Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1989 - George Claude Pimentel died.
Pimentel was an American chemist who invented the chemical laser. Chemical lasers get their energy from chemical reactions and can reach megawatt power levels. He was also the pioneer of the technique of matrix isolation in low temperature liquids.1983 - US launches the first American woman astronaut.
NASA
The space shuttle Challenger lifted off taking the first American woman, Sally K. Ride as part of the five person crew into space. This launch was just over 20 years after the Soviets launched their first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova.
1971 - Paul Karrer died.
Karrer was a Swiss chemist who was awarded half the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2. Carotenoids are organic pigments in plants. His investigations were into beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A. Flavins are organic compound sources of riboflavin, or vitamin B2.1932 - Dudley Robert Herschbach was born.
Herschbach is an American chemist who shares the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Yuan Lee and John Polanyi for their discoveries into the dynamics of chemical reactions. He and Lee used molecular beams that would cross each other and note the collisions and the reactions that took place. This research gave a basic understanding of chemical reactions and what it takes for two reagents to react with each other.1926 - Allan Rex Sandage was born.
Sandage is an American astronomer who discovered quasi-stellar radio sources (quasars) with Thomas A. Matthews. Quasars are very distant stellar objects that emit strong radio frequency energy.1918 - Jerome Karle was born.
Karle was and American chemist and crystallographer who shares the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Herbert A. Hauptman for their development of the direct method determining crystal structures. They found a mathematical method to determine a crystal's molecular structure from the crystal's x-ray diffraction pattern. This would lead to a method of three dimensional x-ray crystallography.1905 - Per Teodor Cleve died.
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Cleve was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered the elements holmium and thulium. He also discovered the element didymium was not an element at all, but two separate elements, neodymium and praseodymium.
1845 - Alphonse Laveran was born.
Nobel Prize Foundation
Laveran was a French physician who identified the cause for malaria as a protozoan while studying red blood cells of infected people. This discovery would earn him the 1907 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
1799 - William Lassell was born.
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Lassell was an English amateur astronomer. He built his own observatory and telescope in Liverpool and discovered Triton, Neptune's largest moon. He also discovered two moons of Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel. He independently discovered the moon Hyperion of Saturn.
1178 - Fire on the Moon reported
An English monk, Gervase of Canterbury, recorded an event witnessed by himself and five others where the upper part of the cresent of the moon split in two.He wrote:
"From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out... fire, hot coals and sparks... The body of the moon, which was below writhed... throbbed like a wounded snake."
There is a debate as to what was witnessed. In 1976 it was suggested this was the birth of the crater Giodano Bruno. This would have produced a spectacular meteor shower, but no meteor shower was ever recorded by any other astronomers or witnesses. The current theory is a meteor entering the atmosphere and burning up that happened to line up with the monk's line of sight of the moon.
