Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1962 - NASA launches Mariner 2.
NASA
NASA launched the Mariner 2 spacecraft that became their first successful flyby of the planet Venus. It passed within 22,000 miles of the planet and took measurements of the atmosphere and surface. Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to travel to another planet.
1958 - Ernest Orlando Lawrence died.
Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Lawrence was an American physicist who was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the particle accelerator and the development of artificial radioactive elements. He invented the cyclotron particle accelerator where charged particles are accelerated using a high-frequency alternating voltage and a strong perpendicular magnetic field. As the particles accelerate, they make a spiral pattern as they enter and leave the accelerating field. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the element lawrencium were named in his honor.
1928 - Osamu Shimomura was born.
Wikimedia Commons
Shimomura is a Japanese organic chemist who shares the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with with Roger Tsien and Martin Chalfie for their discovery of the green fluorescent protein. The green fluorescent protein is a protein that glows bright green in the presence of blue light and found in Aequorea victoria jellyfish.
1924 - William Maddock Bayliss died.
Wikimedia Commons
Bayliss was a British physiologist who, with Ernest Starling, discovered the first hormone. They discovered a chemical compound that stimulates the secretion of pancreatic digestive juice when food enters the intestines. They called this chemical secretin and called this type of chemical a hormone after the Greek horman meaning "to set in motion".
1915 - Norman Foster Ramsey was born.
Ramsey is an American physicist who was awarded half the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the oscillatory fields method of measuring very small energy changes. This method was used in the development of atomic clocks. He also was part of the team that developed the hydrogen maser.1874 - Carl Bosch was born.
Bosch was a German chemical engineer who created the large scale method to fix nitrogen from atmospheric nitrogen. His continued research into high pressure chemistry would earn him half the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was also one of the founders of one of the largest chemical companies in the world, IG Farben.
