jlynch | April 16, 2007Births
1598 - Giovanni Riccioli, Italian astronomer
1794 - Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist
1798 - Ãtienne Bobillier, French mathematician
1863 - Augustus Edward Hough Love, English mathematician
1866 - Ernest Starling, British physiologist
1946 - Georges J.F. Kohler, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1790 - Benjamin Franklin, American inventor
1942 - Jean Perrin, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1976 - Henrik Dam, Danish biochemist, Nobel laureate
1994 - Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, Nobel laureate
jlynch | April 15, 2007Events
1943 - Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD.
Births
1495 - Petrus Apianus, German mathematician
1660 - Hans Sloane, British collector and physician
1728 - Joseph Black, Scottish chemist
1823 - Ferdinand Eisenstein, German mathematician
Deaths
1783 - Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer
1788 - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French naturalist
1888 - Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski, Polish physicist
1914 - George William Hill, American astronomer
1958 - Rosalind Franklin, British chemist
jlynch | April 15, 2007
Events
1923 - Insulin first became generally available for use by diabetics.
Births
1452 - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance polymath (above)
1552 - Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician
1641 - Robert Sibbald, Scottish physician
1707 - Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician
1710 - William Cullen, Scottish physician
1793 - Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, German astronomer
1794 - Jean Pierre Flourens, French physiologist
1809 - Hermann Grassmann, German mathematician
1874 - George Harrison Shull, American plant geneticist, and Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel laureate
1896…
jlynch | April 13, 2007Requiem
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
Kurt Vonnegut
jlynch | April 13, 2007Events
1956 - Videotape is first demonstrated at the NARTB (now NAB) convention
1958 - The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1970 - One of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks explodes, causing a cancelled moon mission.
1981 - The first operational space shuttle, Columbia, lands at Edwards Air Force Base after its first test flight.
2003 - Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
Births
1629 - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician
1927 - Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist, Nobel laureate…
jlynch | April 13, 2007About the only thing I bother to make time to watch on the TV is The Sopranos which has just entered its final season of nine episodes. Here's what has happened in the previous seasons:
jlynch | April 12, 2007Births
1771 - Richard Trevithick, English engineer and inventor
1780 - Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer
1802 - Leopold Fitzinger, Austrian zoologist
1850 - Arthur Matthew Weld Downing, British astronomer
1887 - Gordon S. Fahrni, Canadian physician and President of the Canadian Medical Association
1909 - Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, Polish mathematician
1941 - Michael Stuart Brown, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1855 - Henry De la Beche, English geologist
1880 - Robert Fortune, Scottish botanist
1941 - Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer
jlynch | April 11, 2007Events
1633 - The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins.
1937 - Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft
1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in space.
Births
1748 - Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist
1852 - Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician
1884 - Otto Meyerhof, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate
Deaths
1971 - Igor Tamm, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1997 - George Wald, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | April 11, 2007This is sad. Kurt Vonnegut has died. Pessimist, existentialist and damn great writer. As he said in God Bless You Mr Rosewater:
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "
I've taught his Galapagos many times over the years and Slaughterhouse-Five is a classic that reflects his experiences in Dresden during the fire-bombing of 1945.
From Slaughterhouse-Five:
"And every day my…
jlynch | April 10, 2007Events
1905 - Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity.
Births
1705 - William Cookworthy, English chemist
1755 - James Parkinson, English physician
1798 - Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist
1953 - Andrew Wiles, British mathematician who found a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem
Deaths
1626 - Marin GetaldiÄ, Croatian mathematician
1926 - Luther Burbank, American botanist
jlynch | April 9, 2007There is something bitterly ironic about a muppet like Dembski complaining about the Nisbet & Mooney piece on "framing science." His complaint is, after all, coming from a man who accepts money from a group who coin glib phrases like "teach the controversy" and talk about "a new science for a new century". Sheech!
jlynch | April 9, 2007
Births
1651 - Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, German mathematician
1755 - Samuel Hahnemann, German physician
1762 - Giovanni Aldini, Italian physicist
1887 - Bernardo Houssay, Argentine physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1917 - Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1927 - Marshall Warren Nirenberg, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1813 - Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Italian-born mathematician
1920 - Moritz Cantor, German mathematician
1955 - Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and theologian
1999 - Heinz…
jlynch | April 9, 2007People are discussing the Nisbet & Mooney "Framing Science" paper, but due to real life getting in the way, I haven't been able to either read the (short) paper or the (long) blogospheric coverage. I will however note that Greg Laden makes a great point over at Pharyngula:
In the manner of Dale Carnegie, I'll say it and I'll say it again and again: Let's try to drop the "theory" from "evolutionary theory"... this word is doing so much work out there in normal language, it DOES NOT MATTER that scientists think "theory" means a certain thing. It does not. that is not how language works. The…
jlynch | April 8, 2007
Events
1959 - Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven" (see above).
1967 - The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) takes its maiden flight.
Births
1770 - Thomas Johann Seebeck, German physicist
1806 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer
1930 - F. Albert Cotton, American chemist
1932 - Jim Fowler, American zoologist
Deaths
1626 - Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher and formative influence on the Royal Society of London
1889 - Michel Eugène Chevreul, French chemist
1951 - Vilhelm…
jlynch | April 8, 2007
Cheeta turns 75 today, continuing his run as the oldest living non-human primate and making him a shoo-in as your Monday Mammal. You can donate to the CHEETA sanctuary (which also cares for other ex-movie primates) here.
jlynch | April 8, 2007AP is running a story that the Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life has reached 1,009,000 extant species and expects to reach 1.75 million by 2011. Along with the Tree of Life project, the Catalog of Life offers plenty of information for the budding systematist.
jlynch | April 7, 2007
Births
1541 - Michele Mercati, Italian physician
1818 - August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist
1865 - Charles W. Woodworth, American entomologist
1869 - Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon
1911 - Melvin Calvin, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate for discovering the Calvin Cycle (see above)
Deaths
1461 - Georg Purbach, German mathematician and astronomer
1919 - Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist
1936 - Robert Bárány, Austrian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1984 - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1992 -…
jlynch | April 6, 2007
Events
1827 - John Walker sells the first friction match. He had invented it in the previous year.
1938 - LSD is first synthesized (see above)
1964 - IBM announces the System/360.
1969 - The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.
2001 - Mars Odyssey is launched.
Births
1727 - Michel Adanson, French botanist
1890 - Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American conservationist and writer
1936 - Jean-Pierre Changeux, French neuroscientist
Deaths
1761 - Thomas Bayes, English mathematician
1789 - Petrus Camper, Dutch anatomist
1823 - Jacques Charles, French chemist
1885 - Carl Theodor…
jlynch | April 6, 2007
Ode to a Trilobite
Frank P. Zeidler (1935)
The stone mason who split the limestone block
With lucky stroke of hammer left quite whole
The imprint that you gave Niagara rock
When you met death in open sea or shoal.
He little thought, that workman did, when he
Began to pound the stone to make it square
That ancient bodies of Silurian time
Did die to make a stony bottomed sea,
While later years exposed to open air
The creatures that had died, as massive lime.
I found your mark before the weather wore
The stone too smooth; I cut you from your grave;
I took you home to swell my fossil store…
jlynch | April 5, 2007
Events
648 BC - Earliest solar eclipse recorded by the Ancient Greeks.
1938 - Teflon is discovered.
1965 - Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
1973 - Launch of Pioneer 11 (current position above)
Births
1613 - Stjepan GradiÄ, Croatian philosopher and scientist
1851 - Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer
1911 - Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1920 - Edmond H. Fischer, Swiss-American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1928 - James…