Portal:History of science/Selected anniversaries/January 31

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)