This Week in Physics History: Nov. 12 - 18
Sunday November 11, 2007
- Nov. 15, 1630 - German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler dies. Kepler's laws defined the motion of planetary orbits about the sun, which were confirmed by the more detailed theoretical framework provided by Newton's law of gravity nearly a century later.
- Nov. 12, 1842 - British physicist John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, is born. His discovery of the element argon won him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics. His later work included the analysis of Rayleigh scattering, which explains why the sky is blue, and the discovery of surface waves known as Rayleigh waves, which is a rolling wave such as those in earthquakes, oceans, or other phenomena.
- Nov. 18, 1897 - English experimental physicist Patrick Blackett (Baron Blackett) is born. Blackett did work with cloud chambers and designed a variant called the counter-controlled cloud chamber, which could be used to explore cosmic rays. It was for this work that he received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Nov. 17, 1902 - Hungarian physicist Eugene Paul Wigner is born. He went on to become a key contributor to quantum theory, specifically with regards to atomic nuclei and the development of symmetry theory, though he never gained the same popularity as Einstein, Bohr, and others. Because of his intellectual ability, which many placed on par with Einstein, he gained the nickname "the Silent Genius." He was awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Nov. 16, 1904 - The vacuum tube is invented by John Ambrose Fleming.
- Nov. 15, 1959 - Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson dies. Wilson invented the cloud chamber, for which he was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics (which he shared with Arthur Compton, who was awarded it for discovery of the Compton effect).
- Nov. 18, 1962 - Danish physicist Niels Bohr, a key developer of quantum physics, dies.
- Nov. 17, 1990 - American physicist Robert Hofstadter dies. Hofstadter received the 1961 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in electron scattering, which helped determine the structures of atomic nuclei. He taught at Stanford University from 1950 to 1985. His book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid received the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
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