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engineering
William Grey Walter and his Machina speculatrix

William Grey Walter and his Machina speculatrix

Tabea Tietz
On February 19, 1910, British neurophysiologist and robotician William Grey Walter was born. Walter is best known for linking learning with a particular brain wave as revealed by measurements by electroencephalograph. But his most famous work was his construction of some of the first electronic autonomous robots. “The mechanism of learning is of course one of the most enthralling and baffling mysteries in the field of biology.” – William Grey Walter, A machine that…
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archeology
Heinrich Karl Brugsch and the Decipherment of Demotic Script

Heinrich Karl Brugsch and the Decipherment of Demotic Script

Harald Sack
On February 18, 1827, German egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch was born. Brugsch was associated with Auguste Mariette in his excavations at Memphis and pioneered in the decipherment of Demotic, the simplified script of the later Egyptian periods. He also recognized the Semitic side of Egyptian grammar, thus enabling a far more comprehensive and systematic understanding of hieroglyphs. Self-taught Studies in Egyptology Heinrich Karl Brugsch was born in Berlin, Germany, as the son…
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astronomy
Giordano Bruno and the Wonders of the Universe

Giordano Bruno and the Wonders of the Universe

Harald Sack
On February 17, 1600, Dominican friar and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned on the stake after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. Becoming a Dominican Friar Giordano Bruno was born as Filippo Bruno in Nola,  in the Kingdom of…
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mathematics
Pierre Bouguer – Child Prodigy and ‘Father of Photometry’

Pierre Bouguer – Child Prodigy and ‘Father of Photometry’

Tabea Tietz
On February 16, 1698, French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomerPierre Bouguer was born. In 1735 Bouguer sailed with Charles Marie de La Condamine on a scientific mission to Peru, in order to measure a degree of the meridian arc near the equator. He is also known as “the father of naval architecture” and the “father of photometry“. Pierre Bouguer – Early Life Pierre Bouguer was born in Le Croisic at the French Atlantic…
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chemistry
Hans von Euler-Chelpin and the Alcoholic Fermentation of Sugar

Hans von Euler-Chelpin and the Alcoholic Fermentation of Sugar

Tabea Tietz
On February 15, 1873, German-born Swedish biochemist Hans von Euler-Chelpin was born. Hans von Euler-Chelpin shared the 1929 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Sir Arthur Harden for work on the role of enzymes in the alcoholic fermentation of sugar. Youth and Education Hans von Euler-Chelpin was the son of the later Bavarian Major General Rigas von Euler-Chelpin (1837-1923)and his wife Gabriele Furtner († 1931). He spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in…
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engineering
Christopher Latham Sholes invented the QWERTY Typewriter

Christopher Latham Sholes invented the QWERTY Typewriter

Harald Sack
On February 14, 1819,  American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes was born, who invented the first practical typewriter and is responsible for the  QWERTY keyboard layout still in use today. Printer, Editor, and Politician Born on a farm in Montour County, Pennsylvania, USA, Christopher Latham Sholes worked in Madison, Wisconsin, as a printer and later as editor of Bender’s Newspaper. In this city he was one of the co-founders of the Republican Party of…
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computer science
ENIAC – The First Computer Introduced Into Public

ENIAC – The First Computer Introduced Into Public

Harald Sack
On February 13, 1946, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly introduced Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, the first general purpose, electronic computer. ENIAC was a giant step forward in computing technology. “Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons.” – Andrew Hamilton, “Brains that Click”,…
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physics
Julian Schwinger and Quantum Electrodynamics

Julian Schwinger and Quantum Electrodynamics

Harald Sack
On February 12, 1918, US-american theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate Julian Seymour Schwinger was born. Schwinger is best known for his work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), in particular for developing a relativistically invariant perturbation theory, and for renormalizing QED to one loop order. “Is the purpose of theoretical physics to be no more than a cataloging of all the things that can happen when particles interact with each other…
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explorer
Vivian Fuchs and the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition

Vivian Fuchs and the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition

Tabea Tietz
On February 11, 1908, British geologist and explorer Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs was born. Fuchs initiated and led together with Sir Edmund Hillary [5,6] the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1957-58, which completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica in 1958. Vivian Fuchs – Education and first Expeditions Vivian Fuchs was born in 1908 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, the son of the German immigrant Ernst Fuchs from the Jena area and of his British wife…
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history
Victoria and Albert – A Royal Wedding

Victoria and Albert – A Royal Wedding

Harald Sack
Victoria Alexandrina was born as the fifth in the line of succession and her childhood was rather unspectacular, as her mother kept her from contact with other children and granted her an excellent home schooled education, wherefore she was able to speak many languages. In 1836, Leopold, King of the Beligians, and uncle to Victoria suggested that his nephew Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha should marry his niece Victoria. After a first…
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