I belong to those theoreticians who know by direct observation what it means to make a measurement. Methinks it were better if there were more of them.
~Erwin Schrodinger
The 224th day of the year; 224 is the sum of the cubes of 4 consecutive integers:
224 = 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 and also 23 + 63
Cool thing about 224: 224 = 23+45+67+89 *Derek Orr @Derektionary
Every number smaller than 224 can be expressed as the sum of distinct divisors of 224.
224 = 2^5 x 7. With so many factors of two, it has lots of representations as the difference of two squares. 224 = 57^2 - 55^2 = 30^2 - 26^2 = 15^2 - 1^2
See More Math Facts for every Year Day here.
1269 A letter written on this day (the date is questioned as Aug 6, 8, or 12th) by Master Peter de Maricourt (Perigrinus, Spanish for pilgrim or traveller) (to a fellow named Sygerius of Foucaucourt,) indicates that he had a knowledge of magnetic polarity, knew that opposites attract, understood that splitting a bar magnet preserved two poles in each part, and was aware that a weaker magnet could have its polarity reversed by a stronger one. *A history of physics in its elementary branches By Florian Cajori
This letter was later included in his treatise "Epistola de Magnete" ("Letter on the Magnet"). Peregrinus’s Epistola represents one of the earliest examples of the experimental method in physics, more than 300 years before Gilbert's De Magnete (1600). His work shows how medieval natural philosophers were capable of real scientific insight, grounded in observation and experimentation. Gilbert acknowledged his debt to Peregrinus and incorporated this thirteenth-century scientist's experiments on magnetism into his own treatise, called De magnete. *PB notes
Pivoting compass needle in a 14th-century handcopy of Peter's Epistola de magnete (1269)
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| *Wik |
Pierre Gassendi produced an anonymous pamphlet attempting to reassure the people of Paris that a predicted eclipse of the sun on this day in 1654 would not lead to a disaster. He was not entirely successful as many of the inhabitants of Paris hid in their cellars on this day. (Why anonymous? Was he worried about the possible effect if he was wrong?)
There is an interesting painting at the Rijksmuseum, a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam, showing the various ways people viewed this eclipse. On the left a man points to a basin with water. Two men view the eclipse with a mirror. Others look at the sun through a piece of glass. And the first view I've ever seen of the "man in the Sun". (*John McCafferty)
1755 19 year old Joseph Louis Lagrange sends a letter to Euler where he described his "method of variations" and work on isoperimetric problems. *Optimal Control and Forecasting Euler responded promptly,and with great fervor and the two began a long series of correspondence. "You seem to have brought the theory of maxima and minima almost to its highest degree of perfection." Euler also promoted the admission of Lagrange to the Berlin Academy.
Lagrange’s letter to Euler described a general method—what he called the “method of variations”—that allowed these kinds of problems to be solved more systematically. His work led to the formal foundations of the calculus of variations, providing a technique for finding functions that optimize functionals (expressions involving integrals of functions and their derivatives). Lagrange’s method was not just about solving specific problems—it changed the approach to mathematical optimization and laid groundwork for what we now call optimal control theory, which plays a key role in physics, economics, and engineering.
1851 Today in 1851 Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine.
*the painter flynn@thepainterflynn
But Wait!!! There's More
Elias Howe and Isaac Singer patented sewing machines in the 1840s and ’50s. Howe invented and patented the first practical sewing machine that used lock-stitching. This machine could produce 300 stitches per minute compared to a professional seamstress’s 40–50 stitches per minute but only in a straight line, a severe limitation. As sewing technology improved, garment factories were able to quickly and cheaply mass-produce fashionable clothing for the general population. The practical sewing machine was later available for home use, becoming a staple of self-reliance of the American family. In 1851 Singer designed an improved model that utilized Howe’s patented lock-stitch method and a new up-and-down motion mechanism. Howe was able to reestablish his rights in 1854 after a five-year legal battle against Singer and others, whereupon he received royalties on all U.S.-made sewing machines.
1877 Asaph Hall discovered Deimos, outer satellite of Mars. It is named after Deimos, a figure representing dread or terror in Greek Mythology. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were found when American astronomer Hall identified them after a long search, although their existence had been a source of speculation before. The possibility of Martian moons had been speculated long before Hall's discovery. The astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) even predicted their number correctly, although with faulty logic: he wrote that since Jupiter had four known moons and Earth had one, it was only natural that Mars should have two.
Perhaps inspired by Kepler (and quoting Kepler's third law), Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels (1726) refers to two moons in Part 3, Chapter 3 (the "Voyage to Laputa"), in which the astronomers of Laputa are described as having discovered two satellites of Mars orbiting at distances of 3 and 5 Martian diameters, and periods of 10 and 21.5 hours, respectively. The actual orbital distances and periods of Phobos and Deimos of 1.4 and 3.5 Martian diameters, and 7.6 and 30.3 hours, respectively.
Hall discovered Deimos on August 12, 1877 at about 07:48 UTC and Phobos on August 18, 1877, at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., at about 09:14 GMT (contemporary sources, using the pre-1925 astronomical convention that began the day at noon, give the time of discovery as August 11, 14:40 and August 17 16:06 Washington mean time respectively)*Wik
In the words of Asaph Hall, "Of the various names that have been proposed for these satellites, I have chosen those suggested by Mr Madan of Eton, England, viz: Deimos for the outer satellite; Phobos for the inner satellite. These are generally the names of the horses that draw the chariot of Mars. " *assorted
Hall discovered Deimos on August 12, 1877 at about 07:48 UTC and Phobos on August 18, 1877, at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., at about 09:14 GMT (contemporary sources, using the pre-1925 astronomical convention that began the day at noon, give the time of discovery as August 11, 14:40 and August 17 16:06 Washington mean time respectively)*Wik
In the words of Asaph Hall, "Of the various names that have been proposed for these satellites, I have chosen those suggested by Mr Madan of Eton, England, viz: Deimos for the outer satellite; Phobos for the inner satellite. These are generally the names of the horses that draw the chariot of Mars. " *assorted
1883 Fragmented Comet Nearly Hits The Earth: On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun. Today, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, gave a different interpretation. He thinks Bonilla must have been seeing fragments of a comet that had recently broken up. This explains the 'misty' appearance of the pieces and why they were so close together. Manterola and co end their paper by spelling out just how close Earth may have come to catastrophe that day. They point out that Bonilla observed these objects for about three and a half hours over two days. This implies an average of 131 objects per hour and a total of 3275 objects in the time between observations.
Each fragment was at least as big as the one thought to have hit Tunguska. Manterola and co end with this: "So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event." *MIT Technology Review, (Many question the interpretation)
1949 On Aug. 12, 1949, time slowed briefly in London. Fifty starlings settled on Big Ben’s minute hand and delayed the striking of the hour by four and a half minutes. *Greg Ross, Futility Closet (A “murmuration” of starlings, as this phenomenon is known, must be one of the most magical, yet underrated, wildlife spectacles on display in winter. Impenetrable as the flock’s movements might seem to the human eye, the underlying maths is comparatively straightforward. Each bird strives to fly as close to its neighbors as possible, instantly copying any changes in speed or direction. As a result, tiny deviations by one bird are magnified and distorted by those surrounding it, creating rippling, swirling patterns. In other words, this is a classic case of mathematical chaos (larger shapes composed of infinitely varied smaller patterns). Whatever the science, however, it is difficult for the observer to think of it as anything other than some vast living entity. Until recently such sights were common over London. *Daniel Butler, Telegraph, 23 Feb 2009)
Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, England, but the name is frequently extended to refer also to the clock and the clock tower.
In 1960, the U.S. launched the first telecommunications satellite, Echo 1, from Cape Canaveral, packed in a Thor-Delta rocket. At the altitude for low Earth orbit, above almost all of the Earth's atmosphere, the satellite was deployed and inflated with gas at low pressure to form a 100-ft (30.5-m) diameter spherical balloon made of metallized Mylar, 0.5 mils (12.7-μm) thick. Thus it is known as a balloon satellite, as originally conceived by William J. O'Sullivan (26 Jan 1956). Its orbit was at about 1,000 miles (1600-km). It was merely passive, to reflect microwave signals between points on Earth, similar to the way the Moon reflects light while the Sun is below the horizon. A commemorative stamp was issued 15 Dec 1960. Echo 1 remained in orbit until 24 May 1968. Telstar 1 followed 10 Jul 1962 *TiS
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| *Linda Hall Org |
1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall began. In the early morning hours of 13 August 1961 [Film 5.80 MB], temporary barriers were put up at the border separating the Soviet sector from West Berlin, and the asphalt and cobblestones on the connecting roads were ripped up. Police and transport police units, along with members of “workers’ militias,” stood guard and turned away all traffic at the sector boundaries. The SED leadership’s choice of a Sunday during the summer holiday season for its operation was probably no coincidence.
1981 IBM introduces its Personal Computer (PC) also known as the IBM Model 5150, lending legitimacy to microprocessor-based computers. IBM's first PC ran with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system. In 1983, Compaq Computer Corp. released the first clone of the IBM PC, a machine embodying an identical copy of the PC architecture -- which IBM had made publicly available -- and begining the gradual decline of IBM's share of the personal computer market.
The PC architecture, based on Intel's x86 microprocessor family, continues to dominate desktop computing with over 85% of PCs using an x86-based CPU. *CHM
1985 Celebration of the centenary of the International Statistical Institute in Amsterdam begins. It lasted until August 22. *VFR
The origins of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) can be traced back to a series of International Statistical Congresses, the first of which was convened by Adolphe Quetelet in 1853 in Brussels.
The ISI was formally founded in 1885, during a meeting held to celebrate the Jubilee of the London Statistical Society.
The initial 81 members were the elite of that era’s statisticians in government and academia.
They established our first statutes, and our first half-century was a period of general stability. Major changes, such as a proposed affiliation in 1920 with the League of Nations, were resisted.
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| Adolphe Quetelet, ISI |
2014 BBC announces the first Female Fields Medal winner. An Iranian mathematician working in the US has become the first ever female winner of the celebrated Fields Medal. In a landmark hailed as "long overdue", Prof Maryam Mirzakhani was recognized for her work on complex geometry. Four of the medals were presented in Seoul at the International Congress of Mathematicians, *BBC
Four Fields medallists left to right Artur Avila, Martin Hairer (at back), Maryam Mirzakhani + epsilon (with her daughter) and Manjul Bhargava at the ICM 2014 in Seoul
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| Four Field's Medalist + epsilon |
2026 Next total solar eclipses in Europe, total in North of Spain shortly before sunset also in parts of Portugal.*NSEC Hoping to get my picture and post here It will be Europe's first total solar ewclipse in over 25 years.
The next total solar eclipse in the United States will occur on March 30, 2033 (in Alaska only), whereas the next total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States will occur on August 22, 2044. OK, if you have to wait that long, here's a picture of an earlier Solar eclipse. *PB notes
1769 Johann Christian Martin Bartels (12 August 1769 – 7/20 December 1836) was a German mathematician. He was the tutor of Carl Friedrich Gauss in Brunswick and the educator of Lobachevsky at the University of Kazan. *Wik
In 1808 Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky had the good fortune to study with Bartels at Kazan University not long after he took up his post there. Not only did Bartels assist Lobachevsky with his studies, but he also looked after his young student, supporting him when he got into trouble with the authorities (which happened quite often!) When Lobachevsky was due to graduate it was Bartels who spent three days lobbying the other professors to award him a Master's degree. The university authorities did not want to give Lobachevsky a degree at all because of his poor behaviour. Bartels won the argument and Lobachevsky was awarded a Master's Degree. After graduating in 1811, Lobachevsky remained in Kazan to study with Bartels who guided his reading of Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae Ⓣ and Laplace's Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ. In 1814 it was mainly due to Bartels that Lobachevsky was appointed as an assistant professor. We should note that Lobachevsky took Bartels' course on the History of Mathematics which, following Montucla, considered in detail Euclid's Elements and his theory of parallel lines. It was this course which made Lobachevsky think about non-euclidean geometry.*SAU
1862 Jules Antoine Richard (12 August 1862 in Blet, Département Cher,- 14 October 1956) Richard worked mainly on the foundations of mathematics and geometry, relating to works by Hilbert, von Staudt and Méray.
Further according to Richard, it is the aim of science to explain the material universe. And although non-Euclidean geometry had not found any applications (Albert Einstein finished his general theory of relativity only in 1915), Richard already stated clairvoyantly:"One sees that having admitted the notion of angle, one is free to choose the notion of straight line in such a way that one or another of the three geometries is true." *Wik
1887 Erwin Schrodinger, born (12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961). Austrian theoretical physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac. Schrödinger took de Broglie's concept of atomic particles as having wave-like properties, and modified the earlier Bohr model of the atom to accommodate the wave nature of the electrons. This made a major contribution to the development of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger realized the possible orbits of an electron would be confined to those in which its matter waves close in an exact number of wavelengths. This condition, similar to a standing wave, would account for only certain orbits being possible, and none possible in between them. This provided an explanation for discrete lines in the spectrum of excited atoms. *
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| This cat doesn't like the odds. |
TIS
1897 Otto Struve (August 12, 1897 – April 6, 1963) Ukrainian-Russian-American astronomer who spent most of his life and his entire scientific career in the United States.
He was one of the few eminent astronomers in the pre-Space Age era to publicly express a belief that extraterrestrial intelligence was abundant, and so was an early advocate of the search for extraterrestrial life.
"An intrinsically improbable event may become highly probable if the number of events is very great. ... [I]t is probable that a good many of the billions of planets in the Milky Way support intelligent forms of life. To me this conclusion is of great philosophical interest. I believe that science has reached the point where it is necessary to take into account the action of intelligent beings, in addition to the classical laws of physics."
Struve received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1944), the Bruce Medal (1948), the Henry Draper Medal (1949), and the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (1957)
The crater Struve on the Moon (commemorating three of the Struve astronomers), Asteroid 2227 Otto Struve and the Otto Struve Telescope of McDonald Observatory are named in his honor. *TIA
He was a fourth generation astronomer, the great-grandson of Friedrich Struve. *TiS
1908 Caryl Parker Haskins (August 12, 1908 to October 8, 2001) was a scientist, author, inventor, philanthropist, governmental adviser and pioneering entomologist in the study of ant biology. In the 1930s he was inspired by Alfred Lee Loomis to establish his own research facility. Along with Franklin S. Cooper, he founded the Haskins Laboratories, a private, non-profit research laboratory, in 1935. Affiliated with Harvard University, MIT, and Union College in Schenectady, NY, Haskins conducted research in microbiology, radiation physics, and other fields in Cambridge, MA and Schenectady. In 1939 Haskins Laboratories moved its center to New York City. Seymour Hutner joined the staff to set up a research program in microbiology, genetics, and nutrition. The descendant of this program is now part of Pace University in New York. In the 1940s Luigi Provasoli joined the Laboratories to set up a research program in marine biology which disbanded with his retirement in 1978. Since the 1950s, the main focus of the research of Haskins Laboratories has been on speech and its biological basis. The main facility of Haskins Laboratories moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1970 where it entered into affiliation agreements with Yale University and the University of Connecticut. Haskins Laboratories continues to be a leading, multidisciplinary laboratory with an international scope that does pioneering work on the science of the spoken and written word.
Haskins served as President, Research Director, and Chairman of the Board of Haskins Laboratories, 1935-'87; Director, E.I. du Pont de Nemours, 1971-'81 and Research Professor, Union College, 1937-'55. In 1956, he was appointed to the Presidency of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a position he held until 1971. He was also President of the Sigma Xi society in 1967-'68. He remained a Trustee of Carnegie Institution and of Haskins Laboratories, as well as Trustee Emeritus of the National Geographic Society until his death. He also continued his research on entomology, working with his wife, Edna Haskins, and other colleagues. *Wik
1919 Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, née Peachey, FRS (August 12, 1919 Davenport, England - ) is a British-born American astrophysicist, noted for original research and holding many administrative posts, including director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
During her career, she served at the University of London Observatory, Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, the California Institute of Technology, and from 1979 to 1988 was first director of the Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where she has worked since 1962.
After receiving her Ph.D. in 1943, she started to research galaxies by linking a spectrograph to telescopes. At the Yerkes Observatory in the USA her work involved studying B stars and galaxy structure.
In 1957, the B²FH group showed the famous result that all of the elements except the very lightest, are produced by nuclear processes inside stars. For this they received the Warner Prize in 1959. In her later research she was one of the first to measure the masses and rotation curves of galaxies and was one of the pioneers in the study of quasars.
At UCSD she also helped develop the faint object spectrograph in 1990 for the Hubble Space Telescope. Currently, she is a professor emeritus of physics at UCSD and continues to be active in research, such as engaging in non-standard cosmologies such as, intrinsic redshift.*Wik
1926 Horace Chandler Davis (August 12, 1926 – September 24, 2022) was an American-Canadian mathematician, writer, educator, and political activist. an American-Canadian mathematician, writer, and educator.
He was born in Ithaca, New York, to parents Horace B. Davis and Marian R. Davis. In 1948 he married Natalie Zemon Davis; they have three children.
In 1950 he received a doctorate in mathematics from Harvard University.
His principal research investigations involve linear algebra and operator theory in Hilbert space. Furthermore he has made contributions to numerical analysis, geometry, and algebraic logic. He is one of the eponyms of the Davis–Kahan theorem and Bhatia–Davis inequality (along with Rajendra Bhatia). The Davis-Kahan-Weinberger dilation theorem is one of the landmark results in the dilation theory of Hilbert space operators and has found applications in many different areas. A PhD thesis titled "Backward Perturbation and Sensitivity Analysis of Structured Polynomial Eigenvalue Problem" is dedicated to this theorem. In total Chandler Davis has written around eighty research papers in mathematics.
He is currently one of the co-Editors-in-Chief of the Mathematical Intelligencer. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
He began his writing career in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. From 1946 through 1962 he produced a spate of science fiction stories, mostly published there. One of the earliest, published May 1946, was The Nightmare, later the lead story in A Treasury of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin; it argued for a national policy of decentralizing industry to evade nuclear attacks by terrorists. He also issued the fanzine "Blitherings" in the 1940s.
Davis came from a radical family and has identified himself as a socialist and former member of the Communist Party of America.
Davis—along with two other professors, Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert—refused to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and was subsequently dismissed from the University of Michigan. Davis was then sentenced to a six-month prison term where he was able to do some research. A paper from this era has the following acknowledgement:
"Research supported in part by the Federal Prison System. Opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and are not necessarily those of the Bureau of Prisons."
The Federal government released Davis from prison in 1960. After his release, Davis moved to Canada, where he currently resides. He began teaching at the University of Toronto. He has lived in Canada longer than he lived in the US.
In 1991, the University of Michigan Senate initiated the annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. Recent speakers have included: Cass Sunstein (2008), Nadine Strossen (2007), Bill Keller (2006), Floyd Abrams (2005), and Noam Chomsky (2004). *Wik
1930 Jacques Tits (12 August 1930 – 5 December 2021) was a Belgian and French mathematician who works on group theory and geometry and who introduced Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, and the Tits group. Tits was an "honorary" member of the Nicolas Bourbaki group; as such, he helped popularize Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter's work, introducing terms such as Coxeter number, Coxeter group, and Coxeter graph.
He received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1993, the Cantor Medal from the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German Mathematical Society) in 1996, and the German distinction "Pour le Mérite". In 2008 he was awarded the Abel Prize, along with John Griggs Thompson, “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory." *Wik
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1933 James Ray Vanstone ( August 12, 1933 near Owen Sound, Ontario , Canada ; April 9, 2001 in Florida ) was a Canadian mathematician who worked on differential geometry and multilinear algebra, particularly in connection with relativity theory.
Vanstone studied at the University of Toronto with a bachelor's and master's degree and received his doctorate in 1959 from the University of Natal in South Africa under Hanno Rund ( Generalized Metric Differential Geometry ). In 1959 he became lecturer , in 1961 assistant professor, in 1965 associate professor and in 1973 professor at the University of Toronto. He retired in 1995. He died of a heart attack in his winter residence in Florida.
With his colleagues in Toronto Stephen Halperin and Werner H. Greub, he wrote a three-volume textbook on differential geometry.
He was visiting professor and visiting scientist at Flinders University in Australia, the University of Western Australia in Perth , the ETH Zurich , the University of Arizona and the University of Mannheim and he was on the executive board of the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) from 1969 to 1972 and from 1981 to 1983. From 1965 to 1967 he was editor of the Bulletin of the CMS and from 1983 to 1988 of the Journal of the CMS.
He was married and had two daughters and two sons.*Wik
1901 Ernest de Jonquières (3 July 1820 Carpentras, France – 12 Aug 1901 Mousans-Sartoux, France) was a French naval officer who discovered many results in geometry. After his introduction to advanced mathematics by Chasles it is not surprising that his main interests were geometry throughout his life. He made many contributions many of them extending the work of Poncelet and Chasles. An early work, the treatise Mélanges de géométrie pure (1856) contains: an amplifications of Chasles' ideas on the geometric properties of an infinitely small movement of a free body in space; a commentary on Chasles' work on conic sections; the principle of homographic correspondence; and constructions relating to curves of the third order. In a final section de Jonquières presented a French translation of Maclaurin's work on curves. *SAU
1928 Charles Chree, FRS (5 May 1860 – 12 August 1928) was a British physicist, an authority on terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, and for 32 years Superintendent of Kew Observatory.
Chree was born in Lintrathen, Forfarshire, Scotland on 5 May 1860, second son to Rev Charles Chree. He was educated at the Grammar School, Old Aberdeen, the University of Aberdeen where he graduated MA in 1879 and the University of Cambridge where he graduated as Sixth Wrangler (MA, 1883).
Chree was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1897.
He was awarded the James Watt medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1905.
He was President of the Physical Society of London between 1908 and 1910.
Chree won the Royal Society Hughes Medal in 1919 "for his researches in terrestrial magnetism" and served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1922 to 1923.
He was appointed Superintendent of Kew Observatory in 1893, a post he retained until 1925, a remarkably long period of 32 years. During his tenure of office he was responsible for testing thousands of chronometers, watches, thermometers and other scientific instruments, success in which tests gained the award of a "Kew Certificate".
Chree received degrees of D.Sc. from Cambridge in 1895 and LL.D. from Aberdeen in 1898.
The Chree Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics was named for him. The awards were renamed in 2008.
He died on Sunday 12 August 1928 in Worthing, Sussex. He was unmarried.
1989 William B. Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) English-American engineer and teacher, co-winner (with John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for their development of the transistor, a device that largely replaced the bulkier and less-efficient vacuum tube and ushered in the age of microminiature electronics. *TIS
2004 Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (28 August 1919 – 12 August 2004) English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Allan Cormack) for creation of computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanners. He originated the idea during a country walk in 1967 when he realized that the contents of a box could be reconstructed by taking readings at all angles through it. He applied the concept for scanning the brain using hundreds of X-ray beams imaging cross-sections that were reconstructed as high-resolution graphics by a computer program handling complex algebraic calculations. By 1973 his CAT scanner could produce cross-section images of a brain in 4-1/2-min, invaluable for the diagnosis of brain diseases. He later built a larger machines able to make a full body scan. *TIS
2007 Ralph Asher Alpher (February 3, 1921 – August 12, 2007) was an American cosmologist. Alpher's dissertation in 1948 dealt with a subject that came to be known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In a strange mathematical pun, his pre-publication of his thesis may have caused his independent role to have been minimized.
Although his name appears on the paper, Hans Bethe had no direct part in the development of the theory, although he later worked on related topics; Gamow added his name to make the author list Alpher, Bethe, Gamov, a pun on alpha, beta, gamma (α, β, γ), the first three letters of the Greek alphabet. Thus, Alpher's independent dissertation was first published on April 1, 1948 in the Physical Review with three authors. The humor engendered by the prodigious Gamow may at times have obscured the critical role Alpher played in developing the theory. This seminal paper was based on his dissertation (defended shortly thereafter).
With the award of the 2005 National Medal of Science, Alpher's original contributions (nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background radiation predicition) to the modern big bang theory are beginning to receive due recognition. Neil deGrasse Tyson was instrumental in a NSF committee recommendation.
In 2005 Alpher was awarded the National Medal of Science. The citation for the award reads "For his unprecedented work in the areas of nucleosynthesis, for the prediction that universe expansion leaves behind background radiation, and for providing the model for the Big Bang theory." The medal was presented to his son Dr. Victor S. Alpher on July 27, 2007 by President George W. Bush, as his father could not travel to receive the award. Ralph Alpher died following an extended illness on August 12, 2007. He had been in failing health since falling and breaking his hip in February 2007. *Wik
Credits :
*CHM=Computer History Museum
*FFF=Kane, Famous First Facts
*NSEC= NASA Solar Eclipse Calendar
*RMAT= The Renaissance Mathematicus, Thony Christie
*SAU=St Andrews Univ. Math History
*TIA = Today in Astronomy
*TIS= Today in Science History
*VFR = V Frederick Rickey, USMA
*Wik = Wikipedia
*WM = Women of Mathematics, Grinstein & Campbell
