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Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
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APRIL 3 – BIRTHS – Scientists born on April 3rd
  Jane Goodall
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Video: What separates us from chimpanzees?
 Born 3 Apr 1934.   quotes
Jane Morris Goodall, Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall is an English primatologist, anthropologist and ethnologist who is known for her exceptionally detailed and long-term research since 1960 on the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. This represents the longest-running study of a non-human primate in its natural habitat. Among many other discoveries, Goodall and her associates found that chimpanzees: occasionally hunt in groups and eat meat; have a range of social customs, including group warfare; and the manufacture of tools that they use is also taught to their offspring.   more
My Life With the Chimpanzees, by Jane Goodall. - book suggestion.
  Virgil I. Grissom
 Born 3 Apr 1926; died 27 Jan 1967 at age 40.   quotes
Virgil Ivan (“Gus”) Grissom was an American astronaut and pilot who was one of the original “Mercury Seven” astronaut trainees (1959), the second American in space (1961), and died in a fire that broke out while testing the grounded Apollo I capsule (1967). He first flew in space in the Liberty Bell 7, launched on 21 Jul 1961. On splashdown, the escape hatch blew prematurely. He managed to escape, but the capsule filled with water and sank. Grissom helped design and construct the spacecraft of Project Gemini. He was the first Gemini pilot, launched in Gemini 3 on 23 Mar 1965 with John W. Young for the first two-man space flight. He died with copilots Ed White and Roger Chaffee in an Apollo I simulation launch test that ended in a disastrous fire.«
  Katherine Esau
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c.1930
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 Born 3 Apr 1898; died 4 Jun 1997 at age 99.
Russian-born American botanist who did groundbreaking work in the structure and workings of plants. She is best known for her research into the effects of viruses upon plant tissues, and her studies of plant tissue structures and physiology. Her research into plant viruses focused on how viruses effect the structure and development of a plant's phloem (its food-conducting tissue). This research enabled her to distinguish between primary and secondary viral symptoms, allowing studies of viral damage to specific plant tissues to be conducted. In addition, she clarified the development phases of plant tissues, particularly the sieve tubes which serve to move solutes throughout a plant. Her definitive work Plant Anatomy (1953, rev.1965) is a classic.
  Ralph A. Bagnold
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 Born 3 Apr 1896; died 28 May 1990 at age 94.
English geologist who was a leading authority on the mechanics of sediment transport and on eolian (wind-effect) processes. While a career soldier, serving in Egypt prior to WW II, he first studied sand dune formation and movement. After retiring from the army (1935), he continued his research and wrote the book Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes, investigating the physics of particles moving through the atmosphere and deposited by wind. He recognized two basic dune types, the crescentic dune, which he called "barchan," and the linear dune, which he called longitudinal or "sief" (Arabic for "sword"). During WW II, his avocational interest in vehicle performance on blowing sand aided the Allies in North Africa.[Image right source ]
Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes, by Ralph A. Bagnold. - book suggestion.
  William James Farrer
 Born 3 Apr 1845; died 16 Apr 1906 at age 61.
British-born Australian agricultural researcher who developed several varieties of drought- and rust-resistant wheat that made possible a great expansion of Australia's wheat belt. Farrer believed that he could produce a new strain which would be rust-resistant, as well as being suitable for Australian conditions. From 1889, although often ill, Farrer worked hard toward this goal for many hours a day and well into the night to record his results. His variety of wheat, noted for its drought-resistant qualities, was distributed in 1900 and therefore was called Federation. As a result, the average wheat yield per acre rose by about three bushels between 1900 and 1920. His wheats were not so much rust-resistant as rust escaping because of their early maturity.
  Hermann Carl Vogel
 Born 3 Apr 1842; died 13 Aug 1907 at age 65.   quotes
German astronomer who discovered spectroscopic binaries (double-star systems that are too close for the individual stars to be discerned by any telescope but, through the analysis of their light, have been found to be two individual stars rapidly revolving around one another). He pioneered the study of light from distant stars, and introduced the use of photography in this field.
  John Burroughs
 Born 3 Apr 1837; died 29 Mar 1921 at age 83.   quotes
American naturalist and author who lived and wrote after the manner of Henry David Thoreau. Burroughs studied and celebrated nature in his many essays and books. Growing up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, Burroughs absorbed much of the nature and country life that would fill his essays in later life. As a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, he filled idle hours with writing about the outdoors he loved. This became his first book, Wake-Robin. Returning to the Hudson River Valley in 1873, he began fruit farming and continued to write, publishing a new book about every two years. He travelled extensively, camping out with such friends as the naturalist John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt.   more
  Charles Wilkes
 Born 3 Apr 1798; died 8 Feb 1877 at age 78.
American oceanographer, who led the first major ocean expedition (1838-42), which circled the globe, and determined that Antarctica (which Wilkes so named) is a continent.
  Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau
 Born 3 Apr 1778; died 18 Feb 1862 at age 83.
French physician and epidemiologist who performed the first successful tracheotomy to save a patient suffering from laryngeal diptheria from suffocating. In 1825, he made an incision of and entrance into the trachea through the skin and muscles of the neck. (Four previous attempts had failed.) Bretonneau was the first to distinguish typhoid from typhus. He was also the first to clinically describe diphtheria, which he named (Traité de la Diphérite,1826), a contagious condition, characterised by the presence of a false membrane in the pharynx or larynx. He derived the word derived from a Greek word meaning leather or hide. He also enunciated a theory of specific causes of infectious diseases, in which he foreshadowed the germ theory of Louis Pasteur.
  Simon Willard
 Born 3 Apr 1753; died 30 Aug 1848 at age 95.
U.S. clockmaker, creator of the timepiece that came to be known as the banjo clock, and a member of a Massachusetts family of clockmakers designing and producing brass-movement clocks from 1765 to 1850.


Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan Thumbnail Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
APRIL 3 – DEATHS – Scientists died on April 3rd
  Gino P. Santi
 Died 3 Apr 1997 (born c. 1916).
American engineer whose long career with the U.S. Air Force was most notable for his development of the pilot ejection system.[Enc. Brit gives year of birth as 1916/17.]
  Jérôme-Jean-Louis-Marie Lejeune
 Died 3 Apr 1994 at age 67 (born 13 Jun 1926).
French geneticist who made the first positive identification (1959) linking a human disorder to a chromosome aberration. The anomaly he pinpointed, the trisomy 21, causes Down syndrome, one of the most common forms of mental retardation. In Jul 1958, while examining the chromosomes of a so-called "Mongol" child, Lejeune discovered the existence of an extra chromosome on the 21st pair. On 26 Jan 1959, Jérôme Lejeune, with Marthe Gauthier and Raymond Turpin, presented their discovery to the Académie des Sciences. This began to shed light on the existence of diseases by chromosomal aberration, unsuspected until then. Lejeune continued to identify more connections between specific disorders and chromosomal anomalies.
  Sir Edward Bullard
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Pangea
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 Died 3 Apr 1980 at age 72 (born 21 Sep 1907).   quotes
Sir Edward Crisp Bullard was an English marine geophysicist who, with Maurice Ewing, is generally considered to have founded the discipline of marine geophysics. work in geomagnetism. Bullard made the first satisfactory measurements of geothermal heat-flow through the oceanic crust. In early work, he measured minute gravitational variations by timing the swings of an invariant pendulum, studied in the East African Rift Valley. Bullard’s computer analysis of the precise fit of the rifted continental borders on each side of the Atlantic Ocean, added support to the theory of continental drift. His “dynamo” theory of geomagnetism explained the Earth’s magnetic field as due to convection of molten material within the Earth’s core. Knighted in 1953.«   more
  Marston Bates
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mosquito
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 Died 3 Apr 1974 at age 67 (born 23 Jul 1906).   quotes
Drell Marston Bates was an American zoologist and writer who studied mosquitoes and tropical diseases for the Rockefeller Foundation with fieldwork in Albania, Egypt and Colombia (1937-50). Rockefeller scientists reduced the problem of yellow fever in Colombia, where Bates supervised researchers who worked with local doctors in diagnoses and treatment, studied the region's forests and swamps in the area, and tested insects suspected as disease carriers. His first book, The Natural History of Mosquitoes (1949) was followed by more natural history books for laymen including The Nature of Natural History (1950) which showed his love of the tropics. As an environmental activist, he believed even the government should respect the earth's environment.«
The Nature of Natural History, by Marston Bates. - book suggestion.
  Richard Wilhelm Heinrich Abegg
 Died 3 Apr 1910 at age 41 (born 9 Jan 1869).
German physical chemist who, with Guido Bodländer, proposed an electron treatment of chemical affinity and valency in a paper Die Elektronaffinität (Electron Affinity, 1899) to explain how certain atoms can combine based on the newly discovered electrons comprising the atom. Abegg in a later paper gave a “rule of eight” whereby: “Every element possesses a positive as well as a negative maximum valence whose sum is always eight. The maximum positive valence is the same as the number of the periodic group to which the element belongs.” It had several difficulties and was not generally accepted. Abegg enjoyed travelling, ballooning, skiing and photography. He died at age 41, in the crash of his gas balloon Schlesien[Ref: Abegg and Bodländer, Zeit. Anorg. Chem. (1899), 20, 453.]
  Albert Fink
 Died 3 Apr 1897 at age 69 (born 27 Oct 1827).
German-born American railroad engineer and executive who was the first to investigate the economics of railroad operation on a systematic basis. He was also inventor of the Fink truss, used to support the roofs of buildings and for bridges. Instead of being supported with an arch or cables, a truss bridge is held up with a latticework of rods that reinforce its stiffness, as shown (left) on the Louisville-Nashville Railroad Bridge constructed in 1857-1859 to span the Green River, Ky. (until destroyed in October 1861 during the Civil war.) His truss, patented in 1850, was one of the first intended to be built from iron instead of wood. He was involved in the construction of roundhouses for locomotives, and a courthouse in Louisville, Ky.
  Sir James Clark Ross
 Died 3 Apr 1862 at age 61 (born 15 Apr 1800).
British naval officer who carried out important magnetic surveys in the Arctic and Antarctic and discovered the Ross Sea and the Victoria Land region of Antarctica.
  Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni
 Died 3 Apr 1827 at age 70 (born 30 Nov 1756).
German physicist who is known as the “father of acoustics” for his mathematical investigations of sound waves. Chladni figures, seen when thin plates covered in sand at set in vibration, are complex patterns of vibration with nodal lines that remain stationary and retain sand. He demonstrated these to an audience of scientists in Paris in 1809. He measured the speed of sound in various gases by determining the pitch of the note of an organ pipe filled with different gases. To determine the speed of sound in solids, Chladni used analysis of the nodal pattern in standing-wave vibrations in long rods. He performed on the euphonium, an instrument he invented, made of glass and steel bars vibrated by rubbing with a moistened finger. He also investigated meteorites.
  Anton-Lazzaro Moro
Thumbnail - Anton-Lazzaro Moro
Artist’s concept 1824
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Title page
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 Died 3 Apr 1764 (born 1687).   quotes
Italian geologist who suggested that islands and continents had been elevated from the bottom of the sea, by the force of volcanic fires. These fires, he believed, originated soon after the Earth was created, and burned under the bottom of the ocean then covering the entire globe. The earliest land surface to be raised had no shells as the ocean began devoid of such life. Continuing volcanic fires pushed up further strata which included shells and other evidence of marine life as they had later came into existence. The violence of the forces also resulted in the distortions and inclination of the strata. He published these ideas in 1740. Although imperfect, his plutonic theory was ground-breaking.«[Illustration of Moro may come from an artist’s imagination. Webmaster has, as yet, found no portrait made during his life on which the sketch could be based.]

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APRIL 3 – EVENTS – Science events on April 3rd
  First cell phone call
  In 1973, the first portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper. The phone was 10 inches in height, 3 inches deep and an inch-and-a-half wide and weighed 30-oz. Since then, cell phones have shrunk to a mere palm-size weighing 4-oz, and are used by a billion people around the world. Cooper's first ''shoebox'' phone replaced a car phone of the time that weighed more than 30 pounds and cost thousands of dollars. A car phone owner had to drill a hole in his car to install the antenna and most of the phone sat in the trunk. A control unit with a handset was placed inside the car.
  Twin blade razor
  In 1973, Francis W. Dorion patented a "dual razor blade assembly" (No. 3,724,070).
  Artificial Heart
  In 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley implanted a total artificial heart into a 2-month-old patient. Three days later, the patient received a heart transplant, but dies of respiratory insufficiency only 14 hours later.
  Moon orbited
  In 1966, Luna 10, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon entered lunar orbit, and completed its first orbit 3 hours later. It had been launched by the USSR from an Earth orbiting platform on 31 Mar 1966. The scientific instruments on board included a gamma-ray spectrometer, triaxial magnetometer, and a meteorite detector. Other instruments investigated the solar-plasma, infrared emissions from the Moon, radiation conditions of the lunar environment and gravitational studies. Luna 10 transmitted the Internationale during the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was battery powered, operated for 460 lunar orbits and made 219 active data radio transmissions before discontinued on 30 May 1966.«
  Space nuclear power
  In 1965, SNAP 10A, the first nuclear reactor in space, was launched from Vanden berg Air Force Base, Calif. It was activated by a signal from scientists on earth about four hours later, and generated 500 kilowatt-hours of power during its life, providing electrical power for a 1 kgf ion engine. While its ground version lasted 10,000 hours without problems, the orbiting reactor was shut down by an electrical failure in another of the satellite's systems after 45 days in operation. It is still orbiting the earth. SNAP stands for Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power. Although the Soviet Union has flown many nuclear reactors in space, the SNAP-10A is the only one flown by the United States.
  Catseye patent
  In 1934, a British patent application for the first catseye road marker was recorded for inventor Percy Shaw (1889-1975), described as "Improvements relating to Blocks for Road Surface." These are the familiar reflectors which mark the lines that are lit up at night by the lights of passing vehicles. The raised surface in which the reflectors are mounted have a construction that "will yield when travelled over by a vehicle wheel and sink to the level of the road surface" such as a resilient white rubber cushion mounted in a metal holder sunk below the road surface. The patent No. 436,290 was accepted 3 Oct 1935. A revised design was patented the following year as No. 457,536. Shaw started Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd. to manufacture them.
  First human kidney transplant
  In 1933, the first human to human kidney transplant was achieved in a six-hour operation by Ukranian surgeon Yurii Voronoy. A female patient admitted with acute mercury intoxication (after a suicide attempt by taking poison) had not responded to conventional treatment. A male patient had just died from a basal skull injury. A cadaver kidney was implanted in the thigh of the woman, and connected to blood vessels at the site. It excreted urine until the second day after the operation. There was a hopeless mismatch of blood types, resulting in the rejection of the organ, and the patient died. Although medical history included some prior kidney transplant involving animals, this was the first ever human to human case.« 
  Edison patents at Menlo Park
  In 1876, Thomas Edison executed patent applications (on acoustic telegraphy) which were the first since moving to Menlo Park (his second and third applications after a year-long hiatus).
  Hat manufacture
  In 1866, a hat shaping machine was patented by Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld.
  Coffee mill
  In 1829, James Carrington of Wallingford, Conn, patented his coffee mill.
  First patent grant
  In 1449, the earliest English patent was granted to John of Utynam protection for introducing the making colored glass to England. In what was probably the first grant by an instrument of letters patent, King Henry VI gave this exclusive privilege for a term of 20 years during which none of his subjects could use such arts without the consent of John. This was for the benefit of the King, who directed John of Utynam to create stained-glass windows for the King's new institutions: Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. John had recently returned to England from Flanders and brought back knowledge of other subjects which the King wished John to teach his subjects, as well as tutoring some assistants in the skills of making coloured glass for the creation of his windows.«

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- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


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