Births in this week:
- Sir Ernest Rutherford
Born 30 August 1871, Sir Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand-English physicist who laid the groundwork for the development of nuclear physics. He worked under Sir J. J. Thomson at Cambridge University. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
- Wilhelm Ostwald
Born 2 September 1853, Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was a Russian-German physical chemist who organised physical chemistry into a nearly independent branch of chemistry. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibrium, and reaction velocities.
- Ferdinand Porsche
Born 3 September 1875
Austrian automotive engineer who designed the popular Volkswagen car. In 1935, the brainchild of Adolph Hitler – the VW Beetle – was designed by Porsche.
Demises in this week:
- Sir J.J. Thompson
Died on 30 August 1940
Joseph John Thompson was an English physicist who helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908. His experiments prompted him to make a bold proposal: these mysterious rays are streams of particles much smaller than atoms. He called these particles “corpuscles,” and suggested that they might make up all of the matter in atoms.
- Christiaan Barnard
Died 2 Sep 2001
Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African surgeon who performed the world’s first human heart transplant operation. In a five-hour operation on 3 Dec 1967, Barnard successfully replaced the diseased heart of Louis Washkansky (55) with a healthy heart from Denise Darvall, a woman in her mid-20s with the same blood type, who died in hospital after an automobile accident. Barnard knew it was a surgical success when he first applied electrodes and the heart resumed beating.
- Barbara McClintock
Died 3 Sep 1992
American scientist regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of genetics. In the 1940s and 1950s McClintock’s work on the cytogenetics of maize led her to theorize that genes are transposable – they can move around – on and between chromosomes.She was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize.
Things that had happened in this week:
- Titanic wreck located
On 2nd September 1985, it was announced that a U.S. and French expedition had located the wreckage of the Titanic about 560 miles off Newfoundland, 73 years after the British luxury liner sank.
- USS Shenandoah airship crash
On 3rd September 1925, the U.S. Navy airship Shenandoah, the first American-built rigid dirigible crashed. It was struck and destroyed in a violent thunderstorm, ripped apart by high winds, over Caldwell, Ohio. Of the 43 crew members, 14 died, but 29 survived.
Edited by-Manthan Chauhan