Scientist of the Day

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin lived his life in the spirit of a renaissance man: he was deeply interested in the world around him, and he excelled in several widely differing fields of human endeavor.

He had a profound effect on our understanding of electricity and shaped the language we use when we talk about it, even today.

Here we shall concentrate on his life as a scientist and an inventor, only briefly touching on his other achievements.

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Josiah, was a tallow chandler, candle maker, and soap boiler who had moved to the American Colonies from England. His mother, Abiah Folger looked after the home and was the mother of ten children, including Benjamin, who was the eighth child in the family. She was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Benjamin only had two years of formal education, which finished when he was ten years old, because his family could not afford the fees. His informal education then accelerated, because his mind was too restless to stop learning.

He had to work in his father’s business, but in his spare time he read everything he could, about every subject under the sun.

When he was twelve, Benjamin began working as an apprentice in a printing shop owned by one of his elder brothers, James. When his brother started printing a newspaper, Benjamin wrote to it in the name of “Mrs. Dogood” in defense of freedom of speech.

Aged 17, Benjamin Franklin left for Philadelphia, escaping from his apprenticeship, which was against the law. He was, however, free. After a few months in Philadelphia he left for London, England, where he learned more about printing, before returning to Philadelphia at the age of 20 to continue his career in printing. 

By the age of just 23, Franklin had become the publisher of the Philadelphia Gazette.

Aged 27, in December 1732, the first editions of the publication that would make him a wealthy man rolled off his printing press: Poor Richard’s Almanac, which Franklin would publish annually for the next 25 years. It was a general interest pamphlet offering interest and amusement for its readers, including: ‘how to’ guides, practical tips, stories, astrological forecasts, and brain teasers.

With each year he published the Almanac, his financial position grew more secure, and Franklin’s fertile mind began looking for new outlets.

He continued reading as much as he could, increasing his knowledge of science and technology until he was in a position to begin innovating himself.

Benjamin Franklin’s Science, Innovation, and Inventions

Franklin was an original thinker, scientist and inventor. Dating his inventions is not always easy, because Franklin did not patent what he invented. He said that anyone who wanted to make money from his ideas was free to do so. This means the dates given to his inventions are approximate.

Bifocal Spectacles

Franklin wore spectacles for most of his life.

He felt limited by the spectacles of his day, because a lens that was good for reading blurred his vision when he looked up. Working as a printer, this could be infuriating.

He defeated this problem in about 1739, aged 33, with his invention of split-lens bifocal spectacles. Each lens now had two focusing distances. Looking through the bottom part of the lens was good for reading, while looking through the upper part offered good vision at a greater distance.

The Franklin Stove

As Franklin read more about science, he learned more about heat transfer. He looked at the design of a typical stove and concluded that it was inefficient. Much more heat was lost up the flue than necessary.

He decided to redesign the stove using the concept of heat-exchange/heat recovery.

The idea was that hot gases which would normally simply go up the flue would exchange their heat with cold air from the room, heating it up, and so heating the room up.

In 1741, the Franklin Stove came on to the market, allowing homeowners to get more heat into their homes for each unit of fuel they burned.

Cold air (blue) gains heat from contact with the hot stove. As this warming air continues on its path, it gains more heat through contact with metal, the other side of which is in contact with the hot smoke (red) going to the flue.

Franklin wrote:

The use of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the neighboring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.

American Philosophical Society

In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society. (In those days, scientists were called philosophers.) The Society offered a scientific forum for new ideas, including Franklin’s electrical theories.

Electricity

In summer 1743, Franklin visited his hometown of Boston. Always seeking new knowledge, he visited a science show. There he saw Dr. Archibald Spencer, who had arrived from Scotland, demonstrating a variety of scientific phenomena. The electrical part of the show intrigued Franklin most: it featured the effects of static electricity.
Franklin left the show determined to learn more about electricity. It seemed to him that Dr. Spencer didn’t really understand it. This, of course, was true: nobody understood it! It was more a source of entertainment than a science.
In 1747, Franklin got hold of a long glass tube for the efficient generation of static electricity from Peter Collinsion in London.
Soon, Franklin was spending much of his time studying electricity. He wrote:

“For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done.”

Shaping our understanding of electricity

Franklin’s observations soon began to shape the world’s understanding of electricity and shape the language we use even today when we talk about it.
He identified that there was an electrical fluid that could flow from A to B. To describe the process he coined the terms positive and negative to describe the difference between A and B after the electrical fluid had flowed. Of course, today we would call the electrical fluid electrons, but remember: this was 1747; J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron lay 150 years in the future!
Franklin found that an excess of fluid led to positive charge (okay, we’ll have to pretend that electrons are positively charged for this) and a deficit of fluid led to negative charge.
Franklin was the first to write that electric charge cannot be created; it can only be ‘collected.’ This is a fundamental law of physics – the Law of Conservation of Electric Charge. It means that you cannot create (or destroy) electric charge.
Franklin was also the first person to use the words electrical battery. His meaning was not the same as ours though. His battery was made of capacitors (known as Leyden jars) wired together in series to store more charge than one alone could. This enabled Franklin to produce a bigger discharge of static electricity in his experiments.
In 1751, Franklin published the fruits of his labors in a book called Experiments and Observations on Electricity, which was widely read in Britain and then Europe, shaping a new understanding of electricity.
In 1752 Franklin’s most famous scientific work was carried out – the proof that lightning is electricity.
Franklin had an idea for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity, making use of another of his own discoveries in electricity: that static electricity discharges to a sharp, pointed object more readily than to a blunt object.
And now here are Benjamin Franklin’s own words on the subject:

From Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity

Benjamin Franklin

“As electrified clouds pass over a country, high hills and high trees, lofty towers, spires, masts of ships, chimneys, etc, as so many prominences and points, draw the electrical fire, and the whole cloud discharges there…
“If these things are so, may not the power of points be of use to mankind, in preserving houses, churches,… from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle… and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground…?

Benjamin Franklin’s Proposed Sentry Box

“I would propose an experiment… On the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. From the middle of the stand, let an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet, pointed very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it when such clouds are passing low might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. If any danger to the man should be apprehended (although I think there would be none) let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod a loop of wire that has one end fastened to the leads he his holding by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire and not affect him.”

King Louis XV saw a translation of Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and he asked French scientists to test Franklin’s lightning rod concept.
Jean Francois Dalibard used Franklin’s idea to confirm by experiment that lightning was indeed electrical in Paris in May 1752. Franklin himself carried out similar work in 1752, using a kite with a metal key connected to a Leyden Jar to prove his own theory. He didn’t write about his own experiment, however, until 1772.
The significance of the experiment was that it established the study of electricity as a serious scientific discipline.
Franklin had shown how to prove that electrical phenomena were a fundamental force of nature. Electricity would never again be thought of as just an interesting plaything for scientists and showmen to conjure up using glass rods.
Very soon, in 1753, when he was aged 47, the transformation in science that Franklin had brought about was recognized. Britain’s Royal Society honored his electrical work with its highest award, the Copley Medal – the equivalent of a modern Nobel Prize.

The Lightning Rod

A building protected by a lightning rod. A cable carries electricity from lightning to ground.

Even today, we still use Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod.
Like his other ideas, he did not patent it: he profited from the lightning rod intellectually, not financially.
Since the time he invented it, it has saved societies all over the world great amounts of time and money by protecting buildings from damage. It has also, of course, saved countless lives.

Refrigeration

In 1758, working with John Hadley in Cambridge, England, Franklin established the principle of refrigeration by evaporation.
In a room at 18 °C (65 °F) , the scientists repeatedly wetted a thermometer with ether, then used bellows to quickly evaporate the ether.

They were finally able to achieve a temperature reading on the thermometer of -14 °C (7 °F).
We now know the reason for the refrigeration effect. We have learned that molecules in a liquid have a range of energies. Some have high energy, and some have low energy. Molecules carrying the most energy escape from the liquid most easily – they evaporate. This leaves the lower energy, colder molecules in the liquid. The result is that the temperature of the liquid falls.
Of his discovery, Franklin said:

“One may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day.”

We owe the refrigerators and freezers in our homes today to Franklin and Hadley’s discovery over 250 years ago.

Meteorology

By observation of storms and winds, Franklin discovered that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind. This was an important discovery in the development of the scientific discipline of meteorology.

More than a Scientist and Inventor

Franklin lived in turbulent times, which culminated in the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776: Franklin was one of the five men who drafted it. He had previously acted as British postmaster for the colonies; he was the American Ambassador in France from 1776 – 1785; and the governor of Pennsylvania from 1785 – 1788.

The End

Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84. He was killed by pleurisy – a lung inflammation.
His wife, Deborah, had died sixteen years earlier. Franklin was survived by his daughter, Sarah, who looked after him in his later years and his son, William. William left America to live in Britain in 1782.
Today, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, named in Franklin’s honor, is one of the most prestigious awards in science. Its winners include Alexander Graham Bell, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Scientist of the Day

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (a.k.a., Roentgen) (1845-1923), the first Nobel winner in Physics, was the first to produce X-rays, known originally as Röntgen rays.  The facts of his early biography offer hope for those who fail in their initial educational efforts.  A childhood act of solidarity excluded him from many subsequent schools.  However, he went on not only to complete his education but to achieve a full professorship.  His discovery of the effect of the invisible but powerful rays that revealed the bones inside bodies has made possible many elements of modern medicine.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was the child of a Dutch mother and a German father.  Although born in Germany, his family, which was Catholic moved to Holland, which is largely Protestant.  As a teenager, he made the judgment error of refusing to squeal on a schoolmate who had drawn a rude picture of an instructor. This act of defiance caused his expulsion and his exclusion from other gymnasia, not only in the Netherlands but in his father’s nation of Germany as well.

Education:

Somehow in spite of apparently universal blacklisting, he managed to gain admission to the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, by entry exam.  He studied mechanical engineering, and went on to the University of Zurich for his PhD.  He went on to teach physics at a number of universities.  He even considered an offer from Columbia University, an institution with a history of offering lecterns to brilliant émigrés. However, World War I broke out and he ended up remaining in Munich for the remainder of his professional career.

Research:

For decades, he had been studying the effects of electrical charge on the response and appearance of vacuum tubes.  The science of electricity was still relatively new, and there remained much to understand.  His set-ups used relatively simple components by today’s standards.

He conducted a series of experiments in 1895 in which he connected a type of vacuum tube (visualize a light bulb on steroids) called a Hittorf-Crookes tube to an early and very powerful electrostatic charge generator known as a Ruhmkorff coil, similar to what sparks a car motor to start.  He was trying to reproduce a fluorescent effect observed with another type of vacuum tube called a Lenard tube.   The filament inside produced a stream of electrons which was well-known, called a cathode ray.    To his surprise, this produced fluorescence on a screen coated with a compound called barium platinocyanide, several feet away.  This suggested to him that a hitherto unknown, and entirely invisible, effect was being produced.  We know now that the cathode ray had excited the atoms of the aluminum to produce X-rays, which in turn excited the atoms of the barium (an element which fluoresces readily)

He also discovered that when his hand passed between the electrically charged vacuum tube and the barium platinocyanide coated screen, he saw his bones.  He reproduced this phenomenon with his wife, causing horror.
After secretly confirming his findings, he published an article titled, “On A New Kind Of Rays” (Über eine neue Art von Strahlen).  This revelation and its nearly immediate application to all sorts of medical imaging earned him an honorary medical degree.  His Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.

Unlike the bios of some other radiation pioneers, his does not end with him giving his life for his seminal work, since he used lead shielding.  He did, however, die of intestinal carcinoma.

 

Scientist of the Day

Emile Berliner

Emile Berliner (formally known as Emil Berliner) was an inventor best known for developing the disc record gramophone. He founded The Berliner Gramophone Company in 1895, The Gramophone Company in London, England, Deutsche Gramophone in Hanover, Germany and Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada.

Emile Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany on the 20th of May 1851. He was one of thirteen children born to Samuel and Sarah Berliner. Following a few years of school in Hanover, Berliner was sent to Wolfenbuttel from which he graduated in 1865 at the age of fourteen. Berliner then spent several years there after doing odd jobs in Hanover to help support the large Berliner family. He migrated to the United States of America in 1870, where he lived in Washington, D.C. and officially turned a citizen in 1881. He became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and invented an improved telephone transmitter. In 1886 Berliner began experimenting with methods of sound recording. He was granted his first patent for what he called the “gramophone” in 1887. Berliner’s other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth; an acoustic tile and an early version of the helicopter.

Berliner started to compose as well. He expressed his love for America and the opportunities it had afforded him in a patriotic song which became a smash hit of its day: The Columbian Anthem- a song debuted in Washington on Washington’s Birthday at the 1897 national council of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As a composition it ranks easily with the best national hymns ever written.

Berliner turned his attention to the violin. It is well known that antique violins are consistently more brilliant over their entire range than new instruments. Berliner determined that the new instrument did not vibrate freely because the fibers of the wood under the bridge took much time to adjust to the uneven pressures transmitted by the strings through the bridge to the instruments body.

In 1909 he donated funds for an infirmary building at the Starmont Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Washington Grove, Maryland, dedicated to the memory of his father. Berliner was president of the Washington Tuberculosis Association for some years. In 1920 Berliner endowed a silver cup as an annual award by the Tuberculosis Association to the city whose school children were most engaged in his health crusade.

In 1899, Berliner wrote a book, Conclusions that speaks of his agnostic ideas on religion and philosophy.

Berliner was also awarded the Franklin Institute’s John Scott Medal in 1897, and later the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1913 and the Franklin Medal in 1929.

Emile Berliner died of a heart attack at the age of 78 and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Through his innovations and inventions, he left invaluable legacies in communications, acoustics, and aeronautics to America and to the rest of the world.

Scientist of the Day

K. Eric Drexler

In the field of nanotechnology, there is a name that always stands out and it is K. Eric Drexler. Oftentimes, he is thought of as the “Founding father of nanotechnology” and this gives everyone a clearer idea of just how significant his contributions are to the field. He is one man that had big plans for the future and wants the best for mankind. It is amazing to see just what kind of man he is and what has pushed him into doing extensive studies on nanotechnology. His career is one that is extremely notable but it is also one that has had its fair share of controversy.

Kim Eric Drexler was born on 25th April, 1955. He is an American engineer and is most known for being the driving force behind the idea of molecular nanotechnology (MNT) and of its potential benefits for humans back in the 70’s and 80’s. In the year 1991, he published his doctoral thesis at MIT and it was later on republished and turned into a book which was entitled Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation. It was published in 1992 and went on to receive the Best Computer Science Book award for 1992 from the Association of American Publishers. He is what you might call an MIT loyalist and holds three degrees from the institution. It was where he received his B.S. in Interdisciplinary Sciences back in 1977 and his M.S. in Astro/Aerospace Engineering in 1979. It was in 1991 when he got his Ph.D. from the auspices of the MIT Media Lab.

It was back in the 1970s that Eric Drexler first became influenced by ideas listed in Limits to Growth. At his first year at MIT, he went out to look for someone who was doing work on extra-terrestrial resources as this was his response to the whole Limits to Growth idea. It was because of this that he ran into Dr. Gerard O’Neill who was with Princeton University and who just happened to be a physicist that was known for having a very strong interest and focus on particle accelerations. Dr. O’Neill was also known for his work on concepts of colonies in space. In the summers of 1975 and 1976, K. Eric Drexler would study with NASA. It was during his summers in NASA that he learned about space colonies and helped fabricate revolutionary metal films to better show the potential of using solar sails. He would also spend a lot of time coming up with mass driver prototypes and delivering papers to the first three Space manufacturing conferences that were held at Princeton. In 1977 and 1979, he and Keith Hendon co-authored papers on vapor phase fabrication and space radiators; both papers were given patents. Drexler was also quite active in space politics and in the year 1980, he helped the L5 society in defeating the Moon Treaty.

It was in the late 70’s when he really began to develop ideas pertaining to MNT and it was in 1979 that he encountered a provocative talk by Richard Feynman named There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom. In Drexler’s boon entitled Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, he used it to talk about the use of nano-scale assemblers that had the ability and capacity to build copies of itself and other things of different complexities. This might not sound too scientific but he also coined the “grey goo” term which he used to describe what happens if the MNT he talked about was to go haywire.

Drexler and his then-wife Christine Peterson helped put up the Foresight Institute in 1986 and the main goal was to prepare for the eventual manufacturing and use of nanotechnology. It was in 2002 that the husband and wife team ended their marriage of 21 years and today, Drexler is no longer a member of the institute they put up. However, he did join Nanorex in 2005 which is a company that specializes in molecular engineering software and he became the Chief Technical Advisor. A year later, he married a former investment banker named Rosa Wang.

It is safe to say that K. Eric Drexler was quite passionate about MNT but it just so happened that Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley wasn’t too into the idea and he even went as far as to criticize Drexler’s ideas. In Smalley’s 2001 article in the Scientific American, he argued that “fat fingers” were the reason why MNT was impossible. He went on to argue that the nanomachines everyone envisioned would have to be more like chemical enzymes and not the assemblers Drexler imagined and even then, they would only work on water. Drexler countered these criticisms by saying that they were nothing more than straw man arguments but had no further replies from Smalley. In December 2003 though, Drexler did have his vindication because Ray Kurzweil dedicated four whole pages in his book to debunk Smalley’s theories and prove that Drexler’s ideas on MNT were in fact practicable and were already being put to use.Smalley may not believe in what Drexler has to propose but Science fiction writers and fans all over the world have fallen in love with the idea of nanotechnology and Drexler was even mentioned in the Diamond Age which is a sci-fi book that is about society in the future that makes use of nanotechnology almost every day. In the book Decipher, written by Stel Pavlou Drexler is mentioned and the same goes for the novel Excavation written by James Rollins where he referenced Drexler’s Engines of Creation.

The scientist Kim Eric Drexler now lives in Los Altos, California and he lives comfortably knowing that his studies have yielded to the nanotechnology used today. Even better, his critic Richard Smalley has admitted that he developed an interest in the field by reading one of Drexler’s books. It has to be said that Drexler is just as much of a visionary as he is a scientist; he sometimes gets carried away by what can be rather than what really is but it is his very idealism that made nanotechnology what it is today.

Scientist of the Day

John Ray

John Ray was a highly influential English naturalist and botanist whose contributions to taxonomy are considered groundbreaking and historic. He is also well-known in the world of botany for the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy.

Early Life and Education:

Born in 1627 in a small village of Black Notley, Essex, John Ray’s father was a blacksmith. Ray entered the Cambridge University at the young age of sixteen.

Contributions and Achievements:

John Ray was selected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1649. However, he lost the position thirteen years later when, in 1662, he declined to take the oath to the Act of Uniformity after the Restoration. With full support of his former stundent and fellow naturalist, Francis Willoughby, Ray made several trips throughout Europe with him, carrying out research in the fields of botany and zoology.

Ray formulated the fundamental principles of plant classification into cryptogams, monocotyledons and dicotyledons in his landmark works “Catalogus plantarum Angliae” (1670) and “Methodus plantarum nova” (1682). Other major publications of Ray include “Historia generalis plantarum” (3 volumes, 1686-1704) and “The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation” (1691), both of which became quite influential during the time.

The zoological contributions of Ray include the developement of the most natural pre-Linnaean classification of the animal kingdom. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667. Ray endorsed scientific empiricism as compared to the deductive rationalism of the scholastics.

Later Life and Death:

In his later years, Ray moved to his native village, where he remained until his death in 1705. He was 77 years old. The Ray Society was established in his honor in 1844.

Scientist of the Day

Dame Valerie Jane Goodall

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”

This famous quote is by a lady who has been interested in animals all of her life. Dame Valerie Jane Goodall was born in London in 1934. Jane Goodall is the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps’ environment and gaining their confidence as in one of her project she said that:

“Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.”

As a child she was given a lifelike chimpanzee toy named Jubilee by her mother. Jubilee started her early love of animals. Today, the toy still sits on her dresser in London. As she writes in her book, Reason For Hope: “My mother’s friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares.” Jane was a bright student as she is the one of only nine people to receive a PhD degree in Ethology without first obtaining a BA or B.Sc.

Were it not for fate, Goodall may have ended up being a secretary instead of the champion of animals she now is as went to secretarial school and then had a series of jobs at Oxford University and for a film studio that made documentary films until by chance a friend invited her to travel to Kenya. She saved her money by working as a waitress until she could afford to travel by boat to Kenya. She sailed from London to Africa on the passenger liner The Kenya Castle. Two months after arriving there she met Louis Leakey, a famous anthropologist and his wife, Mary.

After a period of working with the Leakeys in the Uvalde Gorge, Leakey recognized in Goodall the right qualities to do an in depth study of chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania.

Dr. Goodall’s research at Gombe Stream is best known to the scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were passive vegetarians. While observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively “fishing” for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of tool making.

Humans had long distinguished us from the rest of the animal kingdom as “Man the Toolmaker”. In response to Goodall’s revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, “We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!” Over the course of her study, Goodall found evidence of mental traits in chimpanzees such as reasoned thought, abstraction, generalization, symbolic representation, and even the concept of self, all previously thought to be uniquely human abilities.

But the most disturbing thing was the tendency for aggression and violence within chimpanzee troops. Goodall observed dominant females deliberately killing the young of other females in the troop in order to maintain their dominance, sometimes going as far as cannibalism. These findings revolutionized contemporary knowledge of chimpanzee behaviour, and were further evidence of the social similarities between humans and chimpanzees, albeit it in a much darker manner.

Goodall also set herself apart from the traditional conventions of the time by naming the animals in her studies of primates, instead of assigning each a number. Numbering was a nearly universal practice at the time, and thought to be important in the removal of one’s self from the potential for emotional attachment to the subject being studied.

Jane was the international recipient of the 1996 Caring Award for Scientific Achievement. She also received the National Geographic Society’s prestigious Hubbard Medal ‘for her extraordinary study of wild chimpanzees and for tirelessly defending the natural world we share. She has also appeared in an episode of Nickelodeon’s animated series and is also a character in Irregular Web comic Steve and Terry theme. A parody of Goodall featured as a diamond-hoarding chimpanzee slave driver in an episode of The Simpsons.

Today, Jane Goodall spends much of her time lecturing, sharing her message of hope for the future and encouraging young people to make a difference in their world.

United Nations Day

The United Nations Organization (UNO) or simply United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. There are about 192 member states, including nearly every sovereign state in the world. From its offices around the world, the UN and its specialized agencies decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout the year. On October 24, 1945, the United Nations (UN) came into force when the five permanent members of the security council ratified the charter that had been drawn up earlier that year. These members were: France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. Since 1948, the event's anniversary has been known as United Nations Day. It is an occasion to highlight, celebrate and reflect on the work of the United Nations and its family of specialized agencies.

History - The foundations for a “League of Nations” were laid in the Treaty of Versailles, which was one of the treaties to formally end World War I. The treaty was signed in Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919. The league aimed to encourage disarmament, prevent outbreaks of war, encourage negotiations and diplomatic measures to settle international disputes and to improve the quality of life around the world. However, the outbreak of World War II suggested that the League of Nations needed to take on a different form. The ideas around the United Nations were developed in the last years of World War II, particularly during the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, the United States, beginning on April 25, 1945. The UN was officially created when a UN charter was ratified on October 24 that year.

United Nations Day was first observed on October 24, 1948. The UN recommended that United Nations Day should be a public holiday in member states since 1971. There were also calls for United Nations Day to be an international public holiday to bring attention to the work, role and achievements of the UN and its family of specialized agencies. These have been spectacular, particularly in the fields of human rights, support in areas of famine, eradication of disease, promotion of health and settlement of refugees. The UN does not work alone but together with many specialized agencies, including: the World Health Organization (WHO); the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); International Labour Organization (ILO); United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); and United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Events - On and around October 24, many activities are organized by all parts of the UN, particularly in the main offices in New York, the Hague (Netherlands), Geneva (Switzerland), Vienna (Austria) and Nairobi (Kenya).

These include:

• Concerts.

• Flying the UN flag on important buildings.

• Debates on the relevance of the work of the UN in modern times.

• Proclamations by state heads and other leaders.

Symbols - The UN emblem consists of a projection of the globe centred on the North Pole. It depicts all continents except Antarctica and four concentric circles representing degrees of latitude. The projection is surrounded by images of olive branches, representing peace. The emblem is often blue, although it is printed in white on a blue background on the UN flag.

                                                                                                                      - Library Staff

Scientist of the Day

Frederick Sanger is an English biochemist who twice received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; in 1958 for his discovery of the structure of the insulin molecule, and in 1980 for his collaborative work on base sequences in nucleic acids with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert. He is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential biochemists in history.

Born in 1918 in Rendcombe, England, Frederick Sanger’s father was a medical practitioner. He understood the significance of science and the scientific method from an early age. He focused on chemistry and physics in the beginning, but was later attracted to the emerging field of biochemistry.

He received an undergraduate degree and PhD in biochemistry from St John’s College, Cambridge, England.

After graduation, Frederick Sanger joined the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the university as a researcher. Sanger is the fourth person in history to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. He received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking research on protein structure.

Sanger was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry once again in 1980, this time sharing it with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert for determining the amino acid sequences of DNA information. His later contributions constitute the basic genetic principles utilized by almost every biotechnology application. He has received many other honors for his extraordinary work on genetics and biotechnology.

Sanger retired in 1983 to his house in Swaffham Bulbeck near Cambridge. He rejected the knighthood as he did not wanted to be addressed as “Sir”. However, he accepted the award of O.M. (Order of Merit) in 1986. 

Scientist of the Day

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

While living organisms have been extensively studied for centuries, the discovery that organisms are made up of cells is comparatively new to the world. One of the reasons behind this could be the absence of modern technology laboratory equipment. The 1595 invention of the microscope made the cells visible for the first time.

The Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, commonly known as “the Father of Microbiology”, was one of the first microscopists in history. He committed himself to the discovery and research related to the thus-far invisible world of biology, notable among them the discovery of protozoa and the first-ever description of red blood cell.

Born on October 24, 1632 in Delft, The Netherlands, van Leeuwenhoek was entirely self-taught and did not receive a formal degree. His primitive approach, dismissing any type of scientific dogma, made him think freely, and directed him only towards his own passion and interests.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a salesman by profession who traded household linen. He often took magnifying glasses to judge the quality of cloth. Leeuwenhoek employed his own lenses of diamond shavings, which he got from Delft-diamond cutters. He constructed his own microscopes which were basically simple instruments consisting of a single lens. The product, containing two metal plates set to each other with a fixed lens in between, was however with high precision, and able to perform magnifications of around 300x.

The object intended to be magnified was put on top of a movable metal holder, and focusing took place by way of a screw provided at the back. The whole thing was less than 10 cm in size.

Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes were actually very strong magnifying glasses, having considerable similarities with the composite microscopes of the time. It was Leeuwenhoek’s passion, skill and the quality to illuminating the objects properly that made him discover the microscopic objects. He analyzed things like tooth plaque, stagnant water, baker’s yeast, sperm and blood.

Reinier de Graaf, a Delft physician, brought van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society, where he published his uniquely detailed findings in Dutch, consisting of only 200 letters.

Leeuwenhoek gained worldwide fame with these observations, however he wrote in 1716 that he “did not strive for fame, but [was] driven by an inner craving for knowledge”. This great scientist died on

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is celebrated every year on October 17 throughout the world. It was first observed in the year 1987 at Paris, France where 100,000 people gathered on the Human Rights and Liberties Plaza at the Trocadéro to honour victims of poverty, hunger, violence and fear. But it was officially recognised by the United Nations in 1992 under resolution 47/196 of December 22, 1992.

One of the main aims of the day is to make the voice of the poor heard. To this end, commemorations often include testimonies from people living in poverty, describing their own experiences or those of people they know. Various non-government organizations and community charities organise different types of events to raise the voice towards this issue.

According to Food and Agriculture Organization - The food crisis is stalking the small-scale farms and rural areas of the world, where 70 percent of the world's hungry live and work. With an estimated increase of 105 million hungry people in 2009, there are now 1.02 billion malnourished people in the world, meaning that almost one sixth of all humanity is suffering from hunger. Both public and private investments are needed, more specifically through targeted public investment to encourage and facilitate private investment, especially by farmers themselves. The FAO aims to raise levels of nutrition across the globe, improve agricultural productivity at all levels, enhance the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy. It also provides assistance to countries changing their agricultural policy, to aid regions out of famine situations, to help implement appropriate technology and facilitate a neutral environment to discuss issues around food production. World Food Day is also held to commemorate the founding of the United Nations' (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

History - World Food Day was established by FAO's Member Countries at the Organization's Twentieth General Conference in November 1979. The date chosen - 16 October - is the anniversary of FAO. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. At the FAO's 20th session in Rome, Italy, in November 1979 the conference called for the observance of World Food Day on October 16, 1981, and on the same date each year. The UN General Assembly ratified this decision on December 5, 1980, and urged governments and international, national and local organizations to contribute to observing World Food Day. World Food Day has been held each year since 1981.

Handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrhoeal and acute respiratory infections, which take the lives of millions of children in developing countries every year. Together, they are responsible for the majority of all child deaths. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practised and difficult to promote. The challenge is to transform handwashing with soap from an abstract good idea into an automatic behaviour performed in homes, schools, and communities worldwide. Turning handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhoea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter. A vast change in handwashing behaviour is critical to meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing deaths among children under the age of five by two-thirds by 2015.

Global Handwashing Day is observed every year on 15th October every year in an effort to raise awareness of handwashing with soap as a key approach to disease prevention. As a campaign it aims to motivate and mobilize millions around the world to wash their hands with soap. Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash their hands with soap at the critical occasions. More handwashing with soap means lower rates of infectious disease: Clean Hands Save Lives! Initiated in 2008 by the Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap (PPPHW). Members of the PPPHW include the World Bank and Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), host of the PPPHW; the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); Procter & Gamble; Unilever; the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC); the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM); Johns Hopkins University (JHU); and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Global Handwashing Day is endorsed by a wide array of governments, international institutions, civil society organizations, NGOs, private companies and individuals around the globe.

Women play a critical role in the rural economies of both developed and developing countries. In many parts of the world, agriculture is the first sector of employment for women, for instance in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia, where respectively 68 per cent and 61 per cent of working women are employed in agriculture. Rural women, mainly farmers, are at least 1.6 billion and represent more than a quarter of the total world population. Women produce on average more than half of all the food that is grown: up to 80 per cent in Africa, 60 per cent in Asia, between 30 and 40 per cent in Latin America and Western countries. Women own only 2 per cent of the land, and receive only one per cent of all agricultural credit. Only 5 per cent of all agricultural extension resources are directed to women. Women represent two third of all illiterate people. The number of rural women living in poverty has doubled since 1970. The United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Rural Women directs attention to both the contribution that women make in rural areas and the many challenges that they face. It also celebrates and honours the role of rural women on October 15 each year. It recognizes rural women’s importance in enhancing agricultural and rural development worldwide.

History - The International Day of Rural Women was first celebrated as an official UN observance on October 15, 2008. This day recognizes the role of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty. The idea of honouring rural women with a special day was put forward at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995. It was suggested that October 15 be celebrated as “World Rural Women’s Day,” which is the eve of World Food Day, to highlight rural women’s role in food production and food security. “World Rural Women’s Day” was previously celebrated across the world for more than a decade before it was officially a UN observance.

Events - Many people, government agencies, community groups and non-government associations celebrate the International Day of Rural Women on October 15 every year. Television, radio, online, and print media broadcast or publish special features to promote the day. Panel discussions, research papers, and conferences are also held to review and analyse rural women’s role in society, particularly in areas such as economic improvement and agricultural development.

Congratulations to Nobel Prize winners

Kailash Satyarthi

Malala Yousafzay

History was made on Friday when an Indian and a Pakistani jointly shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014.

India's Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan's Malala Yousafzay were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "showing great personal courage" and their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.

The committee said Kailash Satyarthi maintained Mahatma Gandhi's tradition and headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children's rights".

"Children must go to school and not be financially exploited. In the poor countries of the world, 60% of the present population is under 25 years of age. It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation," the committee said.

Talking about Malala, it said "Despite her youth, Malala has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' right to education".

Scientist of the Day

Gerty Theresa Cori

The name of Gerty Theresa Cori is acknowledged among the greatest women achievers of the 20th century. This American biologist is known for her discoveries in biochemistry, especially carbohydrate metabolism. Her contributions in the field of biology led her to be the first American woman to achieve the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which she shared with her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay.

Gerty Theresa Cori was born on August 15, 1896 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Until the age of ten she was educated at her home after which she was enrolled in a Lyceum for girls. As a child Gerty became interested in science and mathematics and entered the Realgymnasium at Tetschen, from which she graduated in 1914, and then joined the Medical School of the German University of Prague. Here she met Carl Ferdinand Cori, a fellow student who shared her hobbies of skiing, gardening and mountain climbing and her interest in laboratory research. Both of them worked together and during 1920 published the results of their first research collaboration, completed their graduation, and got married.

Gerty Cori’s first research position was as an assistant in the Karolinen Children’s Hospital in Vienna. In 1922 Carl Cori immigrated to the United, having accepted a job at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, New York. Gerty Cori stayed behind for a few months, meanwhile working as an assistant pathologist at the Institute and later rising to assistant biochemist. After six months, Gerty got a job at the same institute as Carl, and she joined him in Buffalo. In 1928 they became U.S. citizens.

In 1931 Carl Cori took the position of chairman of the Department of Pharmacology of the Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was employed too, as a research associate, regardless of her equivalent degrees and comparable research experience. In 1943 she was appointed as an associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and two months after she received her Nobel Prize in 1947, she got promoted to the rank of professor of Biological Chemistry.

During the 1930s and 1940s both husband and wife began studying carbohydrate metabolism and continued the research in their laboratory at Washington University. Their laboratory gained an international standing as an important center of biochemical advancements. In 1947 the Cori’s won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their pivotal studies in elucidating the nature of sugar metabolism.

In 1947 Gerty Cori showed the symptoms of myelofibrosis, a disease she fought for 10 years, refusing to give up her research until the last few months of her life. She died on October 26, 1957.

Besides the Nobel Prize she was also honored with the Garvan Medal for women chemists of the American Chemical Society as well as membership in the National Academy of Sciences. The crater Cori on the Moon is named after her. She also shares a star with her husband on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

World Sight Day

Scientist of the Day

Sir Arthur Eddington

Sir Arthur Eddington was an eminent English astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He is noted for his grounbreaking research work in astrophysics. Being the first person to investigate the motion, internal structure and evolution of stars, Eddington is widely considered to be one of the greatest astronomers of all time.

Born on December 28, 1882 in Kendal, Cumbria, Arthur Eddington’s father was the head of a local school. Eddington was a bright student and he won an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating three years later, he accepted a teaching position, and after a few months, Eddington became the Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

Eddington visited Malta in 1909 to find out the longitude of the geodetic station of the place. He also visited Brazil as the head of the eclipse expedition. He became the Plumian Professor of Astronomy in Cambridge in 1913, where he taught for about 31 years.

He published his first book, “Stellar Movements and the structure of the Universe”, in 1914. It laid the groundwork for scientific exposition. “The Internal Construction of the Stars”, another work by Eddington was published in 1926, which still remains one of the best-selling books about astronomy. His “Mathematical Theory of Relativity” was the earliest work in English language that explained the mathematical details of Einstein’s theory of gravitation.

Eddington discovered in 1926 that the inward gravitational pressure of a star must maintain the outward radiation and gas pressure to remain in equilibrium. He also demonstrated that there was an upper limit on the mass of a star. Eddington discovered mass-luminosity relationship, which implies that the the size of a star is directly proportional to its luminosity, making the mass of a star to be decided upon its intrinsic brightness.

In “Fundamental Theory”, which was published after his death, Eddington introduced his calculations of many of the constant of nature, particularly the recession velocity constant of the external galaxies, the ratio of the gravitational force to the electrical force between a proton and an electron, and the number of particles in the universe.

Arthur Eddington became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1906, and eight years later, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914. He was knighted in 1938.

Eddington died in Cambridge, England on November 22, 1944 after an unsuccessful surgical operation. Eddington Memorial Scholarship and Eddington Medal were established after his death, in his honor.

Indian Airforce Day

The Indian Air Force (IAF; Devanāgarī: भारतीय वायु सेना, Bharatiya Vāyu Senā) is the air arm of the Indian armed forces. Its primary responsibility is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during a conflict. It was officially established on 8 October 1932 as an auxiliary air force of the British Empire and the prefix Royal was added in 1945 in recognition of its services during World War II. After India achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, the Royal Indian Air Force served the Dominion of India, with the prefix being dropped when India became a republic in 1950. Since independence, the IAF has been involved in four wars with neighbouring Pakistan and one with the People's Republic of China. Other major operations undertaken by the IAF include Operation Vijay – the annexation of Goa, Operation Meghdoot, Operation Cactus and Operation Poomalai. Apart from conflicts, the IAF has been an active participant in United Nations peacekeeping missions.

The President of India Pranab Mukherjee serves as the ex-officio Commander-in-Chief of the IAF. The Chief of Air Staff, an Air Chief Marshal (ACM), is a four-star commander and commands the Air Force. There is never more than one serving ACM at any given time in the IAF. The rank of Marshal of the Air Force has been conferred once, to Arjan Singh, by the president of India on 26 Jan 2002 and he became first five-star rank holding officer of IAF & serves as the ceremonial chief.

In its publication the Military Balance 2010, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that the Indian Air Force has a strength of 175,000 active personnel. However, various reliable sources provided notably divergent estimates of its strength over the years. Flightglobal estimates there to be to 1,499 aircraft in active service during 2013/2014

 

The IAF's mission is defined by the Armed Forces Act of 1947, Constitution of India and the Air Force Act of 1950, in the aerial battlespace, as:

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Defence of India and every part thereof including preparation for defence and all such acts as may be conducive in times of war to its prosecution and after its termination to effective demobilisation.

”

Thus, the IAF has the primary objective of safeguarding Indian territory and national interests from all threats in conjunction with the other branches of the armed forces by defending Indian airspace. The IAF provides close air support to the Indian Army troops in the battlefield and also provides strategic and tactical airlift capabilities. The IAF also operates the Integrated Space Cell together with the other two branches of the Indian Armed Forces, the civilian Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to utilise more effectively the country's space-based assets for military purposes and to look into threats to these assets.

The Indian Air Force along with the other branches of the Indian Armed Forces provide assistance in disaster relief such as during natural calamities by undertaking evacuation or search-and-rescue (SAR) operations and air dropping relief supplies in affected areas. The IAF provided extensive assistance to relief operations during natural calamities such as the Gujarat cyclone in 1998, the Tsunami in 2004 and North India floods in 2013. The IAF also provides assistance to other countries during relief activities such as Operation Rainbow in Sri Lanka.