the village of Carclops, close to this birthplace.

He died, surrounded by his family, on November 15, 1959.

References:

"Profile: C.T.R. Wilson" The New Scientist; (1959)5:348-349

C.T.R. Wilson Nobel Biography

Charles Thompson Rees Wilson Wikipedia Entry

William P. Murphy

2011-02-07T11:56:00.001-08:00

William Parry Murphy was born on February 6, 1892 in Stoughton, Wisconsin. His father, Thomas Francis Murphy, was a congregational minister with pastorates in Wisconsin and Oregon. Murphy was educated in public schools in Oregon and Wisconsin and the University of Oregon where he took an A.B. degree in 1914. He spent the next two years as a teacher in the public schools in Oregon teaching physics and mathematics. After the short stint teaching he decided to attend medical school. He started in medical school at the University of Oregon medical school in Portland, where he also acted as a laboratory assistant in the department of anatomy, for one year. He then attended a summer seminar at the Rush Medical School in Chicago. He was then awarded the William Stanislaus Murphy Fellowship to Harvard University Medical School, which he retained for three years, graduating with his M.D. in 1922.

He spent two years as a house officer at the Rhode Island hospital and then he was assistant resident physician at the Peter Brent Brigham Hospital. He held this position for 18 months and then was appointed Junior Associate in Medicine. In 1924 he was appointed Assistant in Medicine at Harvard University and from 1928 to 1935 he was was Instructor in Medicine there. From 1935 to 1958 he was Lecturer in Medicine and in 1958 was made Senior Associate. He was Emeritus Lecturer thereafter.

From 1923 his research dealt with diabetes mellitus and blood diseases. It is his work on pernicious anemia (a form of the disease characterized by a lower than normal amount of red blood cells) that he is remembered for. In 1924, working with George Minot, he bled dogs to make them anemic. He then fed them various substances to see if any would help with the dogs anemia. He found that a diet of liver relieved the anemia. Later he was able to isolate vitamin B12 as the agent that relieved the anemia.

Pernicious anemia is a form of anemia characterized by the inhibition of DNA synthesis in red blood cell progenitors, that results in the formation of large, fragile, megoblastic erythrocytes. The cause of the disease can be a dietary insufficiency of vitamin B12 or an autoimmune reaction against intrinsic factor, a protein secreted by parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Intrinsic factor is responsible for the absorption of vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 cannot be synthesized by the body and thus must be absorbed from the diet and normally the body stores 3 to 5 years worth of the vitamin in the liver. When the absorption process is blocked by an autoimmune reaction against intrinsic factor or the parietal cells pernicious anemia results. If the body cannot absorb B12 trough normal means the disease can be cured by intravenous injection of the vitamin otherwise oral B12 can be used.

For their work discovering the cure for pernicious anemia Murphy and Minot were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1934, sharing it with George H. Whipple who first suggested raw liver as a treatment for pernicious anemia. Murphy was also awarded the Order of White by the country of Finland, the Cameron Prize from the faculty of the University of Edinburgh and the Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Humane Society.

He died on October 9, 1987.

References:

Spicoll; "William P. Murphy: Condon's Other Nobel Prize Winner"; on the Pauling Blog, paulingblog.wordpress.com

William P. Murphy Nobel Biography

William P. Murphy Wikipedia Entry

G. Evelyn Hutchinson

2011-01-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

George Evelyn Hutchinson was born in Cambridge, England on January 30 1903. His father was a professor of mineralogy at Pembroke College, Cambridge University and his mother was a descendant of minor Italian nobility. As a child he kept red water mites in an aquarium and learned that different animals lived in different waters. He also collected butterflies, but tired of this pursuit by age 13. His first publication, at age 15, was a note on grasshoppers, swimming in a pond near Cambridge.

He was educated at Gresham's School, in Holt and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After earning a double first, the only degree he ever earned, Hutchinson took a Rockefeller Fellowship to the Naples Seaside Laboratories. There he worked on studying cephalopod hormones, but the work did not progress well because the octopi were scarce and good to eat. While at Naples he answered an ad for a lectureship in zoology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and was accepted, taking it against his parents advice because it was under H. B. Fantham, who had a reputation of being difficult. He was dismissed from his duties by Fantham for incompetent teaching, and he made use of his time studying the life in and chemistry of the dry lakes or pans of South Africa with his first wife Grace Pickford. The University of Witwatersrand now posses a Hutchinson Hall, dedicated to the study of Biology.

He applied for a fellowship at Yale University, studying embryology under Ross Granville Harrison after the deadline had passed, applying by Trans-Atlantic cable. Hutchinson was granted the fellowship just at the time a lectureship in zoology unexpectedly opened up, allowing him to teach. In 1932 Hutchinson went to India with geologist Helmutt de Terra and studied the chemistry and biology of the high altitude lakes around Ladakh. Hutchinson was valuable on the expedition because he was the only member that knew how to properly skin mammals, a skill he had learned as a boy. While in India in addition to studying ecology he also studied the culture and religion and published a book on the subject, The Clear Mirror, in 1936. Returning from India, Hutchinson began a stream of teaching, research, and writing that lasted throughout his career at Yale.

For his work he his considered the father of limnology, the study of inland bodies of water incorporating chemical, biological, physical and geological aspects. He is the first person to use radioactive phosphorus to study the cycle of this important element in natural waters and thus is the founder of the field of radioecology. Many ideas of modern ecology can be traced back to the writings of Hutchinson. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949 and the National Academy of Science in 1950. He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 1986 and the National Medal of Science, posthumously in 1991. At least 22 species of organisms are named after him. The American Society of Limnology and Oceanography named an award after him, the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award, given each year to the mid-career scientist for outstanding contributions to the society's fields.

After his retirement from Yale he spent most of his time in England and he died on May 17, 1991.

References:

Slobodkin, Lawrence A and Slack, Nancy G.; "George Evelyn Hutchinson: 20th Century Ecologist"; Endeavour(1999) Vol. 23 No. 1 at limnology.org

"G. Evelyn Hutchinson a.k.a. the Father of Modern Limnology and a Modern Darwin"; from the Soil and Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax

G. Evelyn Hutchinson Wikipedia Entry

Gertrude B. Elion

2011-01-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

Gertrude Belle Elion was born on January 23, 1918 in New York City the daughter of immigrant parents. She grew up in New York City and the Bronx, which at that time was a still a suburb of New York with many open lots for children to play in. By her own account she was a child with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and she did well in all her classes. Her interest in science was sparked by the death of her grandfather, who died of cancer when she was 15. When she went to Hunter College in 1933, she chose to study science and in particular chemistry.

After graduating from Hunter College she had trouble finding work, but was eventually able to able to find work teaching and as a laboratory assistant. In 1939 she entered graduate school at New York University. The only woman in her class, she continued her studies, taking work as a substitute secondary teacher, graduating with a masters in chemistry in 1941. After finishing her masters she took a job working in the quality department of a food company. She soon bored of this work and looked for a job doing research. The most interesting position she found was working in George H. Hitchings' laboratory at Burroughs Wellcome. Hitchings was working on antagonists to nucleic acid analogs and she worked for him as an organic chemist, synthesizing new compounds.

Nucleotide and nucleoside analogs are compounds that resemble nucleic acids. These compounds can be used to treat patients with viral diseases, cancer and can also be used as immunosuppresent drugs used for organ transplants. Viruses, replicating cancer and immune cells can be inhibited if their ability to reproduce DNA is inhibited. These compounds inhibit the synthesis of new DNA, by substituting a compound that resembles a nucleic acid or nucleoside but which blocks further synthesis. For their work in developing these compounds Elion and Hitchings were awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Shortly after taking the position in Hitchings laboratory, Elion began taking classes to earn her Ph.D. After a year of taking classes she was told that she would have to work on her Ph.D. full time. Given the choice she continued her work for Hitchings. She worked for Burroughs Wellome until 1983 when she retired and assumed the status of scientist emeritus. Other awards won by Elion include honorary doctorates from the Polytechnic University of New York and Harvard University, The National Medal of Science, and induction into the Inventors Hall of Fame, of which she was the first woman to be inducted. She was elected into the National Academy of Science in 1990 and to the National Institute of Medicine in 1991.

While on her daily walk on February 21, 1999 she collapsed. She was admited to the hospital and passed away at midnight at the age of 81.

References:

Avery, Mary Ellen; "Gertrude B. Elion" in Biographical Memiors; National Academy Press; 2000

Gertrude B. Elion Nobel Autobiography

Gertrute B. Elion Wikipedia Entry

August Weismann

2011-01-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

Friedrich Leopold August Weismann was born on January 17, 1834 in Frankurt, Germany. His father was a high school teacher and graduate in ancient languages and theology. His early education took place in Frankfurt and at 18 he left to go to the University of Gottingen where he studied medicine, graduating in 1856. After graduation he took a job in the city clinic in Rostock and successfully submitted two papers, one on the synthesis of hippuric acid in herbivores and one on the salt content of the Baltic Sea. He served as the physician of the Archduke of Austria from 1860 to 1862.

He studied zoology at the University of Giessen under Rudolf Leuckart and in 1863 he became privadozent in comparative anatomy at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg in Breisgau. He was made extraordinary professor in 1866 and was full professor from 1873 to 1912. He was the first chair in zoology and served as director of the zoological institute. Due to problems with his eyesight there were long periods in which he was unable to do microscope work and his reading and writing was done with the help of others.

Weismann's biological studies led him to theorize that in multicellular organisms there were two type of cells, germ cells and soma cells. Germ cells, such as sperm or ova, are the carriers of biological information, the means by which traits of parent cells were transferred to daughter cells. Somatic cells were the offspring of germ cells and carried out the biological functions of the organism. These somatic cells did not transfer information to future generations. Before the discovery that chromosomes are the means that cells use to transfer genetic information, Weismann's germ cell theory was an important stepping stone, holding that biological traits come from within the organism and do not arise from an external mechanism.

For his work Weismann was awarded the Linnean Society of London's Darwin-Wallace medal in 1908. Weismann died on November 15, 1914.

References:

"August Weisman" in Report of the National Academy of Sciences; U. S. Government Printing Offices; 1914

August Weisman Wikipedia entry

Simon Marius

2011-01-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

Simon Marius (latinized from the German Simon Mayr) was born in Gunzenhausen, Germany on January 10, 1573. His father was the mayor of Gunzenhausen in 1576. From 1586 to 1601 he studied at Markgraftschaft's Lutheran academy in Heilsbronn. During this time he became interested in astronomy and his observations began in 1594.

In 1596 he published an account of the comet of that year and in 1599 he published a set of astronomical tables. On the strength of these publications he was appointed mathematician of the Markgraftschaft of Ansbach. In this capacity he published astronomical predictions each year until his death. Soon upon his appointment he traveled to Prague to study under Tycho Brache, unfortunately Brache died soon after. He then went to Padua to study at the university there.

He returned to Ansbach in 1605 and married Felicitas Lauer, the daughter of his publisher. In 1609 he published the first German translation of Euclid's Elements. In 1608 he learned from an artillery officer about spyglasses. Marius attempted to reproduce the device with the officer, but it was not until 1609 that he obtained a telescope that was good enough to be used for astronomical observations. In December, 1609 Marius turned his telescope to Jupiter, where he observed 4 satellites orbiting the large planet. Because he was the first to publish Galileo Galilei is usually given credit for discovering these satellites, but his observation of them is dated January 1610, after that of Marius' claim (which Galileo would dispute). It is Marius who is given the credit for naming these four satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) which he named after four human consorts of the Roman god Jupiter. Regardless of who was first to observe them, it was Marius who first published tables of their motions.

At the time of their observation the satellites of Jupiter, moons that orbited a planet other than Earth, went against the model of the solar system that was prevalent at the time, the Earth centered model put forth by Aristotle. Because these observations ran counter to that model many believed that they were the result of defects in the telescopes used to observe them. Today we know that Jupiter has 63 moons, the most of any planet in our solar system.

Marius also observed the Andromeda nebula, which had been observed by Arab astronomers of the Middle Ages, and he also observed sunspots. His observations of stars led him to believe that they were not as distant as would be required by Copernican model of the universe, where all the planets, including Earth, orbit the sun. Marius believed in the Tychonic system, where the planets orbit the sun but the sun orbits the Earth. We now know that the Copernican model is correct. A crater on the moon is named after Marius.

Marius died on December 24, 1624 after a brief illness.

References:

Burgess, Eric; By Jupiter: Odysseys to a Giant
; Columbia University Press, 1982

Simon Marius biography at The Galileo Project

Simon Marius Wikipedia Entry

Albert Abraham Michelson

2010-12-19T12:43:00.000-08:00

Albert Abraham Michelson was born on December 19, 1852 in Strenlo, Prussia (now Poland). His family moved two years later to Virginia City, Nevada where his father was a merchant. The family later moved to San Francisco, California, where Michelson first attended public school. He graduated in 1869 and President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the United States Naval Academy from which he graduated in 1873 and served for two years as an ensign on a cruise of the West Indies. After the cruise he he returned to the Naval Academy teaching chemistry and physics. In 1879 he was posted to the Naval Almanac Office. A year later he obtained a leave of absence so that he could go to Europe to continue his education where he visited the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the College de France and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

Michelson was fascinated with the speed of light. While at Annapolis he had repeated the Jean Bernard Leon Foucault's 1850 measurement, improving Foucault's rotating mirror system. After two years of studying in Europe he resigned from the Navy in 1881. In 1883 he took a position as a professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, OH. There he concentrated on developing an interferometer to use in his experiments.

In 1887 he performed, with Edward Morley, the experiment for which he is most famous. At the time it was believed that the earth (and everybody on it) was traveling through the aether, and electromagnetic waves (light) were affected by the movement of the aether. In order to test this effect Michelson and Morely used a light beam that was split in half and half was reflected in a right angle to the original beam. The light beams were then reflected back to the starting point where the interferometer was used to determine their velocities. The result was a null result and both light beams, traveling identical distances had both arrived back at the starting point at the same time, thus had equal velocities. This result proved that there was no aether and light could propagate at the same speed in any direction. For this work Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907, becoming the first American to win the prize.

In 1889 Michelson moved to Clark University in Worcester, MA and in 1892 he was appointed professor of physics at the new University of Chicago. He continued his attempts to measure the speed of light and developed a way to use interferometry to determine the diameter of stars. In addition to the Nobel he has also won the Copley medal, the Henry Draper Medal and a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. For his work he was awarded several honorary degrees and a crater on the moon is named after him

He died on May 9, 1931.

References:

Law, Fredrick Houk; Modern Great Americans: Short Biographies of 20 Great Americans of Modern Times Who Won Wide Recognition for Achievements in Various Types of Activity; Ayer Publishing, 1969

Albert A. Michelson, Nobel Biography

Albert Abraham Michelson Wikipedia Entry

William Henry

2010-12-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

William Henry was born in Manchester, England on December 12, 1775. He was the son of Thomas Henry an apothecary and a founder of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Henry's early education took place at the Manchester Academy and he was apprenticed to Thomas Percival, a physician. As a boy he suffered an injury, caused by a beam falling on him, which left his growth stunted and caused pain. Because of the injury Henry would later abandon medical practice and instead devote his time to laboratory research. Dr. Percival had poor eyesight and was prone to headaches so he had Henry read to him. After a five year apprenticeship Henry went to Edinburgh University, where he studied medicine. While at Edinburgh he also attended the chemistry lectures of Joseph Black. He attained his M.D. in 1807.

While studying medicine Henry was also doing chemistry research. At the time it was believed that all acids contain oxygen and Henry attempted to remove oxygen from muriatic (hydrochloric) acid by electrocution. He was of course unsuccessful. When in 1810 Humphrey Davy proved that muriatic acid contained only hydrogen and chloride, Henry supported him, publishing a paper with further evidence in 1812. In 1802 he published an experiment where he measured the amount of dissolved gas in a liquid at different temperatures he showed that as the temperature drops the amount of dissolved gas increases.

He is most famous for discovering that the amount of a gas dissolved in a liquid is proportional to the partial pressure of the gas above the liquid. This is known as Henry's law. An example of how this law applies can be seen in canned or bottled carbonated soda. Before the can or bottle is opened the gas over the liquid is almost all carbon dioxide and the liquid contains dissolved carbon dioxide. When the can or bottle is opened the carbon dioxide over the drink is released and bubbles of carbon dioxide appear in the drink. As the partial pressure above the liquid is lowered (when the can or bottle is opened and exposed to the air) the dissolved carbon dioxide in the drink comes out of solution, producing bubbles. If the bottle or can is left to go to equilibrium almost all of the carbon dioxide will leave the liquid, and the soda will go flat.

Henry won the Copley Medal in 1808 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1809. In 1801 he published "An Epitome of Chemistry", later renamed "The Elements of Experimental Chemistry", which went through eleven editions and was last published in 1829.

He died on September 2, 1836.

References:

"William Henry" in The Dictionary of National Biography; Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, Editors; Macmillian Compan; 1908

Thronber, Craig; "Thomas Henry, FRS and his son William Henry, MD, FRS, GS" at thronber.net

William Henry Wikipedia Entry

Carl Ferdinand Cori

2010-12-06T10:57:00.001-08:00

Carl Ferdinand Cori was born on December 5, 1896 in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary. There were university professors on both sides of his family; his maternal gradfather was theoretical physicist Ferdinand Lipich and father was a marine biologist. He moved with his family to Trieste when he was two, where his father was the director of the Marine Biological Station. Young Cori's interest in science was sparked by his father, who took him on expeditions to collect samples. Young Cori was also a practical joker, one time planting silk worms in his mother's parlor, timed so that the moths would escape their cocoons during a party his mother was throwing. His mother was mortified. After graduating from gymnasium, in 1914, Carl went to study medicine at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. During World War I he served as a lieutenant in the ski corps. and sanitary corps. on the Italian front. After the war he returned to the university where he finished his medical education and met his wife Gerty who was also a medical student.

After a year as an assistant in pharmacology at the University of Graz, he and his wife emigrated to America, where he took a position as a biochemist at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, New York. In 1928 the Coris became naturalized American citizens and in 1931 he was appointed professor of pharmacology in the medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. The Coris, Carl and Gerty, collaborated on their research, starting in their student days.

At first their research was on immunology, but they switched the topic of their research to study the fate of sugar in the human body. In 1936 they succeeded in isolating glucose-1-phosphate, a key intermediate in sugar metabolism. Once glucose enters the cell, phosphate is added to it enzymatically, forming glucose-1-phosphate. With the negatively charged phosphate group attached to it, glucose is then unable diffuse through the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane, keeping glucose sequestered within the cell, where it may be broken down to release energy. The Coris also studied how glucose can be reversibly stored for later use as glycogen and discovered the enzymes responsible. For their discovery of how glycogen is produced they were awarded half of the Nobel Prize of Physiology and Medicine in 1947.

Gerty Cori died in 1957 and Carl retired from Washington University in 1966. After retirement he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he worked on genetic research at Harvard University.

Cori died on October, 24, 1984.

References:

Cori, Carl F.; "The Call of Science"; Annual Review of Biochemistry (1969)38:1-21

Carl Ferdinand Cori Wikipedia Entry

Carl Cori Nobel Biography

Christian Andreas Doppler

2010-11-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

Christian Andreas Doppler was born on November, 29, 1803 in Salzburg, Austria. He was the son of a successful stonemason, but as he grew he was unable to work in his father's business due to his frailty and generally poor health. Doppler attended primary school in Salzburg and Secondary school in Linz. Unsure about the academic potential of their son, his parents consulted a mathematics professor who suggested that he study higher mathematics at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute. Doppler began his studies there in 1822. He excelled at mathematics and graduated in 1825. After graduation he returned to Salzburg, where he attended philosophy lectures at the Salzburg Lyceum and afterward studied higher mathematics, mechanics and astronomy at the University of Vienna.

At the end of his studies he was appointed assistant to mathematics professor A. Burg at Vienna University. He remained in this position for four years publishing papers on mathematics. At the age of 30 he began competing to find a permanent position. At that time open competitions were held to fill open professorships. Doppler competed for many positions and while he was waiting he supported himself by working as a bookkeeper for a cotton spinning factory. Despairing of not getting a position, Doppler sold his things in order to finance a trip to America, but before his final decision was made he was offered a position at the Technical Secondary School in Prague. Doppler was ambitious and wanted to do more than teach elementary mathematics. He applied to become a professor at the Polytechnic in Prague without success, until 1841 when he was appointed to the post.

Doppler's tenure at the Polytechnic was rocky and his students complained that his examinations were to difficult. He was reprimanded and forced to reexamine his students. In 1844 he was forced to give up teaching due to his poor health. He returned in 1846. Leaving his troubles in Prague behind he took a position as professor of mathematics, physics and mechanics at the Academy of Forests and Mines in Banska Stiavnica. As a result of the stormy revolutionary year 1848 Doppler sought refuge and went to Vienna, where he was appointed as the first director of the Institute of Physics at Vienna University.

Not all of Doppler's contemporaries considered him a brilliant mathematician, but he had an original way of looking at things that not all appreciated. For years Doppler attempted to become a member of the Bohemian Society, and despite good recommendations it was not until 1843 that he was elected in. In 1842 he presented a paper on the color of binary stars and how it is affected by their motion, to or away from the observer. Although the color changes of binary stars are not great enough to be significant, light is a wave and if a star emitting light is traveling toward the observer it will shorten the wavelength of light it is emitting moving it toward the red end of the visual spectrum. If the star is moving away from the observer the wavelengths grow longer, shifting the wavelength to the blue/violet end of the visible spectrum. These effects are called red shift and blue shift. This effect is most easily demonstrated with sound waves. A siren approaching the observer has a higher pitch than it would have if it were stationary with respect to the observer. As the siren passes the observer the pitch drops lower than it would have if it were stationary with respect to the observer. In 1845 Doppler performed an experiment with trumpeters on a railway car playing a single sustained note. As the railway approached and passed musicians recorded what notes they heard, demonstrating that the horn's pitch lowered as they passed the observer. This effect is called the Doppler effect.

Doppler died on March 17, 1853 in Venice, then a part of the Austrian Empire.

References:

O'Connor, JJ and Robertson, EF; "Christian Andreas Doppler"; MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive; University of St. Andrews

Maizlin, Z.V.; The Wonders of Radiology; Create Space; 2010

Christian Doppler Wikipedia Entry

Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatieff

2010-11-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatieff was born on November 21, 1867 in Moscow, Russia. Ipatieff spent his early years studying for a military career. At age 11, after two years of regular gymnasium, he enrolled at the Third Moscow Military Gymnasium. Although he excelled in math generally his grades were poor until he reached the sixth class at age fourteen. After graduation, at sixteen he went to the Alexander Military School in Moscow when he failed to be admitted to the Mikhail Artillery School in St. Petersberg. He worked hard to achieve grades that led his class and in 1886 he transferred to the Mikhail Artillery School. He graduated in 1887 and was commissioned a lieutenant, using a portion of the money given to him by the government and his father to set up a chemistry laboratory in his home.

He began teaching chemistry at the artillery academy and working toward a doctorate, which he obtained from St. Petersberg University in 1906. He began teaching at the university in 1906 as a lecturer and remained until 1916. During World War I he served as the director of the Commission for Preparation of Explosives and Chair of the Chemical Committee. Because he was uninterested in politics he was asked, after the revolution, to remain in charge and help convert the wartime chemical industry to a peacetime industry. In 1930, at the age of 64, taking his wife with him, he left the Soviet Union to go to a meeting in Berlin. He never returned. Initially he split his time between the United States and Berlin, but eventually settled in the United States.

Ipatieff's research interests were studying the effects of high pressures and catalysts on hydrocarbons. In 1927 he founded the High Pressure Institute, where he and his students studied the effect of inorganic molecules (catalysts) on organic compounds at high pressures and temperatures. To perform these studies Ipatieff developed a bomb shaped steel case that could withstand high pressures, called an Ipatieff bomb. Catalysts are compounds that when added to a chemical reaction lower the activation energy necessary for the reaction to happen, thus speed the reaction. Inorganic (non-carbon containing) compounds are often used as catalysts in organic (carbon containing) chemistry. One example of a catalytic reaction discovered by Ipatieff is the preparation of high-octane fuels by the catalytic conversion of paraffin. The high octane fuels that were produced were used by the British Air Force during World War II, and allowed British airplanes to go faster than German planes.

After moving to the United States Ipatieff obtained a lecturer position at Northwestern University and worked for the Universal Oil Products Company. Initially the Soviet Union tried to encourage Ipatieff to return, but he had no desire to return. Eventually he was denounced by the Soviet Union (and even by his own son, who was a chemistry teacher) and had his citizenship revoked. He was also expelled from the Russian Academy of Science. He became a U. S. citizen in 1937 and was elected the National Academy of Science in 1939. Throughout his time in the U.S. he remained active in his research, publishing almost 160 papers between 1933 and 1954, and with his name on more than 200 patents.

Ipatieff died on November 29, 1952.

References:

McDermott, Wm. F.; "Faster than Bullets"; The Rotarian (1951) Vol. 58 No. 1:29-31, 56

Schmerling, Lewis; "Vladimir Nikolaevich Ipatieff: 1867-1952"; in Biographical Memiors Vol. 57; National Academy Press; 1975

William Hewson

2010-11-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

William Hewson was born on November. 14, 1739 in Hexham, Northumberland, England. The son of a respected local surgeon also named William Hewson. As was the custom in those days he did not attend medical school, so after attending Hexham Grammar School, he was apprenticed to his father, and was also a pupil of Richard Lambert of Newcastle. In 1759 he went to London, where he lodged with John Hunter. While attending lectures on anatomy given by Hunter's older brother William, he studied at Guy's and St. Thomas hospitals. When in 1760 William Hunter went abroad with the army, Hewson continued the lectures for the other pupils.

Recognizing his extraordinary ability, when William Hunter returned he offered to take Hewson on as a partner teaching anatomy, if Hewson would go to Edinborough and study for a year, which Hewson did. He returned to London in the winter of 1762 and began lectureing with Hunter which provided him a steady income. The Hunter brothers both studied and taught anatomy, but in addition to studying human anatomy they also studied the anatomy of fishes, birds and animals, as did Hewson when he came under their influence. Hewson became interested in blood, lymph and lymphatic organs such as the thymus which which he was one of the first to study microscopically. In 1770 Hewson married Mary Stevenson, with whose mother Benjamin Franklin lodged with when he came to London in 1757. Franklin stayed in London until 1775 and became good friends with Mary, whom he called "Polly". Hewson dedicated one of the books that he wrote to Benjamin Franklin.

Hewson was the first to show that the lymphatic system was not part of the circulation and that nodes are stopping points along the lymphatic vessels. He also demonstrated that all parts of the body drain into the lymphatic system and not just the small intestine, by using a dye which he showed ran throughout the body of an animal test subject. The lymphatic system is part of the immune system through which fluid and white blood cells are transported to the heart, and because all parts of the body drain into the lymphatic system it serves as as place where foreign particles can be detected by white blood cells.

Hewson also investigated blood coagulation. He was the first to identify that fibrinogen, the protein that causes blood to coagulate, is found in the plasma. Before it was believed that the protein was a constituent of red blood cells. He believed that it was contact with air that caused blood to coagulate, but this was later disproved by John Hunter who showed that blood could coagulate in a vacuum. It was due to the observations of Hewson that later scientists were able to discover all of the factors of the coagulation cascade, a series of proteins that activate fibrinogen and cause blood to coagulate.

In late April of 1774 Hewson accidentally wounded himself while dissecting a corpse. Septicemia followed and he died on May, 1, 1774 at the age of 34, and was buried at St. Martins in the Fields.

References:

Dameshek, William; "Editorial: William Hewson, Thymicologist; Father of Hematology"; Blood(1963)21:513-516

Doyle, Derek;"William Hewson(1739-1774): The Father of Haematology"; British Journal of Heamatology(2006)133:375-381

Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney;"Hewson, William" in The Dictionary of National Biography Vol. 26; Smith, Elder and Co.; 1891

Konrad Zacarias Lorenz

2010-11-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

Konrad Zacarias Lorenz was born on November 7, 1903 in Altenberg, Vienna, the son of an orthopedic surgeon. His parents had a large house and garden which allowed him to keep many animals. In an autobiography he says, "they were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals." His study of animals started at a young age and he became an expert on the behaviour of ducks. His first exposure to evolution came from his reading, but in school, even though he studied under a Benedictine Monk he learned about Darwin's theory of evolution, free thought being a characteristic of Austria. His interest in the study of evolution led him to study paleontology as a means of understanding evolution.

After high school, following his father's wishes he took pre-medical school classes at Columbia University. He stayed at Columbia for a year before returning to Vienna where he continued his medical studies at the University of Vienna, finishing his MD in 1928. In medical school his anatomy professor was Ferdinand Hoschsetter, and under his teaching Lorenz began to study comparative anatomy, which he soon realized was a better way to study evolution than paleontology. After graduation, instead of practicing medicine Lorenz continued his studies in comparative anatomy, supporting himself by taking a position at the university as an assistant in the Institute of Anatomy, which he retained until 1935. In 1933 he finished his Ph.D. in comparative anatomy. Throughout he kept studying the birds on his parents estate.

In 1936 Lorenz met Nikolaas Tinbergen at a conference in Leiden, Holland. Lorenz found that their studies had much in common and he invited Tinbergen to come to work with him at his parents estate. With Tinbergen, he conducted experiments using the birds on his parent's estate. In these studies they compared the behavior of the wild, domestic and hybrid geese. They showed that domesticated geese had an increased drive for feeding and copulation, but showed a decrease in socialization. Soon after came the Anchluss, the German annexation of Austria, and Lorenz wrote about the differences of domesticated species using terms of Nazi ideology. These allowed Lorenz to be appointed the chair in psychology at Koningsberg. Lorenz later recanted these writings. During the World War II Lorenz served as a physician on the German side, until he was captured by the Russians, after which he was a prisoner of war, serving the medical needs of the Russian army.

After being released by the Russians, Lorenz returned to Altenberg. Unable to obtain an academic position, with the aid of donations and his students he continued his animal research there concentrating again on water fowl and fish. He made a study of the bonding of water fowl and aggressiveness of fish. Even after years of watching animals he found there were new insights and published more papers describing these behaviours. In 1950 the Max Planck Society established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioural Physiology in Buldern, Germany.

In 1973 Lorenz, Tinbergen, and Karl Von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for "their discoveries concerning organization and elucidation of individual and social behavior patterns". They were awarded the prize for developing the science of ethology. Ethology is the study of animal behavior with regard to evolution. Where a psycologist will study the behavoir of an animal in a laboratory, out of the animals native environment, an ethologist studies behavior in the environment. Studying how evolution has affected an animal's behavior.

Lorenz died on February 27, 1989.

References:

Fuller, Ray; Seven Pioneers of Psychology: Behaviour and Mind
; Psychology Press; 1995

Lorenz, Konrad, Nobel Autobiography

Lorenz, Konrad Wikipedia Entry

Marian Elliot Koshland

2010-10-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

Marian Elliot Koshland was born in New Haven, Connecticut on October 15, 1921 to Margarethe Smith Elliot, a teacher and Walter Elliot a hardware salesman. When she was four, her younger brother contracted typhoid fever. While her parents sat vigil at her brother's hospital bedside, two girls next door taught her to read and do math. After her brother returned home, she and her brother were kept in quarantine by her parents for the next year. Her father took the part of schoolmaster, teaching his daughter. When she went to schools she was more advanced than her peers, giving her a confidence in her ability to learn. In high school she took the hardest classes and after graduation was admitted to Vassar College, where she supported herself with scholarships and lived in a co-op dormitory. She graduated in 1942 with a B.A. in bacteriology.

After graduation she spent one year at medical school, but opted to go to the University of Chicago where she earned a M.S. in bacteriology (1943) and a Ph.D. in immunology (1949). While at the University of Chicago she worked on two projects, one was a vaccine for cholera, intended to help service men serving in the Far East and the other was working on ways to prevent the spread of disease among military recruits. In 1945 she married Daniel Koshland and went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to be with her husband and work on the Manhattan Project. In Oak Ridge she studied the biological effects of radiation. After she and her husband graduated, in 1949, they moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where both had postdoctoral positions at Harvard. After two years they moved to Long Island, where they both worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory and in 1965 they moved to Berkeley. At Brookhaven she was initially refused a position, but in exchange for editing the publications that followed Brookhaven symposia she was able to get a laboratory and an assistant. The Koshlands had five children, the first comming while they were graduate students at the University of Chicago, the second in 1949, two years later they had twins and the youngest child was born in 1953.

Koshland's research dealt with antibodies. Antibodies are molecules that are secreted by immune cells that attach to molecules that are foreign to the body and signal the immune system's other cells to destroy them. In the 1950's at Brookhaven, Koshland determined that there were more than one type of antibodies. She discovered that immune cells that protect mucosal cells (cells that compose outer layers of tissue, exposed to an environment, in the stomach or lungs for example) secrete a different type of antibody than the immune cells that circulate in the blood. Later, during the 1960s, she determined the amino acid structure of antibodies that bind to different pathogens is different. At the time it was believed that antibodies could bind to different things by means of different protein folds. She proved that it was different amino acids in the structure of antibodies that give them the ability to bind to different things. In the 1970s she identified a antibody protein called the j-chain (or joining chain) that allows antibodies to assemble into multiple units. The antibody secreted by circulating immune cells (called IgG) is composed of four protein molecules and has only two spaces where it binds to another protein. Some antibody complexes are larger and as many as five or six of these IgG-like units (composed of four protein molecules with two binding spots) which give them as many as ten or twelve spots to bind foreign molecules and some use this j-chain to put more than one IgG-like unit together (for an article about the structure of the different types of antibodies go here).

In 1991 Koshland was elected to the National Academy of Science. She served as the chair of the U.C. Berkeley Department of Immunology and Bacteriology from 1981 to 1989 and she has been awarded numerous honorary degrees.

She died of lung cancer on October 28, 1996.

References:

Guyer, Ruth Levey; "Marian Elliot Koshland"; Biographical Memoirs Vol. 90; National Academy Press; 2009

Saunders, Robert; Press Release on the death of Marian Koshland; November 6, 1997

Wasserman, Elga; The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science; Joseph Henry Press; 2002

Ernest William Goodpasture

2010-10-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ernest William Goodpasture was born on a farm near Clarksville, Tennessee on October 17, 1886. His father, Albert Goodpasture, was a lawyer and a farmer, who served in the Tennessee state government and ran a publishing business. It was said by his family that he took after his maternal grandfather, Dr. Stephen L. Dawson, who went to California during the gold rush, and then returned to Tennessee for a long medical practice.

Goodpasture's early education was at public schools in Nashville, Tennessee starting in 1893. Later he attended Bowen's Preparatory Academy. He went to Vanderbilt University in 1903 and graduated in 1907. After a period in which he taught elementary school in order to secure funds for his further education he started at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1908, finishing his M.D. in 1912. After graduation, with the help of a Rockefeller Fellowship he stayed at Johns Hopkins working in the school of pathology. He remained at Johns Hopkins three years after graduation, first as a fellow, then an instructor and in his third year as a resident.

In 1915 Goodpasture took a position as a pathology resident at Brigham Hospital and as an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School. After a two year absence, in which he served as a naval medical officer during World War I, publishing papers on the pathology of influenzal pneumonia, Goodpasture returned to Harvard where he was made assistant professor. In 1921 eager to study tropical diseases, Goodpasture took a assistant professor position at the University of the Philippines in Manila. After a year in the Philippines, Goodpasture took a position as the director of William H. Singer laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1924 Goodpasture accepted a position at Vanderbilt University and was able to return to his native state, where he remained until 1955, serving as dean of the school of medicine from 1945 to 1950.

Goodpasture's research mostly delt with viral diseases. His early work was to study the route of spread of herpes virus in neural tissue. In 1931 Goodpasture, with the help of his colleague Alice Woodruff was investigating fowl-pox and needed means to grow large numbers of viruses. Viruses, unlike bacteria, are unable to reproduce on their own. Viruses must infect cells and use their genetic machinery to reproduce themselves. Using the tissue of chicken embryos, they were able to effectively grow viruses. This discovery made it easier for researchers to grow viruses and was a huge advance in virology. Vaccines against viral diseases, today, are grown from eggs in this manner. In 1934, working with Claud D. Johnson, Goodpasture was the first to isolate the virus that causes mumps.

In 1955 Goodpasture retired from Vanderbilt University and took a position as director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and with his wife he moved to Washington D.C. He served as director until 1959, after which he returned to Nashville. He died in Nashville on September 20, 1960.

References:

Long, Esmond R.; "Ernest William Goodpasture 1886-1960"; Biographical Memoirs; National Academy Press

Ernest William Goodpasture Wikipedia Entry

Lester Halbert Germer

2010-10-10T12:10:00.001-07:00

Lester Halbert Germer was born on October 10, 1896 in Chicago, Illinois and lived most of his childhood in Canastota, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1917. After graduation he joined Bell Labs and then served in World War I as a fighter pilot, earning a citation from General Pershing. After the war he returned to Bell Labs and finished his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1927.

At Bell Labs, Germer initially worked as an assistant to Clinton Davisson. In April of 1925 Davisson and Germer began working on an experiment studying the diffraction of electrons off of a nickel surface. At first their results were similar to results obtained four years earlier. Then suddenly the results changed. Looking for an explanation for the change they cut open the vacuum tube containing the nickel target. With the help of microscopist F. F. Lewis they observed that the due to heat the crystalline surface of the nickel target had changed due to extreme heating. They believed that the change in their results was due to the change of the crystalline surface of the nickel target.

They performed a similar experiment in 1927, after Davisson had attended a conference where Louis-Victor DeBroglie's hypothesis about the wave nature of matter was presented. When electrons of known velocity were used to bombard the nickel surface at a 45 degree angle they observed that the diffraction of the electrons obeyed Bragg's Law, which relates the wavelength of diffracted x-rays with the lattice spacing of the target and the angle of diffraction. This was the first proof of DeBroglie's particle wave hypothesis. For this work Germer and Davisson were awarded the Elliot Cression Medal in 1931 (Davisson shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with George Thompson, who preformed a different experiment confirming DeBroglie's hypothesis four months later).

DeBroglie's hypothesis, that matter, like electromagnetic radiation, has a wave like nature is one of the more surprising revaluations that came with the development of quantum mechanics. In his doctoral thesis DeBroglie hypothesized that the wavelength of matter is dependant on its mass and velocity and that the wavelength is equal to Planck's constant divided by the momentum (p=mass*velocity) of the matter (wavelength=h/p).

After this experiment Germer continued working at Bell Labs, studying the use of this technique to determine the structure of surfaces, work that eventually led to the development of the electron microscope. In addition to his work at Bell Labs, Germer was also an avid rock climber. On October 3, 1971, one week before his 75th birthday, Germer died of a massive heart attack while he was rock climbing.

References:

Lieter, Daryll J. and Lieter, Sharon; "A to Z of Physicists"; Infobase Publishing; 2003

MacRae, Alfred U.; "Lester H. Germer"; Physics Today(1972)25:93-97

Lester Germer Wikipedia Entry

Sir Patrick Manson

2010-10-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sir Patrick Manson was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland on October 3, 1844, the second of nine children in his family. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to an iron worker related to his mother. Soon after his health broke down and he was forced to spend all but two hours of the day in bed. These two hours he spent studying natural science. Frustrated in his attempt to earn a living as an iron worker he turned to study medicine entering Aberdeen University in 1860, finishing his final examinations by the time he was 20.

In 1866 Manson took a position as a medical officer in Formosa (Taiwan). It was here that Manson began his life long work studying tropical diseases. He remained in Formosa for five years after which he took a position as a medical officer in Amoy, an island 300 miles north of Hong Kong. In Amoy Manson was in charge of the hospital for seamen and a missionary hospital. Prejudice against western medicine was rife among the native population and consequently very few of the native Chinese trusted Manson to operate on them. One young man so overcome by his large elephantoid tumor came to Manson after attempting suicide by swallowing arsenic. Manson was able to remove the tumor and save the young man's life. Rumors of his success spread through the native population, causing a greater demand for his services.

In 1875 Manson went to London to learn more about the causes of elephantitis and chyluria. In London however there was no school that taught about tropical illnesses. His only discovery was an written account in the British Museum by Timothy Lewis, describing the discovery of microscopic worms in the blood and urine of patients with chyluria in Calcutta, India. Armed with this knowledge Manson guessed correctly that there must be another animal that carried the disease. He tested his hypothesis by feeding mosquitoes with the blood of his servant who had the disease and upon dissecting the mosquitoes he found the parasites. Although he thought that mosquitoes passed on the parasites by dying and leaving the parasites in drinking water and not transferring them by biting humans, Manson was the first to identify mosquitoes as a vector for disease.

Over one million people die each year from mosquito borne diseases. When female mosquitoes bite humans (only female mosquitoes bite humans) they inject anti-coagulants, to prevent the human's blood from clotting. With the anti-coagulants infected mosquitoes will also inject viruses and parasites. Diseases spread by mosquitoes include the malaria and helminthiasis (the cause of elephantitis) parasites, and the viruses that cause yellow and dengue fevers.

In 1883 Manson traveled to Hong Kong where he was the force behind the founding of the Medical School of Hong Kong. In 1889 Manson left Asia with the hope of retiring to Scotland. His finances proved inadequate and he returned to London where he began a practice, passing the examination for the Royal College of Physicians within a year. In 1894 Manson published a paper in which he suggested that mosquitoes might be the vector for malaria. This hypothesis would stimulate Ronald Ross into a frenzy of research nailing down the life cycle of the malarial parasite. In 1897 Manson was appointed medical officer to the Colonial Office. There he was able to able to institute many reforms which improved the health of British colonial officers. Also in 1897 Manson published a book on tropical diseases which for many years was the standard reference on the subject. For his discoveries and work in founding medical schools Manson is hailed as the father of tropical medicine.

A lifelong sufferer from gout, Manson succumbed to the disease on April 9, 1922.

References:

Hale-White, Sir William; Great Doctors of the Nineteenth Century; Ayer Publishing; 1970

Jay, Venita; "Sir Patrick Manson: the Father of Tropical Medicine"; Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (2000)124:1594-1595

Walker, M. E. M.; Pioneers of Public Health: the Story of Some Benefactors of the Human Race; Ayer Publishing; 1930

Sir Patrick Manson Wikipedia Entry

Archibald Vivian Hill

2010-09-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Archibald Vivian Hill was born on September 26, 1886 in Bristol, England. His family had little money and Hill won his education by competing for scholarships. His secondary education was at Blundell's School from which he obtained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he studied mathematics and natural sciences, graduating third wrangler (highest honors) in mathematics in 1907. After graduation with the urging of his teacher, Sir Walter Morely Fletcher, he accepted a fellowship to do physiological research that allowed him to stay at Cambridge for four more years.

With the encouragement of John Langley, the owner and editor of the Journal of Physiology, Hill began investigating "the efficiency of cut out frog muscle as a thermodynamic machine". At the time it was known that muscles produce heat in response to a twich or tetanus, in tetanus the rate of heat production declines as the stimulation continues and that the ratio of of work to total energy is dependant on the load and has a maximum of .30. Hill using a more advanced temperature sensing device was able to determine that heat was produced both during and after muscle contraction, in the recovery phase.

From 1914 to 1919 Hill devoted his time to the war effort, commanding an experimental anti-aircraft section. After the war, Hill returned to Cambridge and soon after accepted a faculty chair at Manchester University. He continued his research into the heat production of muscles, discovering that the heat produced at the initiation of a muscle contraction did not require the presence of oxygen gas. The heat produced by muscles upon recovery however was greater in the presence of oxygen than it was in nitrogen.

Working in at the same time the German biochemist Otto Meyerhof had shown that in the recovery phase lactic acid, which was believed to be the chemical product of muscle contraction, can be reconverted back into glycogen or combusted by oxidation. Hill shared the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Meyerhof "for his discovery relating to the heat in the muscle". This synthesis of thermodynamics and biochemistry, though some was later proved incorrect, was the first coordinated explanation of muscle function. Together Hill and Meyerhof coauthored only one paper together, but Hill kept a stack of the reprints of Meyerhof's papers, which he was constantly referring to. Hill and Meyerhof received their Nobel Prizes in 1923. In 1923, shortly before the Nobel was announced, Hill accepted a professorship at London University, where he remained until 1951.

As years passed a clearer picture of the chemical processes involved in the production of high energy compounds used in muscle contraction emerged. Eventually it became clear that there were two chemical pathways by which the energy used in muscle contraction was produced, one dependant on oxygen and another independent of oxygen, the so called aerobic and anaerobic pathways. In the aerobic, with oxygen, pathway glucose, the major source of biochemical energy, is converted entirely into water and carbon dioxide. In the anaerobic pathway glucose is broken down with lactic acid as an end product. Hill's observation of a smaller heat produced in the recovery phase without oxygen is the muscle tissue rebuilding its store of high energy compounds with the production of lactic acid.

After receiving the Nobel Prize Hill continued his work on muscle biophysics and extended his research to the measurement of heat released by nerve impulses. His work is largely responsible for the emergence of the study of biophysics. Other honors he received include election to the Royal Society in 1918, the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1948 and numerous honorary doctorates from universities British and foreign. He served as a member of Parliament, representing Cambridge from 1940 to 1945.

Hill died on June 3, 1977.

References:

Bassett Jr., David R.; Scientific Contributions of A. V. Hill: Exercise Physiology Pioneer; Journal of Applied Physiology(2002)93:1567-1582

Archibald V. Hill Nobel Biography

Archibald Hill Wikipedia Entry

Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre

2010-09-20T13:34:00.001-07:00

Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre was born near Amiens, France on September 19, 1749. The eldest child in his family, he suffered from a bout of smallpox at the age of 15 months. His parents feared he would loose his eyesight, and he did loose his eyelashes, which never grew back in, but although his sight was limited he did not go blind. Fear of loosing his eyesight made him a voracious reader, and he was able to memorize all that he read, becoming fluent in English, German and Italian.

He attended the Jesuit college in Amiens until 1764 when Jesuits were banned from France and he continued his education under teachers brought from Paris. Originally his intent was to become a parish priest, but with the encouragement of his teachers he went to Paris to continue his studies. He won a scholarship at the College du Plessis where he studied classical languages and prepared himself for university study. He sat for the university entrance exam, but with his poor eyesight he had difficulty reading the exam and he failed to gain a scholarship. His parents, unable to afford a university education, urged him to return to Amiens, instead he began studying mathematics in order that he could become a tutor and he took a position as the tutor of the son of a nobleman in Compiegne. Studying mathematics he soon became an expert, developing exceptional calculating skills.

In 1771 Delambre returned to Paris to take a position tutoring the son of Jean-Claude Geoffroy d'Assy, the Receiver General of Finances. He took this position for less than d'Assy offered in exchange for housing. Once again in Paris he began studying Greek and Greek sciences, including astronomy. He continued his study of astronomy, studying the works of current astronomers, including Jerome Lelande. He began attending lectures given by Lelande and soon impressed the teacher with his knowledge, so much so that Lelande offered him a position as his assistant. In 1786 Delambre observed the transit of Mercury across the sun and found that the tables of its transit, prepared by Lelande, were inaccurate, and Delambre would expend much effort to correct them. He also completed tables of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. In 1789 Delambre won a prize from the Academie des Sciences for correctly determining the orbit of Uranus. At the time of the French Revolution Delambre changed his name, which had originally been D'Lambre in order that he would not be arrested.

Delambre was elected associate member of the mathematical section of the Academie des Sciences in 1792 and was given a commission by the Academie to measure the arc distance between Dunkerque to Rodez. This was part of the Commission of Weights and Measures attempt to define the meter. It had been decided to define the meter, the unit of length measurement in the newly created metric system, as one ten millionth of a quarter of the distance between the North Pole and the equator. Delambre reported his results in 1799, having twice been detained by revolutionary forces, and accused of espionage. Delambre finished the report, establishing the length of the meter, in 1806.

Delambre devoted the remainder of his career to the study of the history of mathematics and astronomy. His major work was a six volume history of astronomy, the first two volumes covering ancient astronomy and the remaining four on astronomy of the middle ages, the Renaissance, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries receptively. The final two volumes were published posthumously. This work has been haled by science historian I. Bernard Cohen as "the greatest full-scale technical history of a single branch of science written by a single individual". Delambre also has a crater on the moon named after him.

Delambre died on August 19, 1882.

References:

O'Connor, JJ and Robertson, EF; "Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre"; at www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk

Jarrell, Richard A.; "Delambre, Jean-Baptiste Joseph (1749-1822)" in History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia; John Lankford ed.; Taylor and Francis; 1997

Jean Baptiste Joseph Delamber wikipedia entry

Irene Joliot-Curie

2010-09-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Irene Juliot-Curie was born in Paris, France on September 12, 1897, the daughter of nuclear scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. After a year of formal education when she was six, Juliot-Currie's parents joined a group of distinguished French academics called "The Cooperative" which took turns providing instruction for their children. Classes took place at the academic's homes and provided instruction not only on science but diverse subjects such as Chinese and sculpture. After 2 years of this instruction she returned to a more traditional academic setting, attending the College Sevigne for two years. She then went to the Sorbonne, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

During the war Juliot-Curie helped her mother operating primitive X-ray machines that had been made possible by Marie's research. The machines made it possible to for doctors to locate shrapnel in patients, but the equipment was primitive and she suffered from radiation exposure. After the war she returned to Paris where she worked at her parents' Radium Institute and she completed a doctoral thesis concerning the alpha rays emited by polonium. She was awarded her doctorate in 1925.

While working on her doctorate she was asked to teach the techniques used in radiochemical research to a young chemical engineer named Federic Joliot. They would later marry and share hyphenated last names. Their collaborative study of atomic nuclei was the first to identify the existence of neutrons and positrons, although James Chadwick and C. D. Anderson, respectively, would claim the discoveries. Their breakthrough came in 1934, after bombarding a thin sheet of aluminum with alpha particles, they noticed that the area bombarded gave off positive electrons, after the alpha particles were removed, in such a way that suggested radioactive elements. Further examination of the product revealed that it was a radioactive isotope of phosphorus.

The means of atomic transmution discovered by the Curies involves bombarding nuclei with subatomic particles. The transmutation accomplished by the Curies (aluminum to phosphorus) was accomplished by bombarding aluminum with alpha particles. Alpha particles are low energy radioactive particles that consist of helium nuclei, with two protons and two neutrons. In this case aluminum (atomic number 13) is changed into phosphorus (atomic number 15) by the addition on two protons from an alpha particle. The resulting phosphorus nuclei is unstable and breaks down, releasing positrons.

For their discovery of nuclear transmutation the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935. Irene Juliot-Curie became only the second woman, after her mother to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry. With the prize came employment including a chair at the Sorbonne. During World War II she contracted tuberculosis and she went to Switzerland to convalesce. She made several trips back to Paris to visit her husband and children and on more than one occasion was detained by German troops. In 1956 she contracted leukemia and she died on March 17, 1956.

References:

Bensaude-Vincent, Bernedette; "Irene Joliot-Curie" in Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, 1901-1992; Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1992

Irene Joliot-Curie Nobel Biography

Irene Joliot-Curie Wikipedia Entry

Max Ludwig Henning Delbruck

2010-09-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Max Ludwig Henning Delbruck was born on September 4, 1906 in Berlin Germany, the youngest of seven children of Hans Delbruck, a professor of politics at the University of Berlin and editor of a political journal. Delbruck grew up in the relatively affluent Grunewald suburb of Berlin, and lived in comfort until the outbreak of World War I, in which his older brother, Waldemar, was killed. His first interest in science was astronomy and astrophysics, later in his studies he switched to theoretical physics as it was during the time that the science of quantum mechanics was being discovered. In 1929 he received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Gottingen. After a failed attempt to complete a thesis on novae he wrote a thesis on the quantum problem of the nonexistent diatomic lithium molecule.

After completing his thesis Delbruck spent 18 months at the University of Bristol (England) as a research assistant. After Bristol he received a Rockefeller Fellowship which allowed him to go to Copenhagen to study under Niels Bohr who influenced Delbruck's thinking about biology. In 1932 Delbruck accepted a position as an theoretical physics assistant to Lise Meitner, primarily to be near the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology. Hitler's rise to power in Germany caused a number of the Jewish scientists to emigrate from Germany, leaving the seminars less interesting to Delbruck. To make up for this loss Delbruck helped organize a group of physicists that met weekly to discuss physical problems. This group soon included biologists and a number of important papers emerged from these meetings, including an at first neglected paper on which Dulbruck collaborated about the nature of gene structure and mutations, that went on to be very influential.

In 1937 Dulbruck, on the strength of a second Rockefeller Fellowship, emigrated to the United States and took a position at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) to study drosophila genetics. After having difficulty in learning the terminology of drosophila genetics Delbruck began studying bacterial phages with Emory Ellis. With the start of World War II, Delbruck's fellowship ran out and he took a position teaching at Vanderbilt University. The teaching position was only part time allowing Delbruck to spend the rest of his time doing phage research. During this period he collaborated with Salvador Luria, who was at the University of Indiana, and they demonstrated that bacterial resistance to phages was due to genetic mutation and not adaptive change. For this work they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Alfred Hershey, in 1969.

Phages are viruses that infect bacteria. Like the viruses that attack plant and animal cells, they insert their genetic material into host cell (in this case a bacteria) and use the host's genetic replication mechanisms to produce copies of its own genetic material. Bacteriophages are estimated to be the most widely distributed and diverse entities in the biosphere and they were among the first viral particles to be studied on a genetic level. Delbruk's work with Luria demonstrated that genetic mutation arises independent of selection pressure, that is mutation takes place randomly and is not influenced by changes or stressors in the bacteria's environment. At the time this was considered a huge advance in the understanding genetics and its importance has been compared to the work of Gregor Mendel.

In 1947 Delbruck returned to Cal Tech where he remained until 1977, doing research applying biophysical methods to the problems of sensory physiology. He is considered one of the most influential scientists who applied physical methods to biological problems.

Delbruck died on March 9, 1981.

References:

Delbruck, Max; interview by Carolyn Harding; at oralhistories.library.caltech.edu

Hayes, William;"Max Ludwig Henning Dulbreck" in Biographical Memiors Vol. 62; National Academy Press (1993)

Max Delbruck nndb entry

Luria-Delbruck experiment Wikipedia Entry

Sir Gilbert Blane

2010-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sir Gilbert Blane was born on August 29, 1749, at Blanefield, Ayrshire, Scotland the fourth son of a merchant who he was named after. Little is known about his early life other than the fact that he attended school at Kirkoswald and Maybole. At the age of 14 he was accepted into the Faculty of Arts at Edinburgh University, with the intent of joining the church. Soon his course changed and he began studying medicine taking his M.D. from Glasgow University in 1778.

After graduating he traveled to London, where with letters of recommendation he began his medical career. He became the physician of Admiral (later Lord) George Rodney and traveled with Rodney to the West Indies in 1779. Blane soon became the Physician to the Fleet, being appointed over men who had more naval experience than he had. Blane saw action in six engagements and wrote an account of the Battle of Saintes. Upon his return to Britain, Blaine was awarded a pension from the Admiralty.

While he was with the fleet Blane published, at his own expense, his notes on naval hygiene including recommendations on improvements in hygiene and diet aboard naval vessels. One of Blane's recommendations was the inclusion of fruit into the diet of sailors, to prevent scurvy. At the time the British Navy was losing more men from infection and scurvy than it was losing as casualties of battle. Adhering to Blane's recommendations Rodney's fleet lost not a single man to disease or scurvy for a six month period, from December 1781 to May 1782.

Blane was not the first to discover that fresh fruit prevented scurvy in sailors. In 1747 James Lind, a naval surgeon, divided a group of twelve sailors with scurvy into six groups of two and gave each group a different treatment: the first group was given cider, the second dilute sulfuric acid, the third vinegar, the forth sea water, the fifth fresh oranges, the sixth a spicy paste and barley water. The treatment of group five stopped after six days when they ran out of fruit, but by that time one sailor had recovered and the other was on the way to recovery. In 1768-71 Captain James Cook circumnavigated the world and did not lose a single sailor to scurvy, a feat that was attributed to their stopping to replenish supplies of fruit throughout the voyage.

Blane returned to England at the end of the war in 1783 and established a practice being appointed to be physician at St. Thomas Hospital. In 1795 he was appointed commissioner of the Sick and Wounded Board of the Admiralty. As a commissioner he was able to push through the long needed addition of lemon juice to the provisions of British Naval vessels. Tough he did not discover the link between citrus fruit and scurvy prevention it was Blane who made sure that lemon juice was provided to sailors, an advance that provided the British Navy the man power it would need to fight the Napoleonic Wars. Blane married in 1786 and would have six sons and three daughters. He also served as the personal physician for the Prince of Whales, later King George IV. In 1812 he was sent to investigate the ill fateded Walcheren Expedition and for his service to the crown he was created a baronet.

Blane died in his home in Sackville Street, London on June 26, 1834.

References:

Bown, Steven; Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
; Macmillian; 2005

Leach, R. H.; Sir Gilbert Blane, Bart, MD FRS (1749-1832); Annals Royal College of Surgeons (1980)62:232-239

Wharton, Mary; Sir Gilbert Blane Bt (1749-1834); Annals Royal College of Surgeons (1984)66:375-376

Denis Papin

2010-08-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

Denis Papin was born in Blois, France on August 22, 1647, the son of a royal official. Although his family was Cavinist he attended a Jesuit school in Blois and in 1661 went to the University of Angers where he graduated with a medical degree in 1669. He practiced medicine for two years, until he accepted the offer of Christiaan Huygens to come and work as his assistant. The position was a combined research assistant/curator post at the newly established French Academy. He published several papers jointly with Huygens detailing their experiments with an air pump, and he published a book detailing his experiments to determine the weight of atmospheric air in 1674.

The following year Papin went to London, probably because of his Protestantism, which made his life in France difficult. In London he obtained a similar position to the one he had in France at the Royal Academy, with the assistance of Robert Boyle, who had read his book. At the Royal Academy he continued his experiments on atmospheric weight and did experiments with steam. During his tenure at the Royal Academy he invented a pressure cooker that extracted nutrients from bones and other things not normally digestible by humans. This was probably the most profitable invention of his but he gained little in the way of payment for it. One interesting feature of this invention was a valve by which excess steam could be let off, similar to valves used in later steam engines to prevent dangerous over pressurization.

In 1681 he went to Venice, but returned to London three years later. Later he was invited to take the chair in mathematics at the University of Marburg, where he married his cousin who was a widow with a daughter. The remittance for this position was less than what he required for his new family. In 1696 he moved to Cassel there he was able to complete experimental designs including a centrifugal pump, a diving bell and a submarine boat. He also concieved of ways that mechanical power could be transported over a distance by means of a vacuum tube. He received requests from mine owners for assistance in removing water and ore from their mines. Although he cannot be credited with the invention of the steam engine, his researches were pivitol in its development. He remained in Cassel until 1707 when he returned to London, leaving his family in Germany. He presented a few papers to the Royal Academy, but he was largely destitute.

The last surviving evidence of his existence is a letter dated January 27, 1712. It is believed that he died thereafter and was interred in a paupers pit grave.

References:

Ewart, Henry C.; "Denis Papin: A Life's Work and it's Moral"; The Sunday Magazine(1880)9:316-319

Matschooss, Conrad; Great Engineers; Ayer Publishing, 1970

Denis Papin nndb database entry

Denis Papin Wikipedia Entry

Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie

2010-08-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie was born in Dieppe, France on August 15, 1892., the younger son of Victor Duc de Broglie and Pauline d'Armaille. The history of the de Broglie family included service to the French crown for which the head of the family was granted the hereditary title of "Duc" (Duke) by Louis XIV and the German title of "Prinz" (Prince) for service to Austria during the Seven Years War. All of de Broglie's early education was provided by private tutors. In 1906 he was sent to Lycee Janson de Sailly where he spent three years completing his secondary education. De Broglie then went to the Sorbonne where he initially studied history, intending to take a job in the diplomatic service, earning a degree in 1910. Unsatisfied with his studies in the liberal arts de Broglie began studying theoretical physics.

De Broglie graduated with a degree in physics in 1913. Thereafter, as required by French law, de Broglie enlisted in the military. De Broglie served for the duration of the First World War, from 1913 to 1919. In his initial posting he was sent to a fort at Mount Valerien, where he was given very little to do and it was a difficult time for him. Later, with the influence of his brother Maurice, who had succeeded his father as Duc, de Broglie was posted to a radio station at the Eiffel Tower working as an electrician. De Broglie found this posting much more satisfying as it allowed him experience working with electrical equipment, which would serve him well in his scientific career.

After leaving the French service de Broglie worked with his brother Maurice, also a theoretical physicist, taking advantage of the laboratory built by his bother at the family mansion in Paris. At the time physicists thought of matter as being composed of particles and light was thought of as a wave-like phenomena. Albert Einstein, in his description of the photo-electric effect had demonstrated that light can behave both as a particle and a wave. Influenced by Einstein, de Broglie proposed that matter also has a dual nature, as both a particle and a wave. He proposed that the wavelength of matter is equal to Planck's constant divided by the momentum of the particle (wavelength h/p). This is true for all matter, small particles like electrons and large objects such as bullets or cars. Because of the momentum term in the wavelength equation (p) is equal to the mass of an object multiplied by its velocity (p=m*v) the wavelength gets shorter the more massive an object is and it is only for small particles that the wavelength has any practical effect. Using this insight for his doctoral thesis, his committee was unsure of the validity of his ideas and so passed his thesis on to Einstein who wholeheartedly agreed with the work. De Broglie was granted his doctorate in 1923.

De Brolie's insight into the wave nature of matter gave rise to a field of physics called wave mechanics. An electron, traveling around a nucleus, must have a wave pattern that is stable, where the length of the orbital is an integer number of wavelengths long. Erwin Schrodinger used de Broglie's theory of particle waves to work out the solutions to the wave equation that showed the behavior of an electron in a hydrogen atom and these equations agreed with experimental data.

For his discovery of the wave nature of matter de Broglie was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1929. After completing his doctorate de Broglie gave a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, and was appointed professor of theoretical physics at the Poincare Institute in 1926. In 1932 he was appointed chair of theoretical physics at the Sorbonne where he taught until 1962.

De Broglie died on March 19, 1987.

References:

"Biography of Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie the Nobel Prize in Physics 1929" at debroglie.poldow.com

Prince Luis de Broglie Nobel Biography

Luis de Broglie Wikipedia Entry

Ernest Orlando Lawrence

2010-08-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota on August 8, 1901, the son of Carl Gustavus and Gunda Lawrence. His parents were Norwegian immigrants and his father was superintendent of schools. He attended Canton High School and then St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In 1919 he went to the University of South Dakota, working his way through college by selling kitchenware. Originally he studied for a medical career but switched to physics. He graduated in 1922 with a B.A. in Chemistry. He then went to the University of Minnesota where he earned an M.A. in physics in 1923. He then went to Yale finishing his Ph.D. in physics in 1925 completing a thesis on photoelectricity.

He remained at Yale for three more years as a National Research Fellow and assistant professor. In 1928 he left the relative comfort of his Yale position as an assistant professor to become an associate professor at the University of California Berkley. Two years later he became a full professor at Berkley, being the youngest professor at Berkley. In 1936 became director of the university's radiation laboratory. He remained at these positions until his death.

Lawrence's early research dealt with photoelectricity and the ionization potentials of gaseous metals. In 1929 he invented the cyclotron, a device which accelerates atomic particles without using high voltages. Cyclotrons use an alternating voltage to accelerate particles, and a perpendicular magnetic field holds the particles in a circular path so that they can re-encounter the accelerating voltage many times. Thus the particles are gradually sped up by multiple encounters with the accelerating voltage. Cyclotrons, because the accelerated particles move in a circular path, take up less space than linear accelerators. Cyclotrons are used to create non-naturally occurring elements by bombarding atoms with atomic particles to create larger atoms. Cyclotrons have also been used in medicine to bombard cancerous tumors with radioactive particles.

During World War II Lawrence worked to help develop the atomic bomb. His radiation laboratory actively took part in the research for the development of the bomb. A early proponent of electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes he developed calutrons, a specialized type of mass spectrometer, to separate the isotopes. He also introduced J. Robert Oppenheimer into what would become the Manhattan Project.

In 1939 Lawrence won the Nobel Prize "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and the results obtained with it especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements." Other honors received by Lawrence include the Enrico Fermi Prize awarded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1957 and the Sylvanus Thayer Award presented by the United States Military Academy. Element 103 (atomic number 103) is named Lawrencium after Lawrence.

In 1958 Lawrence was appointed by President Eisenhower to take part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union over and atomic weapons treaty. Despite suffering from colitis Lawrence decided to go to Geneva, to take part in the negotiations. Falling ill while he was in Geneva Lawrence was rushed back to America for medical treatment. Lawrence died one month later on August 27, 1958.

References:

Alvarez, Luis, "Ernest Orlando Lawrence"; in Biographical Memoirs (1970) National Academy Press

"A Few Important Events in Lawrence's Life" at lbl.gov

Ernest Lawrence Nobel Prize Biography

Ernest Lawrence Wikipedia Entry

Georg Charles de Hevesy

2010-08-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Georg Charles de Hevesy was born on August 1, 1885 in Budapest, Hungary. He was the fifth of eight children of Louis de Hevesy, a public prosecutor and Eugenie (Schossberger) de Hevesy. Beginning in 1903 he attended Budapest University and Berlin Technical University studying chemistry, physics, and mathematics. He earned his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in 1908.

He worked for two years at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Technical University of Switzerland before working for a short spell with Fritz Haber and seeing much of the fundamental work Haber did developing the Haber process to synthesize ammonia. He traveled to Manchester, England in 1910 to study under Ernest Rutherford. Rutherford gave him the task or separating out the radium D from the large amount of lead in a sample of Joachimsthal pitchblende which had been given as a gift by the Austrian government. Of course, try as he might de Hevesy was not able to complete the separation. He was able to use radium D and radium E as a radioactive tracer in investigations of the kinetics of lead and bismuth in plants.

Radium is the heaviest of the alkaline earth metals (group 2 on the periodic table) and is intensely radioactive. The products of radium's decay have been historically known as A, B, C etc. Radium D is now known as lead-210, so of course de Hevesesy was unable to separate the radioactive lead isotope from the non-radioactive lead by normal chemical means, but he was able to use it as a radioactive tracer. Other experiments he performed using radioactive isotopes as tracers included using duterated water (water with radioactive hydrogen) as a tracer to determine the amount of water in the human body and using radioactive phosphorus to determine the rate of deoxyribose nucleic acids in liver and kidney cells. He also was able to determine the lifespan of red blood cells and the doubling time of artificially induced tumors using radioactive tracers.

In 1919 de Hevesy went to work at the Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (he had become friends with Niels Bohr while working in Manchester). Bohr had de Hevesy investigated samples of zircon ore for element number 72, then an empty space on the periodic table. Working with Dirk Coster, he was able to find the missing element and named it hafnium, after the Latin name for Copenhagen, Hafnia.

In 1940, when Germany invaded Denmark, de Hevesy dissolved the Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia, to prevent the Germans from stealing them, and placed the solution on a shelf in the Bohr institute. Afterwards he was forced to flee Denmark to Sweden, because of his Jewish ancestry. After the war he returned to find the solution still on the shelf where he had left it and precipitated the gold out. He gave the gold to the Nobel Society, which recast the prizes. In 1943 de Hevesy was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes".

De Hevesy died on July 5, 1966.

References:

Feld, Michael, de Roo, M.;History of Nuclear Medicine in Europe; Schattauer Verlag; 2006

George de Hevesy Nobel Biography

Geroge de Hevesy Wikipedia Entry

Rosalind Elsie Franklin

2010-07-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London, England on July 25, 1920, the second of five children of a prominent Anglo-Jewish family. Her father Ellis Franklin was a partner at Keyser's Bank and her mother Muriel (Waley) Franklin was active in charity work. Growing up with brothers, both older and younger, Franklin became more interested in sports and competitions than girlish things. In 1932, at age eleven, Franklin entered St. Paul's School for Girls and at the competitive school she showed an aptitude for math and science in addition to a facility for languages.

Franklin left St. Paul's in 1936, entering Newnham College at Cambridge (one of the two women's colleges at Cambridge) to major in physical chemistry. She was awarded her B.A. in 1941 and received a scholarship and a grant to do research for a year under R.G.W. Norrish's supervision. Afterwards, with the war on, Franklin was able to find a position doing research for the newly formed British Coal Utilization Research Association. Her research involved studying the microstructure of coal. Measuring the density with different liquids and helium gas she was able to determine the amount of small pores in a sample of coal. When the coal was heated to carbonizing temperatures the amount of pores increased. Her results made it possible to predict the behaviour of different coals with a high amount of accuracy. This work yielded a thesis, for which she received her Ph.D. in 1945.

After the war Franklin went to France, getting a position in the lab of Jacques Mering where she learned the technique of X-ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography is a technique in which the atomic structure of a substance by subjecting it to X-ray bombardment. The X-ray photons are diffracted by the substance and are detected by a photographic plate. The atomic structure of the substance being investigated can be determined by measuring the angles of diffraction. Franklin applied used this technique to continue her studies of carbon structure. Franklin liked the intellectual and egalitarian nature of French culture, preferring it to the middle class English customs of her upbringing.

In 1950 Franklin returned to England to work in the lab of John T. Randall at Kings College London. She was assigned to work with Maurice Wilkins to use X-ray crystallography to study DNA. The much less collegial atmosphere at Kings College did not suit Franklin and she and Wilkins did not communicate. Franklin worked on her own, with graduate student Raymond Gosling, taking increasingly clear pictures of DNA. From her pictures she realized that DNA could assume two different structures, which she labeled A and B. The A form is seen in drier conditions than the B form, the B form being the form that is found en-vivo. Previous researchers had been unable to determine an exact structure because they had been analyzing a mixture of the two forms.

Unknown to Franklin, Wilkins showed one of her diffraction photographs to Francis Crick and James Watson who were at Cambridge also working to determine the structure of DNA. The photograph provided crucial information that allowed them to publish their structure for DNA in 1953. Although they remained cordial with Franklin, Watson and Crick never fully acknowledged the help they received from Franklin in determining their structure.

Unhappy working at Kings College, Franklin arranged to transfer her fellowship to work at the crystallography laboratory of J.D. Bernal at Birkbeck College. There Franklin used her skill with X-ray crystallography to study viruses, particularly the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and determined that the virus' genetic material (RNA in the case of TMC) is embedded in the inner wall of its protein shell.

In the Fall of 1956 Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died on April 16, 1958.

References:

Elkin, Lynne Osman; "Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix"; Physics Today (2003)56:42-48

Maddox, Brendal; Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
; Harper Collins; 2003

The Rosalind Frankin Papers at profiles.nlm.nih.gov

Charles Palache

2010-07-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

Charles Palache was born in San Francisco, California on July 18, 1869. His father, James Palache, had come to California from New York as a cabin boy in 1849 lured by the gold rush, and there set up as a merchant. His mother, Helen Whitney, had come to California in a covered wagon from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Charles, a sensitive child, showed an early interest in natural history and avidly collected rocks. During his childhood his family moved across the bay to Berkley. In 1887 he graduated from Berkley High School and entered the University of California Berkley, selecting to study mining, because of the emphasis on natural history in the program. He soon found out that he was "repelled by the prospect of life in the mine" but when assigned to make a map of the Berkley hills he found that he enjoyed the work. During the assignment he found a set of ponds up in the hills in a place unlikely for ponds. He returned to the ponds and mapped them with his professor. The lakes were actually a result of the rift that would eventually cause the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Palace graduated at the top of his class and stayed at Berkley to earn his doctorate under Andrew C. Lawson. In 1894 Palache went to study in Europe where he studied crystallography under Victor Goldschmidt, laying the foundation for the work he would pursue for the next fifty five years. Palache, after returning to California, received an offer to become an assistant at Harvard University. In 1899 he took part in the Harriman expidition to Alaska, postponing his wedding in order to do so. In 1902 he was named assistant professor, professor in 1910 and professor emeritus after his retirement in 1941.

Palache's major field of work at Harvard was morphological crystallography. There is scarcely a crystallized mineral that he did not work on. He was the first person to bring a Goldschmidt two circle reflecting gonometer to a America. A gonometer is an instrument used to measure the angles of crystals. Palache published over 150 papers on crystallography. In 1919 he helped organize the Mineralogical Society of America and two years later served as its president. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1934. In 1936 he was elected president of the Geological Society of America and in 1937 he was the first recipient of the Roebling Medal given by the Mineralogical Society of America. Palache's greatest achievement however was the comp

Plache's greatest achievement, however, was the preparation of the 7th edition of the Dana System of Mineralogy using the new tool of X-ray crystallography. This is the standard handbook used to identify minerals. The first volume was published in 1944 and the second in 1951.

Palache died on December 5, 1954

References:

Daly, Reginald;"Charles Palache: 1896-1954"; Biographical Memiors Vol. 30; National Academy Press; 1957

Frondel, Cliford; "Memorial of Charles Palache" at frankin-sterlilnghill.com

Charles Palache: 1896-1954 at pbs.org

Cluade Bernard

2010-07-11T08:11:00.001-07:00

Claude Bernard was born on July 12, 1813, in Saint-Julien, a small village near Villefranche-sur-Saone, in eastern France. His father owned a small estate that produced wine. A bright child, the village cure took him under his wing, teaching him Latin and making him a choir boy. Afterwards he went to the Jesuit college in Villefanche. He briefly went to the university in Lyon, but due to financial reasons he was forced to take a job as a pharmacist's assistant, at first working for only room an board.

Bernard's ambitions were not initially for medicine, but for literature. He wrote several plays and had one successfully performed. In 1834, at 21, using the proceeds of his play, Bernard went to Paris, with a five act history he had written. In Paris, he showed the play to Saint-Marc Girardin, a literary critic, professor at the Sorbonne, and at the time the last word on French letters. Girardin, told Bernard that he should study medicine and not write plays. Bernard threw himself into the study of medicine and in 1839 he was appointed an interne at the Hotel Deiu. This position allowed to come into contact with Francios Magendie, the experimental physiologist. In 1843 Bernard finished his doctorate with a thesis on gastric juice and the role it plays in digestion which won him a prize from the Academie des Sciences for experimental medicine in 1850.

After the initial success of his thesis, in which he showed that complex carbohydrates were broken down by gastric secretions, Bernard wanted to continue his research to determine the fate of three basic nutritional components of food (sugars, fats and proteins) in the body. Using a dog fed only protein, he found that there was sugar in the dog's liver. This led him to the conclusion that the liver synthesizes sugar. Additionally he discovered that after the liver had been washed out and left to sit for a while, an additional amount of sugar was released. This was the discovery of glycogen, Bernard's most famous discovery.

Glycogen is the way the body stores carbohydrates for later use and it is found in the liver and in muscle tissues. After eating, when the body has an excess of glucose, glycogen is stored for later use. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, stimulates the cells of the body to uptake glucose and store it as glycogen. When the amount of glucose in the blood stream drops, glucagon is produced by the pancreas which causes the glycogen in the liver to be broken down and released into the blood stream. In this way the body is able to maintain a constant amount of glucose in the blood stream.

Bernard's other major discovery was the effect of vaso-motor nerves. Initially investigating the effect of heat on the body he discovered the vaso-dilating and vaso-constricting affect of the nervous system.

In 1847 Bernard was appointed Magendie's deputy and in 1855 he succeeded his mentor as professor. In 1864 he was introduced to Napoleon III, who created for him two well supplied laboratories. In 1869 he was made senator, a position he lost the next year with the fall of the Emperor. Bernard had little interest in politics and continued his research. Though he was honored throughout the world for his discoveries, he was estranged from his family. His wife and daughters, ashamed of the vivisections he used in his research, left him.

Bernard died on February 10, 1878.

References:

Foster, Sir Michael; Claude Bernard; Longmans, Green, and Co.; 1899

Anonymous; Heroes of Medicine: Claude Bernard; The Practitioner; 63(1899)185-190

Claude Bernard, Wikipedia Entry

John Howard Northrop

2010-07-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

John Howard Northrop was born on July 5, 1891, in Yonkers, New York. His father John Isaiah Northrop, a tutor in the zoology department at Columbia University was fatally injured in an explosion and fire at the zoology museum shortly before his birth. His mother, Alice Rich Northrop, was a botanist and naturalist and helped introduce nature studies into the curriculum of the New York City Schools.

Northrop excelled in chemistry and mathematics in the public schools of Yonkers, New York. Northrop attended Columbia University, studying chemistry and zoology, and was an outstanding member of the rifle and fencing teams, graduating with a B.S. in 1912. He continued at Columbia, earning a M.A. in 1913 and his pH.D. in 1915, completing a thesis on "The Organic Phosphoric Acid of Starch".

After finishing his doctorate, Northrop accepted an offer to work under Jaques Loeb at the Rockefeller Institute. He became an associate a the institute a year later and with the exception of a year spent as a Captain in the Chemical War Service (1917-1918) he remained at the institute becoming an associate member in 1920, a member in 1924. In 1949 he was appointed professor of bacteriology at the University of California and was later appointed professor of biophysics.

Northrop's work at Columbia concerned carbohydrates. Later, working under Loeb, he did research on Drosophilia, examining the relationship between environmental factors and heredity. During World War I, Northrop worked on ways of producing chemicals that were in short supply including acetone. In 1920 Northrop isolated pepsin using a method previously described by Cornelius Pekelharing, but was unable to crystallize it. When in 1926 James B. Sumner crystallized urease, Northrop took another look at the problem. In 1929 Northrop was able to crystallize pepsin and after numerous attempts to separate the enzyme activity from the protein, he was able to conclude that enzymes are proteins. At the time there was doubt about the nature of enzymes, and it was Northrop's work that was able to conclusivley demonstrate the protein nature of enzymes.

Enzymes are the catalysts that allow chemical reactions to take place in biological systems. Pepsin is a digestive enzyme that breaks down proteins into amino acids. Pepsin is secreted by the chief cells of the stomach in an inactive form called a zymogen. Hydrochloric acid, secreted by the parietal cells of the stomach cause the inactive pepsin (called pepsinogen) to cleave itself, leaving the active form of the enzyme.

Northrop is the author of Crystaline Enzymes published in 1939 and was the editor of the Journal of General Physiology for a number of years. In 1949 Northrop, along with Sumner, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work demonstrating the protein nature of enzymes. Other awards Northrop has won include the Stevens Prize (from Columbia) in 1931, the Chandler Medal in 1936, the Elliot Medal in 1939 and the Alex Hamilton Medal in 1961. He also has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Harvard, Columbia, Rutgers and Yale.

Northrop died on May 27, 1981.

References:

Herriott, Roger M.; "John Howard Northrop"; Journal of General Physiology (1981) 77:597-599

Herriott, Roger M.; "John Howard Northrop" in Biographical Memiors, Vol. 63; National Academy Press; 1994

John H. Northrop, Nobel Biography

Thomas Say

2010-06-27T06:04:00.000-07:00

Thomas Say was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 27, 1787 the son of Benjamin Say, a physician and former state senator, and Ann Bonsal, the granddaughter of botanist John Bartram. Say's ancestors on his father's side had been in Pennsylvania since its founding. Say's mother died during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 along with his sister Polly. In May 1799, when Say was 12 he was one of the first pupils to attend the Westtown Boarding School, a newly established Quaker school. After finishing school (at 15 as was the custom at the time) Say helped his father in his apothecary business, and was eventually joined by John Speakman, to found Speakman and Say, an apothecary. It was Speakman who ran the business because Say was often distracted by the pursuit of insect and butterfly specimens. Due to his distraction from the business the apothecary failed.

A self taught naturalist, Say as a boy collected specimens for his great-uncle William Bartram. In 1812 he became a charter member and founder of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Say lived in the rooms of the academy, sleeping underneath the skeleton of a horse. During the War of 1812, say briefly served as a private in the First City Troop. Say only served for slightly over three months in federal service, as the Troop was released from federal service at the end of the war, although Say remained a member.

In 1817 the Academy began publication of a journal, to which Say was a member of the publication committee and a frequent contributor. In 1818 Say joined an expedition to Georgia and Florida (a Spanish possession at the time) several other members of the Academy. The expedition was forced to return home for fear of attacks from native Americans. In 1819-20 Say served as zoologist for Major Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains and and the tributaries to the Missouri River, and in 1823 Say again served as zoologist for Long's expedition to the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

In 1825 Say moved to New Harmony, Indiana at the urging of his friend and patron of the Academy William MacLure. Say, not a member Robert Owen's communistic community in New Harmony, lived as a hermit, collecting specimens and making notes. In New Harmony Say married Lucy Way Sistare, an artist and illustrator and later the first female member of the Academy. With Sistare's help Say was able to complete three volumes on the insects of America and six on the shellfish of North America.

During his career Say described over 1000 beetles and three hundred other insects. For his work he is called the "Father of American Entomology" and he has several species have been named after him.

Say died on October 10, 1834 in New Harmony.

References:

Coates, Benjamin H.; A Biographical Sketch of Thomas Say Esc.; Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Press; 1835

Weiss, Harry B. and Ziegler, Grace M.; Thomas Say, Early American Naturalist; Ayer Publishing; 1978

Thomas Say, Wikipedia Entry

George Redmayne Murray

2010-06-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

George Redmayne Murray was born on June 20, 1865 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the oldest son of William Murray, one of the leading physicians and general practitioners in northern England at the time, and Frances Mary Murray nee Redmayne. He went to Eton and then Trinity College Cambridge, graduating in 1886 with first class honors. He did his clinical work at University College Hospital London, winning the Fellows junior clinical silver medal and senior clinical gold medal and passing his final examinations in 1888. He graduated MB in 1889 and finished his MD in 1896. With a career in experimental medicine in mind he visited clinics in Paris and Berlin between 1897 and 1898, returning to Newcastle in 1891 to work as a pathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children and lecturer in bacteriology and pathology at the University of Durham. It was while he was working at this position that he had the insight that would bring him fame.

Murry was working with Victor Horsely, one of his instructors at University College Hospital. Horsely was studying the thyroid gland, a structure that until about twenty years earlier had no known function. Horsely had found that myxedema (myxoedema is the British spelling) in animals could be cured by grafts of animal thyroid glands. Murray suggested that human patients with myxedema could be treated with injected extracts of sheep thyroid glands. This treatment was successful and Murray published in 1891. Murray is generally given credit for this discovery even though a similar success was reported in Lisbon, Portugal in 1890.

The thyroid gland, the largest endocrine gland in the human body, is located in the throat. It secretes hormones that affect how the quickly the body uses energy, synthesizes proteins, and how sensitive the body is to other hormones, affecting just about every cell in the body. Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not secrete enough of its hormones to maintain normal body functions and symptoms include, among others, myxedema, an increased amount of connective tissue in the skin and dermal edema (puffy skin). Today hypothyroidism is treated by taking synthetic or animal thyroid hormones orally.

After his discovery there was a renewed interest in myxedema and cretinism and Murray wrote on both subjects. His discovery is one of the first examples of hormone replacement therapy and he is regarded as one of the founders of endocrinology, the study of hormones and hormone secreting organs. For his work Murray received many honors, including F.R.C.P. in 1898, Goulstonian lecturer in 1899 and Bradshaw lecturer in 1905. He became professor of medicine at Manchester University 1908, only the second time that someone from outside had been brought in. His tenure was interrupted by World War I, where he served as a consulting physician to the forces in Italy and he retired in 1925, at the age of sixty.

Murry died on September 21, 1939

References:

Asherson, Geoffrey L.; The New Dictionary of National Biography, found online at www.dur.ac.uk

Brockbank, William;The Honorary Medical Staff of The Manchester Royal Infirmary 1830-1948; Manchester University Press; 1965

Pearce, J M S;Myxoedema and Sir William Withey Gull (1816-1890); Journal of Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (2006) 77:639

Jules Bordet

2010-06-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet was born on June 13, 1870 in Soignies, Belgium, a small town 23 miles south west of Brussels. In 1874 his father, Charles Bordet, a schoolteacher, was appointed to the Ecole Moyenne, a primary school. Both, Jules and his older brother Charles Jr. attended the Ecole Moyenne and then received their secondary education at the Athenne Royal of Brussels.

While attending the Athenne Royal Bordet became interested in chemistry and constructed a laboratory at home. He entered the medical program at the free University of Brussels at the age of sixteen, graduating, with his doctorate in 1892. He began doing research while still in medical school, publishing a paper in the Annels de l'Institute Pasteur in 1892.

In 1794 Bordet went to Paris to work at the Pasteur Institute sponsored by a scholarship from the Belgian government. In Paris he worked in the laboratory of the Ukrainian born scientist Ilya Metchnikoff. Bordet's experiments showed that there were two distinct elements present in immune sera needed to cause the lysis of bacterial cell walls. The first was a specific antibody, recognizing the particular kind of bacteria present, generated by the immune system in response to the bacteria. Antibodies are protein molecules that specifically bind to bacteria. The second is a nonspecific response, that is heat sensitive, that works in concert with the antibody response to lyse invading bacteria. Bordet called this second element "alexine", today it is called compliment. The insight that allowed Bordet to distinguish the two elements was that the compliment is sensitive to heat and can be destroyed by heating above 57 degrees Celsius, the antibody response is not destroyed by heating above 57 degrees.

Compliment is a biochemical cascade that works in concert with the antibody response to kill invading bacteria. The bacteria is first tagged when antibody molecules generated by lymphocytes bind to its surface. The compliment, a series of circulating proteins generated by the liver, recognize the antibody bound to the surface of the bacteria and through a series of reactions produce a pore in the cell wall of the bacteria. Fluid rushes in through the hole, driven by osmotic pressure, flooding the inside of the bacterial cell wall, eventually causing the bacterial cell to lyse.

In 1904 Bordet returned to Brussels to found the Pasteur Institute Brussels. In 1906, working with Octave Gengou, Bordet succeeded in isolating a pure culture of Bordatella pertussis, the organism that causes whooping cough, and was able to develop a vaccine against the disease. In 1919 Bordet was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for "for his discoveries relating to immunity".

Bordet died on April 6, 1960.

References:

Laurell, A.B.; "Jules Bordet - A Giant in Immunology"; Scandinavian Journal of Immunology (1990)429-432

"Jules Bordet Biography" at faqs.org

Jules Bordet Nobel Biography

Jules Bordet Wikipedia Entry

Regiomontanus

2010-06-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Born as Johannes Muller, Regiomontanus was born on June 6, 1436 in Konigsberg, Bavaria (not to be confused with the Konigsberg in what was East Prussia and is now Kalingrad). As was the custom at the time Johannes Muller used a latinicized pseudonym for his writings. The Latin name for Konigsberg is Regio Monte and from this Muller derived Regiomontanus. The son of a miller, Regiomontanus was educated at home until the age of 11. In 1447 he entered the University of Leipzig to study dialectics. Attracted by its reputation for mathematics, in 1450 he entered the University of Vienna where he studied mathematics under Georg von Puerbach. He completed his baccalaureate in 1452. He was unable to earn his Master's Degree until 1457, as university regulations required recipients to be 21.

In 1547 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Vienna, where he taught classes on perspective, Euclid and Virgil's Bucolics. He also collaborated with his former teacher Puerbach, doing astronomical observations. His primary interest was reading old manuscripts, of which he made copies. He also collaborated with Peurbach on an a abridgment of Ptolemy's Almagest. On his deathbed Peurbach urged his student to finish the work, which he did and although it was finished in 1462, it was not published until 1496. This work used the trigonometric functions sine and cosine and included a table of natural sines.

After the death of his teacher Regiomontanus traveled to Rome with his new patron Cardinal Bessarion. Regiomontanus spent the years from 1461 to 1465 as a member of the Cardinal's household. During this time he continued his studies, learning Greek from the Cardinal and using the Cardinal's library of Greek classics. Realizing the need for a systemic book on trigonometry, Regiomontanus completed De triangulis omnimodis (On Triangles of All Kinds) in 1464. This is the earliest systemic exposition on trigonometry, both planar and spherical, although portions of the sections on spherical trigonometry were taken, without attribution, from the twelfth century work of Jabir ibn Afla.

In 1471 Regiomontanus settled in Nuremberg, where he established an observatory and printing press. In Nuremberg he wrote three books on astronomy and he also created a mechanical eagle for Emperor Maximilian, which flapped its wings and was considered one of the marvels of the age. In 1475 Regiomontanus returned to Rome. He had been invited by Pope Sixtus IV, who wanted Regiomontanus' advice in reforming the calendar. The trip to Rome would prove fatal. Some commentators claim that Regiomontanus was poisoned. Others say that he died in the outbreak of plague that followed the flood of the Tiber in January 1476.

Regiomontanus died on July 6, 1476.

References:

Ball, Walter William Rouse; A Short Account of the History of Mathematics; Macmillan and Company Ltd.; 1908

O'Conner, J.J. and Robertson, E.F.;"Johan Muller Regiomontanus" at www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk

Regiomontanus wikipedia entry

Hannes Alfven

2010-05-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hannes Olof Gosta Alfven was born on May 30, 1908 in Norrkorping, Sweden. His parents, Johannes and Anna-Clara Alfven were both practicing physicians, his mother being one of the first women in Sweden to practice medicine. Alfven recorded that one of the events that kindled his interest in astronomy and astrophysics was his receiving at an early age the gift of a popular book on astronomy by French astronomer Camille Flammarion. The other was his membership in his school's radio club. As part of club activities young Alfven built radio receivers and without a nearby radio station in Norrkorping, and the one in Stockholm to faint to be received, Alfven was thrilled to hear the notes of music coming out the atmospheric noise and identifying as coming from Aberdeen, Scotland.

After high school Alfven entered the University of Upsala where he studied mathematics, theoretical and experimental physics. He went on to complete his doctorate at Upsala, doing his dissertation on "ultra-short electromagnetic waves". At a time when many others were studying nuclear physics, Alfven demonstrated his independent thought by going on to study electronics and astronomy. After finishing his doctorate in 1934, Alfven remained at the University of Upsala as a lecturer in physics. In 1937 he became a research physicist at the Nobel Institute. In 1940 he was appointed Professor of the Theory of Electricity at the Royal Institute of Technology. He was appointed Professor of Electronics in 1945 and Professor of Plasma Physics in 1963. In 1967 he moved to the University of California at San Diego as a visiting professor.

In 1933, as a graduate student, Alfven published a theory of the origin of cosmic rays in Nature. The term cosmic ray is a misnomer. Cosmic rays are particles (almost 90% of them are protons) that travel through space. In 1937 Alfven proposed that there was a galactic electromagnetic field that caused cosmic rays to move in spiral patterns and because of this they are observed as coming from all directions. He argued that if plasma pervaded the galaxy and the plasma carried an electrical charge, it would create a magnetic field pervading the galaxy. At the time Alfven's suggestion of a galaxy wide magnetic field was dismissed, and it was not until 1950s that the electromagnetic acceleration of cosmic rays was accepted and it was not observed until the 1970s.

For most of Alfven's career because of his unorthodox ideas he was forced to publish in journals without large circulations. Interplanetary space was largely thought to be a good vacuum, disturbed only by occasional comets. This view was largely accepted because it looked that way when viewed by telescopes which only observe in the visual region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Alfven's proposal of electromagnetic currents could not be observed and thus they were dismissed.

Alfven's most well known discovery was the discovery of Alfven waves, proposed in a 1942 paper in Nature. Alfven waves, in plasma, are oscillations of ions and the magnetic field. At first Alfven's proposal was discounted and it was not until after a seminar given by Alfven in 1948 at the University of Chicago with the famous physicist Enrico Fermi in the audience, after which Fermi was seen to nod his head and heard to remark "of course", that Alfven waves were accepted. Alfven was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 "for fundamental work and discoveries in magnetohydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of physics".

Other awards won by Alfven include the the Gold Medal from the British Royal Astronomical Society in 1967, the Franklin Medal from The Franklin Institute in 1970, the Lomonosov Medal from the USSR Academy of sciences in 1971, and the Bowie Medal awarded by the American Geophysical Union in 1988. The European Physical Society awards the Hannes Alfven Prize annually for outstanding contributions to plasma physics.

Alfven retired in 1991 and returned to his native Sweden.

Alfven died on April 2, 1995.

References:

Falthammer, Carl-Gunne;"Hannes Alfven" at the European Geophysical Society website (www.egu.eu)

Falthammer, C-G. and Dessler, A.J.; "Hannes Alfven" at alfvenlab.kth.se

Hogan, James P.; "Kicking the Sacred Cow"; Bean Books, 2004

Perrat, Anthony; "Dean of Plasma Dissidents"; The World and I (1988)p.190-197 found online at public.lanl.gov

Hannes Alfven Nobel Biography

Hannes Alfven Wikipedia Entry

John Bardeen

2010-05-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

John Bardeen was born of May 23, 1908 in Madison, Wisconsin, the second son of the son of Charles Russell Bardeen, the dean of the University of Wisconsin medical school and Althea Harmer Bardeen. Brilliant at an early age his parents moved him from third grade to junior high. When Bardeen was 12 his mother became seriously ill with cancer, and although his father downplayed the seriousness of the illness to his children Althea Bardeen died. Bardeen seriously affected by the death of his mother barely passed French that year. Despite the set back Bardeen graduated high school in 1923 and that fall entered the University of Wisconsin, to major in electrical engineering, at the age of 15.

Bardeen graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1928, after taking a semester off to work at the Western Electric Company in Chicago. Having already completed some of the coursework Bardeen stayed on at the University of Wisconsin to earn a M.S. in electrical engineering studying the emerging field of electrically prospecting for oil under Leo J. Peters. He chose to stay in electrical engineering because it had the math that he loved but unlike physics there were better job prospects and because he did not want to become an academic like his father. By the time he graduated the depression had struck and job prospects were scarce. After being rejected by Bell Labs, Bardeen was able to get a job at Gulf Research Laboratories again working under Peters developing ways to study magnetic and gravitational surveys to find oil.

Geology did not really interest Bardeen and after three years he applied and was accepted to the graduate program in mathematics at Princeton University starting in 1933. At Princeton Bardeen studied both physics and mathematics, completing a thesis on solid state physics under Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner. Before completing his thesis Bardeen was accepted as junior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Bardeen spent three years at Harvard working on problems cohesion and electrical conduction in metals and he also did some work on level density of nuclei. Bardeen graduated with a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton in 1936.

In 1938 Bardeen accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. In 1941, with America involved in WWII, Bardeen worked as a civilian physicist at the Naval Ordinance Laboratories helping the Navy develop ways for ships and submarines to avoid magnetic mines and torpedoes. He was offered a position working for the Manhattan Project, but refused.

Bardeen had met William Shockley while he was at Harvard. After the war Shockley offered Bardeen a position in his research group at Bell Labs at twice the salary of his professorship in Minnesota. Bardeen joined Shockley and Walter Brattain working on an solid state alternative to the vacuum tube amplifiers that were used in electronic devices. In the spring of 1947 Shockley assigned Bardeen and Brattain the task of determining why the silicon amplifier (which was later changed to germanium) he had designed was not working. Drawing on his training in quantum mechanics Bardeen realized that electrons behaved differently at the germanium surface than in the interior. If they could control what was happening on the surface it would allow them to control the current. It took until the end of 1947 for them to perfect their device which was the first point-contact transistor.

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic currents. A transistor changes the amount of power in an electric current. Transistors are ubiquitous in modern electronic devices. Shockley seeing the potential of the new devices continued working on them, excluding Bardeen from further research. Bardeen, upset that he was not able to continue his research, left Bell Labs for a professorship at the University of Illinois. Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1956 "for their researches in semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". Bardeen was making breakfast when he heard the news of the Nobel Prize win on the radio and he dropped a frying pan he was using spreading eggs across the kitchen floor. Bardeen brought only three of his five children (two of his sons were in school at Harvard) to the Nobel Prize ceremony, and when scolded by King Gustav, he assured the king he would bring them all the next time.

At the University of Illinois Bardeen was happy because now he could research whatever he wanted. At Illinois Bardeen studied superconductivity, the ability of some materials (usually at very low temperatures) to conduct electrons without resistance. Working with Leon Cooper and graduate student John Robert Schrieffer he developed a theory of superconductivity called BCS theory (an acronym for their last names). BCS theory proposes that at low temperatures electrons condense into Cooper pairs which have some of the properties of bosons through interaction with the crystal lattice. As a single electron travels through a lattice it creates a small positive charge in the material through which it travels, which attracts a second electron. If the attraction between these two electrons is greater than the vibrational energy of the lattice, forcing them apart, they remain paired. Because the vibrational energy is proportional to temperature this explains why low temperatures are required for superconductivity. So the first electron pulls the second electron through the lattice creating superconductivity. Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1972 for their work on superconductivity. Bardeen was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field and he brought all of his children to the second ceremony.

Bardeen died on January 30, 1991.

References:

Barry, TJ, "BCS Theory" at ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu

Hoddeston, Lillian and Daitch, Vickie ; True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen; Joseph Henry Press; 2002

John Bardeen: Whispering John at PBS.org

John Bardeen Nobel Biography

John Bardeen Wikipedia Entry

Johannes von Mikulicz-Radecki

2010-05-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Johanes von Mikulicz-Radecki was born in Czernowitz (in what was then Austria and is now Poland) on May 16, 1850. His father was an architect and his mother was a member of the Prussian nobility. His ability with languages was early evident and as a youth he spoke fluent German and Polish, and had a facility for Russian. He did his undergraduate studies at Hermannstadt and was headed for a career in law when, against his father's wishes he turned to medicine. Mikulicz went to the University of Vienna to study medicine. His father was so upset with his son that he refused to pay for his studies and Mikulicz taught piano and played organ in a church every morning from 5 to 8 a.m. to pay for his studies. He finished his M.D. in 1875.

After graduation he worked as volunteer assistant to Theodor Billroth, a surgery professor the University of Vienna. After three years his became Billroth's regular assistant. In 1880 he qualified as Privatdozent (unpaid tutor) and took charge of the surgical department at the Allgemeinen Polyklinik (general outpatient clinic) in Vienna. While there he improved the models of the esophagoscope and gastroscope by including distal illumination allowing the surgeon to better visualize the interior of these organs. In 1882 he became the director of the Surgical Clinic of Krakow. In 1887 he accepted the position as director and professor of surgery at the Surgical Clinic of Konigsburg. He remained there for three years and then became the professor of surgery at Breslau in 1890. He remained there until his death.

Mikulicz did much to improve surgical techniques used operating on the digestive system. While at Krakow he was the first surgeon to suture a perforated gastric ulcer and surgically restore part of the esophagus after tumor resection. An ardent advocate of Joseph Lister's work using antiseptics he used a gauze mask during surgery and was one of the first surgeons to wear sterile cotton gloves during surgery.

An imperturbable surgeon one of his assistants recorded a story about an emergency laprotomy performed on a particularly stormy day. While preparing for the surgery one of the glass windows on the roof of the surgical clinic shattered raining pieces of glass down, one nearly missing Mikulicz. Mikulicz calmly turned to the his assistant and asked him to prepare the patient.

Mikulicz died on Jun 14, 1905.

References:

Olch, Peter D.;"Johan von Mikulicz-Radecki"; Annals of Surgery (1960)152:923-926

Young, Archibald; "Obiturary: Dr. Johannes von Mikulicz-Radeki"; Glasgow Medical Journal (1905)64:110-115

Jan Mikulicz-Radecki Wikipedia Article

Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval

2010-05-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval was born on May 9, 1845 in Blosenberg, Sweden to a family of soldiers whose French ancestor had ridden with Gustavus Adolphus. At eighteen he entered the technical department of the University of Upsala, graduating three years later. His first position was as a draftsman at the Stora Kopparberg Company, but his health forced to give up the confining position for something with more opportunities for exercise. He returned to the University of Upsala for further study, graduating in 1872 with Ph.D. in Chemistry.

In 1875 he took a job as an engineer at Klosterverken Iron Works and shortly thereafter he developed a centrifugal device for separating cream. Needing more time to perfect his device he resigned his position at Klosterverken, and after much persistence was able to obtain a small loan that enabled him to manufacture his device. The device proved to be such a success that it was not long before Separator Company, Limited was on secure financial footing. For his invention of this separator device and other labor saving devices for dairy farmers, de Laval has been called "the Edison of dairying".

In search of a method to drive the centrifugal separator, which required high speeds, de Laval developed a steam turbine. The turbine was driven by high pressure steam shooting through a cone shaped nozzle developed by de Laval, that is now used on rocket engines. Able to turn, at what at the time was a frightening speed of 24,000 rpm, the turbine had to be reduced to one-tenth speed to drive the separator and did not prove to be useful for this purpose. However there were many other uses for the turbine and a separate industry developed.

Not content to rest on his laurels de Laval was constantly seeking new inventions, including milking machines and a process for treating low grade Swedish zinc ores, none of which were as successful as his cream separator. During his lifetime he received many honors, including from the King of Sweden, the Cross of Commander of the Order of Wasa and that of Knight in the Order of the North Star and he was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1886 and received its gold medal in 1892.

De Laval died on February 2, 1913.

References:

"Karl Gustaf Patrik de Laval" from the Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1913) Vol. 35, Issue 1, p 16-18

"Inventor of the Separator Dead" from the Holstein-Friesian Register (1913) Vol.35, Part 1, p.692

Gustaf de Laval, Wikipedia Entry