Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/August

Selected anniversaries in August

January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December

August 1:

• 1744 - Birth of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French scientist (d. 1829)

• 1779 - Birth of Lorenz Oken, German naturalist (d. 1851)

• 1818 - Birth of Maria Mitchell, American astronomer (d. 1889)

• 1828 - Bolton and Leigh Railway opens to freight traffic

• 1885 - Birth of George de Hevesy, Hungarian chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1966)

• 1881 - Birth of Otto Toeplitz, German mathematician (d. 1940)

• 1889 - Birth of Walter Gerlach, German physicist (d. 1979)

• 1924 - Birth of Georges Charpak, Ukrainian-born physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1945 - Birth of Douglas D. Osheroff, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1967 - Death of Richard Kuhn, Austrian chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1900)

• 1996 - Death of Tadeus Reichstein, Polish chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1897)

• 2004 - Death of Philip Abelson American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1913)

August 2:

• 1788 - Birth of Leopold Gmelin, German chemist (d. 1853)

• 1790 - The first US Census is conducted

• 1823 - Death of Lazare Carnot, French general, politician, and mathematician (b. 1753)

• 1932 - The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson

• 1939 - Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon

August 3:

• 1917 - Death of Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, German mathematician (b. 1849)

• 1942 - Death of Richard Willstätter, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1872)

• 1958 - The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travels beneath the Arctic ice cap

• 1959 - Birth of Koichi Tanaka, Japanese scientist, Nobel laureate

August 4:

• 1693 - Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Pérignon's invention of Champagne

• 1719 - Birth of Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German mineralogist and geologist (d. 1767)

• 1805 - Birth of William Rowan Hamilton, Irish mathematician (d. 1865)

• 1834 - Birth of John Venn, English mathematician (d. 1923)

• 1906 - Birth of Eugen Schuhmacher, German zoologist (d. 1973)

• 1909 - Birth of Saunders Mac Lane, American mathematician (d. 2005)

• 1912 - Birth of Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, Russian mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and mountaineer (d. 1999)

• 2005 - Death of Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist (b. 1932)

August 5:

• 1802 - Birth of Niels Henrik Abel, Norwegian mathematician (d. 1829)

• 1866 - Birth of Carl Harries, German chemist (d. 1923)

• 1952 - Death of Sameera Moussa, Egyptian nuclear scientist (b. 1917)

• 1957 - Death of Heinrich Otto Wieland, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1877)

August 6:

• 1694 - Death of Antoine Arnauld, French philosopher and mathematician (b. 1612)

• 1753 - Death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann, Russian physicist (struck by lightning) (b. 1711)

• 1766 - Birth of William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist (d. 1828)

• 1845 - The Russian Geographical Society is founded in Saint Petersburg

• 1881 - Birth of Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1955)

• 1900 - Birth of Cecil H. Green, American geophysicist (d. 2003)

• 1979 - Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1911)

• 1991 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet

• 1998 - Death of André Weil, French mathematician (b. 1906)

August 7:

• 1639 - Death of Martin van den Hove, Dutch scientist (b. 1605)

• 1844 - Birth of Auguste Michel-Lévy, French geologist (d. 1911)

• 1848 - Death of Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (b. 1779)

• 1868 - Birth of Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, Russian mathematician (d. 1931)

• 1925 - Birth of M. S. Swaminathan, Indian scientist

• 1944 - IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I)

• 1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars

August 8:

• 1518 - Birth of Conrad Lycosthenes, French-born German humanist and encyclopedist (d. 1561)

• 1555 - Death of Oronce Finé, French mathematician (b. 1494)

• 1828 - Death of Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish naturalist (b. 1743)

• 1876 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph

• 1901 - Birth of Ernest O. Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)

• 1902 - Birth of Paul Dirac, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)

• 1911 - The millionth patent is filed in the United States Patent Office by Francis Holton for a tubeless vehicle tire

• 1921 - Birth of John Herbert Chapman, British physicist (d. 1979)

• 1931 - Birth of Sir Roger Penrose, British physicist

• 1968 - Jurō Wada successfully performs Japan's first heart transplant

• 1987 - Death of Danilo Blanuša, Croatian mathematician (b. 1903)

• 1996 - Death of Nevill Mott, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1905)

August 9:

• 1726 - Birth of Francesco Cetti, Italian Jesuit scientist (d. 1778)

• 1776 - Birth of Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (d. 1856)

• 1892 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph

• 1896 - Birth of Erich Hückel, German physicist (d. 1980)

• 1911 - Birth of William Alfred Fowler, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1996)

• 1969 - Death of Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1903)

• 2006 - Death of James van Allen, American physicist (b. 1914)

August 10:

• 1519 - Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe

• 1602 - Birth of Gilles de Roberval, French mathematician (d. 1675)

• 1675 - The foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London is laid

• 1802 - Death of Franz Aepinus, German scientist (b. 1724)

• 1839 - Birth of Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov, Russian physicist (d. 1896)

• 1846 - The Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the U.S. Congress after $500,000 was given for such a purpose by scientist James Smithson

• 1856 - Birth of William Willett, English inventor of Daylight Saving Time (d. 1915)

• 1902 - Birth of Arne Tiselius, Swedish chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1971)

• 1913 - Birth of Wolfgang Paul, German physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1993)

• 1915 - Death of Henry Moseley, English physicist (b. 1887)

• 1929 - Death of Pierre Fatou, French mathematician (b. 1878)

• 1979 - Death of Walter Gerlach, German physicist (b. 1889)

• 1990 - The Magellan space probe reaches Venus

August 11:

• 1464 - Death of Nicholas of Cusa, German philosopher and mathematician (b. 1401)

• 1578 - Death of Pedro Nunes, Portuguese mathematician (b. 1502)

• 1851 - Death of Lorenz Oken, German naturalist (b. 1779)

• 1854 - Death of Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist (b. 1798)

• 1905 - Birth of Erwin Chargaff, Austrian biochemist (d. 2002)

• 1912 - Birth of Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer (d. 1954)

• 1926 - Birth of Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-born chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate

• 1938 - Birth of Branko Stanovnik, Slovenian chemist

• 1956 - Birth of Pierre-Louis Lions, French mathematician

• 2003 - Death of Armand Borel, Swiss mathematician (b. 1923)

August 12:

• 1851 - Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine

• 1865 - Death of William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (b. 1785)

• 1877 - Asaph Hall discovers Deimos

• 1883 - The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam

• 1885 - Birth of Jean Cabannes, French physicist (d. 1959)

• 1887 - Birth of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1961)

• 1919 - Birth of Vikram Sarabhai, Indian physicist (d. 1971)

• 1925 - Birth of George Wetherill, American scientist (d. 2006)

• 1930 - Birth of Jacques Tits, Belgian mathematician

• 1935 - Death of Friedrich Schottky, German mathematician (b. 1851)

• 1953 - Nuclear testing: the Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of Joe 4, the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon

• 1955 - Death of James B. Sumner, American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1887)

• 1973 - Death of Karl Ziegler, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1898)

• 1979 - Death of Ernst Boris Chain, German-born biochemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1906)

• 1981 - The IBM Personal Computer is released

• 1989 - Death of William Shockley, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1910)

August 13:

• 1625 - Birth of Rasmus Bartholin, Danish physician, mathematician, and physicist (d. 1698)

• 1814 - Birth of Anders Jonas Ångström, Swedish physicist (d. 1874)

• 1819 - Birth of George Gabriel Stokes, Irish physicist (d. 1903)

• 1872 - Birth of Richard Willstätter, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1942)

• 1912 - Birth of Salvador Luria, Italian-born biologist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1991)

• 1913 - Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley

• 1917 - Death of Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1860)

• 1918 - Birth of Frederick Sanger, English chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate

• 2008 - Death of Henri Cartan,French mathematician (b. 1904)

August 14:

• 1777 - Birth of Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish physicist (d. 1851)

• 1856 - Death of Constant Prévost, French geologist (b. 1787)

• 1860 - Death of André Marie Constant Duméril, French zoologist (b. 1774)

• 1865 - Birth of Guido Castelnuovo, Italian mathematician (d. 1952)

• 1866 - Birth of Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, Belgian mathematician (d. 1962)

• 1885 - Japan's first patent is issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint

• 1933 - Birth of Richard R. Ernst, Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate

• 1941 - Death of Paul Sabatier, French chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1854)

• 1958 - Death of Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1900)

August 15:

• 1758 - Death of Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician (b. 1698)

• 1852 - Death of Johan Gadolin, Finnish scientist (b. 1760)

• 1863 - Birth of Alexei Krylov, Russian engineer and mathematician (d. 1945)

• 1892 - Birth of Louis, 7th duc de Broglie, French physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1987)

• 1893 - Birth of Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer (d. 1950)

• 1896 - Birth of Gerty Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1957)

• 1901 - Birth of Pyotr Novikov, Russian mathematician (d. 1975)

• 1953 - Death of Ludwig Prandtl, German physicist (b. 1875)

• 1977 - The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by The Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project

• 1982 - Death of Hugo Theorell, Swedish scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1903)

• 2004 - Death of Sune Bergström, Swedish biochemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1916)

August 16:

• 1650 - Birth of Vincenzo Coronelli, Italian cartographer and encyclopedist (d. 1718)

• 1705 - Death of Jakob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and scientist (b. 1654)

• 1836 - Death of Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician (b. 1755)

• 1842 - Birth of Jakob Rosanes, German mathematician (d. 1922)

• 1845 - Birth of Gabriel Lippmann, French physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1921)

• 1858 - U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal will force a shutdown of the service in a few weeks

• 1899 - Death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German chemist (b. 1811)

• 1904 - Birth of Wendell Meredith Stanley, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1971)

• 1907 - Death of James Hector, Scottish geologist (b. 1834)

• 1957 - Death of Irving Langmuir, American chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1881)

• 1973 - Death of Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-born biochemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1888)

• 1989 - A solar flare from the Sun creates a geomagnetic storm that affects micro chips, leading to a halt of all trading on Toronto's stock market

August 17:

• 1601 - Birth of Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (d. 1665)

• 1673 - Death of Regnier de Graaf, Dutch physician and anatomist (b. 1641)

• 1863 - Birth of Gene Stratton-Porter, American author and naturalist (d. 1924)

• 1969 - Death of Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1888)

• 1970 - Venera Program: Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus)

• 1993 - Death of Feng Kang, Chinese mathematician (b. 1920)

• 2004 - MD5 collision found by Chinese researchers

• 2005 - Death of John Bahcall, American astrophysicist (b. 1934)

August 18:

• 1685 - Birth of Brook Taylor, English mathematician (d. 1731)

• 1868 - French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen discovers helium

• 1902 - Birth of Margaret Murie, American conservationist, naturalist, and author (d. 2003)

• 1955 - Birth of Taher ElGamal, Egyptian scientist

• 2001 - Death of David Peakall, British scientist (b. 1931)

August 19:

• 1646 - Birth of John Flamsteed, English astronomer (d. 1719)

• 1662 - Death of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher (b. 1623)

• 1822 - Death of Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, French mathematician (b. 1749)

• 1913 - Birth of John Argyris, Greek aeronautical engineer, one of the creators of the Finite Element Method (d. 2004)

• 1950 - Death of Giovanni Giorgi, Italian physicist (b. 1871)

• 1968 - Death of George Gamow, Ukrainian-born physicist (b. 1904)

• 1994 - Death of Linus Pauling, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Peace (b. 1901)

August 20:

• 1710 - Birth of Thomas Simpson, British mathematician (d. 1761)

• 1779 - Birth of Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d. 1848)

• 1858 - Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory

• 1913 - Birth of Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1994)

• 1915 - Death of Paul Ehrlich, German scientist, Nobel laureate (b. 1854)

• 1917 - Death of Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1835)

• 1936 - Birth of Hideki Shirakawa, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1961 - Death of Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1882)

• 1963 - Death of Joan Voûte, Dutch astronomer (b. 1879)

• 1997 - Death of Norris Bradbury, American physicist (b. 1909)

August 21:

• 1660 - Birth of Hubert Gautier, French scientist and civil engineer (d. 1737)

• 1665 - Birth of Giacomo F. Maraldi, French-Italian astronomer (d. 1729)

• 1789 - Birth of Augustin-Louis Cauchy, French mathematician (d. 1857)

• 1813 - Birth of Jean Stas, Belgian chemist (d. 1891)

• 1814 - Death of Benjamin Thompson, American physicist and inventor (b. 1753)

• 1816 - Birth of Charles Frédéric Gerhardt, French chemist (d. 1856)

• 1826 - Birth of Carl Gegenbaur, German anatomist (d. 1903)

• 1836 - Death of Claude-Louis Navier, French physicist (b. 1785)

• 1888 - The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs

• 1909 - Birth of Nikolay Bogolyubov, Russian mathematician (d. 1992)

• 1951 - Birth of Eric Goles, Chilean mathematician and computer scientist

• 1957 - Death of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, Norwegian meteorologist and oceanographer (b. 1888)

• 1995 - Death of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-born astrophysicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1910)

August 22:

• 1647 - Birth of Denis Papin, French physicist and inventor (d. c. 1712)

• 1752 - Death of William Whiston, English mathematician (b. 1667)

• 1828 - Death of Franz Joseph Gall, Austrian neuroscientist (b. 1758)

• 1834 - Birth of Samuel Pierpont Langley, American astronomer (d. 1906)

• 1867 - Birth of Maximilian Bircher-Benner, Swiss physician and nutritionist (d. 1939)

• 1913 - Birth of Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian physicist (d. 1993)

• 1918 - Death of Korbinian Brodmann, German neurologist (b. 1868)

• 1940 - Death of Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, English physicist (b. 1851)

• 1974 - Death of Jacob Bronowski, Polish-English mathematician & TV presenter (b. 1908)

August 23:

• 1623 - Birth of Stanisław Lubieniecki, Polish astronomer (d. 1675)

• 1769 - Birth of Georges Cuvier, French biologist and statesman (d. 1832)

• 1806 - Death of Charles Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist (b. 1736)

• 1813 - Death of Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born ornithologist (b. 1766)

• 1829 - Birth of Moritz Cantor, German mathematician (d. 1920)

• 1847 - Birth of Sarah Frances Whiting, American physicist and astronomer (d. 1927)

• 1904 - The automobile tire chain is patented

• 1931 - Birth of Hamilton O. Smith, American microbiologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

• 1933 - Birth of Robert Curl, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1956 - Birth of Andreas Floer, German mathematician (d. 1991)

• 1966 - Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon

• 1982 - Death of Stanford Moore, American biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)

• 1997 - Death of John Kendrew, British molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1917)

August 24:

• AD 79 - Death of Pliny the Elder, Roman writer and naturalist (b. 23)

• 1595 - Death of Thomas Digges, English astronomer (b. 1546)

• 1664 - Death of Maria Cunitz, Silesian astronomer (b. c.1610)

• 1787 - Birth of James Weddell, English explorer of Antarctica (d. 1834)

• 1831 - Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle

• 1832 - Death of Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, French mathematician (b. 1796)

• 1888 - Death of Rudolf Clausius, German physicist (b. 1822)

• 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera

• 1899 - Birth of Albert Claude, Belgian biologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1983)

• 2006 - The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a dwarf planet

August 25:

• 1561 - Birth of Philippe van Lansberge, Dutch astronomer (d. 1632)

• 1609 - Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers

• 1822 - Death of William Herschel, German-born astronomer (b. 1738)

• 1867 - Death of Michael Faraday, English scientist (b. 1791)

• 1898 - Birth of Helmut Hasse, German mathematician (d. 1975)

• 1900 - Birth of Hans Adolf Krebs, German physician and biochemist; Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)

• 1908 - Death of Henri Becquerel, French physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1852)

• 1928 - Birth of Herbert Kroemer, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

• 1956 - Death of Alfred Kinsey, American research biologist (b. 1894)

• 1964 - Birth of Maxim Kontsevich, Russian mathematician

August 26:

• 1723 - Death of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch scientist (b. 1632)

• 1728 - Birth of Johann Heinrich Lambert, German scientist (d. 1777)

• 1736 - Birth of Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Isle, French chemist (d. 1790)

• 1743 - Birth of Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist (d. 1794)

• 1858 - First news dispatch by telegraph

• 1865 - Death of Johann Franz Encke, German astronomer (b. 1791)

• 1987 - Death of Georg Wittig, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1897)

• 1998 - Death of Frederick Reines, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)

• 2000 - Death of Akbar Adibi, Iranian scientist (b. 1939)

August 27:

• 1858 - Birth of Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician (d. 1932)

• 1874 - Birth of Carl Bosch, German chemist Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)

• 1915 - Birth of Norman F. Ramsey, American physicist Nobel Prize laureate

• 1926 - Birth of Kristen Nygaard, Norwegian mathematician (d. 2002)

• 1958 - Death of Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)

August 28:

• 1749 - Birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and scientist (d. 1832)

• 1789 - William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn

• 1801 - Birth of Antoine Augustin Cournot, French mathematician (d. 1877)

• 1839 - Death of William Smith, English geologist (b. 1769)

• 1859 - A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as far afield as Japan

• 1878 - Birth of George Whipple, American scientist and Nobel laureate (d. 1976)

• 1908 - Birth of Roger Tory Peterson, American ornithologist (d. 1996)

• 1965 - Death of Giulio Racah, Israeli physicist (b. 1909)

• 2005 - Death of Esther Szekeres, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1910)

• 2005 - Death of George Szekeres, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1911)

• 2006 - Death of Melvin Schwartz, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1932)

August 29:

• 1756 - Birth of Jan Śniadecki, Polish mathematician (d. 1830)

• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle

• 1949 - Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan

• 1982 - The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany

• 1989 - Death of Peter Scott, English explorer, naturalist, and painter (b. 1909)

August 30:

• 1751 - Death of Christopher Polhem, Swedish scientist and inventor (b. 1661)

• 1852 - Birth of Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch physical and organic chemist Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)

• 1856 - Birth of Carle David Tolmé Runge, German physicist (d. 1927)

• 1871 - Birth of Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-born Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate (d. 1937)

• 1884 - Birth of Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)

• 1912 - Birth of Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)

• 1928 - Death of Wilhelm Wien, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)

• 1940 - Death of J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)

• 1941 - Death of Peder Oluf Pedersen, Danish engineer and physicist (b. 1874)

August 31:

• 1663 - Birth of Guillaume Amontons, French physicist and instrument maker (d. 1705)

• 1772 - Death of William Borlase, English naturalist (b. 1695)

• 1869 - Death of Mary Ward, Irish scientist, first automobile accident victim (b. 1827)

• 1897 - Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector

• 1949 - Birth of H. David Politzer, American physicist, Nobel laureate

• 1985 - Death of Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australian biologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1899)

• 2002 - Death of George Porter, English chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1920)

• 2005 - Death of Joseph Rotblat, Polish-British physicist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1908)