TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 20 MARCH
On 20 Mar 1878, Julius Robert Mayer died, a German physicist who had the idea of the conservation of energy before either Joule or Helmholtz. He held that solar energy was the ultimate source of all energy on earth, both living and nonliving.
In this excerpt from “The Century’s Progress in Physics” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1897) on Julius Robert Mayer and the Conservation of Energy you glean more of the historic background on this topic.
As you read the extract, you may reflect on the intellectual capacity for science of 19th-century readers of Harper’s, an otherwise general-interest magazine.
On 20 Mar 1962, Andrew Ellicott Douglass died. He was an American astronomer and climatologist who established the new field of dendrochronology (a name he coined) for the analysis of tree rings to date and interpret past events. It was his interest in predicting sunspots that led to development of tree-ring dating in his adopted Arizona. He began to collect tree specimens, believing that variations in the width of tree rings would show a connection between sunspot activity and the terrestrial climate and vegetation. That in turn revolutionized archaeology in the Southwest (because ruins containing wooden logs, beams or wooden artifacts could be dated from the pattern of their tree rings in the wood). In turn, there came wide-ranging applications of dendrochronology to the study of past and future climates of the entire globe. Today's book pick is: Tree Rings and Telescopes: The Scientific Career of A. E. Douglass, by George E. Webb. The information presented by the author is well-written and will prove useful to those working with the history of archaeology.
It is available from Amazon, typically about Used from $45.00. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | A scientist strives to understand the work of Nature. But with our insufficient talents as scientists, we do not hit upon the truth all at once. We must content ourselves with tracking it down, enveloped in considerable darkness, which leads us to make new mistakes and errors. By diligent examination, we may at length little by little peel off the thickest layers, but we seldom get the core quite free, so that finally we have to be satisfied with a little incomplete knowledge. — Torbern Olof Bergman, Swedish mineralogist, chemist and naturalist (born 20 Mar 1735).  |
 | But psychology is a more tricky field, in which even outstanding authorities have been known to run in circles, ‘describing things which everyone knows in language which no one understands.’ — Raymond Cattell, English-American psychologist (born 20 Mar 1905). |
 | We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, … are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated. — Frederick W. Taylor, American engineer and inventor (born 20 Mar 1856). |
| 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 | |
 | An American psychologist born 20 Mar 1904 studied the learning processes of animals by providing a lever, or such, to deliver a reward or punishment when the animal pressed it. He extended his theories to the behavior of humans. What is the name of this scientist? |
 | Walter M. Elsasser, born 20 Mar 1904, was a German-born American physicist who proposed an explanation for the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field which is still accepted today. What is the model he proposed for the Earth’s magnetic field? |
| Deaths | |
 | An English physicist and mathematician (1642-1727) made seminal discoveries in several areas of science, and was the leading scientist of his era. His study of optics included using a prism to show white light could be split into a spectrum of colours. The statement of his three laws of motion are fundamental in the study of mechanics. He was the first to describe the moon as falling (in a circle around the earth) under the same influence of gravity as a falling apple. Can you name this scientist? |
| Events | |
 | On 20 Mar of a certain year, America’s first demonstration of the alternating-current system provided lighting along Main Street at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, powered by the first AC power plant in the U.S. to begin commercial operation. Who was the 39-year-old inventor of this AC power system? |
 | On 20 Mar 1916, Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was published. It provided an explanation of a phenomenon in the observed path of Mercury that Newton’s gravitational theory could not. It was verified by an astronomical event in 1919. What type of event in 1919 provided the verification of Einstein's theory? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for March 19: discovery of artificially prepared, radioactive isotopes of new elements • chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases • the decade including the year 1929 • Madame Tussaud’s • to test effects of rapid deceleration from high speed on the human body - to simulate the experience for pilots bailing out of supersonic jet airplanes - by rapidly braking the speeding sled • electric eels.
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