Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1989 - Emilio Segré died.
Library of Congress
Segré was an Italian physicist who discovered the first man made element, technetium and the element of astatine. He was also awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Owen Chamberlain for their discovery of the antiproton, or negatively charged proton.
1980 - Fritz Strassmann died.
Strassman was a German chemist who with Otto Hahn identified the smaller element barium when uranium was bombarded by neutrons leading to the discovery of the process of nuclear fission.1970 - First Earth Day celebrated.
Wikipedia Commons
Earth Day was first celebrated in the United States to raise awareness for environmental issues. The first Earth Day was concerned with over-population and the stresses it creates and the problems of global cooling.
1952 - First televised atomic bomb test.
US DOE/NNSA
The United States detonated the Tumbler Charlie atomic bomb at Yucca Flats at 9:30 am and allowed it to be televised to a nationwide audience. The test was the highest air burst to up to that time with a predicted yield of 31 kilotons and dropped from a B-50 Superfortress bomber.
1919 - Donald J. Cram was born.
Cram was an American chemist who shares with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles Pedersen the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research and development of host-guest chemistry. Host-guest chemistry is where two or more molecules/ions bond in unique ways due to their structure in other than covalent bonds.1915 - Modern chemical weapons first used.
Collier's New Photographic History of the World's War (New York, 1918)
Modern chemical weapons were first used when German troops released over 150 tons of chlorine gas during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. The green gas was blown over French trenches and killed 5000 soldiers.
Gas attacks would grow more sophisticated throughout the war and would cause an estimated 88,000 deaths and 1.2 million non-fatal victims on both sides by the end of the war.
Gas attacks would grow more sophisticated throughout the war and would cause an estimated 88,000 deaths and 1.2 million non-fatal victims on both sides by the end of the war.
1909 - Rita Levi-Montalcini was born.
Creative Commons
Montalcini is an Italian neurologist who was awarded half the 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of nerve growth factors. She was denied a research position in Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws of the late 1930s, so she set up a home laboratory and researched nerve growth in chicken embryos. Since 2001, she has served in the Italian Senate.
1904 - J. Robert Oppenheimer was born.
Department of Energy
Oppenheimer was the American physicist who was the lead researcher for the Manhattan Project and is considered the 'father of the atomic bomb'.
1891 - Harold Jeffreys was born.
US Geological Survey
Jeffreys was an English mathematician, geophysicist and astronomer who was first to propose the Earth's core was molten. He also calculated the surface temperatures of the outer planets to be very cold instead of very hot, as prevailing science predicted.
1876 - Robert Bárány was born.
Bárány was an Hungarian physician who was awarded the 1914 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the vestibular apparatus of the inner ear. The vestibular apparatus aids us with our balance and sense of spacial orientation by sending the brain information to aid eye-hand coordination and keeping us standing upright.1839 - August Wilhelm Eichler was born.
Eichler was a German botanist who created one of the first plant classification systems. He divided plants into four phyla: thallophyta, bryophya, pteridophyta and spermatophyta.1056 - Final observation of the Crab Nebula supernova recorded.
NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al., HST/ASU/J. Hester et al.
A Chinese astronomer recorded the 'guest star' in the constellation of Taurus became invisible. The 'guest star' was a supernova event first seen on July 5, 1054 and increased in brightness up to four times the brightness of Venus and visible in the day sky. This supernova created a radio pulsar and the surrounding Crab Nebula.
