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ARTTURI LLMARI VIRTANEN
Born 15 Jan 1895; died 11 Nov 1973.
Finnish biochemist whose investigations directed toward improving the production and storage of protein-rich green fodder, vitally important to regions characterized by long, severe winters, brought him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1945. The AIV method, named for his initials, was storing green fodder in an acid medium to prevent spoilage and retain nutritious nitrogenous material. He found that a mixture of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid was adequate as long as its strength was kept within certain precise limits (a pH of about four). In 1929, he found that cows fed such silage gave milk indistinguishable in taste from that of cows fed on normal fodder, while as rich in vitamins A and C.
R.B.BRAITHWAITE Born 15 Jan 1900; died 21 Apr 1990.
Richard Bevan Braithwaite was a British philosopher, who trained in physics and mathematics, but turned to the philosophy of science. He examined the logical features common to all the sciences. Each science proceeds by inventing general principles from which are deduced the consequences to be tested by observation and experiment. Braithwaite was concerned with the impact of science on our beliefs about the world and the responses appropriate to that. He wrote on the statistical sciences, theories of belief and of probability, decision theory and games theory. He was interested in particular with the laws of probability as they apply to the physical and biological sciences.
EDWARD TELLERBorn 15 Jan 1908; died 9 Sep 2003 
Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist who participated in the production of the first atomic bomb (1945) and who led the development of the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. After studying in Germany he left in 1933, going first to London and then to Washington, DC. He worked on the first atomic reactor, and later working on the first fission bombs during WW II at Los Alamos. Subsequently, he made a significant contribution to the development of the fusion bomb. His work led to the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb (1952). He is sometimes known as "the father of the H-bomb." Teller's unfavourable evidence in the Robert Oppenheimer security-clearance hearing lost him some respect amongst scientists.
2008 is the 50th anniversary of the first integrated circuit, demonstrated on 12 Sep 1958 by its inventor, Jack Kilby, to his supervisor at Texas Instruments.
2008 is the 100th anniversary of the first major Middle East oil strike made on 26 May 1908 at Masjid-i-Suleiman, Persia.
2008 is the 200th anniversaries of the first isolation of the elements barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium, by Humphry Davy in England.Free Blog Content
