Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1940 - Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed.
Ed Elliott/US Department of Transportation
The bridge crossing Puget Sound spanning the Tacoma Narrows in the state of Washington began resonating due to strong winds. By the afternoon, the twisting of the bridge span was so severe, the bridge broke up and fell into the waters below. The bridge was nicknamed "Gallopin' Gertie" early in its life because it would sway side to side. The entire event was captured on video and gave engineers new insights into the effects of wind shear and resonance.
1929 - Eric Kandel was born.
Kandel is an Austrian-American neurobiologist who shares the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard for their discoveries concerning the propagation of nerve signals. Kandel's work involved the role nerve synapses play in learning. He identified there were chemical changes in the synapses that occur when a behavior is learned and there are different chemical changes associated with long and short term memory.1928 - Norton David Zinder was born.
Zinder is an American biologist who discovered genetic transduction. Transduction occurs when hereditary information is transferred from one organism to another. Zinder was studying the Salmonella bacteria and observed how the bacteriophage took over the cell's genetic material. He was also the first to discover a bacteriophage that used RNA as its genetic material.1903 - Konrad Lorenz was born.
Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist who studied animal behavior and related it to human behavior and the nature of learning behaviors from parents. This work would earn him part of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen.1887 - Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born.
Raman was an Indian physicist who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of Raman scattering. When photons strike a surface of molecules, most of the light will bounce off with the same frequency it started with. A small number of photons will give up their energy to the molecule and bounce back less energy. This scattering is called Raman scattering and can be used to measure the energy of molecular bonds.1878 - Lise Meitner was born.
Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who discovered nuclear fission with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann when they bombarded uranium with neutrons. She was the one who identified that fission had occurred after examining the data. She also discovered the first long lasting isotope of the element protactinium with Otto Hahn. Element 109, meitnerium was named in her honor.
1867 - Marie Skłodowska Curie was born.
Curie was a Polish-French chemist and physicist who pioneered the study of radioactivity. She was awarded two Nobel Prizes: the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Baquerel and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the elements radium and polonium. She died as a result of radiation poisoning before the health effects of radiation were known.
