Newsletter for Friday 3 January

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY NEWSLETTER - 3 JANUARY

Book of the Day

On 3 Jan 1980, Joy Adamson, naturalist, conservationist and famous as author of Born Free was killed in Northern Kenya. Besides Elsa, the lion cub, Joy had rescued baby elephants, leopards, and cheetahs. Today's Science Store pick is: The Great Safari: The Lives of George and Joy Adamson, Famous for Born Free, by Adrian House. In this joint biography of Joy and her husband, House never ignores Joy's often scurrilous behavior and destructive tantrums. House takes pains to recognize her great qualities—her love of animals, her recognition of the need to conserve them, and her generosity to the conservation movement—and to make clear that she was a woman of “vision, energy, tenacity, courage and skill as an artist and a photographer.” It is available New from $39.53. Used from $0.67. (As of time of writing.). For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science History Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the universe. The fact that the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, related to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind. Celestial mechanics and spectrum analysis finally robbed them of their mysterious prestige. - Franz Cumont, Belgian archaeologist and philologist (born 3 Jan 1868).
	The year 1918 was the time of the great influenza epidemic, the schools were closed. And this was when, as far as I can remember, the first explicitly strong interest in astronomy developed ... I took a piece of bamboo, and sawed a piece in the middle of each end, to put a couple of spectacle lenses in it. Well, the Pleiades looked nice because the stars were big. I thought I was looking at stars magnified. Well, they weren�t. It was a little thing with two lenses at random on each end, and all you got were extra focal images, big things, but I thought I was looking at star surfaces. I was 12 years old. - William Wilson Morgan, American astronomer (born 3 Jan 1906).
	Mathematics, as much as music or any other art, is one of the means by which we rise to a complete self-consciousness. The significance of mathematics resides precisely in the fact that it is an art; by informing us of the nature of our own minds it informs us of much that depends on our minds. - Antoine-Thomson d' Abbadie, French geographer (born 3 Jan 1810).

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
	On 3 Jan 1906, William Wilson Morgan was born, an American astronomer who provided the first evidence of the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy (1951). With Keenan and Kellman, he introduced stellar luminosity classes and the two-dimensional classification of stellar spectra strictly based on the spectra themselves. With Osterbrock and Sharpless he demonstrated the shape of the Galaxy using precise distances of O and B stars obtained from spectral classifications. What shape for the Milky Way Galaxy did his evidence provide?
	Robert Whitehead, born 3 Jan 1823, was a British engineer who invented the modern form of a certain weapon. By 1870, he had developed it in a useful form, and the British government purchased his invention the following year. Edison made a movie of the weapon being demonstrated in 1900. What was the weapon he developed?
Deaths
	Reginald Punnet (1875-1967) devised the “Punnett Square” for which he remains known. His interest in natural science began as a child, while afflicted by appendicitis, when he read a series of books on biology that his father had bought. During World War I, Punnett developed a technique of separating chicks using sex-linked plumage colours to select the more useful male chicks. For what is the Punnett Square used?
	An English inventor, artist and potter (1730-1795) placed the manufacture of stoneware on a scientific basis, and founded the potteries of North Staffordshire. The agateware and unglazed blue or green stoneware he decorated with white neo-classical designs, used pigments he invented. He designed machinery and kilns. For his invention of a pyrometer for measuring high temperatures, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. What is the name of this famous maker of pottery?
Events
	On 3 Jan of a certain year, the world's first electric watch was introduced in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by the Hamilton Watch Company. The idea of a watch which never needed winding was very exciting to consumers, and its popularity was enhanced by a number of very dramatic case styles with non-traditional asymmetrical styling. In which decade were the world's first electric watches introduced?
	On 3 Jan 1919, Ernest Rutherford first accomplished the artificial transmutation of an element. By bombarding atoms of a certain element with alpha particles emitted by radioactive materials he transmuted some of these atoms into another element. What was the element with which he began, and what element resulted?

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 January 3 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. Fast answers for the previous newsletter for January 2: biochemistry • niobium • pendulum • stratosphere • decade including the year 1959 • John Roebling.

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