Newsletter for Thursday 17 April

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY NEWSLETTER - 17 APRIL

Feature for Today

On 17 Apr 1598, Giovanni Riccioli was born, the Italian astronomer who was the first to observe a double star. You can read more about Giovanni Riccioli's contributions to Italian astronomy, including his book, Almagestum Novum (1651) in this article from The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1841).

Book of the Day

On 17 Apr 1933, Harriet Brooks died, the Canadian nuclear physicist who was probably the first to observe the recoil of the atomic nucleus as nuclear particles were emitted during radioactive decay. As one of the first researchers in the field of radioactivity, she was called by Ernest Rutherford the best woman scientist in the field next to Marie Curie. Today's Science Store pick is Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist, by M.F. & G.W. Rayner-Canham, who reveal how her success was hampered by the fact that she was a woman as she struggled to overcome conventions. Her premature death at age 56 was probably related to her work with radiation. This book is one that admirably fills the gap in describing in the contribution of women to science.  New Price $27.95. Also available Used from $2.79. (as of time of writing). Yesterday's pick: To Conquer the Air : The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, by James Tobin. For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	"I think it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries. I cannot conceive how women's colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a principle." (From a letter Brooks wrote to her dean, knowing that she would be told to resign if she married, she asked to keep her job. Nevertheless, she lost her teaching position at Barnard College in 1906. Dean Gill wrote that 'The dignity of women's place in the home demands that your marriage shall be a resignation.') - Harriet Brooks, first Canadian woman nuclear physicist (died 17 Apr 1933)
	"I say it is impossible that so sensible a people (citizens of Paris), under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing." Describing the energy-saving benefit of adopting daylight saving time. (1784) - American scientist in the quiz below (died 17 Apr 1790)
	(My favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who) "devised a complex equation known as the Bayes theorem, which can be used to work out probability distributions. It had no practical application in his lifetime, but today, thanks to computers, is routinely used in the modelling of climate change, astrophysics and stock-market analysis." - Bill Bryson describing Thomas Bayes, English theologian and mathematician (died 17 Apr 1761)

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
	Giovanni Riccioli, born 17 Apr 1598, was an Italian astronomer who in 1651, he assigned the majority of the current names to features on the Moon. He named the more prominent features after famous astronomers, scientists and philosophers. What general name did he give to the large dark smooth areas of the Moon?
Deaths
	An American printer and publisher (1706-1790) invented a type of stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces. The lightning rod and bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Can you name this scientist?
Events
	On 17 Apr 1967, the spacecraft Surveyor 3 was successfully launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. It was the second US spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon, where it studied the lunar surface and sent more than 6300 pictures back to Earth. What total number of Surveyor spacecraft were sent to the moon?
	On 17 Apr of a certain year, Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, became the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world. In which decade was this woman's transglobal flight made?

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 April 17 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. Fast answers for the previous newsletter for April 16: Wilbur; carbon dioxide; Rosalind Franklin; by accident, through the skin, upon touching its container; pistols.

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