This Week in Physics History: Nov. 24 - 30
Monday November 24, 2008
- Nov. 27, 1701 - Anders Celsius is born. The Swedish inventor and astronomer is best known for the Celsius temperature scale that he devised.
- Nov. 29, 1803 - Christian Doppler is born. The Austrian physicist is best known for the explanation of the Doppler effect in waves.
- Nov. 25, 1814 - German physicist and physician Julius Robert von Mayer is born. von Mayer is known as a founder of thermodynamics, especially for his early formulation of the law of conservation of energy in 1841.
- Nov. 29, 1849 - English electrical engineer and physicist John Ambrose Fleming is born. Fleming invented the diode for use in electronics. He also invented the right hand rule, used in mathematics when taking the cross product of two vectors.
- Nov. 25, 1867 - Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
- Nov. 30, 1869 - Swedish industrialist Gustaf Dalen is born. Dalen was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of automatic valves, used in lights called the Dalen light. The valves had a darkened metal rod which expanded when sunlight came up, causing the valve to close. This cut off the flow of gas into the light, turning the light off during the day. It was used in lighthouses and buoys.
- Nov. 27, 1871 - Italian electrical engineer Giovanni Giorgi was born. He invented system of measurement called the Giorgi system, which was a precursor to our the SI unit system.
- Nov. 28, 1950 - American physicist Russell Alan Hulse is born. Hulse received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for work in discovering the binary pulsar. He shared the prize with his doctoral thesis advisor, Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.
- Nov. 28, 1954 - Enrico Fermi dies. The Italian physicist won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity, based on his work in the development of quantum physics. He is also known for his work in developing controlled nuclear reactions, which ultimately led to the construction of nuclear reactors. Fermilab, one of the most important centers for sub-atomic quantum research, is named after Enrico Fermi.
- Nov. 27, 2001 - The Hubble Space Telescope detects a hydrogen atmosphere on the planet Osiris, in the constellation Pegasus (approximately 150 light-years from Earth's solar system). This is the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.
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