On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein was born, the son of
a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein’s
theories of special and general relativity drastically
altered human understanding of the universe, and his
work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb.
E = mc2
The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in
the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace
on December 10, 1901.
The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast
fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be
“annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during
the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”
Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the
prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret
over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.
First award ceremony at the Royal Swedish Academy of
Music.
Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel
(21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896)
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955)
Physicist Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity uprooted
centuries of settled science and laid the foundation for a new
era of achievement for mankind, was born to a prominent
Jewish family in Ulm, Germany, on this day in 1879.
Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his
services to theoretical physics, and especially for his
discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
On November 8, 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
(1845-1923) became 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.
Röntgen’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.
Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (above) (1845-1923) became 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 because of
their unknown nature.
One of the first X-ray photographs, taken by
Roentgen, showing his wife’s hand.
