1st NovemberToday in 1899 Sir Gavin de
Beer an English zoologist and morphologist was born. He developed the concept of
paedomorphism (the retention of juvenile characteristics of ancestors in mature adults) which helped to explain the sudden changes in the fossil
record which were apparently at odds with Darwin's
gradualist theory of evolution.
2nd NovemberToday in 1955 American investigators
Carlton Schwerdt and F.L. Schaffer crystallised the polio virus. Each virus
crystal is composed of many thousands of virus particles. Virus
preparations pure enough to crystallise usually provide the best
material for chemical studies. This was used to split the polio virus into
infectious and non-infectious parts. Their research laid the groundwork for
the polio vaccine.
3rd NovemberToday in 1664 Robert Hooke’s
‘Micrographia’ was published. It contained spectacular
copperplate engravings of the miniature world. The text
reinforced the power of the new microscope. Hooke famously
describes a plant cell (coining the term for the first time. As they
reminded him of walled Monk’s quarters).
4th NovemberToday marks the death
of the American Physician Howard A. Rusk in 1989. He is considered to be the
founder of rehabilitative medicine,
which he established through efforts to
rehabilitate wounded soldiers during and
5th NovemberToday marks the death of the French scientist Alexis Carrel died in 1944. He received the
1912 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine developing a method of suturing blood vessels.
Techniques developed by Carrel have made possible the
surgical transplantation of blood vessels and body
6th NovemberToday in 1956, the British
colonial government in Rhodesia began the construction of the Kariba High Dam across the
Zambezi river between North and South Rhodesia (now Zambia and
Zimbabwe). Completed in June 1959, it was the largest dam of its time and provides electricity to the region. During construction "Operation Noah" ensured the rescue of over 5,000 animals
comprising 35 different mammal species and thousands of reptiles.
7th November
Today marks the death of the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz in 1903. He was the founder of modern ethnology (the study of animal behaviour by means of
comparative zoological methods). He was known affectionately by his pupils as the "father of the grey geese" which he studied. His ideas revealed how
behavioural patterns may be traced to an evolutionary past, and he was also known for his work on the roots of aggression. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, for developing a unified, evolutionary theory of
animal and human behaviour.
8th NovemberOn this day in 1895, physicist Wilhelm
Conrad Rontgen becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific
advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all
medicine, by making the invisible visible. Rontgen's discovery occurred
accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether
cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He
dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.
9th November
On this day in 1864 the Russian microbiologist Dimitri Iosifovich
Ivanovsky who, from his study of mosaic disease in tobacco, first reported the
characteristics of the organisms that were later called viruses. Ivanovsky had been
commissioned in 1890 to study a mysterious disease that was killing tobacco crops in the Crimea. He
determined that some agent in sap could transfer disease from plant to plant.
Through detailed filtering and microscope work, he concluded that some invisible parasite, much smaller than any known bacterium, was the culprit. In fact, his super-small bacterium was a new life
form - the virus.
10th November
Today marks the death of the Swiss cardiologist Wilhelm His in 1934. He fully described a group of modified muscle fibres (known as the bundle
of His) forming part of the impulse-conducting system of the heart. It runs as a single bundle from the atrioventricular node (between the atria and ventricles) then branches into pathways to the right and left ventricles. It relays an electrical impulse, establishing a single rhythm of contraction
through the heart. He was among the first to recognise that the heartbeat originates in the individual cells of heart muscle.
11th November
Today in 1938 Typhoid Mary died. Mary Mallon was the famous typhoid carrier in the New York City area in the early 20th century. Fifty-one
original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attributed), although she herself was immune to the typhoid bacillus (Salmonella typhi). The outbreak of
Typhus in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1904 puzzled the scientists of the time because they thought they had wiped out the deadly disease.
Mallon's case showed that a person could be a carrier without showing any outward signs of being sick.
12th NovemberToday in 1935 the first modern surgery on the frontal lobes for
treatment of mental disorders was performed by Egas Moniz at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Moniz injected absolute alcohol into the frontal lobes of a mental patient through two holes drilled in the skull. Moniz later used a
technique that severed neurones and led to the prefrontal lobotomy
techniques of the 1940s. Moniz was later awarded a Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine for 1949.
13th November
Today in 1893 the American biochemist Edward A. Doisy was born. He shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Henrik
Dam) for his isolation and synthesis of vitamin K, a substance that encourages blood clotting used
in medicine and surgery.
14th NovemberToday in 1666 the English physician, Samuel Pepys, made an record in his diary describing Richard Lower making the first documented blood transfusion. "Dr. Croone told me ... there was a pretty experiment of the blood of one dog let out, till he had died, into the body of another on
one side, while all his own run out on the other side. The first died upon the place, and the other very well and likely to do well. This did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop and such like; but, as Dr. Croon says, may, if it
takes, be of mighty use to man's health, for the amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body."
15th NovemberToday marks the death of the American biochemist Elmer McCollumin in 1967. He originated the letter system of naming vitamins. He discovered
vitamins A, B and worked with others on vitamin D. He performed extensive research work in nutrition and growth. In the 1910's, he
recognised that a healthy diet required certain fats, and he named the essential component "fat-soluble A," as distinct from another he named
"water-soluble B." Although at first he thought each was a single compound, he later showed that they were in fact complexes. He
researched how certain minerals were as important as nutrients, including calcium, phosphorus, fluorine, manganese and zinc.
16th NovemberToday marks the death of in
the Austrian physiologist Maximilian Ruppert Franz
von Frey in 1852. He studied the sense of touch,
providing the first comprehensive information about the cutaneous senses. He confirmed the existence of locations for heat, cold,
pressure, and pain reception. He is credited with developing an early prototype of a heart-lung
17th NovemberToday marks the death of the American zoologist Raymond Pearl in 1940. He was one of the founders of biometry, the application of statistics to biology
and medicine. He pioneered studies in longevity, changes in world population, and genetics. He reported in the May
1938 Scientific American that "the smoking of tobacco was associated definitely with an impairment of life
duration and the amount or degree of this impairment increased as the
habitual amount of smoking increased." In 1926, he first reported health benefits
of moderate alcohol consumption (as opposed to both abstinence and heavy drinking) in a modern medical light.
18th NovemberNobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling declared on this day in 1970 that large doses of
Vitamin C could ward off the common cold. He proposed that regular intake of vitamin C in amounts far higher than the officially sanctioned RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) could help prevent and shorten the duration of the common cold.
He concluded that the optimal daily intake of vitamin C for most people is 2.3 grams to 10 grams daily. Although the medical establishment immediately voiced
their strong opposition to this idea, many ordinary people believed Dr. Pauling and began taking large amounts of vitamin C. He wrote a book on the subject Vitamin C
and the Common Cold which became a best-seller..
19th NovemberToday marks the death of the American pharmacologist and biochemist Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. in 1915. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 for isolating cyclic adenosine mono-phosphate (cyclic AMP) and demonstrating its
involvement in numerous metabolic processes that occur in animals.
20th November
Today marks the death of James Bertram Collip
the Canadian biochemist in 1892. He co-discovered insulin.
Working with the bovine pancreas, Collip produced insulin in a form which permitted
clinical use.
21st November
Today marks the death of the American geneticist Alfred Henry Sturtevant in 1970. In 1913 developed a technique for mapping the location of specific genes of the chromosomes in the fruit fly Drosophila. Sturtevant's method for "chromosome mapping", relies on the analysis of groups of linked genes. In a classic paper in
genetics (1913), he described the location of six sex-linked genes as deduced by the way in which they associate with each other. Sturtevant later discovered the so-called 'position effect', in which the expression of a gene depends on its position in
relation to other genes. He also demonstrated that crossing over between chromosomes is prevented in regions where a part of the chromosome material is
inserted the wrong way round.
22nd NovemberToday in 1917 the
English physiologist and biophysicist Sir Andrew
Fielding Huxley was born. He who was a co-winner the 1963 Nobel
Peace Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alan Hodgkin in
elucidating the chemical phenomena-
the ‘sodium pump’ mechanism-by which
nerve impulses are transmitted.
23rd NovemberToday in 1553 the Italian physician and botanist Prospero Alpini was
born. He is credited with the introduction to Europe of coffee and
bananas. He made an extensive study of Egyptian and Mediterranean flora. He spent three years in Egypt,
and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of
the Linnaean system.
24th November
Today in 1859 Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ was released. It sold out the same day. The word 'evolution' is used for the first time only in the
sixth edition of the book. The term 'descent with modification' is the forerunner for evolution.
25th NovemberToday marks the death of Nikolai Vavilov the Russian plant geneticist in 1887. He devoted his life to the study and and improvement of wheat, corn and other cereal crops that sustain the global population. While
developing his theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organised a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collected seeds from every corner of the globe, and created in Leningrad the world's
largest collection of plant seeds. This seed-bank was diligently preserved even throughout the 28-month Siege of Leningrad. Despite starvation,
one of Nikolai's assistants starved to death surrounded by edible seeds.
26th November
Today in 1937 the Soviet physician Boris Borisovich
Yegorov was born. He travelled on Voskhod 1 ("Sunrise 1"),
12-13 Oct 1964 the first space flight with a crew of more than one man. He was an expert in
the sense-of-balance mechanism of the inner ear. He collected medical information,
including the effects of radiation, confinement and weightlessness on the crew.
27th November
Today in 2005 the first partial face transplant
was carried out in Amiens, France. In the
controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries
and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor
and attached to the patient's lower face.
28th NovemberToday in 1876 the the
Prussian-Estonian embryologist who discovered
the mammalian egg and notochord was born. He
showed that mammalian eggs were not the follicles of the
ovary but microscopic particles inside the follicles.
He described the development of the embryo
from layers of tissue, which he called germ layers, and
demonstrated similarities in the embryos of different species of vertebrates.
29th NovemberToday in 1627 the English
naturalist John Ray sometimes referred to as the
father of English Natural history died. He contributed significantly to progress in
taxonomy and was the first to classify flowering plants into
monocotyledons and dicotyledons. Ray
established the species as the basic taxonomic unit - his enduring legacy to botany.
30th NovemberToday marks the death of
the German botanist Nathanael Pringsheim in 1893. He was one of the founders of the science
of algology (study of algae).He made
important discoveries in the morphology and physiology of plants,
especially in the fields of reproduction and
evolution.