Gerald H. Ford, a British illustrator, was born in 1809 and died in 1896. We have no idea of his birth date or date of death. In the past, that would have excluded him from the ranks of Scientist of the Day, which requires a date of some sort to celebrate. ...
Hans Schlottheim, a German clockmaker working in Augsburg, was active in the 1580s, but we have no idea when he was born or died. We celebrate his life and creativity today because it seems high time somebody did so. Schlottheim is known today almost exclusively for...
Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux, a French physician and model maker, was born April 7, 1797. While in medical school, Auzoux appreciated the utility of the life-size wax models that were then used to aid instruction in anatomy, but wax models were fragile and could not be...
Harold Edgerton, an American engineer, inventor, and photographer, was born Apr. 6, 1903. Edgerton grew up in Nebraska and was a tinkerer from an early age. After graduating from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, he spent a year working for General Electric,...
Matthias Jakob Schleiden, a German botanist and microscopist, was born Apr. 5, 1804. Most people vaguely remember “Schleiden and Schwann” from their high-school biology course, where one briefly encountered them right after learning that Robert Hooke...
Francis Hauksbee, an instrument maker and experimental demonstrator, died on an unknown day in April 1713; he was born sometime in the early 1660s. Hauksbee is a textbook example (literally) of how experimental inquiry coupled with shrewd insight can lead to the...
