Scientific Anniv
Feature
Florence Nightingale’s 200th Birthday
John Graunt’s 400th Birthday
Graunt was recognized as the pioneer of drawing scientific conclusions from the analysis of statistical information; his work is considered a cornerstone in the foundation of the modern sciences of statistics and demography. Graunt’s work earned him election to the Royal Society, but the Great Fire of London in 1666 burned down his house, damaging his business and sending him straight into poverty.
I’m sure you all know the lady with the lamp, the most famous nurse of the 19th century. But did you also know she was a health and hygiene pioneer and expert in health statistics? While working in the Crimea, the horrifyingly unsanitary conditions led her to institute a cleanliness regimen that greatly reduced the death rate. She then became an expert in health statistics, and her methods influenced the development of epidemiology. Her presentation of statistical evidence for the benefits of health standards in graphical form, made her a pioneer of data visualiation and influenced policy makers to adopt her methods.
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Electromagnetism
In 1800 Volta invented the primitive battery. This started research into links between electricity and magnetism. Among the researchers was H. C. Oersted who long suspected that electricity and magnetism shared a deep unity. After noticing a current causing a nearby compass needle to move, he conducted experiments enabling the generation of a magnetic field outside a wire carrying an electric current. About a decade later Michael Faraday showed the opposite, that moving a magnet around a wire induces an electric current.
Roger Bacon’s 800th Birthday
Bacon was one of the top natural philosophers of his day; he studied at Oxford and lectured at the University of Paris. Later Bacon became a Franciscan monk, but often got in trouble for breaking the order’s rules. Bacon was among the first advocates in this era for the importance of experiment in investigating nature. He also understood the importance of using math when explaining natural phenomena.
5 Resonance Issue 13
|| Autumn 2020
Discovery of X-rays
When Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, they were almost immediately put to use in medical practice. Later experiments on X-rays showed that electromagnetic “waves” sometimes behave as particles and eventually gave the images that led to determing the structure of DNA.
