Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/January

1888 - The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time

1927 - Death of Carle David Tolmé Runge, German physicist (b. 1856)

1957 - The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch

1969 - Death of Jean Focas, Greco-French astronomer (b. 1909)

1989 - Death of Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, Russian mathematician (b. 1909)

January 4:

1493 - Christopher Columbus leaves the New World, ending his first journey

1643 - Birth of Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and natural philosopher (d. 1727)

1752 - Death of Gabriel Cramer, Swiss mathematician (b. 1704)

1761 - Death of Stephen Hales, English physiologist (b. 1677)

1813 - Birth of Isaac Pitman, English inventor (Pitman shorthand) (d. 1897)

1882 - Death of John William Draper, English scientist, photographer (b. 1811)

1940 - Birth of Brian Josephson, Welsh physicist, Nobel laureate

1945 - Birth of Richard R. Schrock, American chemist, Nobel laureate

1961 - Death of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1887)

1990 - Death of Harold Edgerton, American electrical engineer (b. 1903)

2005 - Death of Frank Harary, American mathematician (b. 1921)

January 5:

1587 - Birth of Xu Xiake, Chinese geographer (d. 1641)

1838 - Birth of Camille Jordan, French mathematician (d. 1922)

1865 - Birth of Julio Garavito Armero, Colombian astronomer (d. 1920)

1896 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays

1909 - Birth of Stephen Kleene, American mathematician (d. 1994)

1924 - Birth of Dr Gilbert Bogle, Australian scientist who died in the Bogle-Chandler case (1963)

1940 - Birth of Yuri Ershov, Russian mathematician

1970 - Death of Max Born, German physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1882)

1981 - Death of Harold C. Urey, American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1893)

2005 - Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory

2007 - Death of Chih Ree Sun, Chinese-American physicist and poet (b. 1923)

January 6:

1561 - Birth of Thomas Fincke, Danish mathematician (d. 1656)

1655 - Birth of Jakob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1705)

1689 - Death of Seth Ward, English mathematician and astronomer (b. 1617)

1731 - Death of Étienne François Geoffroy, French chemist (b. 1672)

1795 - Birth of Anselme Payen, French chemist (d. 1871)

1838 - Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electrical telegraph

1884 - Death of Gregor Johann Mendel, Austrian geneticist (b. 1822)

1885 - Death of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Norwegian writer and scientist (b. 1812)

1907 - Birth of David Fleay, Australian naturalist (d. 1993)

1918 - Death of Georg Cantor, German mathematician (b. 1845)

1920 - Birth of John Maynard Smith, English biologist (d. 2004)

1931 - Thomas Edison submits his last patent application

1932 - Birth of Stuart A. Rice, American chemist

1945 - Death of Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian mineralogist (b. 1863)

1980 - The beginning of the first GPS epoch

1990 - Death of Pavel Alekseyevich Čerenkov, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)

January 7:

1610 - Galileo Galilei observes the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time. He named them and in turn the four are called the Galilean moons

1834 - Birth of Johann Philipp Reis, German physicist and inventor (d. 1874)
1871 - Birth of Émile Borel, French mathematician and politician (d. 1956)
1878 - Death of François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist (b. 1794)
1893 - Death of Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist and mathematician (b. 1835)
1894 - W. K. Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film
1925 - Birth of Gerald Durrell, British naturalist (d. 1995)
1927 - First transatlantic telephone call – New York City to London
1941 - Birth of John E. Walker, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1954 - Georgetown–IBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM
1998 - Death of Vladimir Prelog, Croatian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)

January 8:

1587 - Birth of Johannes Fabricius, German astronomer (d. 1616)

1642 - Death of Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and scientist (b. 1564)

1823 - Birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, British naturalist and biologist (d. 1913)

1838 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code)

1888 - Birth of Richard Courant, German-American mathematician (d. 1972)

1891 - Birth of Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate (d. 1957)

1903 - Birth of Igor Kurchatov, Russian physicist (d. 1960)

1945 - Death of Karl Krafft, Swiss astrologer (b. 1900)

1980 - Death of John Mauchly, American physicist (b. 1907)

January 9:

1757 - Death of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientist and man of letters (b. 1657)

1757 - Death of Louis Bertrand Castel, French mathematician (b. 1688)

1799 - Death of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian scientist (b. 1718)

1816 - Sir Humphry Davy tests the Davy lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery

1839 - The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process

1848 - Death of Caroline Herschel, German-born astronomer (b. 1750)

1864 - Birth of Vladimir Steklov, Russian mathematician (d. 1926)

1868 - Birth of S. P. L. Sørensen, Danish chemist (d. 1939)

1894 - New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts

1918 - Death of Émile Reynaud, French scientist (b. 1844)

1922 - Death of Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel laureate

1923 - Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight

1975 - Death of Pyotr Novikov, Russian mathematician (b. 1901)

1998 - Death of Kenichi Fukui, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate (b. 1918)

January 10:

1573 - Birth of Simon Marius, German astronomer (d. 1624)

1638 - Birth of Nicolas Steno, Danish geologist (d. 1686)

1654 - Death of Nicholas Culpeper, English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer (b. 1616)

1729 - Birth of Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist (d. 1799)

1778 - Death of Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist (b. 1707)

1833 - Death of Adrien-Marie Legendre, French mathematician (b. 1752)

1890 - Birth of Grigory Landsberg, Russian physicist (d. 1957)

1898 - Birth of Katharine Blodgett, American Scientist and inventor (d. 1979)

1916 - Birth of Sune Bergström, Swedish biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2004)

1936 - Birth of Robert Woodrow Wilson, American physicist and radio astronomer, Nobel laureate

1938 - Birth of Donald Knuth, American mathematician and computer scientist

1949 - Death of Erich von Drygalski, German geographer, geophysicist, and polar scientist (b. 1865)

1951 - Death of Yoshio Nishina, Japanese physicist (b. 1890)

1962 - Apollo Project: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket booster. It became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, which launched every Apollo moon mission

1997 - Death of Alexander R. Todd, Scottish chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1907)

January 11:

1757 - Birth of Samuel Bentham, English mechanical engineer (d. 1831)
1787 - William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus
1788 - Birth of William Thomas Brande, English chemist (d. 1866)
1800 - Birth of Ányos Jedlik, Hungarian physicist (d. 1895)
1839 - Birth of Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Puerto Rican educator, philosopher and nationalist (d. 1903)
1845 - Birth of Albert Victor Bäcklund, Swedish physicist (d. 1912)
1850 - Birth of Joseph Charles Arthur, American botanist (d. 1942)
1872 - Birth of George Washington Pierce, American physicist (d. 1956)
1882 - Death of Theodor Schwann, German physiologist (b. 1810)
1887 - Birth of Aldo Leopold, American ecologist (d. 1948)
1906 - Birth of Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist (d. 2008)
1924 - Birth of Roger Guillemin, French neuroendocrinologist, Nobel laureate
1968 - Death of Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898)
1991 - Death of Carl David Anderson, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1905)

January 12:

1577 - Birth of Jan Baptist van Helmont, Flemish chemist (d. 1644)
1665 - Death of Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician and lawyer (b. 1601)
1792 - Birth of Johan August Arfwedson, Swedish chemist (d. 1841)
1808 - The organizational meeting that led to the creation of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is held in Edinburgh
1895 - The National Trust is founded in Britain
1899 - Birth of Paul Hermann Müller, Swiss chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1965)
1903 - Birth of Igor Kurchatov, Russian physicist (d. 1960)
1909 - Death of Hermann Minkowski, German mathematician (b. 1864)
1949 - Birth of Michael W. Vannier, American radiologist
1967 - Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation
1996 - Death of Joachim Nitsche, German mathematician (b. 1926)
2003 - Death of Alan Nunn May, English physicist and Soviet spy (b. 1911)
2004 - Death of Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Russian mathematician (b. 1921)
2007 - Comet McNaught reaches perihelion becoming the brightest comet in more than 40 years

January 13:

1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, 4th moon of Jupiter

1796 - Death of John H. D. Anderson, Scottish scientist and inventor (b. 1726)

1845 - Birth of Félix Tisserand, French Astronomer (d. 1896)

1858 - Birth of Oskar Minkowski, Biologist (d. 1931)

1861 - Birth of Max Nonne, German neurologist (d. 1959)

1864 - Birth of Wilhelm Wien, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)

1870 - Birth of Ross Granville Harrison, American biologist (d. 1959

1906 - Death of Alexander Popov, Russian physicist (b. 1859)

1924 - Death of Georg Hermann Quincke, German physicist (b. 1834)

1934 - The Candidate of Science degree is established in the USSR

1934 - Death of Paul Ulrich Villard, French physicist (b. 1860)

1938 - The Church of England accepts the theory of evolution

January 14:

1679 - Death of Jacques de Billy, French mathematician (b. 1602)

1684 - Birth of Johann Matthias Hase, German scientist (d. 1742)

1742 - Death of Edmond Halley, English scientist (b. 1656)

1898 - Death of Lewis Carroll, English writer and mathematician (b. 1832)

1901 - Death of Charles Hermite, French mathematician (b. 1822)

1905 - Death of Ernst Abbe, German physicist (b. 1840)

1966 - Death of Sergei Korolev, Russian rocket scientist (b. 1906)

1970 - Death of William Feller, Croatian mathematician (b. 1906)

1978 - Death of Kurt Gödel, Austrian mathematician (b. 1906)

1998 - Researchers in Dallas, Texas present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis)

2001 - Death of Burkhard Heim, German physicist (b. 1925)

January 15:

1623 - Death of Fra Paolo Sarpi, Italian patriot, scholar, scientist and church reformer (b. 1552)

1759 - The British Museum opens

1790 - Death of John Landen, English mathematician (b. 1719)

1804 - Death of Dru Drury, English entomologist (b. 1725)

1850 - Birth of Sofia Kovalevskaya, Russian mathematician (d. 1891)

1895 - Birth of Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1973)

1908 - Birth of Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist (d. 2003)

1973 - Death of Ivan Petrovsky, Russian mathematician (b. 1901)

2005 - ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon

2007 - Death of James Hillier, Canadian inventor of electron microscope (b. 1915)

January 16:

1477 - Birth of Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (d. 1547)

1547 - Death of Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (b. 1477)

1554 - Death of Christiern Pedersen, Danish humanist (b. 1480)

1834 - Death of Jean Nicolas Pierre Hachette, French mathematician (b. 1769)

1856 - Death of Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist (b. 1795)

1875 - Birth of Leonor Michaelis, German enzyme kinetic theorist (d. 1947)

1909 - Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole

1932 - Birth of Dian Fossey, American zoologist (d. 1985)

1967 - Death of Robert J. Van de Graaff, American nuclear physicist (b. 1901)

2002 - Death of Robert Hanbury Brown, British-Australian astronomer and physicist (b. 1916)

January 17:

1501 - Birth of Leonhart Fuchs, German physician and botanist (d. 1566)

1524 - Beginning of Giovanni da Verrazzano's voyage to find a passage to China

1560 - Birth of Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist (d. 1624)

1666 - Birth of Antonio Maria Valsalva, Italian anatomist (d. 1723)

1705 - Death of John Ray, English naturalist (b. 1627)

1834 - Birth of August Weismann, German biologist (d. 1914)

1834 - Death of Giovanni Aldini, Italian physicist (b. 1762)

1881 - Birth of Antoni Łomnicki, Polish mathematician (d. 1941)

1911 - Sir Francis Galton, English polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist (b. 1822)

1997 - Death of Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer (b. 1906)

2005 - Death of Albert Schatz, American microbiologist (b. 1920)

January 18:

1878 - Death of Antoine César Becquerel, French physicist (b. 1788)

1896 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time

1901 - Birth of Ivan Petrovsky, Russian mathematician (d. 1973)

1908 - Birth of Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born mathematician, poet, and physicist (d. 1974)

1916 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri

1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease

1995 - Death of Adolf Butenandt, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1903)

2000 - The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth

January 19:

1833 - Birth of Alfred Clebsch, German mathematician (d. 1872)

1851 - Birth of Jacobus Kapteyn, Dutch astronomer (d. 1922)

1869 - Death of Carl Reichenbach, German chemist and philosopher (b. 1788)

1878 - Death of Henri Victor Regnault French physicist and chemist (b. 1810)

1883 - The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey

1908 - Birth of Aleksandr Gennadievich Kurosh, Russian mathematician (d. 1971)

1915 - Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising

1954 - Death of Theodor Kaluza, German scientist (b. 1885)

January 20:

1775 - Birth of André-Marie Ampère, French physicist (d. 1836)

1812 - Birth of Thomas Meik, Scottish engineer (d. 1896)

1910 - Birth of Joy Adamson, Austrian naturalist and writer (d. 1980)

1931 - Birth of David Lee, American physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate

1948 - Birth of Natan Sharansky, Russian-born physicist and politician

2005 - Death of Miriam Louisa Rothschild, British zoologist, entomologist, and author (b. 1908)

January 21:

1814 - Death of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, French writer and botanist (b. 1737)

1827 - Birth of Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin, Russian mathematician (d. 1900)

1882 - Birth of Pavel Florensky, Russian mathematician (d. 1937)

1912 - Birth of Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2000)

1954 - The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States

1969 - An experimental underground nuclear reactor at Lucens Vad, Switzerland, released radiation into a cavern, which was then sealed

January 22:

1561 - Birth of Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher (d. 1626)

1592 - Birth of Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist (d. 1655)

1767 - Death of Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German minterologist and geologist (b. 1719)

1796 - Birth of Karl Claus, Russian chemist (d. 1864)

1903 - Birth of Fritz Houtermans, Polish physicist (d. 1966)

1908 - Birth of Lev Landau, Soviet physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1968)

1922 - Death of Camille Jordan, French mathematician (b. 1838)

1936 - Birth of Alan J. Heeger, American chemist, Nobel laureate

January 23:

1719 - Birth of John Landen, English mathematician (d. 1790)

1745 - Birth of William Jessop, English canal engineer (d. 1814)

1785 - Death of Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician (b. 1717)

1805 - Death of Claude Chappe, French telecommunications pioneer (b. 1763)

1810 - Death of Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German chemist and physicist (b. 1776)
1840 - Birth of Ernst Abbe, German physicist (d. 1905)

1857 - Birth of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist (d. 1936)

1862 - Birth of David Hilbert, German mathematician (d. 1943)

1872 - Birth of Paul Langevin, French physicist (d. 1946)

1876 - Birth of Otto Diels, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1954)

1907 - Birth of Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1981)

1918 - Birth of Gertrude B. Elion, American scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1999)

1919 - Birth of Hans Hass, Austrian zoologist and underwater scientist

1929 - Birth of John Charles Polanyi, Canadian chemist, Nobel laureate

1937 - Death of Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist (b. 1876)

1960 - The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet)in the Pacific Ocean

1971 - Death of Fritz Feigl, Austria-born chemist (b. 1871)

1988 - Death of Charles Glen King, American biochemist (b. 1896)

January 24:

1877 - Death of Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist (b. 1796)

1918 - The Gregorian calendar introduced in Russia by decree of the Council of People's Commissars effective from February 14(NS)

1966 - Death of Homi J. Bhabha, Indian physicist (b. 1909)

1988 - Death of Werner Fenchel, German mathematician (b. 1905)

January 25:

1627 - Birth of Robert Boyle, Irish chemist (d. 1691)

1726 - Death of Guillaume Delisle, French cartographer (b. 1675)

1736 - Birth of Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Italian-born mathematician (d. 1813)

1794 - Birth of François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist (d. 1878)

1796 - Birth of William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (d. 1852)

1881 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company

1900 - Birth of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian-American geneticist and biologist (d. 1975)

1917 - Birth of Ilya Prigogine, Russian scientist Nobel Laureate (d. 2003)

1957 - Death of Kiyoshi Shiga, Japanese physician and bacteriologist (b. 1871)

1994 - Death of Stephen Cole Kleene, American mathematician (b. 1909)

2006 - Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star

January 26:

1630 - Death of Henry Briggs, English mathematician (b. 1556)

1697 - Death of Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician (b. 1640

1904 - Birth of Ancel Keys, American scientist (d. 2004)

1911 - Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful seaplane

1911 - Birth of Polykarp Kusch, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1993)

1942 - Death of Felix Hausdorff, German mathematician (b. 1868)

1943 - Death of Nikolai Vavilov, Russian botanist (b. 1887)

1946 - Death of Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer (b. 1884)

1962 - Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km)

January 27:

1851 - Death of John James Audubon, French-born naturalist and ornithologist (b. 1789)

1860 - Death of János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1802)

1903 - Birth of John Carew Eccles, Australian neuropsychologist, Nobel Laureate (d. 1997)

1936 - Birth of Samuel C. C. Ting, American physicist, Nobel Laureate

1951 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on the Frenchman Flats

1972 - Death of Richard Courant, German-American mathematician (b. 1888)

1983 - Pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest subaqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido breaks through

January 28:

1540 - Birth of Ludolph van Ceulen, German mathematician (d. 1610)

1608 - Birth of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and physicist (d. 1679)

1611 - Birth of Johannes Hevelius, astronomer (d. 1687)

1622 - Birth of Adrien Auzout, French astronomer (d. 1691)

1687 - Death of Johannes Hevelius, Polish astronomer (b. 1611)

1701 - Birth of Charles Marie de La Condamine, French mathematician and geographer (d. 1774)

1724 - The Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, and implemented in the Senate decree. It was called St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences until 1917

1855 - The first locomotive runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on the Panama Railway

1864 - Birth of Herbert Akroyd Stuart, English engineer - inventor of the first compression ignition engine (d. 1927)

1864 - Death of Émile Clapeyron, French engineer and physicist (b. 1799)

1884 - Birth of Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist (d. 1962)

1915 - Death of Nikolay Umov, Russian physicist (b. 1846)

1922 - Birth of Robert W. Holley, American biochemist, Nobel Laureate (d. 1993)

1950 - Death of Nikolai Luzin, Russian mathematician (b. 1883)

January 29:

1688 - Birth of Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish scientist and philosopher (d. 1772)

1810 - Birth of Ernst Kummer, German mathematician (d. 1893)

1846 - Birth of Karol Olszewski, Polish scientist (d. 1915)

1886 - Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile

1901 - Birth of Allen B. DuMont, American scientist and inventor (d. 1965)

1926 - Birth of Abdus Salam, Pakistani physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1996)

1933 - Birth of Paul Sally, American mathematician

1934 - Death of Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Laureate (b. 1868)

1947 - Birth of Linda B. Buck, American scientist, Nobel laureate

1953 - Birth of Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korean biomedical scientist

1978 - Sweden outlaws aerosol sprays due to their harmful effect on the ozone layer, becoming the first nation to enact such a ban

January 30:

1822 - Birth of Franz Ritter von Hauer, Austrian geologist (d. 1899)

1858 - Death of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist (b. 1778)

1899 - Birth of Max Theiler, South African virologist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1972)

1912 - Birth of Werner Hartmann, German physicist (d. 1988)

1925 - Birth of Douglas Engelbart, American computer scientist

1930 - The world's first radiosonde is launched in Pavlovsk, USSR

1962 - Death of Manuel de Abreu, Brazilian physician (b. 1894)

1991 - Death of John Bardeen, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1908)

1995 - Death of Gerald Durrell, British naturalist, zookeeper, author, and television presenter (b. 1925)

1996 - Comet Hyakutake is discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake

January 31:

1632 - Death of Joost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker and mathematician (b. 1552)

1747 - The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital

1862 - Alvan Graham Clark observes the first white dwarf star, a companion of Sirius, through an eighteen inch telescope at Northwestern University

1868 - Birth of Theodore William Richards, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1928)

1881 - Birth of Irving Langmuir, American chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1957)

1896 - Birth of Sofya Yanovskaya, Russian mathematician (d. 1966)

1929 - Birth of Rudolf Mössbauer, German physicist, Nobel laureate

1954 - Death of Edwin Howard Armstrong, American electrical engineer and inventor of the FM radio (b. 1890)