Top 10 scientific anniversaries that we will celebrate in 2019

01. 04. 2019
6th international conference of exopolitics, history and spirituality

This year's remarkable nostalgia includes significant anniversaries - births, deaths, expeditions and tables. Anniversary identification is not the most pressing issue facing the scientific community today. There are much more important things. Such as expressing the seriousness of climate change and seeking new knowledge to help combat it. Or deal with sexual harassment and discrimination. Or provide reliable funding from a dysfunctional government. Not to mention what black matter is.

Yet, maintaining mental health requires occasional divergence from sources of darkness, despair and depression. Sometimes, on bleak days, he helps to recall happier moments and think about some of the scientific achievements and the scientists who answer for them. Luckily, in 2019, there are many opportunities to celebrate, much more than it can fit into Top 10. So don't be overwhelmed if your favorite anniversary is on the list (such as 200's anniversary anniversary of J. Presper Eckert, John Couch Adams or 200's Jean Foucault birthday or 150's Caroline Furness birthday)

1) Andrea Cesalpino, 500. birthday

Unless you are an extraordinary fan of botany, you have probably never heard of Cesalpin, born on June 6, 1519. He was a physician, philosopher and botanist at the University of Pisa until the pope, who needed a good doctor, recalled him to Rome. As a medical researcher, Cesalpino studied blood and had knowledge of its circulation long before English physician William Harvey came across a large blood count. Cesalpino was most impressive as a botanist, generally credited with the first botany textbook. Of course, he did not have everything correctly, but he described many plants accurately and classified them more systematically than previous scientists, who mostly considered plants as a source of drugs. Today, its name is remembered under the flowering plant of the genus Caesalpinia.

2) Leonardo da Vinci, 500. anniversary of death

Less than a month before Cesalpino was born, Leonardo died on May 2, 1519. Leonardo is much better known as an artist than as a scientist, but he was also a true anatomist, geologist, technician and mathematician (hey, Renaissance man). His role in the history of science was limited because many of his ingenious ideas were in notebooks that no one had read until long after his death. But he was a productive and resourceful observer of the world. He developed elaborate geological views of river valleys and mountains (he thought the peaks of the Alps were once islands in the upper ocean). As a technician, he understood that complex machines combined a few simple mechanical principles and insisted on the impossibility of eternal movement. He developed the basic ideas of work, energy, and power that became the cornerstones of modern physics, which were then developed more precisely by Galileo and others, more than a century later. And, of course, Leonardo would probably develop an airplane if he had the financial means to do so.

3) Petrus Peregrinus Discourse on Magnetism, 750. anniversary

Magnetism has been known since ancient times as a property of some iron-containing rocks known as "lodestones". But no one knew much about it until Petrus Peregrinus (or Peter Pilgrim) appeared in the 13th century. He left little information about his personal life; no one knows when he was born or when he died. However, he had to be a very talented mathematician and technician, widely appreciated by the well-known critical philosopher Roger Bacon (unless Peter, whom he mentioned, was actually Pilgrim).

In any case, Peter composed the first major scientific treatise on magnetism (completed August 8, 1269), explaining the concept of magnetic poles. He even found that when you break a magnet into pieces, each piece becomes a new magnet with its own two poles - north and south, in analogy to the poles of the "celestial sphere" that the stars around Earth allegedly carried. But Peter did not realize that compasses work because the Earth itself is a huge magnet. He also had no idea about the laws of thermodynamics when he designed what he thought the machine was constantly driven by magnetism. Leonardo would not recommend that he obtain a patent for it.

4 Magellan's World Tour, 500. anniversary

On September 20, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from southern Spain with five ships on a transoceanic voyage that would take three years to embrace the globe. But Magellan only lasted halfway because he was killed in a clash in the Philippines. However, the voyage still retains its name, although some modern sources prefer the name of the Magellan-Elcano expedition to include Juan Sebastian Elcano, commander of Victoria, the only ship of the original five that has returned to Spain. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison noted that Elcano "completed the navigation, but only followed Megell's plan."

Among the great navigators of Age of Discovery, Morison expressed the view, "Magellan stands the highest," and given his contributions to navigation and geography, "the scientific value of his journey is unquestionable." Although it was certainly not necessary to sail around Earth the world's first circumnavigation certainly qualifies as a significant human achievement, even if it is only slightly behind the visit to the moon.

5) Landing on the Moon, 50. anniversary

Apollo 11 was primarily a symbolic (albeit technically difficult) success, yet scientifically significant. In addition to strengthening the science of lunar geology by bringing lunar rock, Apollo astronauts set up scientific apparatus to measure earthquakes on the moon (to learn more about the lunar interior), studied lunar soil and the solar wind, and left a mirror in place as a laser target on Earth. in order to accurately measure the distance to the moon. Later, the Apollo missions also conducted larger experiments).

But more than providing new scientific results, Apollo's mission was to celebrate past scientific achievements - understanding the laws of motion and gravity and chemistry and propulsion (not to mention electromagnetic communication) - accumulated by previous scientists who had no idea that their work would once make Neil Armstrong famous.

6) Alexander von Humboldt, 250. birthday

Born in Berlin on September 14, 1769, von Humboldt was probably the best candidate of the 19th century for the title of Renaissance Man. Not only a geographer, geologist, botanist and engineer, he was also a world explorer and one of the most important writers of popular science of that century. With botanist Aimé Bonpland, von Humboldt spent five years exploring plants in South America and Mexico, recording 23 observations in geology and minerals, meteorology and climate, and other geophysical data. He was a profound thinker who wrote a five-part work called Cosmos, which essentially conveyed a summary of modern science to the (then) general public. And he was also one of the leading humanitarian scientists who strongly opposed slavery, racism and anti-Semitism.

7 Thomas Young's Work on Measurement Error, 200. anniversary

An Englishman, famous for his experiment that shows the wave nature of light, Young was also a doctor and a linguist. This year's anniversary commemorates one of his deepest works, published two centuries ago (January 1819), about mathematics about the probability of error in scientific measurements. He commented on the use of probability theory to express the reliability of experimental results in "numerical form". He found it interesting to show why "a combination of a large number of independent sources of error" has a natural tendency to "reduce the overall variation of their joint effect." In other words, if you make many measurements, the magnitude of the probable error of your result will be less than if you do only one measurement. And mathematics can be used to estimate the probable magnitude of error.

However, Young warned that such methods could be misused. "This calculation sometimes tried in vain to replace common sense arithmetic," he stressed. In addition to random errors, it is necessary to protect yourself from "constant causes of errors" (now referred to as "systematic errors"). And he noted that it is "very rarely safe to rely on the complete absence of such causes", especially when "observation is done by one instrument or even by one observer." He warned that confidence in mathematics without fear of these considerations could lead to erroneous conclusions: To consider this indispensable condition, the results of many elegant and sophisticated investigations that relate to the probability of error can ultimately be completely ineffective. ”So that.

8) Johannes Kepler and his Harmonica Mundi, 400. anniversary

Kepler, one of the greatest physico-astronomers of the 17th century, tried to reconcile the ancient idea of ​​the harmony of the spheres with the modern astronomy he helped to create. The original idea, attributed to the Greek philosopher-mathematician Pythagoras, that spheres carrying celestial bodies around the Earth formed a musical harmony. Apparently no one had heard this music, because some Phytagoras supporters claimed that it was present at birth and therefore it was an unnoticed background noise. Kepler believed that the construction of the universe was more with the sun at its center than with the Earth, observing harmonic mathematical conditions.

For a long time he tried to explain the architecture of the solar system as corresponding to nested geometric bodies, thus prescribing the distances separating (elliptical) planetary orbits. In Harmonica Mundi (Harmony of the World), published in 1619, he admitted that matter itself could not be counted exactly as the details of planetary orbits - other principles were needed. Most of his book is no longer relevant to astronomy, but its enduring contribution was Kepler's third law of planetary motion, which showed the mathematical relationship between the distance of a planet from the sun and the time it takes for the planet to complete one orbit.

9 Solar Eclipse confirmed by Einstein, 100. anniversary

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, completed in 1915, predicted that light from a distant star passing near the sun would be refracted by the sun's gravity, changing the star's apparent position in the sky. Newtonian physics could explain some such bending, but only half of what Einstein calculated. Observing such light seemed like a good way to test Einstein's theory, except for the small problem that the stars are not visible at all when the sun is in the sky. However, both Newton and Einstein's physicists agreed on when the next solar eclipse would be, making the stars near the edge of the Sun briefly visible.

British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington led an 1919 expedition in May, watching an eclipse from an island off the coast of West Africa. Eddington found that the deviations of some of the stars from their previously recorded position corresponded to the general relativity prognosis enough to proclaim Einstein as the winner. In addition to making Einstein famous, the result was not very important at that time (in addition to encouraging the general theory of relativity in cosmology theory). But the general relativity became a major problem a decade later, when new astrophysical phenomena had to be explained, and the GPS device could be accurate enough to get rid of the road maps.

10) Periodic Table, Sesquicentennial!

Dmitri Mendeleev was not the first chemist to notice that several element groups have similar characteristics. But in 1869, he identified the guiding principle for classifying elements: if you put them in order of increasing atomic mass, elements with similar properties are repeated at regular (periodic) intervals. Using this view, he created the first periodic table of elements, one of the greatest achievements in the history of chemistry. Many of the greatest scientific achievements have emerged in the form of erratic mathematical formulas or have required sophisticated experiments requiring intuitive genius, great manual dexterity, huge cost, or complex technology.

However, the periodic table is a wall table. This allows anyone to understand at first glance the basics of the entire scientific discipline. Mendeleus' table has been reconstructed many times, and its governing rule is now atomic number, rather than atomic mass. However, it remains the most versatile consolidation of the deep scientific information ever built - an iconic representation of all the kinds of matter from which terrestrial substances are made. And you can find it not only in the classroom on the walls, but also on ties, T-shirts and coffee mugs. One day, he may adorn the walls of a chemistry-themed restaurant called the Periodic Table.

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