This Week in Physics History: July 21 - 27
Monday July 21, 2008
- July 25, 1844 - English physicist and chemist John Dalton dies. Dalton is known for having been an early advocate of atomic theory in modern science, though it would be nearly a century after his work that it was more generally adopted by the scientific community.
- July 22, 1887 - German experimental physicist Gustav Ludwig Hertz is born. Hertz is the nephew of Heinrich Hertz (who demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves). Gustav Hertz, along with James Franck, performed the Franck-Hertz experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases. This work earned the pair of them the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- July 21, 1969 - Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first human beings to walk on the Moon's surface.
- July 24, 1979 - English physicist Sir James Chadwick dies. Chadwick discovered the existence of the neutrally charged atomic particle, the neutron. The neutron, with a lack of electrical charge, is useful in triggering nuclear fission, or "splitting the atom." He received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery. Because of this work, Chadwick reputedly gained the nickname "Jimmy Neutron."
- July 27, 2005 - NASA grounds the space shuttles after the space shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam from its external fuel tank larger than that which caused the destruction of the Columbia in 2003. The Discovery foam did not strike the spacecraft and caused no actual difficulties to the launch or mission.
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