Obituary Prof. Fusakichi Omori [1868–1923, pictured].

From Charles Davison, Nature, Vol. 113, No. 2830, 1924, p. 133.

During the last few years we have lost three of our leading seismologists. G. W. Walker died in 1921, C. G. Knott in 1922, and, late in 1923, Fusakichi Omori, the well-known professor of seismology in the Imperial University of Tokyo and president of the Japanese Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee. At an early age he was fortunate in coming under the inspiring influence of John Milne and, encouraged by him, took up the study of the aftershocks of earthquakes. For a time he worked on other subjects with Milne, who left Japan in 1895, and with S. Sekiya, the first professor of seismology in the Imperial University. On the death of the latter in 1896, Omori succeeded to his chair, and about the same time became secretary of the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee. In this position he attained great influence. He became the natural leader in all Japanese investigations on volcanoes and earthquakes, and kept in close and friendly touch with the heads of other scientific departments. At the time of the great earthquake of September 1 he was absent from Japan, on a voyage apparently in search of health. He returned to the ruined city and died there on November 8.

Few students in any branch of earth-physics have worked harder than Omori, and not many to better purpose. His papers in English alone occupy more than four thousand pages. His labours were prolonged far into the night. In one of his latest papers he describes observations on the behaviour of pheasants during earthquakes made while at work in his study at 2 a.m. He could speak and read German with ease; several of his papers are written in Italian, but the great majority were in English, not always of course with absolute precision in grammar, but never admitting any doubt as to his meaning. His papers show no evidence of wide reading, references to workers in other lands being rare or altogether absent. Thus, in a few respects, he seemed to be not quite in sympathy with recent work. If anything, he suffered from too great wealth of material, and tried to carry out work that might well have been left in the hands of assistants. We have, for example, among his papers preliminary notes on the San Francisco and Messina earthquakes, the complete reports on which were never written. He was one of the most kindly, modest, and upright of men, courteous with that courtesy that we now call old-fashioned, as if the manner of it were dying out from among us.

Omori’s first important work was his memoir published in 1894 on the after-shocks of earthquakes, in which he stated his well-known law that governs their decline in frequency. [Omori’s law states that aftershock frequency decreases by roughly the reciprocal of time after the main shock.] Five years later he described his mechanically recording horizontal pendulum [now called the Omori seismometer], an instrument that has done useful work in Japan and elsewhere. With this and a horizontal tremor recorder he made many observations and experiments on the vibrations of brick buildings, lofty chimneys, bridges and their piers, railway trains and torpedo-boats. Several of his papers are occupied with discussions on the nature of earthquake-motion founded on the records of Japanese and distant earthquakes. The duration of the first preliminary tremor was of special interest to him, and by its means he made several estimates of the depth of the focus in local earthquakes. His papers include many careful studies of Japanese earthquakes and of the laws which rule their distribution in space. He investigated personally the Kangra, San Francisco, and Messina earthquakes. On several occasions Omori worked at the annual and diurnal periodicity of earthquakes in Japan, and traced a relation between variations in earthquake-frequency and in barometric pressure. Also, in connexion with the same inquiries, he considered the annual variation in the height of the sea-level at different seaports in Japan.

The volcanic eruptions, as well as the earthquakes, of Japan fall within the purview of the Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee, and Omori had several excellent opportunities of studying such eruptions from the physical point of view. The strictly geological inquiries were left in the capable hands of his colleague Prof. B. Koto. Within twelve years he published three admirable series of memoirs: the first on the eruption of the Usu-san in 1910, with its remarkable formation of a new mountain; the second on the explosions of the Asama-yama in 1910-14; and the third on the great eruption of the Sakura-jima in 1914. In all three the numerous preceding and accompanying earthquakes were carefully recorded and their relations with the eruptions studied. In the Asama-yama and Sakura-jima explosions the sound-areas and intervening silent zones were mapped and the distribution of the areas of multiple reports determined; while in the Sakura-jima the changes of level that accompanied and followed the great eruption were measured by re-levelling on the land and new soundings in the sea-areas. Some idea of the value of these memoirs may be gathered from the fact that the three series contain respectively 81, 709 and 520 pages, and are illustrated by 21, 101, and 114 plates.

At any time the death of our leader in seismology would have been a serious loss. But when we think of Omori’s memoirs on the Sakura-jima eruption, or, as he characteristically calls them, his “modest geometrical and seismological reports,” we can realise what a monograph he would have written on the most destructive earthquake known to this generation.

Zhang’s Seismograph

The composition includes an ancient Chinese seismograph invented by Zhang Heng (Chang Heng; 78–139 CE) a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan.

Considered to be the first seismometer, Zhang’s bronze urn-shaped device was able to determine the exact direction (out of eight directions) of tremors and earthquakes. With a swinging pendulum inside, it was able to detect the direction of an earthquake hundreds of miles/kilometers away. To indicate the direction of a distant earthquake, Zhang’s device dropped a bronze ball from one of eight tubed projections shaped as dragon heads; the ball fell into the mouth of a corresponding metal object shaped as a toad, each representing a direction like the points on a compass. His device had eight mobile arms (for all eight directions) connected with cranks having catch mechanisms at the periphery. When tripped, a crank and right angle lever would raise a dragon head and release a ball which had been supported by the lower jaw of the dragon head. [REF]

Portrait of Dr. George Washington Carver with Austin Wingate Curtis, Jr.

24in x 36in Oil on Panel

George Washington Carver was an American scientist, botanist, artist, educator, and inventor. “[He] did not know the exact date of his birth, but he thought it was in January 1864 (some evidence indicates July 1861, but not conclusively). He knew it was sometime before slavery was abolished in Missouri, which occurred in January 1864″[1].

In addition to his work on agricultural extension education for purposes of advocacy of sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature, Carver’s important accomplishments also included improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, and religion. He served as an example of the importance of hard work, a positive attitude, and a good education. His humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality, and rejection of economic materialism also have been admired widely[3]. Carver’s philosophy was “Save everything. From what you have make what you want.” His gnarled hands were always busy with bits of string, tinfoil, clay, which he fashioned, as he talked, into decorative objects. He was proudest of his picture of four peaches, painted with pigment made of native clay, not as a work of art but because any child, as a result of his researches, should be able to use similar material. “That’s just the clay we walk on every day.” he said. “Our clays are just as brilliant as the ones the old masters used”[3]. Carver was an accomplished painter, frequently using pigments and oils he had made himself[4].

Carver never married or expressed interest in dating women, and rumors circulated about his sexuality at Tuskegee Institute while he was an employee. In particular, his enjoyment of giving “therapeutic” peanut oil massages to and engaging in horseplay with handsome men was seen as unusual. Late in his career, Carver established a life and research partnership with another male scientist, Austin Wingate Curtis, Jr. The two men cohabitated from 1934 until Carver’s death in 1943[5]. Carver and Curtis kept details of their lives discreet, and as such historians know little about how these men understood their relationship. Nonetheless, the fact that Carver willed his assets to Curtis testifies to the significance of their relationship[6-10].

On Carver’s grave was written, “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world”[2].

REFERENCES:

1. “About GWC: A Tour of His Life”. George Washington Carver National Monument. National Park Service.

2. Wikipedia

3. Time Magazine Article

4. NNDB

5. WVculture

6. “Carver, George Washington,” by Linda Rapp in glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, ed. Claude J. Summers (Chicago: glbtq, Inc., link).

7.Jim Kepner, “Queered Science,” in Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America, ed. Lynn Witt, Sherry Thomas, and Eric Marcus (New York: Warner Books, 1995), 27.

8. Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver: An American Biography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1943.

9.George Washington Carver Collection, folder 8/6/1/8-60, “Carver: Sexual Orientation,” Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa.

10. Austin W. Curtis Interviewed by Toby Fishbein in Detroit, Michigan, March 3, 1979: Transcript in Iowa State University Special Collections, George Washington Carver File, Box 2, RS: 21/7/2.

In 1942–45, mathematicians Samuel Eilenberg (right) and Saunders Mac Lane (left), introduced category theory as part of their work in algebraic topology. Category theory abstractly codifies the properties of mathematical concepts by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows (morphisms) which satisfy certain basic conditions. Significant areas of mathematics can be formalised as categories, and the use of category theory allows many intricate and subtle mathematical results in these fields to be stated, and proved, in a much simpler and elegant way than without the use of categories.

Categories can be used as a possible foundation of all of mathematics, thus replacing the use in such a foundation of the usual Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms for set theory. The category theory axioms orbit the heads of Eilenberg and Mac Lane shown in the painting.

Portrait of Ellen Swallow Richards, Chemist.

8.5″ X 11″ oil on acetate on wood.

Ellen Swallow Richards (December 3, 1842 – March 30, 1911) was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy (2nd oldest secondary school in Westford, MA). She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and its first female instructor, the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.

Ellen Swallow taught, tutored, and cleaned for years, finally saving $300 to enter Vassar College in 1868, earning her bachelor’s degree two years later. After failing to find suitable employment as an industrial chemist after graduation, she entered MIT to continue her studies, “it being understood that her admission did not establish a precedent for the general admission of females” according to the records of the meeting of the MIT Corporation on December 14, 1870. Three years later she received a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT for her thesis “Notes on Some Sulpharsenites and Sulphantimonites from Colorado,” as well as a Master of Arts degree from Vassar for a thesis on the chemical analysis of iron ore. She continued her studies at MIT and would have been awarded its first doctoral degree, but MIT balked at granting this distinction to a woman, and did not award its first doctorate until 1886.

Following her tenure at MIT, she remained associated with MIT, volunteering her services as well as contributing $1,000 annually to create programs for female students. In January 1876, she began a long association as an instructor with the first American correspondence school, the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. Also in 1876, with the urging of the Women’s Education Association of Boston, the MIT Women’s Laboratory was created, where in 1879 she became an assistant instructor (without pay) in the fields of chemical analysis, industrial chemistry, mineralogy, and applied biology, under Professor John M. Ordway. In 1883, MIT began accepting women and awarding them degrees as regular students, and the Laboratory was closed.

Richards published The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning: A Manual for House-keepers in 1881, designed and demonstrated model kitchens, devised curricula, and organized conferences.In 1908, she was chosen to be the first president of the newly formed American Home Economics Association. Her books and writings on this topic include Food Materials and their Adulterations (1886), Conservation by Sanitation, The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning, The Cost of Living (1899), Air, Water, and Food (1900), The Cost of Food, The Cost of Shelter, The Art of Right Living, The Cost of Cleanness, Sanitation in Daily Life (1907), and Euthenics, the Science of Controllable Environment (1910).

Richards along with Marion Talbot (Boston University, class of 1880), became the initial “founding mothers” of what was to become the American Association of University Women (AAUW) when they invited 15 other women college graduates to a meeting at Talbot’s home in Boston, Massachusetts on November 28, 1881. The 17 women envisioned an organization in which women college graduates would band together to open the doors of higher education to other women and to find wider opportunities for their training. AAUW became one of the nation’s leading advocates for education and equity for all women and girls—a 125-year legacy of leadership. Today AAUW numbers more than 100,000 members, 1,300 branches, and 500 college and university partners nationwide.

From 1884 until her death, Ellen Richards was an instructor in the newly founded laboratory of sanitary chemistry, the Lawrence Experiment Station, which was the first in the United States and headed by her former professor William R. Nichols. In 1887, the laboratory, then under Thomas Messinger Drown, conducted a study under Richards of water quality in Massachusetts for the Massachusetts State Board of Health involving over 20,000 samples, the first such study in America. As a result, Massachusetts established the first water-quality standards in America, as well as the first modern sewage treatment plant, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Richards was a consulting chemist for the Massachusetts State Board of Health from 1872 to 1875, and the official water analyst from 1887 until 1897. She also served as a consultant to the Manufacturers Mutual Fire Insurance Co, and in 1900 wrote the textbook Air, Water, and Food from a Sanitary Standpoint, with A. G. Woodman. Her interest in the environment led her in 1892 to introduce into English the word ecology which had been coined in German to describe the “household of nature.”

Richards served on the Board of Trustees of Vassar College for many years, and was granted an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1910. She died at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1911. In her honor, MIT designated a room in the main buildings for the use of women students, and in 1973, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Richard’s graduation, established the Ellen Swallow Richards Professorship for distinguished female faculty members.

A powerful leader, a wise teacher, a tireless worker, of sane and kindly judgment, Ellen Swallow Richards has taught and inspired thousands to carry forward the movements which she has inaugurated.

Further reading on Ellen Swallow Richards:

• Wikipedia entry on Ellen Swallow Richards
• MIT Biography of Ellen Swallow Richards
• Ellen Swallow Richards’ MIT thesis

Portrait of Max Planck, Theoretical Physicist

Max Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German theoretical physicist, considered to be the founder of  quantum theory, and thus one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, “in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.” Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly’s supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.

In 1894 Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. He had been commissioned by electric companies to create maximum light from lightbulbs with minimum energy. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (i.e., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body? The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment agreed with experimental values.

Planck’s first proposed solution to this problem in 1899 followed from what Planck called the “principle of elementary disorder”, which allowed him to derive Wien’s law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred-to as the Wien-Planck law. Soon it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck’s frustration. Planck revised his approach, deriving the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described the experimentally observed black-body spectrum well.  This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion.

In November 1900, Planck revised this first approach, relying on Boltzmann’s statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. As Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann’s approach, his recourse to them was, as he later put it, “an act of despair … I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics.”

The central assumption behind his new derivation was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit. At first Planck considered that such quantisation was only “a purely formal assumption … actually I did not think much about it…”; nowadays this assumption, incompatible with classical physics, is regarded as the birth of quantum physics and the greatest intellectual accomplishment of Planck’s career.  However, Planck did not understand in a deep sense that he was “introducing the quantum” as a real physical entity. Nevertheless, it was in recognition of this accomplishment that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta,  to no avail. “My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble.” Even several years later, other physicists like Rayleigh, Jeans, and Lorentz set Planck’s constant to zero to align with classical physics, but Planck knew well that this constant had a precise nonzero value. “I am unable to understand Jeans’ stubbornness — he is an example of a theoretician as should never be existing, the same as Hegel was for philosophy. So much the worse for the facts, if they are wrong.”

Max Born wrote about Planck: “He was by nature and by the tradition of his family conservative, averse to revolutionary novelties and skeptical towards speculations. But his belief in the imperative power of logical thinking based on facts was so strong that he did not hesitate to express a claim contradicting to all tradition, because he had convinced himself that no other resort was possible.”

Planck expected that wave mechanics would soon render quantum theory unnecessary. However, this was not to be the case. Further work only cemented quantum theory, even against Planck’s and Einstein’s philosophical revulsions. Planck experienced the truth of his own earlier observation from his struggle with the older views in his younger years: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Wikipedia Entry on Max Planck

Portrait of Andreas Vesalius, Anatomist

Andreas Vesalius (December 31, 1514 – October 15, 1564) was an anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body). Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.

As a boy, Vesalius showed great interest in the dissection of animals. After pursuing his early studies at Louvain, he went to the University of Paris in 1533, where Johannes Quinterus of Andernach and Jacobus Sylvius taught medicine. At the university, Vesalius gave his attention largely to anatomy, especially to that of bones found in cemeteries and at places of executions. He dissected entire animals and gained in this way so much knowledge that at the request of his teachers and fellow students he publicly dissected a corpse and explained its parts.

Vesalius took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and was appointed professor of surgery and anatomy at Padua. Contrary to custom, Vesalius dissected the bodies himself and explained the different parts: the former usage had been for a surgeon to dissect while a physician read aloud suitable chapters from Galen or the Anatomie of Mundino. In 1538 he published the Tabulae anatomicae from his own drawings and those of the painter Johann Stephan of Kalkar; this was the first fruits of his investigations. His labors led him to the conviction that Claudius Galenus had never dissected the dead body of a human being, and that Galen’s celebrated Anatomy lacks the stamp of truthfulness, as it is based almost entirely on the dissection of apes.

In 1540 he began his celebrated work Fabrica (see link below to view the publication), in 1542 went to Basle in order to supervise the printing of it, returned to Padua at the end of 1543 after the publication was completed, spent a short time in Bologna and Pisa, and in 1544 was appointed court physician to the Emperor Charles V. Up to the time of the emperor’s abdication in 1556, Vesalius accompanied Charles on all his journeys and campaigns. After the abdication he entered the service of Philip II of Spain. For unknown reasons, in the spring of 1564 he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from which he never returned.

The border in the portrait of Andreas Vesalius is after the title page from Vidi Vidii: Florentini de anatome corporis humani libri VII the anatomic treatise by Vidius Vidius (Guido Guidi, c.1508-1569), an early physician/anatomist, published posthumously in 1626.  Little is known of Guido Guidi. Anatomic structures named after Vidius include the Vidian nerve, artery, and canal well known to neurosurgeons.

Further reading on Andreas Vesalius:
Article at NNDB

Wikipedia Entry

De corporis humani fabrica libri septem

For further reading about Guido Guidi see:
Tubbs RS, Salter EG. Vidius Vidius (Guido Guidi): 1509-1569. Neurosurgery. 2006 Jul;59(1):201-3.

Portrait of Richard Feynman, Physicist

Richard Phillips Feynman (1918 – 1988) was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics (a three-volume physics textbook published in 1964) makes for excellent reading on basic physical theories.  The textbook is based on lectures given by Feynman to undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1961–63. It includes lectures on mathematics, electromagnetism, Newtonian physics, quantum physics, and even the relation of physics to other sciences. Six readily accessible chapters were later compiled into a book entitled Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, and six more in Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time.

Wikipedia entry on Richard Feynman