Scientist of the Day

Hippolyte Fizeau

September 23, 2020

Hippolyte Fizeau, a French physicist, was born Sep. 23, 1819.  Fizeau was a master at designing experiments, most of them centered around light.  He was exposed to photography almost from the moment that Louis Daguerre’s discovery was announced by François Arago...

Michael Faraday

September 22, 2020

Michael Faraday, an English chemist and physical scientist, was born Sep. 22, 1791. Faraday’s entry into the academic world was one of the great rags-to-(academic) riches stories in science. Faraday came from a lower-class family, had no formal education, and...

Lee DuBridge

September 21, 2020

Lee Alvin DuBridge, an American physicist and administrator, was born Sep. 21, 1901.  We don’t often discuss administrators in these posts, but there are many occasions, especially during wartime, when the work of even the most brilliant scientists would come to...

Nathaniel P. Langford

September 18, 2020

On Sep. 18, 1870, a party of explorers rode into Upper Yellowstone Basin and sighted a geyser in full eruption. The expedition was led by Henry Washburn, the newly appointed Surveyor-General of Montana territory, and he was accompanied by a small contingent of...

Squire Whipple

September 16, 2020

Squire Whipple, an American civil engineer, was born Sep. 16, 1804.  Whipple was one of the first engineers in the United States to design truss bridges made of iron.  He came of age when the Erie Canal was expanding from its original 40-foot width to 70 feet, which...

Charles du Fay

September 14, 2020

Charles-François de Cisternay du Fay, a French physical scientist, was born Sep. 14, 1698.  We see above a portrait that was printed in a late 19th-century history of technology. Du Fay (sometimes Dufay) was one of the pioneer investigators of electrical phenomena in the crazy decade of the 1730s, when no one had a clue what electricity was…