science newsletter: Newsletter for Tuesday 25 September

Newsletter - September 25 - Today in Science History

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER - 25 SEPTEMBER

Feature for Today

On 25 Sep 1878, a letter warning against the use of tobacco, Dr. Charles Drysdale, senior physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, was published in The Times newspaper in Britain. He pointed to "the enormous consumption of tobacco in all European states," and concluded "that the use of tobacco is one of the most evident of all the retrograde influences of our time."

Years earlier, in 1864, he published in Med. Circular results of excessive use, such as cases of jaundice in healthy young men smoking 3/4-oz daily, and a young man who smoked 1/2-oz daily having "most distressing palpitation of the heart."

If you are amazed that the dangers of tobacco were being pointed out so much more than a century ago, you will be interested how research on the harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke were already well-known when he wrote he wrote
his book, Tobacco and the Diseases It Produces, in 1875.

In an extract from that book, the section on Tobacco Chemicals lists harmful pyridine bases found in the products of decomposition of nicotine. Particularly notable is his recognition, over 135 years ago, of the dangers of passive smoking to non-smokers inhaling tobacco smoke in public rooms.

Book of the Day

On 25 Sep 1866, Thomas Hunt Morgan was born, the Nobel laureate who began a revolution in genetic investigation using the fruit fly. Yep, that little fly that buzzes around a banana skin in the trash. As a pioneer ingenetics, this is a scientist you should know about! Today's Science Store suggestions are two biographies and an engaging book on the fruit fly in research. Take your pick: the most authoritative biography from Princeton Univ. Press is Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science, by Garland E. Allen, out of print, available used from $150.54, or the shorter Thomas Hunt Morgan: Pioneer of Genetics, by Ian B. Shine, used, from $4.95. Morgan's work is a large section in Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science, by Martin Brookes, who also covers the resulting developments up to the present in the field Morgan opened up. Available used from $0.01. Fly is an informative delight to read, and highly recommended by your webmaster, who learned much by reading it). (Used prices as of time of writing.)
Yesterday's pick: The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle. For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	"That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for, for if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of our friends would have us believe we might well despair that biology could ever become an exact science." - Thomas Hunt Morgan, (born 25 Sep 1501)
	"In scientific study, or, as I prefer to phrase it, in creative scholarship, the truth is the single end sought; all yields to that. The truth is supreme, not only in the vague mystical sense in which that expression has come to be a platitude, but in a special, definite, concrete sense. Facts and the immediate and necessary inductions from facts displace all pre-conceptions, all deductions from general principles, all favourite theories. Previous mental constructions are bowled over as childish play-structures by facts as they come rolling into the mind. The dearest doctrines, the most fascinating hypotheses, the most cherished creations of the reason and of the imagination perish from a mind thoroughly inspired with the scientific spirit in the presence of incompatible facts. Previous intellectual affections are crushed without hesitation and without remorse. Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions." - Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, American geophysicist (born 25 Sep 1843)
	"All infections, of whatever type, with no exceptions, are products of parasitic beings; that is, by living organisms that enter in other living organisms, in which they find nourishment, that is, food that suits them, here they hatch, grow and reproduce themselves." - Agostino Maria Bassi, Italian life scientist (born 25 Sep 1773)

QUIZ
Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page.
Births
	Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, born 25 Sep 1843 was a U.S. geologist and educator, known for his "planetesimal hypothesis," proposed with Forest Ray Moulton in 1904. *What was his planetesimal hypothesis?*
	William Le Baron Jenney, born 25 Sep 1832, was an American civil engineer and architect whose technical innovations were of primary importance in the development of the skyscraper. His Home Insurance Building in Chicago was one of the first buildings with the innovation which became the standard for American skyscraper design. *What was his important innovation?*
Deaths
	Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier (1811-1877) was a French astronomer who predicted the position of a previously unknown planet. *Which planet - and did he find it?*
Events
	On 25 Sep of a certain year, scientists first reported that freon gases released from aerosol spray cans were destroying the ozone layer. *In what decade did this occur?*
	On 25 Sep 1956, a new transatlantic cable system began operating (Clarenville, Newfoundland to Oban, Scotland). *What made it the world's first, different from previous cables?*

Answers

When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the September 25 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for September 24: carbon and hydrogen (CH radical); neon light; Hans Geiger; the decade containing the year 1960; steam engine.

Feedback