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Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake on this day in 1600 following a seven-year Inquisition. Among Bruno’s heresies was the idea that the earth circles the sun and that the stars in the sky are other suns like ours.  He is widely regarded as a martyr to science, and the consequences of his refusal to recant his heresies was on Galileo’s mind when he was accused of heresy for his heliocentric theory of the solar system.

Gregor Mendel, founder of the science of genetics, was born this day in 1822. His experiments on pea plants between 1856 and 1863 led to an understanding of dominant and recessive gene types and frequencies, later known as Mendel’s laws. Combined with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Mendel’s work formed the basis of modern evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, Mendel’s work was not recognized in his lifetime.

Bert Hölldobler an entomologist and writer, was born this day in 1936. Hölldobler co-authored four books with Edward O. Wilson, including the 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning “The Ants” and in 2011 “The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct.”

E.O. Wilson, biologist and author, is born this day in 1929. WIlson is an entomologist whose studies of insect behavior pioneered the field of sociobiology. He is also most notably the author of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge which argued for a unified view of evolution, genetics, social behavior and environmental protection. He was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Ants, co-authored with Bert Hölldobler. And he was awarded the Crafoord prize in 1990, the equivalent of the Nobel prize in the field of ecology.

Francis Crick born this day in 1916. Crick was co-discoverer of the structure of DNA in 1953 together with James D. Watson. He, Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Medicine. A fourth researcher, Rosalilnd Franklin, is also today recognized as making major research contributions. The significance of decoding DNA is difficult to overstate.

Ford Quadracycle first tested on this day in 1896. Although not the first horseless carriage built in the US or Europe, Ford would go on to dominate the auto industry by applying mass production techniques to serve the largest possible market.
In his biography, My Life and Work Ford talks about his “gasoline buggy,” although, like other automotive engineers of the era (including Kettering, Diesel and Ricardo), Ford advocated the use of renewable ethanol from farm crops and cellulose.

Thomas Savery demonstrates his steam engine to the British Royal Society on this day in 1699. The engine was used to pump water from mines, but would be improved in the 1700s by James Watt and become universally used in manufacturing, transportation and many other fields as part of the industrial revolution.

Sadi Carnot, a French engineer and physicist, was born this day in1796. He is known for the 1824 book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, which, despite the widespread use of steam engines by that time, was one of the first theoretical approaches to thermodynamics. Although some of his calculations were off base, Carnot’s basic contribution was to envision an ideal heat engine and provide a mathematical foundation for understanding its operation. Carnot’s work is also an example of science following and explaining technological innovation.

Daniel Fahrenheit, inventor of the mercury thermometer and the Fahrenheit temperature scale was born on this day in 1686 in Gdansk, Poland. He settled in the Netherlands and worked as an instrument glassblower, making barometers, altimeters, and thermometers. His Fahrenheit scale was developed around 1724 and was originally based on the freezing point of salt water, but was refined for ease of taking measurements. It has long since been replaced by the Celsius scale in all major countries except the United States.

Thomas Midgley Jr., inventor of leaded gasoline and ozone-depleting chemicals, is born this day in 1889. More than most engineers, Midgley’s legacy points to serious ethical issues engineers must face and the consequences of simply going along with corporate management. In the 1921 – 1925 period, while developing leaded gasoline, Midgley was also working on other octane-boosting fuel additives (especially alcohols but also reformates, carbonyls and aromatics). At an automotive engineers conference in 1921, he was particularly enthusiastic about ethanol as an octane – boosting additive for gasoline. But in 1924, General Motors, Standard Oil and du Pont — which had formed the Ethyl Corp. — preferred the poisonous leaded gasoline compound that maximized their profits. After at least 17 workers died violently insane from lead poisoning in refineries that year, debate broke out over its public health impacts, and public health experts such as Alice Hamilton of Harvard and Yandall Henderson of Yale stepped forward to challenge GM / Standard / DuPont / Ethyl (New Market). Midgley did not remain neutral; he openly lied and claimed that no alternatives existed. Midgley’s work in the 1930s on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants was in part an attempt to redeem himself because at the time, CFCs were inert substitutes for dangerous ammonia refrigerants; they were not known to contribute to ozone depletion until the 1970s. Midgley expressed remorse for the deaths of workers but disdain for public health “fanatics” during his lifetime, which was cut short by an apparent suicide in 1944.