Biographical encyclopedia
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891 [1491] DRAKE
RICHTER [1493]
[1491] DRAKE, Frank Donald American astronomer Born: Chicago, Illinois, May 28, 1930
Drake obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1958 and then worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observa tory at Green Bank, West Virginia. After a year at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California, in 1963, he joined the faculty of Cornell University. He has carefully studied and analyzed radio signals from space, whether from Jupiter or the galactic center. He is best known, perhaps, for his alertness to the possibility of radio signals that might in dicate the existence of civilizations else where than on Earth. He is responsible, along with Sagan [1504], for the plaques carried on Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, the Jupiter probes that were launched in 1972 and 1973 and will eventually move out of the solar system and wander end lessly through interstellar space. These plaques contained a drawing of a man and a woman and various pieces of in formation designed to indicate the source of the plaques—Earth’s identity and lo cation in the universe. They are the first artifacts that will ever leave the solar system and it may still be wandering and recognizable long after all the accom plishments of humanity on Earth itself will be gone like a forgotten dream. [1492] ARMSTRONG, Neil Alden American astronaut Born: Wapakoneta, Ohio, August 5, 1930
Armstrong has been in the air almost all his adult life. He was a licensed pilot at sixteen and was flying planes in the Korean War when he was twenty. He flew seventy-eight missions and was shot down twice. After graduating from Purdue Univer sity in 1955, he joined NASA and was one of the test pilots of the X-15 rocket plane, flying more than 1,100 hours. He reached heights of 200,000 feet and flew at speeds of 4,000 miles per hour. He also flew the huge B-29 bombers. In 1962 he became an astronaut and was command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966 when he performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space.
The climax of his life, however, came at 4:18 p .
. Eastern Daylight Time on July 20, 1969, when, as commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, he and Edwin Aldrin took the lunar module down to the very surface of the moon near the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tran quillity. Armstrong was then the first human being in history to set foot upon that surface. He said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for man kind.”
They remained on the moon for 21 hours, 37 minutes, and splashed down on Earth at 12:51 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time on July 24, eight days after takeoff. Indeed, as a steppingstone in space ex ploration, it was the most significant mo ment since Gagarin’s [1502] first orbital flight only eight years before; and in the history of exploration generally, possibly since Columbus’ [121] first voyage nearly five centuries earlier. [1493] RICHTER, Burton American physicist Born: New York, New York, March 22, 1931 Richter obtained his Ph.D. at the Mas sachusetts Institute of Technology, then went on to Stanford University. There he specialized in the high-energy studies of elementary particles. He supervised the building of the world’s first pair of elec tron storage rings in which two streams of high-energy electrons could collide head on, thus doubling the effective en ergy of collision. In the 1960s he de signed the Stanford Positron-Electron Accelerating Ring, which produced head-on collisions of matter and antimat ter resulting in a still further escalation of energy. The use of the energy lay in the new field of quarks. When Gell-Mann [1487] advanced the concept of quarks, two quarks were all that were needed to ex 892
[1494] MILLER
CRONIN [1497]
plain the existence of neutrons and pro tons. These were termed “up quarks” and “down quarks.” A third quark, the “strange quark,” was needed to account for strange particles. However, as the nature of quarks was delved into, it seemed they ought to exist in pairs. If a third quark existed, a fourth must as well, and it was dubbed the “charmed quark.” In 1974 Richter, thanks to the enor mous energies he had available, pro duced what he called a “psi particle” which from its properties had to include in its makeup a charmed quark. As it happened, Ting [1507], working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, happened upon what he called a “J particle” independently and almost simultaneously. It was identical with the psi particle, and the two dis coveries were announced jointly. As a result Richter and Ting shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for physics, since the discoveries offered strong evidence in favor of the current quark theories. [1494] MILLER, Jacques Francis Al bert Pierre French-Australian physician
Miller earned his medical degree, with top honors, at the University of Sydney. He taught in England and in the United States, and in 1966 returned to Austra lia.
In 1962, while at the University of London, he demonstrated the importance of the thymus gland (an organ promi nent in young animals and withering away in adults—and until then without known function) in organizing the sys tem of immunity in animals. If the thymus gland is removed at a sufficiently early stage, a young animal is unable to develop antibody resistance to foreign molecules. This may be of importance in the era of organ transplantations, which dawned in the 1960s and reached a climax with the work of Barnard [1452], where the greatest difficulty is dealing with the body’s rejection of the alien organ even though that organ is vital to its own exis tence. [1495] SCHRIEFFER, John Robert (shreeTer) American physicist Born: Oak Park, Illinois, May 31, 1931
Schrieffer received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois in 1957, and he has been on the faculty of the Uni versity of Pennsylvania since 1962 as a professor of physics. He was associated with Bardeen [1334] and Cooper [1489] on the theory of superconductivity cur rently accepted by physicists and shared with them the 1972 Nobel Prize for physics.
[1496] SMITH, Hamilton Othanel American microbiologist Born: New York, New York, Au gust 23, 1931 Smith obtained his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1956 and joined the faculty of the school in 1967. In 1970 Smith discovered an enzyme that broke a molecule of DNA at one specific site. This was elaborated by Smith’s col league Nathans [1482] and it became possible to tailor-make nucleic acid frag ments, so to speak, and study their prop erties and ability to pass along genetic information. It also led to recombinant DNA work in which nucleic acids could be taken apart and put together in other forms. As a result Smith and Nathans shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for phys iology and medicine. [1497] CRONIN, James Watson American physicist Born: Chicago, Illinois, Septem ber 29, 1931 Cronin obtained his Ph.D. at the Uni versity of Chicago in 1955, then joined the staff at Brookhaven National Labora tory. He joined the faculty of Princeton 893
[1498] GILBERT
GLASHOW [1500]
University in 1958, attaining professorial rank in 1965, then returned to the Uni versity of Chicago as professor of phys ics in 1971. Cronin’s work was on the grand sym metries of nature. When Lee [1473] and Yang [1451] showed that the law of con servation of parity did not always hold, that was combined with the law of con servation of charge conjugation and peo ple talked of “CP symmetry.” In 1964, however, Cronin and Fitch [1454] showed that CP symmetry was not always obeyed. Certain particles, called the neutral K-mesons, in their decay on very rare occasions violated CP symmetry. This meant that one had to move to a still more general conservation law entitled “CPT symmetry” in which T stands for time. In those cases where CP symmetry fails, T must also fail in such a way as to make up for it. This means that time reversal does not always re verse events exactly on the subatomic level. As a result Cronin and Fitch shared the 1980 Nobel Prize for physics. [1498] GILBERT, Walter American microbiologist
March 21, 1932 Gilbert obtained his master’s degree at Harvard University in 1954 and then went on to Cambridge University for further study, gaining his Ph.D. in phys ics in 1957. He then joined the Harvard faculty as a physicist, winning profes sorial status in 1968, but grew interested in molecular biology. Gilbert found ways of breaking the nucleic acid molecule at certain points by chemical reagents, of analyzing the fragments so obtained, and from this, of deducing the exact nature of the original long chain. This duplicated, indepen dently, the work Sanger [1426] was doing in Cambridge. As a result, Gilbert and Sanger shared half the 1980 Nobel Prize for chemistry, the other half going to Berg [1470] for splitting and recom bining nucleic acids. [1499] BARTLETT, Neil English chemist Born: Newcastle, Northumber land, September 15, 1932 Bartlett was educated at King’s Col lege in Newcastle and obtained his Ph.D. there in 1957. In 1958 he moved on to the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he served on the faculty. There Bartlett was working with the fluorides of metals related to platinum. (Fluorides in general had come into prominence in the 1940s because of the importance of uranium hexafluoride in the development of the atomic bomb.) Platinum hexafluoride proved to be an unusually active chemical, so active that from theoretical calculations it seemed possible that it might react with xenon. Xenon is one of the noble gases dis covered by Ramsay [832] over half a century before and all those gases were commonly thought to be so inert as to be incapable of any chemical reactions at all. Xenon, however, the heaviest stable gas of this family, is the least inert. It might, it just might, react with a very ac tive chemical. Bartlett tried, and succeeded. He formed xenon platinofluoride (XePtF6) in 1962. Soon afterward, other chemists, flooding into the new and exciting field, formed other noble gas compounds, not only of xenon, but of its sister elements, radon and krypton as well. The newspapers hailed this as an unex pected revolution in chemistry that had overturned chemical thinking, but they overdid this a little. Actually, the new discoveries fit in closely with chemical theory and had been predicted by Pau ling [1236] thirty years before. In 1966 Bartlett accepted a position as professor of chemistry at Princeton Uni versity. [1500] GLASHOW, Sheldon Lee American physicist
cember 5, 1932 Glashow obtained his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University in 1958, and after 894 [1501] PENZTAS
GAGARIN [1503]
some time in Copenhagen, at California Institute of Technology, Stanford Uni versity, and the University of California, returned to Harvard in 1966 and became a full professor there in 1967. He, like Weinberg [1502] (the two were classmates at the Bronx High School of Science and, as under graduates, at Cornell University), worked on a theory of subatomic particles that placed both the electromagnetic interac tion and the weak nuclear interaction under the same mathematical roof. This was the first step toward a “grand unified theory” of interactions that Einstein [1064] had spent half his life laboring to ward uselessly. The theory was sup ported by observational data sufficiently for Glashow and Weinberg to share the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics with Salam [1468], [1501] PENZIAS, Arno Allan German-American physicist Born: Munich, Bavaria, April 26, 1933
Penzias, bom of a Jewish family, saw the light of day only ten weeks after Hitler took control of Germany. Life was precarious indeed but the family managed to get out eventually and ar rived in the United States in 1940. He graduated from City College of New York in 1954 and obtained his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1958. He then joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He and R. W. Wilson [1506] were try ing to determine the characteristics of any radio-wave emission that might come from the outer regions of the gal axy where a gaseous halo might exist. They made use of a big horn-shaped an tenna originally built to detect radio reflections from the Echo satellite. They refined it and, in May 1964, pointed it at the sky and found an excess of radio wave radiation they could not explain. When they had accounted for all possi ble sources of error (including pigeon droppings inside the antenna) they found there was a distinct radiation above and beyond all natural causes coming from all directions in equal quantities. They turned to Dicke [1405], who, as it happened, had been following up a suggestion made by Gamow [1278] nearly two decades before that the big bang would have left a residue of radio waves coming from every direction, the waves becoming longer as the universe expanded and cooled. The characteristics of the radiation de tected by Penzias and Wilson fit what Dicke thought should result from the big bang if the average temperature of the universe were now 3°K. This “echo” of the big bang virtually killed Hoyle’s [1398] steady-state universe. Penzias and Wilson therefore shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for physics along with Ka pitsa [1173]. [1502] WEINBERG, Steven American physicist Born: New York, New York, May 3, 1933 Weinberg was a classmate of Glashow [1500] at the Bronx High School of Sci ence and at Cornell University. He went on to Princeton University for his Ph.D., attaining it in 1957, whereas Glashow went to Harvard. He too made the rounds of universities as a researcher and teacher, and like Glashow, Weinberg eventually came to Harvard in 1973. Both worked on the unification of the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear interactions and both were successful enough to win shares of the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics along with Salam [1468]. [1503] GAGARIN, Yuri Alekseyevich (gah-gah'rin) Russian cosmonaut Born: near Gzhatsk, Smolensk region, March 9, 1934 Died: near Kirzhach, Vladimir region, March 27, 1968 Under the lash of World War II the fighting nations developed airplanes ca 8 9 5
[1503] GAGARIN
SAGAN [1504]
pable of unprecedented speeds. The pro peller reached its limit, for it could turn no faster without flying apart, but to ward the end of the war a stream of burning gas, hurtling backward, pushed “jet planes” forward, by Newton’s [231] third law, more rapidly than ever. After the war, planes approached the speed of sound (740 miles an hour) or Mach 1, as it is called in honor of Mach [733], who first analyzed the behavior of air at those velocities. Air molecules get out of the way of an onrushing plane at a speed that depends on their elasticity and it is upon this elasticity that the speed of sound depends. A plane ap proaching the speed of sound is getting close to the point where it is moving faster than the air molecules can dodge. Air begins to pile up and it becomes difficult to control the plane. Painstaking design on the basis of wind-tunnel studies overcame this diffi culty and on October 14, 1947, an American Bell X-l plane “broke the sound barrier.” For the first time a human being traveled faster than the speed of sound with reference to the Earth’s surface. On December 12, 1953, the fiftieth an niversary of that first half-minute flight of the Wright Brothers [961, 995], a speed of Mach 2Vi (that is, 2Vi times the speed of sound) was attained. By the 1960s the rocket plane X-l 5 was climb ing to heights of fifty miles and attaining speeds of over Mach 5. But by that time, satellites were being placed into orbit and traveling at speeds approaching Mach 25. It was only a matter of time before men were placed in them. In the Soviet Union and in the United States men were undergoing training for the purpose. They were called cosmonauts in the Soviet Union and astronauts in the United States. One of the Soviet cosmonauts was Gagarin, the son of a carpenter, who was born on a collective farm. His early education was interrupted by the neces sity of escape from the invading Ger mans. After the war, however, he at tended a vocational school and was trained in foundry work. His interest in flying led him to a So viet air force school from which he grad uated with honors as an air force lieuten ant in 1957. After serving as a test pilot, he joined the group of cosmonauts in training for orbital flight and it was upon him that the choice fell in 1961. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first man placed in orbit about the earth and returned alive. He remained in orbit 89.1 minutes, rising as high above the surface as 187.66 miles and traveling at a velocity that reached 17,400 miles an hour.
Thus, only three and a half years after the opening of the space age, with the orbiting of Sputnik I, man was in space. Within eight years of Gagarin’s adven ture, so rapid is progress, Armstrong [1492] was on the moon. Gagarin, how ever, did not live to see that, since he died in a tragic airplane crash the year before the moon landing. After his death his birthplace, Gzhatsk, was renamed Gagarin. [1504] SAGAN, Carl (sa/gan) American astronomer
vember 9, 1934 Sagan obtained his Ph.D. at the Uni versity of Chicago in 1960. He is primarily interested in planetary surfaces and atmospheres, a field that rose out of the doldrums with Kuiper’s [1297] researches and the advent of rocketry. Thus, he worked out a green house model for the atmosphere of Venus, accounting for the otherwise puz zling high temperature of the planet. He also found evidence for elevation dif ferences on the surface of Mars and for organic molecules in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Further in the periphery of his inter ests but possessing added glamour is the question of the probabilities of life on other planets and of the origin of life on ours. (It is not surprising that he is an other of those scientists who are fond of reading science fiction.) He has been one of a group trying to form compounds 896
[1505] TEMIN
TING [1507]
from a system that mimics the conditions of the primordial earth, attempting to pass beyond the amino acids and into the building blocks of the nucleic acids. In 1963 he succeeded in detecting the formation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the prime energy-store of living tissue. Thus, it seems quite reasonable to visualize the formation of a chemical energy-store in the oceans, building up steadily at the expense of solar energy and serving as a ready source of energy for the production of complex nucleic acids and proteins; in short, for the pro duction of life. In 1968 he transferred his operations to Cornell University, where he is an as sociate professor of astronomy and the director of its Laboratory for Planetary Studies. In 1969 he accepted a position of editor of the astronomical journal
Sagan’s daring and imaginative ap proach to astronomy has left its mark on the field. He was one of the driving forces behind planetary exploration that placed the Vikings on the surface of Mars and the Voyagers sending back photographs of Jupiter and Saturn, to gether with their satellite systems in the 1970s. He also lent life to the field of SETI (acronym for “search for extra terrestrial intelligence”) and is perhaps the strongest single proponent of the view that “we are not alone.” In the 1970s he blossomed out also as the most successful science popularizer in history. His book The Dragons of
best-selling Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1980 his television series, “Cosmos,” and the book that was published as a spinoff achieved an absolutely unprece dented peak in quality and popularity. [1505] TEMIN, Howard Martin American oncologist Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 10, 1934 Temin obtained his Ph.D. in 1959 at California Institute of Technology, work ing under Dulbecco [1388]. He then moved on to the University of Wiscon sin, where his investigations of cancer cells led him to question the assumption that genetic information flowed exclu sively in a one-way movement from the DNA of chromosomes to the RNA of the cytoplasm to enzymes. It seemed possible that there were loops in the pro gression and that some enzymes could affect the workings of DNA. He located such an enzyme, called “reverse tran scriptase,” and Baltimore [1508], work ing independently, also located the en zyme. As a result, Temin and Baltimore shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for physiol ogy and medicine with Dulbecco. [1506] WILSON, Robert Woodrow American radio astronomer
10, 1936 Wilson graduated from Rice Univer sity with honors in 1957 and went on to obtain his Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology in 1962. Most of his ca reer has been spent at the Bell Labora tories.
He is best known for his collaboration with Penzias [1501] in detecting the ra dio-wave background that is the distant echo of the long-ago big bang. Since then he has detected carbon monoxide and other molecules in the interstellar dust clouds, thus contributing to the fast growing information being gathered on the chemical constitution of these dust clouds from their radio-wave emissions. Because of his work, he shared with Penzias the 1978 Nobel Prize for phys ics. [1507] TING, Samuel Chao Chung American physicist Born: Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jan uary 27, 1936 Ting was the son of a Chinese student working at the University of Michigan. He was taken by his family back to China; but after the victory of the Chi nese Communists, the family moved to 897
[1508] BALTIMORE HAWKING [1510]
Taiwan, the only portion of the land to remain free of Communist control. In 1956 Ting returned to the University of Michigan to follow in his father’s foot steps as a student. By 1962 he had earned his Ph.D. there. He taught at Co lumbia University and then from 1967 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1974, Ting discovered a particle that from its properties had to include in its makeup the postulated but not yet discovered “charmed quark.” This was an important finding, since it at once lifted to a much higher degree of probability the theory of quarks that physicists were working with. The finding had been simultaneously made by Richter [1493] at Stanford University, and the two shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for physics as a result. [1508] BALTIMORE, David American biochemist
March 7, 1938 Baltimore received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in New York. Since 1972 he has been a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Independently of Temin [1505], Balti more isolated an enzyme, “reverse tran scriptase,” which he showed could affect the working of DNA, thus complicating the transmission of genetic information but making it more responsive to the needs of the cell. For this, Baltimore and Temin shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine with Dulbecco [1388].
[1509] JOSEPHSON, Brian David Welsh physicist Born: Cardiff, Wales, January 4, 1940
Josephson was educated at Cambridge University and in 1962, while still a graduate student there, he studied Esaki’s [1464] tunneling effect. Whereas Giaever [1484] had considered the elec tric current flow across an insulator when one metal was superconducting, Josephson dealt with the situation where both were superconducting. Making use of Bardeen’s [1334] theory of superconductivity, Josephson predicted a flow of current which could oscillate under certain circumstances and would be affected by the presence of magnetic fields. Subsequent measurements showed this Josephson effect existed and this was a strong confirmation of the supercon ductivity theory of Bardeen. It also offered a method for measuring the in tensity of weak magnetic fields in space with hitherto unattainable accuracy. Josephson shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics with Esaki and Giaever. [1510] HAWKING, Stephen William English physicist
Hawking, educated at both Oxford and Cambridge universities (receiving his Ph.D. at the latter) is one of the most formidable intellects engaged in elucidation of the deepest problems in cosmology. He has labored to combine both general relativity and quantum theory in working out the theories of black holes, those fascinating objects that involve complete gravitational collapse. He has produced two interesting sug gestions concerning black holes, both of which yet require observational evidence (as indeed almost everything about black holes does). First, he has shown the pos sibility that black holes of any mass- range can have been produced at the time of the big bang, so that small “mini black holes” might exist in space now in undetermined numbers and at undeter mined locations. Second, he has shown from quantum mechanical considerations that black holes can “evaporate” with rates that in crease the less massive they are. For or dinary star-sized black holes, evaporation is insignificant and can scarcely balance the influx of matter under almost all cir cumstances. For small black holes, evap oration is a significant factor and mini 898
[1510] HAWKING
HAWKING [1510]
black holes that are small enough might evaporate so quickly as to explode, leav ing behind telltale gamma radiation. Hawking’s tragedy is that early in life he was struck by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive wasting disease for which there is no known cure. He has been reduced to virtual immobility and helplessness but trapped within the dying body is a brilliant mind and an ap parently indomitable spirit. 899
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ASIMOV, Isaac (5'zih-mov) Russian-American biochemist and science writer Born: Petrovichi, USSR, January 2, 1920
Isaac Asimov, the son of a Jewish im migrant candy-store keeper, was taken to the United States by his parents in 1923 and has been a naturalized American cit izen since 1928. He was educated at Co lumbia University, graduating in 1939 and remaining for further work in chem istry under such men as Sherman [1036], Urey [1164], and King [1193], World War II interrupted his studies; while it lasted he worked as a chemist at the United States Navy Yard in Philadelphia and, later, served as a member of the armed forces. He returned to Columbia in 1946, earning his Ph.D. in 1948 under Charles R. Dawson. In 1949, through the recommendation of Boyd [1264], he accepted a position on the faculty of Boston University School of Medicine, where he has re mained. He is now professor of biochem istry at that school though he has not taught actively since 1958. In 1929 Asimov made his first ac quaintance with science fiction in Amaz
time by T. O’Conor Sloane, whose grandson and namesake at Doubleday asked Asimov to prepare this Bio graphical Encyclopedia. His encounter with science fiction was fateful in three ways: It interested him permanently not only in science fiction itself, but in science as well and in writ ing. At the age of twelve, he was already seeking out obscure comers where he might set down interminable stories in five-cent copybooks. He progressed to typewriter and bond paper and in 1938 decided to try for publication. After his first submission and instant rejection by John W. Campbell, Jr.—to whose continuing encouragement he owes so much that followed—it took him four months and seven more rejec tions to make his first sale. That first sale was a short story, “Marooned off Vesta,” which appeared in the March 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. Since then he has sold hundreds of stories and articles to science fiction magazines. He did not appear in hard covers until 1950, when Doubleday & Company pub lished his first science fiction novel, Peb
over 80 of Asimov’s books. Dr. Asimov’s first effort in science was
textbook on biochemistry for medical students written in collaboration with two other members of the department at Boston University. It was published in 1952 by Williams and Wilkins (third edition, 1957). Asimov, influenced by the work of Ley [1315] and of L. Sprague de Camp, then decided he wanted to write science for the general public. In this ambition, he has received the cooperation of sev eral publishers. His books have dealt with mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology, as well as such nonscientific subjects as mythology, ge ography, the Bible, Shakespeare, and humor. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, in its first edition, was his sixty-first book. Nor has he stopped. In October 1969 his hun dredth book (appropriately entitled Opus 100) was published by Houghton- Mifflin.
In March 1979 he published his two hundredth book, In Memory Yet Green, the first volume of a large two-volume autobiography—the self-indulgent prod uct of a man who cheerfully admits that nothing much has ever happened to him, but insists he can hide that fact by clever writing. To avoid saddening his pub lishers, he let Doubleday publish the au tobiography, and on the same day, Houghton-Mifflin published Opus 200, which Asimov also called his two hun dredth book. With this new edition of the Bio graphical Encyclopedia he is approach ing the 250 mark. 900
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