Albert Abraham Michelson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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