TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 4 DECEMBER
On 4 Dec 1858, Chester Greenwood was born, an American inventor and manufacturer of earmuffs, which, while a teenager, he designed and patented. He had experienced very uncomfortable cold ears while skating in winter, and solved his problem with beaver fur pads on a wire frame. By his mid-twenties, he had a factory and 11 workers producing Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors in his hometown of Farmington producing 50,000 earmuffs yearly. Distribution grew to 400,000 pairs by the year he died. He patented many other inventions. In 1977, the Maine state legislature officially declared 21 Dec, the first day of winter, as the annual Chester Greenwood Day. His hometown celebrates with a parade in early December. His patent No. 188,292 (issued 13 Mar 1877, shows a diagram of his earmuffs, with a description.
On 4 Dec 1945, Thomas Hunt Morgan died, who established the fruit fly as a model organism for genetic research and by which he established the chromosome theory of heredity. Today's book pick is: Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life, by Robert E. E. Kohler. It isn't until you read a book such as this that you realize how much powerful genetics information has been gleaned from such a tiny insect during 100 years. Morgan blazed the trail; a century of progress followed his work. This book brings the early days of Drosophila genetics to a personal level in a refreshing change from any cold, sterile text-book.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $34.50. Used from $12.97. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology of women has hitherto been considered only from the point of view of men. (1926) — Karen Horney, German-American psychologist and psychoanalyst (died 4 Dec 1952).  |
 | Realizing how often ingenious speculation in the complex biological world has led nowhere and how often the real advances in biology as well as in chemistry, physics and astronomy have kept within the bounds of mechanistic interpretation, we geneticists should rejoice, even with our noses on the grindstone (which means both eyes on the objectives), that we have at command an additional means of testing whatever original ideas pop into our heads. — Thomas Hunt Morgan, American geneticist and zoologist (died 4 Dec 1945). |
 | Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate something beyond itself. — John Tyndall, Irish physicist (died 4 Dec 1893). |
| 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 | |
 | Alfred Day Hershey, born 4 Dec 1908, was an American biologist who shared the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for research done on bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). Hershey used an isotope-labeled phage to to infect a bacterial colony and begin to inject their genetic material into the host cells. Then he separated the phage particles from the bacterial walls without rupturing the bacteria. What equipment did he use for this separation? |
| Deaths | |
| | A British physicist (1820-1893) who demonstrated why the sky is blue also studied diamagnetism, glacier motion, and showed that ozone was an oxygen cluster rather than a hydrogen compound. He also invented the fireman's respirator and made other less well-known inventions including better fog-horns. Can you name this physicist who studied the diffusion of light in the atmosphere? |
 | Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) was an Italian physician and physicist studied the structure of organs and the physiology of tissues who is best known for his investigation of the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue. What observation made by Galvani led to this discovery? |
| Events | |
 | On 4 Dec of a certain year in the past decade, the space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of six blasted off on the first mission to begin assembling the international space station. In which decade was this first assembly mission launched? |
 | On 4 Dec 1973, Pioneer 10, a U.S. space probe reached a planet it was launched to visit. Which planet was this? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for December 3: optical fiber with low optical losses for telecommunications • cocaine • he failed to recognize the discovery of Neptune, even though he had viewed it • pesticide • Dr. Christiaan Barnard.
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