This Week in Physics History: June 30 - July 6
Monday June 30, 2008
- July 5, 1687 - Sir Isaac Newton publishes the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Known to posterity as the Principia, this three-volume work is where Newton laid out his three laws of motion as well as the law of gravity.
- July 6, 1854 - German physicist Georg Ohm dies. Ohm defined the concepts of voltage, current, and resistance, thus starting the ability for electrical circuit analysis and development. He also devised Ohm's law, one of the fundamental equations of circuit analysis which states that the current (I) equals voltage (or potential difference, V) divided by resistance (R) or I = V / R.
- July 2, 1862 - English physicist & chemist William Henry Bragg is born. Bragg has the distinction of sharing the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his son, Henry Lawrence Bragg, for their work in analyzing crystaline structures with x-ray spectroscopy (a practice which would prove crucial in the 1950s to discovering the double helix structure of DNA molecules).
- June 30, 1905 - Albert Einstein publishes his paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," in which he presents the essential foundation of special relativity.
- July 2, 1906 - German-American physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe is born. Bethe received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in developing the theory of "stellar nucleosynthesis" - which basically says that the nuclear fusion in stellar formation and decay causes the formation of the heavier elements. Bethe worked ran the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos during the Mahattan Project, though he later was a prominent spokesman against the nuclear arms race, along with Albert Einstein.
- June 30, 1919 - British physicist John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, dies. 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.
- July 2, 1992 - British physicist Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, breaks British publishing records as it remains on the nonfiction bestseller list for three and a half years, selling over 3 million copies in 22 languages. A Brief History of Time is a classic physics book which explains in language that laymen can easily understand the origins and development of the universe.
- July 4, 1997 - The U.S. Pathfinder lands on Mars. The Pathfinder mission releases the Sojourner rover to explore Mars' surface, running for 84 days - much longer than its design estimate of 7 days.
- July 1, 2001 - Russian physicist Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov dies. Basov's work in quantum electronics led to the invention of the laser and maser, earning him the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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