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Harald Sack

engineering
Wilhelm Bauer and his Famous Blockade-Breaking Brandtaucher

Wilhelm Bauer and his Famous Blockade-Breaking Brandtaucher

Harald Sack
In December 23, 1823, Bavarian inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer was born. Bauer was a submarine pioneer and constructed several hand-powered submarines, among them the famous blockade-breaking incendiary ship, the Brandtaucher. Wilhelm Bauer and the German/Danish Wilhelm Bauer was born in Dillingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. His father was a sergeant of a Bavarian cavalry regiment. Because of this, Wilhelm Bauer, after an apprenticeship as a wood turner, joined the military…
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physics
Robert Millikan and the Millikan experiment

Robert Millikan and the Millikan experiment

Harald Sack
On December 19, 1953, US-American physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Andrews Millikan passed away. Millikan was honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for his measurement of the elementary electronic charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect. Millikan‘s famous oil-drop experiment (1911) was far superior to previous determinations of the charge of an electron, and further showed that the electron was a fundamental, discrete particle. In later work,…
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chemistry
Willard Frank Libby and the Radiocarbon Dating

Willard Frank Libby and the Radiocarbon Dating

Harald Sack
On December 17, 1908, American physical chemist Willard Frank Libby was born. Libby is best known for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contributions to the team that developed this process, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960. Early Years Willard Frank Libby was born among two siblings in Grand Valley, Colorado, the son of farmers Ora…
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biology
Maurice Wilkins and the Riddle of the DNA Structure

Maurice Wilkins and the Riddle of the DNA Structure

Harald Sack
On December 15, 1916, New Zealand-born British physicist, molecular biologist, and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins was born. Wilkins’ research contributed to the scientific understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction, and to the development of radar. He is best known for his work at King’s College London on the structure of DNA. “It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth…
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history
The Revenge of the 47 Ronin

The Revenge of the 47 Ronin

Harald Sack
In Genroku 15, on the 14th day of the 12th month (元禄十五年十二月十四日, Tuesday, January 30, 1703), in revenge for the death of their prince Asano, 47 Ronin invaded the house of the Japanese Shogunate official Kira Yoshihisa in Edo and killed him and his male followers. The story of the 47 Ronin is one of the most celebrated in the history of the samurai. Described by Japanese historians as a ‘National Legend’,…
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physics
Max Born and the statistical interpretation of the Wave Function

Max Born and the statistical interpretation of the Wave Function

Harald Sack
On December 11, 1882, German physicist, mathematician, and Nobel Laureate Max Born was born, who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. “Can we call something with which the concepts of position and motion cannot be associated in the usual way, a thing, or a particle? And if…
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physics
Henry Way Kendall and the Scattering of Particles

Henry Way Kendall and the Scattering of Particles

Harald Sack
On December 9, 1926, American particle physicist and Nobel Laureate Henry Way Kendall was born. Kendall won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman and Richard E. Taylor “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.” “While science and technology play critical roles in sustaining…
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mathematics
Jacques Hadamard and the Description of Mathematical Thought

Jacques Hadamard and the Description of Mathematical Thought

Harald Sack
On December 8, 1865, French mathematician Jacques Salomon Hadamard was born. Hadamard made major contributions in number theory, complex function theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations. Moreover, he is also known for his description of the mathematical though process in his book Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. “It is important for him who wants to discover not to confine himself to one chapter of science, but to keep in…
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physics
George Uhlenbeck and the Electron Spin

George Uhlenbeck and the Electron Spin

Harald Sack
On December 6, 1900, Dutch-American theoretical physicist George Eugene Uhlenbeck was born. Together with with Samuel A. Goudsmit, Uhlenbeck proposed the concept of electron spin (Jan 1925) – a fourth quantum number which was a half integer. Early Life George Uhlenbeck was the son of Eugenius Uhlenbeck, who served in the Dutch East Indian Army, and Anne Beeger Uhlenbeck, the daughter of a Dutch major general. He attended the Hogere Burgerschool (High…
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