Cecilia Payne-Gaboschkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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