On September 23, 1791, German astronomer Johann Franz Encke was born in Hamburg. He studied mathematics and astronomy. The orbits of comets held great fascination for Encke. These couldn’t be seen for many decades at a time before they returned. Because these orbital periods…
On August 15, 1871, Sir Arthur George Tansley, was born. He grew from a field-tripping teenager on school nature outings to become one of England’s activist pioneers in the science of ecology. Following studies in botany, physiology, zoology, and geology at Trinity College, Cambridge,…
On August 8, 1863, American ornithologist and nature writer Florence Merriam Bailey was born into a family steeped in natural history. Her father, a friend of John Muir’s, encouraged her interests, as did her brother who became the first chief of the U.S. Biological…
On July 22, 1898, American aviator Wiley Hardeman Post was born. Wiley achieved his fame in what is often called the “Golden Age” of air racing, the 1930’s. First it was his win at the National Air Race Derby, from Los Angeles to Chicago.…
On July 15, 1943, British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born. As a research student, Bell Burnell assisted in the physical construction and operation of a Cambridge university radio telescope, consisting of thousands of poles wired and cabled over several acres of land. Additionally,…
On July 6, 1785, botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker was born. Always interested in botany, he collected and organized plant specimens from his earliest years. With his discovery of a new moss, Hooker was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society and, at 21,…
On this day in Barrie Ontario, Professor Bonnie M Patterson was born. As she grew — and always up for a challenge — Patterson went where no woman had yet gone before and became the first woman Dean of Business in Canada, the first…
Right to the Core On June 4, 1889, geophysicist and mathematician Beno Gutenberg was born and made the study of Earth’s interior his life’s work. He was the first to determine the radius of Earth’s core. Perhaps the most important information geologists gather about…
On May 27, 1907, Rachel Louise Carson was born. She spent her entire life loving the natural world, particularly the ocean. She studied English and marine biology and wrote copy for weekly education broadcasts for U.S. Bureau of Fisheries [later named the U.S. Fish…
On May 25, 1889, Russian-born scientist, engineer, pilot and entrepreneur Igor Sikorsky was born. In 1913 he built the first fixed-wing four-engine aircraft in the world, achieving speed and altitude records only ten years after the Wright Brothers flight in 1903. Learning as he…