Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1978 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish died.
Norrish was an English chemist who shares half the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with George Porter for their research into very fast chemical reactions. They used pulses of light to disrupt organic compounds at equilibrium to increase the number of free radicals. A second pulse of light would record the changes before equilibrium is re-established to determine the intermediate steps to perform these reactions.1928 - Bernard Flood Burke was born.
Burke was an American radio astronomer who, together with Kenneth Franklin discovered radio waves coming from the planet Jupiter. They found a 22.2 MHz periodic burst of static similar to the signals from lightning storms on Earth.1896 - Robert Sanderson Mulliken was born.
Mulliken was an American chemist who was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for describing the electronic structure of chemical and molecular bonds using the molecular orbital method. He proposed that when a molecule is formed, the electron configuration of the component atoms re-orient their orbitals to an overall configuration of the molecule.1877 - Charles Barkla was born.
Nobel Prize Foundation
Barkla was an English physicist who was awarded the 1917 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on x-ray transmission though matter. He found that each element had its own characteristic x-ray spectra.
1862 - Philipp Lenard was born.
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Lenard was a Hungarian physicist who was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into cathode rays. He was one of the first to determine cathode rays were actually particles smaller than air molecules. It is now known cathode rays are streams of electrons.
1843 - Alexis Bouvard died.
Bouvard was a French astronomer and director of the Paris Observatory. He produced accurate tables of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, but his calculations of the orbit of Uranus failed to follow the "correct" orbit. This lead him to postulate the existence of another planet outside Uranus' orbit. This idea would be picked up by Le Verrier and Adams who would predict the existence of Neptune.
1826 - Joseph von Fraunhofer died.
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Fraunhofer was a German physicist who discovered the dark lines on the Sun's spectrum. These lines were found to be caused by the absorption of energy by the elements in the Sun. The dark lines in absorption spectra are now known as Fraunhofer lines.
