Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
2003 - Calder Hall nuclear power plant shuts down.
Calder Hall was a British nuclear power station that was the world's first commercial nuclear plant connected to a public electrical grid. It was opened in 1956 and operated continuously for 46 years.2001 - Clifford G. Shull died.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Shull was an American physicist who was awarded half the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of neutron diffraction technique. His technique used neutrons produced from nuclear reactors to investigate the structure of atomic nuclei, compounds and the neutron itself. He also was the first to use neutrons to study the magnetic properties of materials at the atomic level.
1997 - Friedrich Hund died.
Hund was a German physicist who introduced a method to use molecular orbitals to determine electron structure of molecules and bonds. Hund's rules are a set of rules that determine the ground state of a multi-electron atom based on the energy levels of the filled orbitals.1997 - Lyman Strong Spitzer, Jr. died.
Denise Applewhite/Princeton University/NASA
Spitzer was an American astrophysicist who developed the physics of plasmas and interstellar medium. He was the main figure in developing the space based observatories, the Copernicus satellite and Hubble telescope.
1978 - Charles Herbert Best died.
University of Toronto
Best was a medical student when he assisted Frederick Banting in discovering the hormone insulin and using it to treat diabetes in dogs. This work earned Banting part of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine but not Best. John Macleod received the other half of the prize for providing necessary laboratory space. Banting decided to share his award money and give credit to Best as co-discoverer.
1966 - First satellite to orbit the moon was launched.
NASA
The Soviet satellite Luna 10 (or Lunik 10) was launched to become the first artificial satellite to orbit the moon.
1945 - Hans Fischer died.
Nobel Prize Foundation
Fischer was a German chemist who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into biological pigments. He researched chlorophyll, carotene and synthesized of hemin, the red pigment in hemoglobin. He found these structures were based on the structure of pyrrole.
1934 - Carlo Rubbia was born.
Rubbia is an Italian physicist who shares the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics with Simon van der Meer for the discovery of W and Z bosons. W and Z particles communicate the weak nuclear force of the Standard Model of particle physics.1917 - Emil Adolf von Behring died.
US National Library of Medicine/NIH
von Behring was a German physician who earned the first Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1901 for his serum treatments against diphtheria and tetanus.
