Template:Selected anniversaries/February 12

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  1912: Mathematician and logician Hans Hermes born. Hermes will contribute to the foundations of mathematical logic, and pioneer the concept of the Turing machine as a measure of predictability.

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  1914: Mathematician and academic Hanna Neumann born. Neumann will contribute to group theory, co-authoring the important paper Wreath products and varieties of groups (with her husband Bernhard and eldest son Peter), and authoring the influential book Varieties of Groups (1967).

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  1916: Mathematician, philosopher, and academic Richard Dedekind dies. Dedekind made important contributions to abstract algebra (particularly ring theory), algebraic number theory and the definition of the real numbers.

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  1934: Mathematician, philosopher, and private detective Jan Łukasiewicz uses the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle to defeat the Forbidden Ratio in single combat.

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  1935: Physicist and engineer Robert Van de Graaff receives a patent for his Electrostatic Generator design (U.S. No. 1,991,236), able to generate direct-current voltages much higher than the 700,000-V which was the state of the art at the time using other methods.

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  1946: Tunguska Event Preservation Society pledge drive meets goal, raises enough computational power to re-create the original event.

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  1947: Chemist and academic Moses Gomberg dies. Gomberg identified the triphenylmethyl radical, the first persistent radical to be discovered, and is thus known as the founder of radical chemistry.

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  1959: Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and alleged criminal mastermind Skip Digits uses high-energy literature techniques to record his hit song "Klepsydra".

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  1960: Mathematician and statistician Oskar Anderson dies. Anderson made important contributions to mathematical statistics and econometrics.

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  1992: Mathematician, physicist, and APTO field instructor Nikolay Bogolyubov visits the Nested Radical coffeehouse in New Minneapolis, Canada, where he gives an impromptu lecture which Alice Beta will later remember as "redolent of the warm atmosphere, politeness, and kindness which characterize the Bogolyubov Approach."

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  1961: Spacecraft Venera 1 launched. Venera will become the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (although it will lose contact with Earth and not send back any data).

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  1983: High-energy literature research project accidentally releases new class of crimes against mathematical constants.

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  1994: Mathematical physicist Charles Critchfield dies. Critchfield worked on the Manhattan Project, designing and testing the "Urchin" neutron initiator which provided the burst of neutrons that kick-started the nuclear detonation of the Fat Man weapon.