Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 July 29

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Isidor Isaac Rabi in 1944

Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate. Born on 29 July 1898 into a traditional Jewish family in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, Rabi came to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York's Lower East Side. In collaboration with Gregory Breit, he developed the Breit-Rabi equation, and predicted that the Stern–Gerlach experiment could be modified to confirm the properties of the atomic nucleus. During World War II he worked on radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and on the Manhattan Project. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, used in spectroscopy and imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the US to work on the cavity magnetron, a key component in microwave radar and microwave ovens. After the war, he served on the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was its chairman from 1952 to 1956. He was Science Advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was involved in the creation of the Brookhaven National Laboratory (1947) and CERN (1954). (Full article...)

Did you know...

Black stork
Black stork
  • ... that the black stork (pictured) population has been declining for many years in Western Europe and the bird is no longer a summer visitor to Scandinavia?
  • ... that Robert Lee Burns, a reformed convict from Oregon, was the subject of an interstate extradition battle between Oregon and California?
  • ... that some inhabitants of the Colca Canyon believe their ancestors came from the Hualca Hualca volcano?
  • ... that Swedish singer Wille Crafoord launched the Hovturnén, an annual concert tour in Skåne, in which singers and performers travel by horseback between gigs?
  • ... that at 27 weeks, the longest running number-one song on the US Billboard Dance/Electronic Songs chart is "Closer" by The Chainsmokers, featuring Halsey?
  • ... that the tubeworm Eunice norvegica often grows in association with a deep water coral?
  • ... that the increased prominence of pizza in China had the secondary effect of introducing Chinese consumers to cheese as a culinary ingredient?
  • ... that in 1975, eight men stole $30 million from the Providence Mafia and associates in the Bonded Vault heist?

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Jordan Spieth at the AT&T Championship, February 2015
Jordan Spieth

On this day...

July 29

Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe

Francesco Mochi (b. 1580) · Philip Charles Durham (b. 1763) · Ronald Fisher (d. 1962)

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Today's featured picture

Simeis 147

Simeis 147, also known as the Spaghetti Nebula, is a supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way. Straddling the border between the constellations Auriga and Taurus, the nebula was discovered in 1952 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. It is difficult to observe due to its extremely low brightness.

Photograph: Rogelio Bernal Andreo

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