Biographical encyclopedia
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LEMAITRE, Abbé Georges
Edouard (luh-meh'tr) Belgian astronomer
Lemaître studied at the University of Louvain and was a civil engineer when World War I broke out in 1914. He served in the Belgian army as an artillery officer and, like De Broglie [1157], grew interested in physics and mathematics by way of war. He returned to Louvain to work to ward his Ph.D., then turned toward still another vocation and was ordained a priest in 1922. He went on to study astrophysics at Cambridge in England and at the Massa chusetts Institute of Technology in the 7 4 4
[1174] LEMAÎTRE
WEINER [1175]
United States. He obtained his Ph.D. from the latter institution in 1927. He then returned to Belgium, where he was appointed professor of astrophysics at the University of Louvain, where he had done his undergraduate work. In 1927, also, he worked out his theories of cosmogony, making use of the dramatic concept of the expanding uni verse that had recently been popularized by the studies of Hubble [1136] on the recession of the galaxies, and which had been postulated from purely theoretical considerations by Sitter [1004]. The most startling aspect of Abbé Le- maitre’s theories was his suggestion that if one extrapolated backward in time, the galaxies could be pictured as drawing closer and closer together until at the be ginning they existed crushed together in a kind of “cosmic egg” or “superatom” that contained all the matter in the uni verse. This exploded in a “big bang” and the recession of the galaxies is what remains now, billions of years later, of that original super-explosion. Lemaitre’s suggestion went largely unnoticed, how ever, until his paper was brought to the attention of scientists by Eddington [1085],
From Hubble’s picture of the size of the universe, and from the known veloci ties of the galaxies, it would seem that the moment of the “big bang” was 2 bil lion years in the past. This was an impossibly short time because radioactive disintegration studies of the type first proposed by Boltwood [987] made it seem quite certain that the earth’s solid crust was older than that, and an earth older than the universe seemed ridicu lous.
Baade’s [1163] expansion of the scale of the universe a quarter of a century later put the “big bang” much farther in the past. The most commonly accepted figure eventually came to be 15 billion years.
The “big bang” theory of creation was further elaborated by Gamow [1278] and won out over the “continuous cre ation” theory of astronomers like Gold [1437] and Hoyle [1398], largely because background microwave radiation was de tected by Penzias [1501] and R. W. Wil son [1506]. At the time of his death, Lemaître was president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at Rome. [1175] WEINER, Norbert (wee'ner) American mathematician
vember 26, 1894 Died: Stockholm, Sweden, March 18, 1964 Norbert Wiener was, as a child, a re markable prodigy. He was the son of a renowned immigrant Russian-Jewish scholar in the field of languages and lit erature who drove his unusual son for ward in rather a merciless fashion. Wie ner began reading when he was three, entered Tufts University at the age of eleven, and earned his doctorate in mathematics at Harvard University in 1913 before his nineteenth birthday. He then studied under Bertrand Russell [1005] at Cambridge and Hilbert [918] at Gottingen. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he tried to enlist but his poor eyesight made him unusable. During World War II, Wiener was in volved (as a mathematician) in work connected with antiaircraft defense. To shoot down an airplane one must know the speed and direction of the airplane’s movements, the speed and direction of the wind, the speed of the projectile aimed at the airplane, and other factors as well. All this must be taken into ac count rapidly in aiming the antiaircraft gun and unless the result is computed very quickly, the gun might just as well be aimed by guesswork. To do more than guess, better computers than Bush’s [1139] were absolutely necessary, and Wiener grew interested in working out the mathematical basis of the com munication of information, and of con trol of a system in the light of such com munication. By 1948 he had summarized his work in a book entitled Cybernetics. (He coined the word from a Greek term for “steersman.”) The basic theories in volved in cybernetics apply equally to 745
[1176] VIRTANEN
DAM [1177]
the human nervous system and to man made computers. Wiener was himself a thorough anti-vitalist, denying any basic distinction between life and nonlife, be tween man and machine. In 1947 he an nounced he would contribute no further to any form of military research, and spent the rest of his life trying to alert humanity to the significance and prob lems of the coming age of automation. [1176] VIRTANEN, Artturi Dmari (vihr'tuh-nen) Finnish biochemist
of Russia), January 15, 1895 Died: Helsinki, November 11, 1973
Virtanen obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki in 1919 and stud ied thereafter in Germany, in Swit zerland, and with Euler-Chelpin [1101] in Sweden. He then joined the faculty of Helsinki in 1924, achieving professorial rank in 1931. During the 1920s Virtanen studied methods of preserving green fodder and discovered that by properly acidifying it, those reactions producing deterioration were stopped without damage to any of the nutritional qualities of the fodder. By making it that much more economi cal to feed cattle during long winter months (a particularly important consid eration in northern regions like Scan dinavia) human nutrition is, of course, also benefited. In 1945 Virtanen was honored with the Nobel Prize in chemis try. [1177] DAM, Carl Peter Henrik Danish biochemist Bom: Copenhagen, February 21, 1895
Died: Copenhagen, April 18, 1976 Dam, the son of a pharmaceutical chemist, obtained his doctorate in 1934 from the University of Copenhagen. However, during the course of his educa tion, he studied under Pregl [982] in Austria in 1925 and under Schoenheimer [1211] in Germany. After obtaining his degree, Dam worked with Karrer [1131] in Switzerland in 1935. Dam served on the faculty of the Uni versity of Copenhagen from 1923 on, and attained professorial rank in 1929. In 1929 he studied how hens synthesize cholesterol. In his experiments, he fed his hens on a synthetic diet and noted that they developed small hemorrhages under the skin and within the muscles. These looked like the hemorrhages that develop in scurvy, so he added lemon juice to the diet, using a therapy first ad vanced by Lind [288] a century and a half earlier. It did not help. Dam tried other food additives, adding one or another of the vitamins that, since Eijkman’s [888] time, had been found to be essential in trace quantities in the diet. None worked and he was forced to the conclusion that a vitamin, hitherto unknown, was involved. Since it seemed to be necessary to the proper clotting, or coagulation, of the blood, he named it “vitamin K,” for “Koagulation” (the German spelling). Within a few years several biochem ists, notably a group led by Doisy [1169], had isolated vitamin K and worked out its formula. Its importance to blood clotting has made it useful in surgical operations, where the amount of bleeding can be reduced by its adminis tration. In particular, newborn infants are deficient in vitamin K and are there fore in danger of hemorrhage. Ordinarily the intestinal tract of such infants is, however, quickly infested with bacteria that, in the course of their own metabolism, produce vitamin K, which is then absorbed and used by the child. In the modem, aseptic hospital, the period of danger, before bacterial infestation corrects matters, is extended somewhat, and it is usually considered wise to inject vitamin K into the mother (and hence indirectly into the child) shortly before birth takes place. In 1940 Dam crossed the Atlantic in order to give a series of lectures in the United States and Canada. While there, Hitler’s Nazi armies invaded and occu pied Denmark. Dam therefore remained in the United States during the war, 746 [1178] GIAUQUE
MINKOWSKI [1179]
working chiefly at the University of Rochester. During this period of exile, he and Doisy shared the 1943 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. In absentia he was appointed professor of biochem istry at the Polytechnic Institute in Co penhagen. In 1946 he returned to liber ated Denmark and in 1956 became head of the Danish Public Research Institute. [1178] GIAUQUE, William Francis Gee- oke) American chemist Born: Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada (of American parents), May 12, 1895 Giauque’s academic life was spent at the University of California where, influenced by Lewis [1037], he grew in terested in thermodynamics. He was first a student there, graduating with highest honors in 1920 and obtaining his Ph.D. in 1922. He then joined the faculty and was a full professor of chemistry by 1934.
In 1929 he discovered that oxygen was a mixture of three isotopes. Of these, the most common had an atomic weight which, by ordinary standards, was not quite 16. The other two, rather rare, had weights of 17 and 18. The weighted av erage of these isotopes was 16.00000 (used as atomic weight standard by chemists for a century ever since the time of Berzelius [425]). This led to some important conse quences. Physicists thought it made more sense to use the oxygen-16 isotope as atomic weight standard and set its weight at exactly 16, while chemists con tinued to set the weighted average of the three isotopes at exactly 16. This set up a conflict between the “physical atomic weight” and the “chemical atomic weight.” These differed slightly. Finally in 1961 chemists and physicists united behind a new standard in which the most common isotope of carbon was set equal to exactly 12. This established the princi ple of using a single isotope as standard, but gave values that were almost exactly those that had been used by chemists all along.
Oxygen-18 could be used as an iso topic tracer for those reactions involving the oxygen atom. It was used for this purpose quite extensively, and it was by means of this tracer that nearly twenty years after Giauque’s discovery it was found that the oxygen liberated by plants during photosynthesis (a liberation first detected by Priestley [312] a century and a half earlier) came from water and not from carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, Giauque had also applied himself to the problem of low tempera tures. The usual methods of achieving low temperatures by evaporation were used by Kamerlingh Onnes [843] a gen eration earlier to liquefy helium and to attain temperatures near 1°K. Tempera tures as far down as 0.4°K had been reached but that seemed to be the limit. In 1926, however, Giauque came up with a suggestion (which was also made independently and at the same time by Debye [1094] and by Simon [1165]) that at that low temperature a magnetic salt be prepared with its molecules all lined up under the influence of a magnetic field. Once that was done, and the salt brought to the lowest possible tempera ture in a container surrounded by liquid helium, the magnetic field might be re moved. The molecules would then fall out of alignment and in order to do that, they would have to absorb heat from the surrounding helium. The tem perature would then fall farther. By following this suggestion, tempera tures within thousandths of a degree of absolute zero were obtained, and the re gion of ultimate cold was open to more intensive study. For this, Giauque was honored with the award of the 1949 Nobel Prize in chemistry. [1179] MINKOWSKI, Rudolph Leo B. German-American astronomer
Germany), May 28, 1895 Died: Berkeley, California, Janu ary 4, 1976 Minkowski obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Breslau in 1921 but by 1935 Germany was too 747
[1180] TAMM
RHINE [1182]
Nazified a land in which to remain. He came to the United States with the help of Baade [1163], became an American citizen in 1940, and worked in various California observatories. He joined Baade in the study of super novas, which they divided into two kinds on the basis of spectral characteristics. They also labored to pinpoint the radio sources that Reber [1368] had mapped and to associate them with some definite optical objects. Thus, in 1951, a radio source located by Reber in the constellation of Cassiopeia, was success fully associated by Minkowski and Baade with wisps of gas that were clearly the remnant of a long-past supernova. Minkowski also collaborated with Baade in identifying the radio source in the constellation of Cygnus, as arising from a distant galaxy. In 1951, he discovered the Earth-graz ing asteroid Geographos, which he named for the National Geographic So ciety-Palomar Observatory, where he was working at the time. [1180] TAMM, Igor Yevgenyevich Russian physicist Born: Vladivostok, July 8, 1895 Died: Moscow, April 12, 1971 Tamm, the son of an engineer, gradu ated from Moscow State University in 1918. Just before World War I he had studied in Edinburgh. Back in Russia he participated actively in the Revolution of 1917 but did not formally join the Com munist Party. During the 1920s and early 1930s he worked out the manner of light disper sion in solid bodies on the basis of quan tum mechanics, but it was his explana tion (together with Frank [1340]) of the Cherenkov [1281] radiation in 1937 that eventually earned him a share in the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics. After World War II he was one of those working on techniques looking to ward the control of the fusion reaction of the hydrogen bomb, in order that it might be turned to peaceful uses. In 1950 he suggested the use of the “pinch effect” to hold hot plasma (electrically charged atom fragments) in place by a magnetic field. After 1924 he served on the faculty of the Moscow State University, achieving a professorship in 1927. [1181] COURNAND, André Frédéric (kour-nan') French-American physiologist
Coumand obtained his M.D. at the University of Paris in 1930 and in that year came to the United States and be came an American citizen in 1941. He taught at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He was the first to make use of Forssmann’s [1283] technique of cardiac catheteriza tion clinically and as a result shared with him and with D. W. Richards [1184] the 1956 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1182] RHINE, Joseph Banks American parapsychologist
September 29, 1895 Died: Hillsborough, North Caro lina, February 20, 1980 Rhine was educated at the University of Chicago, from which he obtained his Ph.D. in 1925. After teaching botany at West Virginia University, he joined the faculty of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in 1928 and remained there till his retirement in 1965. Rhine attempted to investigate experi mentally those phenomena that may be interpreted as resulting from the ability of human beings to perceive information other than through the known sense or gans. This is extrasensory perception, usually abbreviated as ESP. His book, Extrasensory Perception, published in 1934, established the field in its present form. That ESP exists is a matter of com mon belief. Many people have experi enced phenomena that made it seem they were directly aware of another per son’s thoughts (telepathy). Cases in 748 [1182] RHINE
DOMAGK [1183]
which events are perceived at a great dis tance (clairvoyance), or before they occur (precognition), or where objects are made to move by thought alone (telekinesis) are constantly being re ported. However, these cases are very often explainable in less romantic fash ion than as ESP and, not unusually, prove the result of honest mistake or even downright fraud. The relatively few cases that remain unexplained would, in all likelihood, be understood if enough data were obtained and enough time spent on the investigation. Most scien tists are reluctant to spend time on mat ters that seem almost certain to come to nothing. Rhine ran exhaustive tests on students, who were set to guessing the symbols on cards they could not see. The percentage of correct guesses they might be ex pected to make by pure chance could easily be estimated, and if the percentage was consistently higher than that for any one student (and it occasionally was), the intervention of ESP seemed a reason able explanation. Thus, the person guess ing the card might be reading the mind of the person holding it; and perhaps might be doing so unconsciously. Rhine seemed quite convinced that as a result of his researches, conducted over a period of a generation, one may con sider the existence of ESP proved, and that there is a whole field of knowledge (parapsychology or psionics) to be in vestigated. However, the majority of scientists are reluctant to admit the existence of ESP on the basis of the work done by Rhine and others. Many think the tests were insufficiently controlled. The existence of ESP seems to be so far outside the elab orate scientific structure built up in the nearly four centuries since Galileo [166] that considerable evidence will have to be accumulated before most scientists will be satisfied. Then, too, parapsychology has been exploited by occult practitioners. As has often happened in the history of science, notably in the cases of Mesmer [314] and Gall [371], it is not the offbeat re sults of the scientist himself that bring on hostility, so much as the extreme views of many of his followers. It may be, as in the case of Mesmer and Gall, that what is valuable in Rhine’s work will eventually be understood and ac cepted.
[1183] DOMAGK, Gerhard (doh'mahkh) German biochemist Born: Lagow, Brandenburg (now Poland), October 30, 1895 Died: Burberg, Wurttemburg- Baden, April 24, 1964 Domagk, the son of a teacher, had his education at the University of Kiel inter rupted at its very beginning by World War I. He volunteered and served throughout the war, being wounded in 1915 and transferred to the Medical Corps. Thereafter, he returned to the university and obtained his medical de gree in 1921. In the late 1920s he en tered industry, working for I. G. Far benindustrie, the great German dye firm. Domagk began a systematic survey of new dyes with a view to detecting possi ble medical applications for some of them. (He was, after all, a physician by training.) One of the dyes was a newly synthesized orange-red compound with the trade name Prontosil. In 1932 Do magk found that injections of the dye had a powerful effect on streptococcus infections in mice. This was extremely exciting. A genera tion earlier, Ehrlich [845] and others had discovered chemotherapeutic agents for several diseases, but those diseases had, like trypanosomiasis, been caused by protozoa, or, like syphilis, by rather un common bacteria. The more common, smaller bacteria had remained untouched by purely chemical attack. The effect of Prontosil held good for humans, as Domagk discovered in the most direct way. His young daughter, Hildegarde, had been infected by strep tococci following the prick of a needle. No treatment did any good until Do magk in desperation injected large quan tities of Prontosil. She recovered dra matically and by 1935 the world had learned of the new drug. It gained fur ther fame when it was used to save the 749
[1184] RICHARDS
MILNE [1186]
life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., son of the President of the United States, who was also dying of an infection. It was not long before it was recog nized by Bovet [1325] that not all the molecule of Prontosil was needed for the antibacterial effect to be evident. A mere portion of it, sulfanilamide, a compound well known to chemists for a generation, was the effective principle. The use of sulfanilamide and related sulfa compounds inaugurated the era of the wonder drug. A number of infectious diseases, notably some varieties of pneu monia, suddenly lost their terrors. Shortly thereafter, the researches of Dubos [1235] revealed that not only syn thetic compounds, but also natural com pounds produced by microorganisms would serve as antibacterials. This in turn brought into prominence the neg lected work of Fleming [1077] on peni cillin, and the new medical age was launched. In 1939 Domagk was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for his discovery. In October he ac cepted. However, Hitler was in a rage with the committee awarding the prizes, for the 1935 Nobel Prize for peace had been awarded to Karl von Ossietzky, a German who was in a concentration camp. Hitler refused to allow Germans to accept Nobel Prizes. Under the threat of arrest by the Gestapo (he was actu ally jailed for a week), Domagk was forced in November to withdraw his ac ceptance. The money that accompanied the prize could be kept for him only one year, after which it reverted to the Nobel Foundation funds; however, one could be patient with the medal and the honor. In 1947, with Hitler dead and Nazism shattered, Domagk visited Stockholm and accepted the prize. After World War II he worked on the chemotherapy of tu berculosis and cancer. [1184] RICHARDS, Dickinson Woodruff American physician Born: Orange, New Jersey, Octo ber 30, 1895 Richards graduated from Yale Univer sity in 1917, then went on to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where he obtained his M.D. in 1923. He taught there from 1928. He studied the technique of cardiac cath eterization introduced by Forssmann [1283] and, along with Coumand [1181], improved and made use of it. As a result he, Forssmann, and Cournand shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. [1185] LINDBLAD, Bertil Swedish astronomer Born: Örebro, November 26, 1895
Died: Stockholm, June 26, 1965 Lindblad, the son of an army officer, obtained his Ph.D. at Uppsala in 1920 and taught at the University of Stock holm. He became director of the Stock holm Observatory in 1927. In 1926 Lindblad carefully studied the apparent motions of the various stars and analyzed the rotation of the galaxy in the light of his results. He decided that while the central core of the galaxy might ro tate as a unit, the outskirts (in which the sun itself is located) revolve more and more slowly as distance from the center increases. This was confirmed in greater detail by Oort [1229] the next year. Lindblad also labored to determine the absolute magnitude (the actual brightness after distance is taken into ac count) of many stars. [1186] MILNE, Edward Arthur (miln) English physicist
14, 1896 Died: Dublin, Ireland, September 21, 1950 Milne, the son of a headmaster, en tered Cambridge after World War I had begun. Defective eyesight kept him out of active service but he worked on war- related scientific matters. In 1924 he was 750
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