Newsletter for Monday 29 October

 

 

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY

NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 29

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.

On 29 Oct 1923, Carl Djerassi was born, inventor of an oral contraceptive and science-in-drama playwright. Today's Science Store pick is Oxygen, by Carl Djerassi. In this play, he considers who deserves credit for the discovery of oxygen. Its premise is that the Nobel Foundation, for its centenary, decides to award a "retro-Nobel" for the discovery of oxygen. But, the committee debates, should it go to Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestly or Carl Wilhelm Scheele? The dramatic action alternates between the rivals in 1777 and judges of their contributions in Stockholm in 2001. So, who will be the awardee? This imaginative play makes an intriging read. Price $24.95, or used from $14.24 (as of time of writing). Yesterday's pick:at a SPECIAL BARGAIN PRICE Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Browse the new Science Store pages of Science Titles in Bargain Books.

Quotations for Today

"Just go on . . . and faith will soon return." - said to a friend hesitant with respect to infinitestimals, by Jean le Rond D'Alembert, French mathematician (born 29 Oct 1783) "You know, ... old folks can have dreams, too, as well as young folks, and then work toward them. And to have a dream like this come true for me is just a terrific experience." - John Glenn, first American astronaut to orbit the earth, who returned to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery on 29 Oct 1998.

QUIZ

Births

Othniel Marsh, born 29 Oct 1831, was a U.S. scientist who made extensive scientific explorations of the western U.S. His rivalry with Edward Drinker Cope, America's other great scientist in the same scientific field was known as "The Great __?__ Wars."  What is the missing word in the last sentence?

Deaths

Arne Tiselius was a  biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1948 for his work on electrophoresis and other new methods of separating and detecting colloids and serum proteins. In electrophoresis - a method of separating chemically similar charged colloids - an electrical field is applied to the sample, and particles with different sizes migrate at different rates to the pole of opposite charge, enabling them to be detected and identified.  What was his nationality?

Events

On 29 Oct 1998, a US astronaut was launched into space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. His first trip into space trip was made 38 years earlier. Can you name this astronaut?

On 29 Oct of a certain year, the first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department Stores for $12.95. Four months earlier, Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, in Buenos Aires on unrelated business, saw the Biro pen in a store, recognized the pen's sales potential and bought a few as samples. Reynolds returned to America and started manufacturing copies.  What was the decade in which first U.S.  ball point pen was sold?

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 October 29 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for October 28:  paper chromatography; the decade including 1950; Eddystone lighthouse; England was the sixth nation to have a satellite; cotton gin.

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