January
Important historic dates in science

January 31: U.S. H-bomb
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced a program to develop the American hydrogen bomb. "I have directed ... work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so called hydrogen or superbomb. Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is being and will be carried forward on a basis consistent with the overall objectives of our program for peace and security ... until a satisfactory plan for international control of atomic energy is achieved. We shall also continue to examine all those factors that affect our program for peace and this country, security." This response followed his earlier announcement, on September 23, 1949, that had shocked America, "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR."

January 30: Hydrogen bomb
In 1950, development of the hydrogen fusion bomb (H-bomb) was ordered by U.S. President Truman. The codename of "Super" for the project reflected the far greater power of this thermonuclear device over the earlier fission bombs used to end WW II.

January 29: Radiation treatment
In 1896, Émil H. Grubbe, a Chicago researcher, became the first known to administer x-ray radiation treatment for the recurrent breast cancer of a fifty-five-year-old woman. X-rays had been discovered the previous year in Germany. Grubbe tried radiation as a tool against cancer after he suffered a radiation burn while experimenting with X-rays. His experiment didn't cure the woman's cancer, but others in the late 1890s who applied X-rays to various cancers - especially skin cancer - not only relieved cancer pain but actually cured some, which encouraged continued use and study of the X-rays. Grubbe did not publish his work until several years later, and his claims of priority as the first to use radiation treatment were widely doubted.

January 28: Atomic power
In 1958, the first privately-owned thorium-uranium atomic reactor to supply power began construction. It was the first reactor designed to supplement fissionable uranium-235 with fertile thorium-232. This was the Indian Point nuclear generating station, built at Buchanan, New York, at a cost of $100 million. It was a pressurized water reactor able to produce 275,000 kilowatts of power. The design and construction was executed by the Babcock and Wilcox Co. for the Consolidated Edison Co. The Indian Point 1 operating licence was dated March 26, 1962 and its shutdown date was October 31, 1974.

January 27: Hyman G. Rickover
(Born January 27, 1900: Died July 8, 1986)
Hyman (George) Rickover, born in Makow, Russia (now Poland), immigrated to the US (1906) and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1922. He eventually became an Admiral. He is known as the Father of the Nuclear Navy for his leadership to build the atomic-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (1954). He served on active duty with the United States Navy for more than 63 years, receiving exemptions from the mandatory retirement age due to his critical service in the building of the United States Navy's nuclear surface and submarine force.

January 26: Pollykarp Kusch
(Born January 26, 1911: Died March 20, 1993)
German-American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1955 for his accurate determination that the magnetic moment of the electron is greater than its theoretical value. This he deduced from researching the hyperfine structure of the energy levels in certain elements, and in 1947 found a discrepancy of about 0.1% between the observed value and that predicted by theory. Although minute, this anomaly was of great significance to theories of the interactions of electrons and electromagnetic radiation, now known as quantum electrodynamics. (He shared the prize with Willis E. Lamb, Jr. who performed independent but related experiments at Columbia University on the hyperfine structure of the hydrogen atom.)

January 25: Atomic clock
In 1955, Columbia University scientists developed an atomic clock accurate to within one second in 300 years.

January 24: Sir David Gill
(Born June 12, 1843: Died January 24, 1914)
Scottish astronomer known for his measurements of solar and stellar parallax, showing the distances of the Sun and other stars from Earth, and for his early use of photography in mapping the heavens. His early training in timekeeping as a watchmaker led to astronomy and he designed, equipped, and operated a private observatory near Aberdeen. To determine parallaxes, he perfected the use of the heliometer, a telescope that uses a split image to measure the angular separation of celestial bodies. He was appointed Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope (1879-1906). Gill also made geodetic surveys of South Africa. In fact he carried out all of the observations to measure the distances to stars in terms of the standard meter.

January 23: Paul Peter Ewald
(Born January 23, 1888: August 22, 1985)
German physicist and crystallographer whose theory of X-ray interference by crystals was the first detailed, rigorous theoretical explanation of the diffraction effects first observed in 1912 by his fellow physicist Max von Laue.

January 22: Albert Wallace Hull
(Born April 19, 1880: Died January 22, 1966)
American physicist who independently discovered the powder method of X-ray analysis of crystals (1917), which permits the study of crystalline materials in a finely divided microcrystalline, or powder, state. His first work was on electron tubes, X-ray crystallography, and (during WW II) piezoelectricity. In the 1920's, he studied noise measurements in diodes and triodes. In the 1930's, he also took interest in metallurgy and glass science. His best-known work was done after the war, especially his classic paper on the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the motion of electrons between coaxial cylinders. He also invented the magnetron (1921) and the thyratron (1927), and other electron tubes with wide application as components in electronic circuits.

January 21: Atomic submarine
In 1954, the first atomic submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Connecticut. Nautilus' nuclear propulsion system was a landmark in the history of naval engineering and submersible craft. All vessels previously known as "submarines" were in fact only submersible craft. Because of the nuclear power plant, the Nautilus could stay submerged for months at a time, unlike diesel-fueled subs, whose engines required vast amounts of oxygen. Nautilus demonstrated her capabilities in 1958 when she sailed beneath the Arctic icepack to the North Pole. Scores of nuclear submarines followed Nautilus, replacing the United States' diesel boat fleet. After patrolling the seas until 1980, the Nautilus is back home at Groton.

January 20: Alexandre-Emile Beguyer de Chancourtois
(Born January 20, 1820: Died November 14, 1886)
French geologist who was the first to arrange the chemical elements in order of atomic weights (1862). De Chancourtois plotted the atomic weights on the surface of a cylinder with a circumference of 16 units, the approximate atomic weight of oxygen. The resulting helical curve which he called the telluric helix brought closely related elements onto corresponding points above or below one another on the cylinder. Thus, he suggested that "the properties of the elements are the properties of numbers." Although his publication was significant, it was ignored by chemists as it was written in the language of geology, and the editors omitted a crucial explanatory table. It was Dmitry Mendeleyev's table published in 1869 that became most recognized.

January 19: Johann Elert Bode
(Born January 19, 1747: Died November 23, 1826)
German astronomer best known for his popularization of Bode's law. In 1766, his compatriot Johann Titius had discovered a curious mathematical relationship in the distances of the planets from the sun. If 4 is added to each number in the series 0, 3, 6, 12, 24,... and the answers divided by 10, the resulting sequence gives the distances of the planets in astronomical units (earth = 1). Also known as the Titius-Bode law, the idea fell into disrepute after the discovery of Neptune, which does not conform with the 'law' - nor does Pluto. Bode was director at the Berlin Observatory, where he published Uranographia (1801), one of the first successful attempts at mapping all stars visible to the naked eye without any artistic interpretation of the stellar constellation figures.

January 18: X-ray machine displayed
In 1896, The first x-ray machine is exhibited in the U.S. at Casino Chambers, New York City. For an admission charge of 25 cents, patrons could view the "Parisian sensation."

January 17: Clyde W. Tombaugh
(Born February 4, 1906: Died January 17, 1997)
American astronomer who discovered the planet Pluto in 1930, the only planet discovered in the twentieth century, after a systematic search instigated by the predictions of other astronomers. Tombaugh was 24 years of age when he made this discovery at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. He also discovered several clusters of stars and galaxies, studied the apparent distribution of extragalactic nebulae, and made observations of the surfaces of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon. Born of poor farmers, his first telescope was made of parts from worn-out farming equipment.

January 16: Robert Jemison Van de Graaff
(Born December 20, 1901: Died January 16, 1967)
American physicist and inventor of the Van de Graaff generator, a type of high-voltage electrostatic generator that can be used as a particle accelerator in atomic research. The potential differences achieved in modern Van de Graaff generators can be up to 5 MV. It is a principle of electric fields that charges on a surface can leap off at points where the curvature is great, that is, where the radius is small. Thus, a dome of great radius will inhibit the electric discharge and added charge can reach a high voltage. This generator has been used in medical (such as high-energy X-ray production) and industrial applications (sterilization of food). In the 1950s, Van de Graaff invented the insulating core transformer able to produce high voltage direct current.

January 15: Edward Teller
(Born: January 15, 1908: Died: September 9, 2003)
Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. After studying in Germany he left in 1933, going first to London and then to Washington, DC. He worked on the first atomic reactor, and later working on the first fission bombs during WW II at Los Alamos. Subsequently, he made a significant contribution to the development of the fusion bomb. His work led to the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb (1952). He is sometimes known as "the father of the H-bomb." Teller's unfavourable evidence in the Robert Oppenheimer security-clearance hearing lost him some respect amongst scientists.

January 14: Sergey Pavlovich Korolev
(Born January 12, 1907: Died January 14, 1966)
Soviet designer of guided missiles, rockets, and spacecraft. He was one of the founders of Moscow Group for the Study of Reactive Motion. In 1933, he participated in the Soviet Union's first launch of a liquid-propellant rocket. Because he was not a member of the Communist Party, he spent much of his life under house arrest. After demonstrating his expertise in the modification of captured V2 rockets, Korolev directed the design, testing, construction, and launching of the Vostok spacecraft, and most of the U.S.S.R.'s other projects. Around 1958, Korolev argued for the pursuit of manned space flight instead of military reconnaissance satellites. After much debate, the Vostok project was approved provided the launch vehicle could also be useful to the military.

January 13: Wilhelm Wien
(Born January 13, 1864: Died August 30, 1928)
German physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1911 for his displacement law concerning the radiation emitted by the perfectly efficient blackbody (a surface that absorbs all radiant energy falling on it). While studying streams of ionized gas Wien, in 1898, identified a positive particle equal in mass to the hydrogen atom. Wien, with this work, laid the foundation of mass spectroscopy. J J Thomson refined Wien's apparatus and conducted further experiments in 1913 then, after work by E Rutherford in 1919, Wien's particle was accepted and named the proton. Wien also made important contributions to the study of cathode rays, X-rays and canal rays.

January 12: Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov
(Born January 12, 1903: Died February 7, 1960)
Soviet nuclear physicist who from 1932 conducted nuclear science research in the Soviet Union, during which time his team built a cyclotron, a proton accelerator and studied artificial radioactivity and neutron-proton interactions. During WW II, he was chosen as director for the development of his country's first atomic bomb, detonated August 29, 1949. Meanwhile, in December 1946, Kurchatov demonstrated a working prototype reactor, though limited to producing only a few watts and by June 1948, a plutonium production reactor. He subsequently produced the world's first practical thermonuclear bomb (1952). Before 1978, the Soviet name for element-104 was kurchatovium (Ku), though subsquently rutherfordium (Rf) became the accepted name.

January 11: Isidor Isaac Rabi
(Born July 29, 1898: Died January 11, 1988)
Isidor Isaac Rabi was American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his invention (in 1937) of the atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method of measuring magnetic properties of atoms, molecules, and atomic nuclei. He spent most of his life at Columbia University (1929-67), where he performed most of his pioneering research in radar and the magnetic moment associated with electron spin in the 1930s and 1940s. His Nobel-winning work led to the invention of the laser, the atomic clock, and diagnostic uses of nuclear magnetic resonance. He originated the idea for the CERN nuclear research center in Geneva (founded 1954).

January 10: Robert Woodrow Wilson
(Born: January 10, 1936)
American radio astronomer who shared, with his coworker Arno Penzias, the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation using a microwave horn antenna at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey. Their discovery in 1964 is now widely interpreted as being the remnant radiation from the "big bang" model for the creation of the universe several billion years ago. Wilson is continuing his astrophysics work with Penzias, looking for interstellar molecules and determining the relative abundances of interstellar isotopes. (Soviet physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa also shared the Nobel award, for unrelated research.)

January 9: Caroline Lucretia Herschel
(Born March 16, 1750: Died January 9, 1848)
German-born British astronomer, sister of Sir William Herschel, who assisted in his astronomical researches making calculations associated with his studies. In her own telescope observations, she found three nebulae (1783) and eight comets (1786-97). In 1787, King George III gave Caroline a salary of 50 pounds per year as assistant to William. She published the Index to Flamsteed's Observations of the Fixed Stars and a list of his mistakes in 1797. At the age of 10 she had been struck with typhus, which subsequently stunted her growth. She never grew taller than 4' 3" and remained frail throughout her life.

January 8: Walther Bothe
(Born January 8, 1891: Died February 8, 1957)
Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe was a German physicist who developed the coincidence method of detecting the emission of electrons by x-rays in which electrons passing through two adjacent Geiger tubes at almost the same time are registered as a coincidental event. He used it to show that momentum and energy are conserved at the atomic level. In 1929 he applied the method to the study of cosmic rays and was able to show that they consisted of massive particles rather than photons. This research brought him a share (with Max Born) in the Nobel Prize for 1954. In 1930, he observed a strange radiation emitted from beryllium when it was exposed to alpha particles, later identified by Chadwick as consisting of neutrons. He built Germany's first cyclotron (1943).

January 7: Josef Stefan
(Born March 24, 1835: Died January 7, 1893)
Austrian physicist who proposed a law of radiation (1879) stating that the amount of energy radiated per second from a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. (A black body is a theoretical object that absorbs all radiation that falls on it.) This law is known as Stefan's law or the Stefan-Bolzmann law. He also studied electricity, the kinetic theory of gases and hydrodynamics.

January 6: Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov
(Born July 15, 1904: Died January 6, 1990)
Soviet physicist who discovered Cherenkov radiation (1934), a faint blue light emitted by electrons passing through a transparent medium when their speed exceeds the speed of light in that medium. Fellow Soviet scientists Igor Y. Tamm and Ilya M. Frank investigated the phenomenon from which the Cherenkov counter was developed. Extensive use of this Cherenkov detector was later made in applications of experimental nuclear and particle physics. For their work, the trio shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics. [The date 15 Jul 1904 Old Style is 28 Jul 1904 New Style]

January 5: Harold C. Urey
(Born April 29, 1893: Died January 5, 1981)
American scientist awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1934 for his discovery of deuterium, the heavy form of hydrogen (1932). He was active in the development of the atomic bomb. He contributed to the growing basis for the theory of what was widely accepted as the origin of the Earth and other planets. In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Urey simulated the effect of lightning in the prebiotic atmosphere of Earth with an electrical discharge in a mixture of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water. This produced a rich mixture of aldehydes and carboxylic and amino acids (as found in proteins, adenine and other nucleic acid bases). Urey calculated the temperature of ancient oceans from the amount of certain isotopes in fossil shells.

January 4: Erwin Schrödinger
(Born August 12, 1887: Died January 4, 1961)
Austrian theoretical physicist who extended the theory of de Broglie waves to describe the structure of the atom, validating the wave theory of matter and contributing fundamentals of quantum mechanics. For his work, he was awarded a shared of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac.

January 3: Charles Augustus Young
(Born December 15, 1834: Died January 3, 1908)
American astronomer who made the first observations of the flash spectrum of the Sun, proved the gaseous nature of the sun's corona and discovered the reversing layer of the solar atmosphere. He was a pioneer in the study of the spectrum of the sun and experimented in photographing solar prominences in full sunlight. On December 22, 1870 at the eclipse in Spain, he saw the lines of the solar spectrum all become bright for perhaps a second and a half (the "flash spectrum") and announced the "reversing layer." By exploring from the high altitude of Sherman, Wy. (1872), he more than doubled the number of bright lines he had observed in the chromosphere, By a comparison of observations, he concluded that magnetic conditions on the earth respond to solar disturbances.

January 2: Dixy Lee Ray
(Born September 3, 1914: Died January 2, 1994)
(Margaret Ray) American marine biologist whose interests extended to the environment and the need for greater public understanding of science. A year after appointment to the Atomic Energy Commission, she became its first female chair (1973-75) and championed nuclear power plant construction. On November 2, 1976 Ray won election as the first woman to be governor of Washington state. In her single term as governor, Ray generated more controversy than accomplishments, advocating reductions in environmental protections, and supporting nuclear power. She feuded with aides and refused to close the Hanford nuclear dump. She was featured on the cover of Time issue of December 12, 1977.

January 1: Harriet Brooks
(Born January 1, 1876: Died April 17, 1933)
Canadian nuclear physicist who was probably the first to observe the recoil of the atomic nucleus as nuclear particles were emitted during radioactive decay. During the years 1901-05, she contributed much to the new science of radioactivity. Working with Rutherford, she measured the rate at which radium released radon (and other gases) into the air. They demonstrated that the diffusion of the emanations of radium both behaved like a a gas, and that this gas had a high (over 100) molecular weight. Rutherford credited her work identifying the release of radon as crucial to developing his theory of the transmutation of one element into another. She died at the age of 56, from leukemia or a like disease related to radiation exposure.

Photos courtsey of Today in Science