TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 16 FEBRUARY
On 16 Feb 1834, Ernst Haeckel was born. Here, you can read a sample of his writing on Evolution, somewhat as road-kill left on science's relentlessly self-correcting path of progress.
Although Haeckel grasped Darwin's ideas on Evolution, Haeckel had his own concept "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning that he supposed any animal embryo progresses through all previous evolutionary stages as it develops. Yes, he was shown to be wrong about that, as science itself evolved with better theories.
Yet your time will be still well-spent reading this time-capsule from the 19th century, when you regard it as one of the stepping stones in the history of biology—Haeckel's interpretation of Evolution.
On 16 Feb 1822, Sir Francis Galton was born, English scientist, founder of eugenics, statistician and investigator of intellectual ability. He was a cousin and contemporary of Charles Darwin. Today's book pick is: A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics, by Nicholas Wright Gillham. Few scientists have made lasting contributions to as many fields as Francis Galton. He was an important African explorer, travel writer, and geographer. He was the meteorologist who discovered the anticyclone, the inventor of regression and correlation analysis in statistics, and the founder of the eugenics movement. Nicholas Gillham paints an engaging portrait of this Victorian polymath - a vibrant biography of a remarkable scientist as well as a superb portrait of science in the Victorian era.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $41.29. Used from $2.49. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all! — Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-American physicist (died 16 Feb 1997).  |
 | The phrase 'nature and nurture' is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence without that affects him after his birth. — Sir Francis Galton, English anthropologist, eugenicist and statistician (born 16 Feb 1822). |
| | The cell never acts; it reacts. — Ernst Haeckel, German naturalist and biologist (born 16 Feb 1834). |
| 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 | |
| | Ernst Haeckel, born 16 Feb 1834, was a German zoologist and evolutionist who was a strong proponent of Darwinism and who proposed new notions of the evolutionary descent of man. He coined many words commonly used by biologists today, such as phylum, phylogeny, and the word used to mean “study of the interactions between organisms and their environment (home).” What is this word for “study of the home” coined by Haeckel? |
| | Sir Francis Galton, born 16 Feb 1822, was an English explorer, anthropologist, and eugenicist, known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton experimentally verified that a certain human feature was unique to each individual. What is this feature? |
| Deaths | |
| | Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was a Chinese-born American physicist who provided the first experimental proof (1956) that the principle of parity conservation does not hold in certain subatomic interactions, disproving what had been thought to be a universal symmetry law of nature. Which type of interactions did She prove not to conserve parity? |
 | Henry Walter Bates (1825-1892) was an English naturalist and explorer whose demonstration of the operation of natural selection in animal mimicry), published in 1861, gave firm support to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. What is meant by Batesian mimicry? |
| Events | |
 | On 16 Feb of a certain year, Dr. Wallace Hume Carothers, received a patent for the synthetic fiber—nylon—he had invented. It was assigned to his employer, DuPont. As early consumer use of nylon was in tooth brushes, to replace hog bristles. In which decade was this patent for nylon issued? |
 | On 16 Feb 1923, archaeologist Howard Carter opened the sealed doorway to the sepulchral chamber of a tomb in Thebes, Egypt. A group of invited visitors and officials was present, including Lord Carnarvon, the aristocratic Englishman who had funded the excavation. This was the tomb of which Egyptian? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for February 15: nine • Cyrus Hall McCormick • four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto • the interactions of subatomic particles • automobile • decade including the year 1873.
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