Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1993 - Severo Ochoa died.
Ochoa was a Spanish biochemist who shares the 1959 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Arthur Kornberg for outlining the mechanisms involved in the synthesis of DNA and RNA. Ochoa discovered an enzyme in bacteria that allowed him to synthesize ribonucleic acid or RNA. He discovered the enzyme while researching high-energy phosphates. The enzyme's main function was to degrade RNA but under laboratory conditions, it could run the process in reverse.1952 - United States tests first thermonuclear device.
Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office
The United States detonated the first nuclear device that uses fusion energy, or thermonuclear device on Enewetak atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It produced an explosion in the 10-14 Megaton range and generated more fallout than predicted.
1950 - Robert B. Laughlin was born.
Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service
Laughlin is an American physicist who shares the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics with Daniel Tsui and Horst L. Störmer for their discovery of the phenomenon where a quantum fluid that behaves as if it were made up of particles with electrical charge less than the elementary charge. This fluid is called the fractional quantum Hall effect. Tsui and Störmer were investigating the Hall effect at near absolute zero and discovered the induced current changed in quantized steps where it appears the charge carriers in the current carry exact fractions of an electron's charge. Laughlin proposed the extreme magnetic fields induce the the charge carriers into a quantum fluid state where new quasi-particles are formed to carry 1/3 of an electron's charge.
