April 18 Science History
Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
Houndry was a French engineer who invented the Houndry process of catalytic cracking of petroleum to gasoline. The process is still in use in refineries today. He also invented the catalytic converter.
Lecoq was a French chemist who used Kirchhoff's spectroscopy techniques to discover the elements gallium, samarium, and dysprosium.
1955 - Albert Einstein died.
Einstein was a German physicist who was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the photoelectric effect. He is also known for his general theory of relativity which ties the forces of gravity, electricity and magnetism together.1945 - John Ambrose Fleming died.
Fleming was an English electrical engineer who was the inventor of the thermionic valve vacuum tube as an electronic device. The device functioned as a diode used as a rectifier to convert AC current into DC current. Fleming's diodes were used in early radio receivers and radar systems before the invention of solid state semiconductors. He was also the originator of the familiar "right hand rule" used by mathematicians and physicists to determine the direction of vectors that are multiplied together.
1940 - Joseph L. Goldstein was born.
Goldstein is an American biochemist who shares the 1985 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Michael Brown for their discoveries on how cholesterol metabolism is regulated. They found that cells remove cholesterol from the bloodstream by low-density lipoproteins. This discovery would lead to the statin drugs to lower cholesterol used by many people today.
1911 - Maurice Goldhaber was born.
Goldhaber is an Austrian-American experimental physicist who made many contributions to nuclear physics. He established the first accurate measurement of the newly discovered neutron in 1934 and provided evidence it was it's own particle and not a compound of positrons and electrons. He also showed beta radiation was the same as atomic electrons. He worked with Edward Teller to develop concepts leading to giant dipole resonance and worked with Lee Grodzins and Andrew Sunyar to establish the negative helicity of neutrinos.1908 - George H. Hitchings was born.
Hitchings was an American doctor spent a career developing drug treatments for a myraid of diseases. His work with chemotherapy earned him part of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine with James Black and Gertude Elion.1892 - Eugene Houdry was born.
Houndry was a French engineer who invented the Houndry process of catalytic cracking of petroleum to gasoline. The process is still in use in refineries today. He also invented the catalytic converter.
1838 - Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran was born.
Lecoq was a French chemist who used Kirchhoff's spectroscopy techniques to discover the elements gallium, samarium, and dysprosium.
1756 - Jacques Cassini died.
Cassini was a French astronomer who compiled the first tables of the orbits of Saturn's satellites. He was the son of astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini and replaced his father as director of the Paris Observatory.
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