February 12 is Charles Darwin’s birthday (1809-1882) and this
year I celebrated drinking my morning coffee in a glass cup engraved with my
name and the occasion – Darwin Day 2007 where I gave a talk on Darwin at
Rutgers University. Darwin of course
provided massive evidence for evolution and proposed a mechanism, natural
selection by which environments selected among variations (later called
mutations) and over time this led to species divergence and change. February 15
is Galileo Galilei’s birthday (1581-1585).
We honor him for his telescopic support for the heliocentric model of
the solar system proposed by Copernicus.
His observations of the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the
sunspots on our sun, and the presence of mountains and craters on the moons made
modern astronomy possible. February 16
is the birthday of Hugo de Vries (1848-1935).
We honor him as a rediscoverer of Mendel’s laws on the transmission of hereditary
traits. He also stimulated interest in
mutations and attracted a new generation of geneticists to work in that field. February
19 is the birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) whose heliocentric model
of the solar system he first formulated as a privately circulated letter (the Commentariolus) and did not allow publication
of his larger book until he was near death for fear of the repercussions of his ideas
despite his being a priest. February 28
is the birthday of Linus Pauling (1901-1994) a noted chemist who received a
Nobel prize for his work on the chemical bond, his recognition and description
of sickle cell anemia as a “molecular disease,” and his activism to bring about
nuclear weapons testing restrictions (for which he added a second Nobel prize).
Scientists
of note are distributed across all twelve months. This is a particularly nice group of my
favorite scientists.
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