JANUARY FEBRUARY
Science Teachers’ Assocation of NSW inc 2016 / 17 Calendar
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY
1932; birth of US zoologist Dian Fossey, who for years made a daily study of the mountain forest gorillas of Rwanda, establishing the Karisoke Research Centre. She wrote of poachers in her 1983 book Gorillas in the Mist, and was hacked to death.
1947; birth of George Pinniger, Australian editor of STANSW, who is still working hard in education after 36 years in the class room. He currently hopes to get both the recentlyretired expert teachers and the finance needed to trial the flexible mentors scheme.
1925; death of English botanist Lillian Gibbs. She organised botanical expeditions to some of the most remote places on Earth. In 1905 she made a botanical trip to Zimbabwe, in 1907 Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, and in 1912 West New Guinea and Borneo.
1743; Sir Joseph Banks was born. He was an English botanist and explorer who was President of the Royal Society for over 40 years, and known for his promotion of science. He lobbied and was included in Cook’ s first voyage on the Endeavour.
1844; birth of Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist who founded statistical mechanics. He also worked out a kinetic theory for gases, and the Stefan-Boltzmann law that relates between the temperature of a body and the radiation it emits.
1844; birth of Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist who founded statistical mechanics. He also worked out a kinetic theory for gases, and the Stefan-Boltzmann law that relates between the temperature of a body and the radiation it emits.
1706; birth of US statesman, scientist, inventor, diplomat, author, printer and publisher who become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical theories and experiments.
16 17 18 19 for women. 20 21 condition. 22
2006; death of English geologist and climatologist who helped show that CO2 is a greenhouse gas by proving that Ice Ages were linked to decreases in atmospheric CO2 and warned that the reverse is true.
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1958; the USA entered the space age by launching its first successful orbiting satellite, Explorer-I, four months after the Soviet launch of Sputnik on Oct 4th 1957. Explorer-I measured cosmic radiation, hence it discovered the Van Allen belts.
30 31 1 2 3“ missing link”. 4 5
1918; birth of US geneticist Ruth Sager, whose research altered the prevailing view about where genetic material is within a cell. In particular, she noted a second set of genes are found outside the cells’ nucleus.
6 7 8 9 10 graphs. 11 12
1838; birth of Margaret Knight, a prolific US inventor of machines and mechanisms. Her creative genius never made her rich; unable to wait for royalties she sold the rights to her inventions outright.
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1869; birth of US pathologist Alice Hamilton, who is known for her research on industrial diseases and publicising the danger to workers’ health of industrial toxic substances. She contributed to the development of safer working conditions. 27 28
1825; birth of Sir Edward Frankland, an English chemist, one of the first investigators of structural chemistry, who invented the chemical bond. Subsequently, he devised the theory of valence.
1923; birth of Arvid Carlsson, a Swedish neuro-scientist and year 2000 Nobel prize winner for work concerning signal transduction in the nervous system, via his research on synaptic transmission – the way neurons communicate.
1889; Gertrude Caton- Thompson, an English archaeologist, was born. She distinguished two prehistoric cultures in the Al-Fayyum depression of Upper Egypt, the older dating to about 5000 BC and the younger about 4500 BC.
1926; William Bateson, English biologist died. He published the first English translation of Gregor Mendel’ s work on heredity that he confirmed with experiments of his own, also demonstrating that heredity is equally apparent in animals.
1564; birth of the Italian genius Galileo Galilei. His triumphs were many, in physics and astronomy. He developed the telescope, clock, the science of motion, inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories.
1879; birth of Danish physical chemist known for a widely applicable acid-base concept identical to that of Thomas Lowry of England. Acids are recognised by an excess of H + ions, and bases have an excess of OH- ions.
1911; birth of Denis Burkitt, an Irish surgeon who found children in Uganda, all from areas endemic with malaria dying within weeks from fast-spreading tumours in their head and neck. It was a new type of cancer, Burkitt’ s lymphoma.
1885; English physician Edward Davy, died. He was also the inventor of an electromagnetic repeater to relay telegraphic signals, He later emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, where he was a farmer and physician.
1907; Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev died. Russian chemist He developed the periodic table of the elements. In its final version he left gaps where he foretold other elements not then known would fit, and predicted the properties of 3 of them.
1854; birth of Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs, who pioneered family planning with the world’ s first birth control clinic. First female at university in Holland she took medicine. Once a doctor she limited her practice to women and children.
1804; birth of German zoologist Carl von Siebold, whose main study was invertebrates( such as jellyfish, intestinal worms, salamanders and freshwater fish), also life cycles of parasites. He discovered the parthenogenesis of the honeybee.
1879; English botanist Agnes Arber was born. Known for studies of the comparative anatomy of plants, her book, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution, was a standard text. She was the first female botanist to be a fellow of the Royal Society,
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1921; death of US astronomer Mary Watson Whitney, who was a professor, and director of the Vassar College Observatory. She championed science education and improvement in professional opportunities
1903; birth of Sir John Eccles, an Australian physiologist who in 1963 won the Nobel Prize for Physiology for his discovery of the chemical means by which nerve impulses are communicated or repressed by nerve cells.
1842; birth of Agnes Clerke, an Irish astronomical writer. She was a diligent compiler of facts, not a working scientist, yet, by 1885 her treatise, A Popular History of Astronomy in the 19th Century was recognised as an authoritative work.
ACSTA Annual Conference Science Teachers Association of NSW – Science Education K-12( 2 Day) Conference 17-18 Feb
Macquarie
1810; English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish died. He determined the Earth’ s mass and density, he showed water is a compound, and investigated the relative density and properties of hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
1840; birth of Sophia Jex-Blake, Britain’ s first female doctor. It was through her determined efforts Parliament finally passed the legislation to give women the right to have access to a medical education, and become doctors.
1893; birth of Raymond Dart, an Australian anthropologist who discovered fossil hominids in Africa. In 1924 what at first seemed to be another primate skull was found. Dart noticed how close to human it looked, and recognised it as a
1823; death of William Playfair, a Scottish economist who pioneered the graphical representation of statistics, creating the line graph, bar graph and pie chart. He wrote Commercial and Political Atlas, the first work to use statistical
1564; death of Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. Best known for his art, he made accurate anatomical drawings of the human body. He too, carried out dissections to more accurately depict bodies of saints or sinners.
1561; birth of Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher remembered for his influence scientific method, insisting that the aim of scientific investigation is to use experimentally reproducible tests to identify natural laws to improve man’ s
1897; the Indiana State Legislature passed a bill that defined pi to be 3.2! Introduced by a Senator who was a farmer for a local mathematical hobbyist, it took a university academic to explain that pi is an actual number. The bill has been postponed.
1859; birth of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry“ in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation.”
1786; birth of François Aragó, a French physicist and astronomer. He discovered the chromosphere of the Sun, estimated the diameters of the planets, and discovered the induction of current when a copper disc is rotated near a magnet.
Science dates compiled by George Pinniger