This Week in Physics History: Dec. 31 - Jan. 6
Monday December 31, 2007
- Jan. 3, 1486 - Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests an experimental flying machine.
- Jan. 4, 1643 - English physicist, alchemist, and government official Sir Isaac Newton is born. Newton's accomplishments are too lengthy to mention, but he is known by many as the figure who contributed the most to the development of physics as a rigorous, mathematically precise field of scientific inquiry.
- Jan. 1, 1818 - Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is first published. This is widely hailed as the first science fiction novel, in which current scientific principles are crucial to the plotline. In addition to the complex ethical questions raised by the novel, Frankenstein anticipates many future concepts in biophysics, which are only now being realized.
- Jan. 6, 1838 - The first electrical telegraph is created and tested by Samuel Morse.
- Jan. 2, 1860 - At a meeting of the Academies des Sciences in Paris, a hypothesis is put forth in which a planet must exist between Mercury & the Sun, in order to explain the changing of Mercury's perihelion through orbits around the Sun. The theory was proposed by French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, who had used calculus to prove the need for Neptune's existence over a decade earlier. With Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the perihelion phenomenon of Mercury is explained without the need for the planet Vulcan, thus invalidating the need for this hypothesis.
- Dec. 31, 1879 - The incandescent lightbulb is first displayed before a public audience by Thomas Edison.
- Jan. 6, 1931 - Thomas Edison files his last patent application.
- Jan. 4, 1958 - The Soviety satellite Sputnik I falls from its orbit, crashing to the Earth, after orbiting the Earth for over a year..
- Jan. 4, 1961 - Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger dies. Schroedinger is best known for his work in quantum mechanics, including the famous "Schroedinger Cat" thought experiment, intended to demonstrate the irrationality of applying quantum phenomena to the non-quantum realm. Schroedinger was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Paul Dirac, for work in atomic theory.
- Jan. 5, 1970 - German physicist Max Born dies. Born recieved the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for quantum physics research, specifically work in determining the statistical properties of the quantum wavefunction.
- Jan. 6, 1990 - Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, a Russian physicist and Nobel laureate, dies.
- Jan. 1, 1995 - Hungarian physicist Eugene Paul Wigner dies. Wigner won the 1963 Noble Prize in Physics for developing principles of symmetry that proved crucial to the understanding of quantum physics.
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