Important historic dates in science

November 30: Galileo studies the moon
In 1609, the modern face of the moon first emerged when Galileo Galilei in Padua turned his telescope toward the moon, noted the irregularities of the crescent face, and made a drawing to record his discoveries. He made at least five more drawings of the moon over the next eighteen days, prepared careful watercolor sketches from these drawings, and then selected four of these to be engraved for his revolutionary Starry Messenger, which appeared the following March. Galileo's treatise announced to an astonished public that the moon was a cratered chunk of elements - a world - and not some globe of quintessential perfection. It was a new land, to be explored, charted, and named.

November 29: Underground atom bomb test
In 1951, the first U.S. underground atom bomb test - designed "Uncle" - was detonated. The low-yield 1.2 kt bomb was buried 17-ft sub-surface at Frenchman Flat, a 123-square-mile (320-sq.km.) dry lake bed at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). It was witnessed by members of Congress and military officers. The explosion, part of Operation Buster-Jangle, caused a hole 800-ft in diameter and 100-ft deep. Since WW II, five U.S. nuclear weapons tests had been conducted at distant islands in the Pacific Ocean. To reduce the extensive logistic effort, time and cost previously involved, testing was begun within the U.S. Although NTS originally was selected by criteria for atmospheric tests, it subsequently also was used for underground tests.

November 28: Enrico Fermi
(Born September 29, 1901: Died November 28, 1954)
Italian-born American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1938 as one of the chief architects of the nuclear age. He was the last of the double-threat physicists: a genius at creating both esoteric theories and elegant experiments. In 1933, he developed the theory of beta decay, postulating that the newly-discovered neutron decaying to a proton emits an electron and a particle he called a neutrino. Developing theory to explain this decay later resulted in finding the weak interaction force. He developed the mathematical statistics required to clarify a large class of subatomic phenomena, discovered neutron-induced radioactivity, and directed the first controlled chain reaction involving nuclear fission.

November 27: Ernest J. Wilkins, Jr.
Born 27 Nov 1923(Born November 27, 1923)
African-American physicist, mathematician, and engineer (chemical/nuclear). He entered the University of Chicago at age 13, and by age 19, in 1942, he became the seventh African American to obtain a Ph.D. in Mathematics. His career achievement has been to develop radiation shielding against gamma radiation, emitted during electron decay of the Sun and other nuclear sources. He developed mathematical models to calculate the amount of gamma radiation absorbed by a given material. This technique of calculating radiative absorption is widely used among researcher in space and nuclear science projects. His was also a joint owner of a company which designed and developed nuclear reactors for electrical power generation.

November 26: John Newlands
( Born November 26, 1837: Died July 29, 1898)
John Alexander Reina Newlands, was a British chemist who first established an order of elements by the atomic weights, and observed a periodicity in the properties. Every eighth element has similar properties, hence he named the Law of Octaves (February 7, 1863). It took another quarter century, and the work of others, such as Mendeleev, for the significance of his discovery to be recognized.

November 25: Atomic research
In 1960, the first atomic reactor for research and development begins operations at Richland, Washington.

November 24: Simon van der Meer
(Born November 24, 1925)
Dutch engineer and physicist who along with Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia, discovered the W particle and the Z particle by colliding protons and antiprotons, for which both men shared the Nobel Prize for Physics. These subatomic particles (units of matter smaller than an atom) transmit the weak nuclear force, one of four fundamental forces in nature. The discovery supported the unified electroweak theory put forward in the 1970's. Working at CERN in Switzerland, Van der Meer improved the design of particle accelerators used produce collisions between beams of subatomic particles. He invented a device that would monitor and adjust the particle beam with correcting magnetic fields by a system of 'kickers' placed around the accelerator ring.

November 23: Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley
(Born November 23, 1887: Died August 10, 1915)
English physicist who experimentally demonstrated that the major properties of an element are determined by the atomic number, not by the atomic weight, and firmly established the relationship between atomic number and the charge of the atomic nucleus. He began his research under Ernest Rutherford while serving as lecturer at the Univ. of Manchester. Using X-ray photographic techniques, he determined a mathematical relation between the radiation wavelength and the atomic numbers of the emitting elements. Moseley obtained several quantitative relationships from which he predicted the existence of three missing elements (numbers 43, 61, and 75) in the periodic table, all of which were subsequently identified. Moseley was killed in action during WW I.

November 22: Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
(Born December 28, 1882: Died November 22, 1944)
English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He contributed much to the introduction of Einstein's general theory of relativity into cosmology. He led one of the two 1919 solar eclipse expeditions which confirmed the predicted bending of starlight by gravity. In astrophysics, he dealt with the importance of radiation pressure, the mass-luminosity relation, pulsations in Cepheid variables, and the very high densities of white dwarfs. He was one of the first to state that "subatomic" reactions must power the stars. Eddington wrote thirteen books, many of them for the general reader. See Stars and Atoms for a sample.

November 21: Bruno Rossi
(Born April 13, 1905: Died November 21, 1993)
Italian pioneer in the study of cosmic radiation. In the 1930s, his experimental investigations of cosmic rays and their interactions with matter laid the foundation for high energy particle physics. Cosmic rays are atomic particles that enter earth's atmosphere from outer space at speeds approaching that of light, bombarding atmospheric atoms to produce mesons as well as secondary particles possessing some of the original energy. He was one of the first to use rockets to study cosmic rays above the Earth's atmosphere. Finding X-rays from space he became the grandfather of high energy astrophysics, being largely responsible for starting X-ray astronomy, as well as the study of interplanetary plasma.

November 20: Francis William Aston
(Born September 1, 1877: Died November 20, 1945)
British physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922 for his development of the mass spectrograph, a device that separates atoms or molecular fragments of different mass and measures those masses with remarkable accuracy. In 1910 he became an assistant to Sir J.J. Thomson at Cambridge, who was investigating positively charged rays emanating from gaseous discharges. Aston invented his mass spectrograph (a new type of positive-ray apparatus) after WWI, with which he showed that many elements are mixtures of isotopes. In fact, he discovered 212 of the 287 naturally occurring nuclides. The mass spectrograph is now widely used in geology, chemistry, biology, and nuclear physics.

November 19: Hendrik Christoffel van de Hulst
(Born November 19, 1918: Died July 31, 2000)
Dutch astronomer who predicted theoretically (1944) that in interstellar space the amount of neutral atomic hydrogen, which in its hyperfine transition radiates and absorbs at a wavelength of 21 cm, might be expected to occur at such high column densities as to provide a spectral line sufficiently strong as to be measurable. Shortly after the end of the war several groups set about to test this prediction. The 21-cm line of atomic hydrogen was detected in 1951, first at Harvard University followed within a few weeks by others. The discovery demonstrated that astronomical research, which at that time was limited to conventional light, could be complemented with observations at radio wavelengths, revealing a range of new physical processes.

November 18: X-ray
In 1950, the first fluoro-record reflector camera was announced. This could make x-ray pictures in one-sixth of the time previously required, and was used for gastro-instestinal surveys. The manufacturer was the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp., Jamaica, N.Y.

November 17: Nuclear-powered heating, nuclear bomb & neutron bomb
In 1951, development of world's first nuclear-powered heating system was reported in Britain.
In 1976, the Chinese detonated their most powerful nuclear device to date.
In 1978, from Moscow, Brezhnev said the Soviets have tested neutron bomb.

November 16: James W. Mitchell
(Born: November 16, 1943)
African-American chemist who is best known for advancing the accuracy of trace element analyses. With his collaborators at Bell Labs, he pioneered the development of x-ray fluorescence methods for part per billion (ppb) trace element determinations, innovated high accuracy activation analysis methods for ultratrace analysis, designed the first laser intracavity spectrophotometer for high accuracy practical determinations of sub-ppb levels of trace impurities, and invented the cryogenic sublimation technique for ultrapurification of liquid analytical reagents and chemicals for fabricating optical waveguides. He is currently exploring ways to apply his ultra-precise measuring procedures to detect trace amounts of contaminants in our air and water.

November 15: André-Eugène Blondel
(Born August 28, 1863: Died November 15, 1938)
French physicist known for his oscillograph and photometric units of measurement. As a professor of electrotechnology in Paris, in 1893, he invented the electromagnetic oscillograph, a device that allowed electrical researchers to observe the intensity of alternating currents. In 1894, he proposed the lumen and other new measurement units for use in photometry, based on the metre and the Violle candle. Endorsed in 1896 by the International Electrical Congress, his system is still in use with only minor modifications. Blondel was a pioneer in the high voltage long distance transport of electric power, and also contributed to developments in wireless telegraphy, acoustics, and mechanics. He proposed theories for induction motors and coupling of a.c. generators.

November 14: Nicholas Louis Vauquelin
(Born May 16, 1763: Died November 14, 1829)
French chemist who discovered the elements chromium (1797) and beryllium (1798).

November 13: Mars satellite
In 1971, Mariner-9, the first man-made object to orbit another planet, entered Martian orbit. The mission of the unmanned craft was to return photographs mapping 70% of the surface, and to study the planet's thin atmosphere, clouds, and hazes, together with its surface chemistry and seasonal changes.

November 12: Jean-Sylvain Bailly
(Born November 12, 1793: Died September 15, 1736)
French astronomer, first Mayor of Paris (1789-91), was guillotined in Paris during the French Revolution. Noted for his computation of an orbit for Halley's Comet (1759) and for his studies of the four satellites of Jupiter then known.

November 11: Thomas Edward Allibone
(Born November 11, 1903: Died September 9, 2003)
English physicist who was a leading authority on high-voltage physics, a member of the Anglo-American team that worked on the atomic bomb, and the last surviving direct collegue of Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics. Allibone proposed to Rutherford that he could build a powerful generator to provide the huge voltages needed artificially to accelerate electrons in a vacuum tube. By 1927, Allibone had built the Voltage Doubler, a device in which electrons and atoms could be accelerated at high speeds, which was used by Rutherford and his team in their subsequent researches on particle acceleration. In 1944 he joined the British team working on the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb in Berkeley, Cal., and Oak Ridge, Tenn.

November 10: Commercial atomic energy
In 1960, the first commercial atomic energy reactor, and the third in the U.S., produced power for distribution. This was the $57 million Yankee Atomic Electric Company's plant at Rowe, Mass., on the Deerfield River. The reactor achieved self-sustaining nuclear reaction on 19 Aug 1960. The pressurized light-water reactor produced 125,000 kilowatts of electricity. The company was formed by twelve New England utility companies which signed a contract with the Westinghouse Corporation as the principal contractor. It was permanently shut down on 26 Feb 1992, due to reactor vessel embrittlement, after more than 31 years of service. Decommissioning began in 1993.

November 9: Nuclear fustion power
In 1991, in Culham, England, nuclear fusion was first harnessed to produce a significant amount of power. Though lasting for only two seconds, about 1.7 megawatts of electric power was produced. The experiment by an international team of scientists at JET, the Joint European Torus was the first to produce controlled fusion power. Fusion differs from the fission reactions used in current nuclear power plants for it occurs when light nuclei travelling at high speed combine, without radioactive waste as a byproduct. The JET programme was set up to make it possible to carry out fusion tests under conditions that closely resemble those of a commercial fusion power plant. Construction of JET began in 1978 and the device has been in operation since 1983.

November 8: X-ray
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays during an experiment.

November 7: Lise Meitner
(Born November 7, 1878: Died October 27, 1968)
Physicist, born in Vienna, Austria, who shared the Enrico Fermi Award (1966) with the chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann for their joint research beginning in 1934 that led to the discovery of uranium fission. She refused to work on the atom bomb. In 1917, she discovered with Hahn the new radioactive element protactinium. She was the first to describe the emission of Auger electrons. In 1935, she found evidence of four other radioactive elements corresponding to atomic numbers 93-96. In 1938, she was forced to leave Nazi Germany, and went to a post in Sweden. She has done much work on nuclear physics in general, including work on the three main disintegration series and on beta rays. In later work, she used the cyclotron as a tool.

November 6: James Gergory
(Born November 6, 1638: Died October 1675)
Scottish mathematician, astronomer and inventor of the reflecting telescope, born in Aberdeen. He was the first to investigate converging number series, which have an infinite number of terms but a finite sum. He made important contributions to the development of the calculus, although some of his best work remained virtually unknown until long after his death. In 1660 he published his Optica Promota, in which he described the first practical reflecting ("Gregorian") telescope. Light reflected from a concave elliptical secondary mirror is brought to a focus just behind a hole in the primary mirror. It was superceded by the Newtonian and Cassegrain telescopes. Gregory also introduced estimation of stellar distances by photometric methods.

November 5: Marie Curie
In 1906, at 1:30 pm, Marie Curie gave her inaugural lecture as the first woman lecturer at the Sorbonne. She explained the theory of ions in gases and her treatise on radioactivity to120 students, public and press. Following the accidental death of her husband, Pierre Curie, she had been invited to occupy the Physics chair at the Sorbonne that he had held. Madame Curie, by now a Nobel prize winner and authority on radioactivity, continued the work she started with her husband.

November 4: X-10 nuclear reactor
In 1943, the X-10 nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory went "critical" with a self-sustaining fission reaction - the world's second reactor to achieve one. The reactor took just nine urgent months to build. Over the next year, the reactor performed flawlessly, irradiating thousands of fuel slugs, which were disassembled and dissolved so the plutonium could be extracted, bit by precious bit. It was an experimental reactor far larger and more advanced than Fermi's Chicago pile: a graphite cube 24 feet on each side, with seven-foot-thick concrete walls for radiation shielding. By the end of 1944, the reactor's most urgent mission had been completed and its focus shifted to radioisotope production for medecine and research.

November 3: Ralph Wyckoff
(Born August 9, 1897: Died November 3, 1994)
Ralph (Walter Graystone) Wyckoff was an American scientist, a pioneer in the application of X-ray methods to determine crystal structures and one of the first to use these methods for studying biological substances. He became famous in two areas of structural research: X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. He developed a new technique of 'metal shadowing' for observation with the electron microscope. A specimen, such as a virus, is placed in a vacuum together with a heated tungsten filament covered with gold. Vaporized gold coated the side of the specimen nearest the filament, leaving a 'shadow' on the far side. This allowing better estimates to be made of their size and shape, as well as revealing details of their structure.

November 2: Peter Debye
(Born March 24, 1884: Died November 2, 1966)
Petrus (Peter) Josephus Wilhelmus Debye was a Dutch physical chemist whose investigations of dipole moments, X rays, and light scattering in gases brought him the 1936 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Most of his work was in chemical-physics with special interest in electrolytes and dipolar momentum analysis. He established a theory of specific heat with some improvements on that proposed by Einstein. Debye performed important work in the analysis of crystalline powders using X-ray diffraction techniques. He also determined the dimensions of gaseous molecules and the interatomic distances using X-rays.

November 1: First H bomb explosed
In 1952, in the first United States test of a thermonuclear device, a hydrogen bomb dubbed "Mike," was exploded at Eniwetok Atholl in the Pacific, 3,000 miles west of Hawaii. It exploded with a blinding white fireball more than three miles across, completely obliterating Elugelab, leaving an underwater crater a 6240-ft wide and 164-ft deep in the atoll where an island had once been. Eighty million tons of soil were lifted into the air by the blast. The yield was several million tons of TNT, a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, a blast greater than all the explosives used during World War II. The "mushroom" cloud rose to top out in 5 mins at 135,000 ft (the top of the stratosphere) and eventually spread to 1000 miles wide.

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Photos courtsey of Today in Science