TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 9 JANUARY
On 7 Jan 1958, Willis Rodney Whitney died. He was the American chemist and research director who founded the General Electric Company's research laboratory and directed pioneering work there. He is known as the “father of basic research in industry” because it became a model for industrial scientific laboratories elsewhere in the U.S. In Oct 1900 he was offered a research position at the General Electric (GE) Co., Schenectady, N.Y. His self-directed research program there began on a basis of three days a week. He quickly proved that chemical research techniques (such as use of an electric furnace) could be highly useful in the electrical industry. By 1904 he was directing 41 staff. His own 40 patents included the GEM lamp filament (1904), but contributed indirectly to many inventions. In the article he wrote on The Biggest Things in Chemistry in The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (1921) he gives some of his own personal experiences in chemistry and then outlines aspects of chemistry as it appeared then. You can compare what he writes then with what he might have written now.
On 9 Jan 1870, Joseph Strauss was born, American civil engineer who was chief engineer for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. Today's book pick is: The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, by John van der Zee, a case study of personal and technological adventure. The engineers in this book come alive as people, with faults and foibles. This complete history of the longest single-span suspension bridge of its time presents the cutting-edge engineering as much, much more than science and technology, along with an exciting drama of human greed, ambition, frailty, courage, and intellectual achievement.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $9.34. Used from $6.41. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. (1930) — John B. Watson, American psychologist (born 9 Jan 1878).  |
 | Even more difficult to explain, than the breaking-up of a single mass into fragments, and the drifting apart of these blocks to form the foundations of the present-day continents, is the explanation of the original production of the single mass, or PANGAEA, by the concentration of the former holosphere of granitic sial into a hemisphere of compressed and crushed gneisses and schists. Creep and the effects of compression, due to shrinking or other causes, have been appealed to but this is hardly a satisfactory explanation. The earth could no more shrug itself out of its outer rock-shell unaided, than an animal could shrug itself out of its hide, or a man wriggle out of his skin, or even out of his closely buttoned coat, without assistance either of his own hands or those of others. — Amadeus William Grabau, American geologist and palaeontologist (born 9 Jan 1870). |
| | I happen to be a kind of monkey. I have a monkeylike curiosity that makes me want to feel, smell, and taste things which arouse my curiosity, then to take them apart. It was born in me. Not everybody is like that, but a scientific researchist should be. Any fool can show me an experiment is useless. I want a man who will try it and get something out of it. — Willis R. Whitney, American chemist and research director (died 9 Jan 1958). |
| 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 | |
 | Sir Alec Jefferys, born 9 Jan 1950, is an English geneticist who did some work on hereditary disease by tracing genetic markers through families to understand inheritance patterns of illness. However, he is best known for the extension of this work. For what purpose is the technique he discovered now widely used? |
 | On 8 Jan 1864, Paul Kroegel was born, the German-American conservationist who was the first U.S. Game Warden at the first U.S. bird sanctuary. Acting alone, he began guarding the birds there from relentless slaughter by hunters harvesting the plumage for the women's fashion trade. He continued protecting the bird life until he died. The name of the sanctuary included the name of which bird that he protected from hunters of its plumage? |
| Deaths | |
 | William Hedley (1779-1843) was an English coal-mine official and inventor who was probably the first to build a commercially useful steam locomotive dependent on friction between wheels and rails (as prevails in modern times) as opposed to any geared track. He patented this design on 13 Mar 1813. The same year, his locomotive began to pull coal trucks on a five mile line from a mine at Wylam, Northumberland, to dockside at Lemington-on-Tyne. Can you name this locomotive? |
 | On 9 Jan 1848, the sister of one of England’s famous astronomers died. She did significant work assisting him in his astronomical researches making calculations associated with his studies. In her own telescope observations, she found three nebulae and eight comets. (Her brother fathered a son who also followed them into astronomy.) Who was the sister? |
| Events | |
 | On 9 Jan of a certain year, the daguerrotype photo process was announced at the French Academy of Science. In which decade was the daguerrotype announced? |
 | On 9 Jan 1998, two teams of international collaborations of scientists announced the discovery that galaxies are accelerating, flying apart at ever faster speeds, by observing distant, ancient exploding stars. This observation implies the existence of a mysterious, self-repelling property of space. Such had earlier been proposed by a theoretical physicist, which he called the cosmological constant. Who was the theoretical physicist? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for January 8: Stephen Hawking is the 17th Lucasian Professor (Michael Green became the 18th in 2009) • sunspots • cotton gin • Galileo Galilei • tallying data for the 1890 U.S. census • George Washington.
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