On December 17, 1908, American physical chemist Willard Frank Libby was born. He specialized in radiochemistry, the chemistry of radioactive materials. Radiochemistry includes the study of both natural and man-made radioisotopes. Isotopes are variants of a specific chemical element that differ from each other…
On December 12, 1900, biophysicist and solar power pioneer Mária Telkes was born in Hungary. She built her first laboratory at ten years of age. Visiting the U.S.A., she worked with surgeon George Crile, co-founder of the Cleveland Clinic, to investigate the energy produced…
On December 11, 1863, American astrophysicist Annie Jump Cannon was born. She learned about constellations from her mother. However, from a fever early in her life, Cannon was hearing impaired. She studied physics at Wellesley and took graduate courses in astronomy there. She acquired…
On December 8, 1730, Dutch physician and scientist Jan Ingen-Housz was born. A talented, successful, and pro-active doctor who moved to England to learn smallpox inoculation. Ingen-Housz worked on English patients and was so skilled, he was invited to inoculate the Hapsburgs in Austria…
On November 23, 1898, American biochemist Rachel Fuller Brown was born. Most famously, she worked through research and production projects with microbiologist and bacteriologist Elizabeth Lee Hazen for the New York State Department of Health; Brown in Albany and Hazen in New York City.…
On November 8, 1895, in the evening, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen [Röntgen] discovered X-rays. Previously, he had investigated the electrical conductivity of crystals and electromagnetic influences on polarized light. This particular evening, Roentgen experimented with the flow of electric current through a glass tube…
On November 7, 1867, physicist and chemist Marie Skłodowska–Curie was born in Poland. A studious young daughter of a scientist, she grew up to become one of the giants of all modern science. With her husband, Pierre Curie, she studied chemical elements in their…
On November 3, 1854, Dr. Jokichi Takamine was born in Japan. His special strengths in languages and science steered him through programs in medical school and chemistry. Along with studies at the University of Glasgow in technology and work experiences in both Japan and…
On October 22, 1896, American biochemist and nutrition researcher, Charles Glen King was born. For about 200 years, limes and lemons and a few certain other foods were known to be effective in preventing and treating scurvy, a nutritional deficiency disease that, untreated, leads…
On October 9, 1876, the first two-way telephone conversation took place by wire, without the assistance of intermediary telephone operators, between Alexander Bell, a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University, and his assistant Thomas Watson, carpenter, machinist, and electric model maker. They spoke…