Template:On This Day (nonfiction)/May 23
1707: Botanist, physician, and zoologist Carl Linnaeus born. He will formalize the binomial nomenclature system of taxonomy.
1734: Physician Franz Mesmer born. Mesmer will theorize that there is a natural energy transference which occurs between all animated and inanimate objects which he will call animal magnetism. The effects which he will observe will later be attributed to hypnosis.
1895: Mineralogist, physicist, and mathematician Franz Ernst Neumann dies. His 1831 study on the specific heats of compounds included what is now known as Neumann's Law: the molecular heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic heats of its constituents.
1917: Meteorologist, mathematician, and chaos theory pioneer Edward Lorenz born. He will introduce the strange attractor notion, and coin the term butterfly effect.
1982: Electrical engineer Florence Violet McKenzie dies. She was Australia's first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC), and lifelong promoter for technical education for women.
1994: George P. Metesky dies. He terrorized New York City for 16 years in the 1940s and 1950s with explosives that he planted in theaters, terminals, libraries, and offices.