Template:Selected anniversaries/August 20: Difference between revisions
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||1892: Octav Onicescu born ... mathematician, member of the Romanian Academy, and founder of the Romanian school of probability theory and statistics. Pic. | ||1892: Octav Onicescu born ... mathematician, member of the Romanian Academy, and founder of the Romanian school of probability theory and statistics. Pic. | ||
||1897: Physician Sir Ronald Ross made a key breakthrough when he discovered malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquito. This day is now known as World Mosquito Day, in celebration of this important discovery. | ||1897: Physician Sir Ronald Ross made a key breakthrough when he discovered malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquito. This day is now known as World Mosquito Day, in celebration of this important discovery. Pic. | ||
||1898: Theoretical physicist Leopold Infeld born. After the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945 Infeld, like Einstein, became a peace activist. Because of his activities, he was unjustly accused of having communist sympathies. In the strongly anti-communist climate of the time many in the Canadian government and media feared that Infled would betray nuclear weapons secrets. He was stripped of his Canadian citizenship and was widely denounced as a traitor. In actuality, Infeld's field was the theory of relativity—not directly linked to nuclear weapons research. Pic. | ||1898: Theoretical physicist Leopold Infeld born. After the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945 Infeld, like Einstein, became a peace activist. Because of his activities, he was unjustly accused of having communist sympathies. In the strongly anti-communist climate of the time many in the Canadian government and media feared that Infled would betray nuclear weapons secrets. He was stripped of his Canadian citizenship and was widely denounced as a traitor. In actuality, Infeld's field was the theory of relativity—not directly linked to nuclear weapons research. Pic. | ||
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||1997: Norris Edwin Bradbury dies ... physicist who served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years from 1945 to 1970. He succeeded Robert Oppenheimer, who personally chose Bradbury for the position of director after working closely with him on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Bradbury was in charge of the final assembly of "the Gadget", detonated in July 1945 for the Trinity test. Pic. | ||1997: Norris Edwin Bradbury dies ... physicist who served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years from 1945 to 1970. He succeeded Robert Oppenheimer, who personally chose Bradbury for the position of director after working closely with him on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Bradbury was in charge of the final assembly of "the Gadget", detonated in July 1945 for the Trinity test. Pic. | ||
||2001: Fred Hoyle dies ... English astronomer and author. | ||2001: Fred Hoyle dies ... English astronomer and author. Pic. | ||
||2008: Sergey Mergelyan dies ... mathematician who made major contributions to Approximation Theory. Pic. | ||2008: Sergey Mergelyan dies ... mathematician who made major contributions to Approximation Theory. Pic. | ||
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Revision as of 07:43, 13 April 2019
1672: Mathematician and politician Johan de Witt dies in a riot. The rioters will partially eat his body.
1797: Physicist and priest Francesco Zantedeschi born. Zantedeschi will be among the first to recognize the marked absorption by the atmosphere of red, yellow, and green light. He will also think that he detected, in 1838, a magnetic action on steel needles by ultraviolet light, anticipating later discoveries connecting light and magnetism.
1911: The first cable message sent around the world from the U.S. by commercial telegraph was transmitted from New York City. It read “This message sent around the world,” left the New York Times building at 7:00 pm and was received at 7:16 pm after travelling nearly 29,000 miles through 16 relays via the Azores, Gibraltar, India, Phillipines, Midway, Guam, Hawaii and San Francisco.
1912: Thomas Edison receives U.S. patent No. 1036470 for a “Phonographic Apparatus,” and No. 1036471 for a “Storage Battery.”
1923: Miniaturized version of John Ambrose Fleming delivers lecture from within Fleming tube.
1942: The first visible quantity of a plutonium compound, plutonium(IV) iodate, is isolated by nuclear chemists Burris Cunningham and Louis Werner.
1961: Physicist and academic Percy Williams Bridgman dies. He won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures.
1962: Mathematician and crime-fighter Alice Beta publishes new class of Gnomon algorithm functions which detect and prevent crimes against mathematical constants.