Author Archives

Harald Sack

Karl Gegenbaur and the Study of Comparative Anatomy

Karl Gegenbaur and the Study of Comparative Anatomy

On August 21, 1826, German anatomist Karl Gegenbaur was born. Gegenbaur demonstrated that the field of comparative anatomy offers important evidence supporting of the theory of evolution. He was a strong supporter of Charles Darwin‘s theory of organic evolution, having taught and worked, beginning in 1858, with Ernst Haeckel.[6] Karl Gegenbaur noted that the most reliable clue to evolutionary history is homology, the comparison of anatomical parts which have a common evolutionary origin.…
Read more
The Transatlantic Flight of the Double Eagle II

The Transatlantic Flight of the Double Eagle II

On August 17, 1978, Double Eagle II became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it landed in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours 6 minutes after leaving Presque Isle, Maine. The flight, the fourteenth known attempt, was the culmination of more than a century of previous attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. John Wise and the Atlantic In 1859, John Wise, US-American pioneer in the field of ballooning,…
Read more
Amedeo Avogadro – Relating Volumes to Quantities and Avogadro’s Law

Amedeo Avogadro – Relating Volumes to Quantities and Avogadro’s Law

On August 9, 1776, Italian scientist Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, Conte di Quaregna e Cerreto was born. He is most noted for his contribution to molecular theory now known as Avogadro’s law, which states that equal volumes of gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure will contain equal numbers of molecules. In tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in 1 mole…
Read more
Benjamin Silliman and the 1807 Meteor

Benjamin Silliman and the 1807 Meteor

On August 8, 1779, early American chemist and science educator Benjamin Silliman was born. He was one of the first American professors of science, at Yale College, the first person to distill petroleum in America, and a founder of the American Journal of Science, the oldest continuously published scientific journal in the United States. Silliman best known for researching the chemical composition of a meteorite that fell in 1807, his report being…
Read more
Andrew Taylor Still and the Dispute about Osteopathic Medicine

Andrew Taylor Still and the Dispute about Osteopathic Medicine

On August 6, 1828, American surgeon and physician Andrew Taylor Still was born. Still was the founder of osteopathy and osteopathic medicine, a type of health care system of diagnosis and treatment that emphasizes relationship between structure and function in the body, and the ways it can be affected through manipulative therapy and other treatment modalities. “An osteopath is only a human engineer, who should understand all the laws governing his engine and…
Read more
Guy de Maupassant – Master of the Short Story

Guy de Maupassant – Master of the Short Story

On August 5, 1850, French writer Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born. Maupassant is remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the naturalist school of writers, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms. I’ve read Maupassant‘s Bel Ami by the time I graduated in computer science, a novel that did make a lasting impression. What I…
Read more
The Visionary Dystopies of Aldous Huxley

The Visionary Dystopies of Aldous Huxley

On July 26, 1894, English writer, novelist, philosopher Aldous Leonard Huxley was born. He was best known for his novels including Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, and for non-fiction books, such as The Doors of Perception, which recalls experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and a wide-ranging output of essays. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in seven different years, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the…
Read more
Walter Schottky and the Image Potential Energy

Walter Schottky and the Image Potential Energy

On July 23, 1886, German physicist Walter Hermann Schottky was born. Schottky played a major early role in developing the theory of electron and ion emission phenomena. He invented the screen-grid vacuum tube in 1915 and the pentode in 1919 while working at Siemens, co-invented the ribbon microphone and ribbon loudspeaker in 1924 and later made many significant contributions in the areas of semiconductor devices, technical physics and technology. Walter Schottky –…
Read more
The Gran Telescopio Canarias

The Gran Telescopio Canarias

On July 14, 2007, the Gran Telescopio Canarias saw first light, also known as the Great Canary Telescope (GTC), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, in the Canaries, Spain. With an aperture of 10.4m, as of 2015, it is the world’s largest single-aperture optical telescope. It has a segmented mirror, i.e. an array of smaller mirrors designed to act as segments of a single…
Read more
Gustav Mahler and the Modernism in Music

Gustav Mahler and the Modernism in Music

On July 7, 1860, Austrian late-Romantic composer Gustav Mahler was born. Mahler also was one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. Gustav Magler – Early Years Gustav Mahler was born in Kaliště in Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic, as the 2nd of 14 children…
Read more
Relation Browser
Timeline
0 Recommended Articles:
0 Recommended Articles: