Important historic dates in science

June 30: Rocket
In 1939, Heinkel He 176 rocket plane flew for first time, at Peenemunde, Germany.

June 29: Oppenheimer
In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission, by a vote of 4 to1 decided against reinstating Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's access to classified information. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 required consideration of "the character, associations, and loyalty" of the individuals engaged in the work of the Commission. Substantial defects of character and imprudent and dangerous associations, particularly with known subversives who place the interests of foreign powers above those of the United States, were considered reasons for disqualification. The Commission regarded his associations with persons known to him to be Communists exceeded tolerable limits of prudence and self-restraint, and lasted too long to be justified as merely the intermittent and accidental revival of earlier friendships.

June 28: Maria Goeppert Mayer
(Born June 28, 1906: Died February 20, 1972)
German physicist who shared one-half of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany for their proposal of the shell nuclear model. (The other half of the prize was awarded to Eugene P. Wigner of the United States for unrelated work.) In 1939 she worked at Columbia University on the separation of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb project. In 1949, she devised the shell nuclear model, which explained the detailed properties of atomic nuclei in terms of a structure of shells occupied by the protons and neutrons. This explained the great stability and abundance of nuclei that have a particular number of neutrons (such as 50, 82, or 126) and the same special number of protons.

June 27: Atomic power
In 1954, the world's first atomic power station began producing electricity in Obninsk, U.S.S.R.

June 26: Paul Niggli
(Born June 26, 1888)
Swiss mineralogist who originated the idea of a systematic deduction of the patterns in the internal structure of crystals by means of X-ray data. He supplied a complete outline of methods that have since been used to determine these patterns. There are 230 possible different internal patterns for different crystals. Because the patterns describe a three-dimensional arrangement, they are known as space groups. Niggli also developed a notation that described the individual space groups, and co-authored a definitive set of tables describing them.

June 25: J. Hans D. Jensen
(Born June 25, 1907: Died February 11, 1973)
Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen was a German physicist who proposed the shell theory of nuclear structure of protons and neutrons grouped in onion-like layers of concentric shells. He suggested that the nucleons (protons and neutrons) spun on their own axis while they moved in an orbit within their shell and that certain patterns in the number of nucleons per shell made the nucleus more stable. Scientists already knew that the electrons orbiting the nucleus were arranged in different shells. Jensen's model of the nucleus won him a share of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics (with Maria Goeppert- Mayer, who arrived at the same hypothesis independently in the U.S.; and Eugene P. Wigner for unrelated work.) Throughout the 1950s, Jensen worked on radioactivity.

June 24: Victor Francis Hess
(Born June 24, 1883: Died December 17, 1964)
Austrian-born physicist who was a joint recipient (with Carl D. Anderson of the United States) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936 for his discovery of cosmic rays, high-energy radiation originating in outer space. He emigrated to the United States in 1938 and was later naturalized. By means of instruments carried aloft in balloons, Hess and others proved that radiation that ionizes the atmosphere is of cosmic origin. He c (1939) a 27-day cycle of cosmic-ray intensity to the magnetic field of the sun and correlated it with the 27-day period of rotation of the sun. He also worked on devising methods for detecting minute quantities of radioactive substances. Hess made basic contributions to an understanding of radiation and its effects on the human body.

June 23: Étienne-Louis Malus
(Born June 23, 1775: Died February 23, 1812)
French physicist who discovered that light, when reflected, becomes partially plane polarized; i.e., its rays vibrate in the same plane. He served in Napoleon’s corps of engineers, fought in Egypt, and contracted the plague during Napoleon’s aborted campaign in Palestine. Posted to Europe after 1801, he began research in optics. In 1808, he discovered that light rays may be polarized by reflection, while looking through a crystal of Iceland spar at the windows of a building reflecting the rays of the Sun. He noticed that on rotating the crystal the light was extinguished in certain positions. Applying corpuscular theory, he argued that light particles have sides or poles and coined the word "polarization."

June 22: N. Howell Furman
(Born June 22, 1892: Died August 2, 1965)
American analytical chemist whose analytical separation of uranium contributed to the development of the atomic bomb. He developed special techniques for preparing the bomb project materials, notably the sampling and analysis necessary for producing pure uranium metal. He also devised a new method of estimating traces of metals in various substances and assisted in developing an ether extraction process for the preparation of uranium oxide of the extreme purity required. His special methods also made possible greater utilization of tracer techniques with radioactive and stable isotopes.

June 21: Herbert Friedman
(Born June 21, 1916: Died September 9, 2000)
American rocket and satellite astronomer who made made seminal contributions to the study of solar radiation. He joined the Naval Research Laboratory in 1940 and developed defense-related radiation detection devices during WW II. In 1949, he obtained the first scientific proof that X rays emanate from the sun. When he directed the firing into space of a V-2 rocket carrying a detecting instrument. Through rocket astronomy, he also produced the first ultraviolet map of celestial bodies, and gathered information for the theory that stars are being continuously formed, on space radiation affecting Earth and on the nature of gases in space. He also made fundamental advances in the application of x rays to material analysis.

June 20: Chernobyl fall-out over Great Britain
In 1986, because of Chernobyl fall-out, the slaughter and movement of lambs in parts of Cumbria, Scotland, was temporarily banned. Fallout in the UK from the Chernobyl accident was greatest where the passage of the cloud coincided with heavy rainfall in north Wales, Cumbria, parts of Scotland and northern Ireland. Studies after the Chernobyl accident have shown that the transfer of radionuclides to sheep and goat products is greater than to cattle.

June 19: Aage N. Bohr
(Born June 19, 1922)
Aage Niels Bohr is a Danish physicist, son of physicist Niels Bohr. They both contributed to the building of the atomic bomb during WW II. As his Nobel-winning father had done before him, Aage Bohr shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ben R. Mottelson and James Rainwater "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection." The theory helped explain many nuclear properties by showing that nuclear particles can vibrate and rotate so as to distort the shape of the nucleus from the expected spherical symmetry into an ellipsoid.

June 18: Dudley R. Herschbach
(Born June 18, 1932)
American chemist and educator who shared (with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi) the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1986. He pioneered the use of molecular beams to elucidate the processes of chemical reactions. This study of reaction dynamics details the sequence of events and energy states of the atoms and molecules.

June 17: Sir William Crookes
(Born June 17, 1832: Died April 4, 1919)
British chemist and physicist noted for his discovery of the element thallium and for his cathode-ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics.

June 16: Wernher von Braun
(Born March 23, 1912: Died June 16, 1977)
Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun was a German-born American engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany and, after World War II, in the United States. His will to expand man's knowledge through the exploration of space led to the development of the Explorer satellites, the Jupiter and Jupiter-C rockets, Pershing, the Redstone rocket, Saturn rockets, and Skylab, the world's first space station. Additionally, he led to mankind setting foot on the moon.

June 15: Transatlantic plane flight
In 1919, Capt. John Alcock (pilot) and Lt. Arthur W. Browne (navigator) successfully completed the first, non-stop, transatlantic, airplane flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in 16 hr 12 min and won the prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Their aircraft was a Vickers Vimy (which was originally designed as a bomber to be used during WW I.) They faced many problems. Their radio broke down shortly after take off. Fog and drizzle prevented the fliers from seeing anything for much of the journey. They aimed to land in a green field but instead it turned out to be a bog. The plane suffered some damage when it hit the ground and sank into the bog. Both Alcock and Brown came away unhurt.

June 14: Atomic submarine Nautilus
In 1952, the keel was laid for the first American atomic submarine Nautilus in a ceremony attended by President Harry S. Trumann. It was built by the Electric Boat Company division of General Dynamics Corp. at Groton, Conn., under the supervision of Captain Hyman George Rickover. Its liquid-cooled atomic reactor provided power for steam turbines. The submarine was launched in early 1954, commisioned later that year. It was tested under nuclear power on January 17, 1955 and completed April 22, 1955.

June 13: Luis W. Alvarez
(Born June 13, 1911: Died September 1, 1988)
American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles (subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions). Alvarez invented a radio distance and direction indicator. During World War II, he designed a landing system for aircrafts and a radar system for locating planes. He participated in the development of the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M. (1944-45). He suggested the technique for detonating the implosion type of atomic bomb. Later, he helped develop the hydrogen bubble chamber, used to detect subatomic particles. This research led to the discovery of over 70 elementary particles and resulted in a major revision ofnuclear theories.

June 12: Silvanus Phillips Thompson
(Born June 19, 1851: Died June 12, 1916)
British physicist and historian of science. He was a recognised authority upon electricity, magnetism and acoustics and his writings are numerous including Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism published in 1881 which ran through some 40 editions and reprints. He was also known for contributions in electrical machinery, optics, and X rays. In 1884, he published his epoch-making work Dynamo-electric Machinery: a Manual for Students of Electrotechnics. Practically every designer of electrical machines gleaned his first information on the subject from this work. His lectures to the Royal Institution on Light, visible and invisible in book form and Polyphase Electric Currents and Motors were published in 1896.

June 11: Mercury capsule patent
In 1963, the Mercury space capsule was patented by Faget, Meyer, Chilton, Blanchard, Kehlet, Hammack and Johnson (U.S. No. 3,093,346). It was assigned to NASA. The invention was described as a "manned capsule configuration capable of being launched into orbital flight and returned to the earth's surface." The invention was to provide "protection for its occupant from the deleterious effects of large pressure differentials, high temperatures, micrometerorite collisions, high level acoustical noise, and severe inertial and impact loads." The patent was applied for on October 6, 1959. Mercury 1 had already flown, on May 5, 1961, in a 15-min sub-orbital flight carrying Alan B. Shepard before the patent was issued.


June 10: John Dollond
.(Born June 10, 1706: Died November 30, 1761)
British maker of optical and astronomical instruments who developed (1758) and patented an achromatic (non- colour- distorting) refracting telescope and a practical heliometer, a telescope used to measure the Sun's diameter and the angles between celestial bodies. In the 1730's, Chester More Hall, an attorney with an interest in telescopes, first discovered that flint glass appeared to have a greater color dispersion than crown glass did at the same magnifications. Hall reasoned that if he cemented the concave face of a flint glass lens to the convex face of a crown glass lens, he could remove the dispersion properties (and thus, chromatic aberration) from both lenses simultaneously. Dollond learned of the technique in the 1750's and developed it.

June 9: Alvan Graham Clark
(Born July 10, 1832: Died June 9, 1897)
U.S. astronomer, one of an American family of telescope makers and astronomers who supplied unexcelled lenses to many observatories in the U.S. and Europe during the heyday of the refracting telescope. He began a deep interest in astronomy while still at school, then joined the family firm of Alvan Clark & Sons, makers of astronomical lenses. In 1861, testing a new lens, he looked through it at Sirius and observed faintly beside it, Sirius B, the twin star predicted by Friedrich Bessel in 1844. Carrying on the family business, after the deaths of his father and brother, Clark made the 40" lenses of the Yerkes telescope (still the largest refractor in the world). Their safe delivery was a source of anxiety. He died shortly after the first use of the Yerkes lenses.

June 8: Augusto Righi
(Born August 27, 1850: Died June 8, 1920)
Italian physicist who showed that radio waves displayed characterics of light wave behavior in the manner of reflection, refraction, polarization and interference. Thus the nature of radio waves was similar to light, but with the difference of greater wavelength. Radio was recognized as part of the same electromagnetic spectrum as light.

June 7: Charles Glover Barkla
(Born June 7, 1877: Died October 23, 1944)
British physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1917 for his work on X-ray scattering, which occurs when X rays pass through a material and are deflected by the atomic electrons. This technique proved to be particularly useful in the study of atomic structures. In 1903, his measurements showed that the scattering of x-rays by gases depends on the molecular weight of the gas. Both by observing polarization of x-rays (1904) and by experiments (1907) on the direction of scattering of a beam of x-rays he showed x-rays to be electromagnetic radiation like light (whereas, at the time, William Henry Bragg who held that x-rays were particles.) Barkla also discovered that each element has its own characteristic x-ray spectrum.

June 6: Heinrich Rohrer
(Born June 6, 1933)
Swiss physicist who, with Gerd Binnig, received half of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. (Ernst Ruska received the other half of the prize.) Ruska's electron microscope of the 1930s was unable to show surface structure at the atomic level. Rohrer and Binnig began work in 1978 on a scanning tunneling microscope in which a fine probe passes within a few angstroms of the surface of the sample. A positive voltage on the probe enables electrons to move from the sample to the probe by the tunnel effect, and the detected current can used to keep the probe at a constant distance from the surface. As the probe moves in parallel lines, a 3D image of the surface can be constructed.

June 5: John Couch Adams
(Born June 5, 1819: Died January 21, 1892)
British mathematician and astronomer, one of two people who independently discovered the planet Neptune. On 3 Jul 1841, Adams had entered in his journal: "Formed a design in the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus ... in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it." Adams made many other contributions to astronomy, notably his studies of the Leonid meteor shower (1866) where he showed that the orbit of the meteor shower was very similar to that of a comet. He was able to correctly conclude that the meteor shower was associated with the comet. Adams considered the motion of the Moon, and studied terrestrial magnetism.

June 4: Willaim Thomas Astbury
(Born February 25, 1898: Died June 4, 1961)
English physical biochemist who was the first to make use of X-ray diffraction patterns to study the structure of nucleic acids (1937). Astbury researched the method under Bragg for seven years, then investigated the structure of wool in both the stretched and unstretched forms. From the difference in the diffraction patterns, he began to try to work ot the structure of protein molecules. His preliminary determination of the structure of nucleic acids were, in fact, wrong - but it gave impetus to Pauling's work with proteins, and to Crick and Watson's study of DNA structure. His work, slowly decoding the nature of molecular structure of virtually the largest organic materials, fibrous and globular proteins, was valuable to both science and industry.

June 3: First Americann spacewalk
In 1965, the first American astronaut to make a spacewalk was Major Edward White II, when he spent 20 minutes outside the Gemini 4 capsule during Earth orbit at an altitude of 120 miles. A tether and 25 foot airline were wrapped in gold tape to form a single, thick cord. He used a hand-held 7.5 pound oxygen jet propulsion gun to maneuver. The launch had taken place a few hours earlier on the same day. During the remainder of the flight, pilot White and his crewmate commander McDivitt completed 12 scientific and medical experiments. The total time in orbit was almost 98 hours, making 62 orbits. Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, had made the first ever spacewalk for 10 minutes about three months earlier.

June 2: Robert Morris Page
(Born June 2, 1903: Died May 15, 1992)
American physicist who, in the 1930s, invented the technology for pulse radar, a system that detects and locates distant objects through the use of short bursts of electromagnetic radiation. Radio pioneer who made outstanding contributions to the development of radar while employed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the years prior to World War II. His invention was vital to the Allies during World War II for detecting enemy planes, ships, and other targets. Page continued research after the war in peacetime applications of radar and other fields of electronics.

June 1: 3K radiation
In 1965, A. Penzias and R. Wilson detected a 3 degree kelvin primordial background radiation using a horn reflector antenna built for radio astronomy. The Big Bang description of the origin of the universe took place 15 to 20 billion years ago in an explosion from a hot dense state. The high energy radiation produced when the universe was very young and very hot would have been absorbed and degraded as the universe expanded and cooled. The microwave background radiation first observed by Penzias and Wilson is thought to be a relic of this very early state, when the universe was only about a million years old. The uniformity of microwave background indicates that the universe was homogeneous until it was a few million years old.

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