Today in Science

Births 1885 - George Richards Minot, American physician and Nobel Prize laureate 1931 - Nigel Calder, British science writer Deaths 1987 - Luis Federico Leloir, French-born chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1987 - Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich, Russian physicist
Births 1525 - Tadeáš Hájek, Czech physician and astronomer 1580 - Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer 1743 - Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist 1925 - Martin Rodbell, American scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1729 - Giacomo F. Maraldi, French-Italian astronomer 1750 - Johan Gabriel Doppelmayr, German mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer 1964 - J. B. S. Haldane, Scottish geneticist
Events 1974 - Lucy is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Births 1756 - Ernst Chladni, German physicist 1768 - JÄdrzej Åniadecki, Polish writer, physician, chemist and biologist 1858 - Jagdish Chandra Bose, Indian physicist 1869 - Gustaf Dalén, Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1889 - Edgar Douglas Adrian, British physiologist 1915 - Henry Taube, Canadian-born chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Births 1627 - John Ray, English naturalist 1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French zoologist 1803 - Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist 1825 - Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist 1849 - John Ambrose Fleming, British physicist 1857 - Theodor Escherich, German pediatrician 1874 - Egas Moniz, Portuguese physician, neurologist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1694 - Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician
Events 1660 - At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society of London. 1964 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars. 2004 - A male Po’o-uli dies of avian malaria in Maui Bird Conservation Center before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct. Births 1700 - Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal 1772 - Luke Howard, British meteorologist 1805 - John Stephens, American archeologist 1908 - Claude Lévi-Strauss, French anthropologist 1950 -…
Events 2001 - A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet. 2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France. Births 1701 - Anders Celsius, Swedish inventor and astronomer 1754 - Georg Forster, German scientist 1857 - Charles Scott Sherrington, British physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate 1903 - Lars Onsager, Norwegian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1955 - Bill Nye (The science guy), American engineer and broadcaster Deaths 1811 - Andrew Meikle,…
Births 1678 - Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist 1832 - Karl Rudolf König, German physicist 1898 - Karl Ziegler, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1904 - Armand Frappier, French-Canadian physician and microbiologist 1907 - Ruth Patrick, American botanist 1938 - Rodney Jory, Australian physicist Deaths 1876 - Karl Ernst von Baer, German biologist 1885 - Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist 1896 - Emil du Bois-Reymond, German physician
Births 1703 - Jean-François Séguier, French astronomer and botanist 1814 - Julius Robert von Mayer, German physician and physicist 1887 - Nikolai Vavilov, Russian geneticist 1913 - Lewis Thomas, American physician and essayist Deaths 1686 - Nicolas Steno, Danish geologist 1694 - Ismael Bullialdus, French astronomer 1884 - Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, German chemist 1972 - Henri CoandÄ, Romanian aerodynamics pioneer
Events 1639 - Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree separately observe the first recorded transit of Venus 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species. Births 1774 - Thomas Dick, Scottish scientific teacher and writer 1888 - Fredrick Willius, American cardiologist 1925 - Simon van der Meer, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 2006 - ZdenÄk Veselovský, Czech zoologist
Births 1553 - Prospero Alpini, Italian physician and botanist 1715 - Pierre Charles Le Monnier, French astronomer 1837 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1887 - Henry Moseley, English physicist 1907 - Lars Leksell, Swedish physician 1924 - Colin Macmillan Turnbull, British-born anthropologist Deaths 1902 - Walter Reed, American bacteriologist 1937 - Jagdish Chandra Bose, Indian physicist 1937 - George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist
First of all, I want to wish a happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers. To everyone else, have a happy Thursday. I’ll be laying low for the next four days (a combination of Thanksgiving and grading) and am not likely to post other than a brief comment to tonight’s ASU vs USC football game. Your Today in Science follows ... Births 1635 - Francis Willughby, English biologist 1897 - Paul Oswald Ahnert, German astronomer 1904 - Louis Eugène Félix Néel, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1917 - Andrew Fielding Huxley, British scientist and Nobel Prize laureate 1939 - Tom West,…
Events 1905 - Albert Einstein’s paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in Annalen der Physik. This paper leads to the mass-energy equivalence E = mc². 1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the "Piltdown Man" skull was a hoax. 1969 - The first ARPANET link is established. Births 1931 - Revaz Dogonadze, Georgian scientist Deaths 1555 - Georg Agricola, German scientist 1652 - Jan Brożek, Polish mathematician, physician, and astronomer 1881 - Ami Boué, Austrian geologist 1970 - Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Indian…
Births 1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist 1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French entomologist 1886 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist and Nobel Prize laureate 1889 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer 1910 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist 1926 - Andrzej W. Schally, Polish-born endocrinologist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1704 - Charles Plumier, French botanist 1778 - Francesco Cetti, Italian scientist 1934 - Willem de Sitter, Dutch scientist 1945 - Francis William Aston, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1976 - Trofim Lysenko, Stalinist biologist
Events 1971 - Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars). Though switched off on 27th October 1972, the probe is still in Mars orbit and stable until at least 2022. Births 1924 - Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist (above) Deaths 1606 - Geronimo Mercuriali, Italian philologist and physician 1994 - Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist
Events 1847 - James Young Simpson is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic. 1980 - Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes first images of its rings. Births 1795 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist 1842 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1896 - Salim Ali, Indian ornithologist Deaths 1742 - Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist 1916 - Percival Lowell, American astronomer
Events 1675 - Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function. Births 1743 - Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish naturalist 1930 - Hugh Everett, American physicist Deaths 1686 - Otto von Guericke, German scientist 1884 - Alfred Brehm German zoologist 1973 - Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Births 1565 - Laurentius Paulinus Gothus, Swedish theologian and astronomer 1695 - John Bevis, English physician and astronomer 1918 - Ernst Otto Fischer, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1935 - Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, Russian astrophysicist 1935 - Bernard Babior, American biochemist 1961 - Rudolf Grimm, Austrian physicist Deaths 1990 - Mário Schenberg, Brazilian physicist
Events 1921 - Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect. 1994 - Discovery of the chemical element Darmstadtium. Births 1721 - Mark Akenside, English poet and physician 1731 - Benjamin Banneker, American scientist 1873 - Otfrid Foerster, German neurologist 1874 - Albert Francis Blakeslee, American botanist 1885 - Theodor Kaluza, German scientist 1897 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate 1934 - Carl Sagan, American astronomer Deaths 2002 - William Schutz, American psychologist
Events 1895 - While experimenting with electricity Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays. Births 1656 (N.S.) - Edmond Halley, British astronomer and mathematician 1854 - Johannes Rydberg, Swedish physicist 1885 - Hans Cloos, German geologist 1922 - Christiaan Barnard, South African heart surgeon 1923 - Jack Kilby, American electrical engineer and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1934 - Carlos Chagas, Brazilian physician
Events 1996 - NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor. Births 1818 - Emil du Bois-Reymond, German physician 1867 - Maria Sklodowska-Curie, Polish-born chemist, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (twice) 1878 - Lise Meitner, Austrian/American chemist, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1888 - C. V. Raman, Indian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1903 - Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist and Nobel Prize laureate 1915 - Philip Morrison, American scientist 1929 - Eric R. Kandel, Austrian-born neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1599 - Gasparo Tagliacozzi, Italian surgeon 1913 -…