TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 16 NOVEMBER
On 16 Nov 1964, Donald Culross Peattie died, an American botanist, naturalist and author who won high critical acclaim for his several books on plant life and nature. After college, he joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a botanist in the office of foreign seed and plant introduction. From 1922-3 he worked on frost resistance in tropical plants. In 1926, he left the USDA to free-lance in his own field, writing books and also began a nature column in the Washington Starwhich ran for 10 years. Today's book pick is: A Natural History of North American Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie, a one-volume edition with two of his earlier books about american trees. Peattie leaves us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest. As reader, you catch glimpses of the country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly.
Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships.
It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed.
For more choice to sample Peattie's nature writings, on flowers, wilderness, dunes, and naturalist biographies, see this booklist.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $846.04. Used from $175.06. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | Because a child of one doubles its age after the passage of a single year, it can be said to be aging rapidly. — Henry Taube, Canadian-American chemist (died 16 Nov 2005).  |
| | Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may seem more commonplace, it is not so to him. Each new insight into how the atoms in their interactions express themselves in structure and transformations, not only of inanimate matter, but particularly also of living matter, provides a thrill. — Henry Taube, Canadian-American chemist (died 16 Nov 2005). |
 | [I shall not] discuss scientific method, but rather the methods of scientists. We proceed by common sense and ingenuity. There are no rules, only the principles of integrity and objectivity, with a complete rejection of all authority except that of fact. — Joel H. Hildebrand, American chemist and educator (born 16 Nov 1881). |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
| Births | |
 | Jules Violle, born 16 Nov 1841, was a physicist who made the first high-altitude determination of the solar constant. He also was interested in the theory of geysers, the origin of hail, and atmospheric exploration through balloon soundings. For high-temperature radiation, he proposed a photometric unit, the violle or Violle's standard. What was his nationality? |
| | On 16 Nov 1881, Joel H. Hildebrand was born, an American educator and chemist. His investigations in the chemistry of solutions helped to protect deep-sea divers from the “bends.” In 1950, he led his faculty's fight against the imposition of a non-Communist “loyalty oath.” He lived to age 101. How does his research in solution chemistry relate to the bends in divers? |
| Deaths | |
 | Carl von Linde (1842-1934) was a German engineer who invented a continuous process of liquefying gases in large quantities. This formed the basis for what modern technology? |
 | Pavel Sergeevich Aleksandrov was a Soviet mathematician who introduced many of the basic concepts of topology. He also supervised the publication of an English-Russian dictionary of mathematical terminology. What is topology? |
| Events | |
 | On 16 Nov 1620 (on the old style calendar), British Pilgrim settlers at Provincetown, Massachussetts, first found a now common vegetable which was unknown to them until then. What was the vegetable? |
 | On 16 Nov of a certain year, two newly discovered elements were announced: americium (atomic number 95) and curium (atomic number 96) In what decade were these elements announced? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for November 15: Uranus • how capillaries open to provide blood flow to supply oxygen to the tissues • Margaret Mead • the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus • decade containing the year 1887 • disposable blades.
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