Satyendra Nath Bose

Date of Birth: January 1, 1894

Profession: Indian mathematical physicist

Notable Works: Bose laid much of the groundwork of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, particularly the Bose-Einstein statistics and the Bose-Einstein condensate, Bose–Einstein distribution, Bose–Einstein correlations, Bose gas. The boson particle was given his name in his honor by Paul Dirac.

Richard R. Schrock

Date of Birth: January 4, 1945

Profession: American organic chemist.

Notable Works: Schrock shares the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert H. Grubbs and Yves Chauvin for their development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis. Shrock identified structures and mechanisms of olefin metathesis catalysts. Metathesis is an organic reaction that redistributes the bonds of similar interacting chemicals so the products’ bonding affiliations are identical or similar to the reactants. It is used to create pharmaceuticals and petroleum polymers with less waste and byproducts.

Joseph Erlanger

Date of Birth: January 5, 1944

Profession: American physiologist

Notable Works: Erlanger shares the 1944 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Herbert Spencer Gasser for their research into the action potentials in nerve fibers. Action potentials are self-generating electrochemical pulses that allow nerve cells to transmit a signal over a distance. They discovered different fibers in nerves had three different fibers that would conduct the potential from a stimulus at different rates. This led to the theory that one type of fiber conducts pain signals and others conduct motor control signals.

Rolf Zinkernagel

Date of Birth: January 6, 1944

Profession: Swiss immunologist

Notable Works: Zinkernagel shares the 1996 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Peter C. Doherty for their discoveries in cell-based immune defense. They discovered how T cells recognize infected cells. They found T-cells seek out two molecules on the surface of an infected cell, the virus infecting the cell and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins. If the T cell discovers these molecules, it kills the cell so the infection cannot reproduce.

Eilhard Mitscherlich

Date of Birth: January 7, 1794

Profession: German chemist

Notable Works: Mitscherlich introduced the idea of isomorphism. He theorized that chemical substances that crystallize together into a solid will typically have similar chemical formulas. Isomorph compounds can substitute each other when crystallizing and the shape of the crystal will not change.

Mitscherlich was also the chemist who discovered permanganic and silenic acids and made several contributions to the understanding of arsenic, phosphorus and benzene derivatives. He discovered the monoclinic crystal form of sulfur and was the first to synthesize nitrobenzene.

Stephen W. Hawking 

Date of Birth: January 8, 1942

Profession: British physicist

Notable Works: Hawking has made several contributions to cosmology and quantum effects of gravity. His work with gravitational singularities (black holes) predicts energy should be emitted from within black holes. This energy, known as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, is caused by the quantum effects of gravity and predicts how black holes could lose mass and disappear over time.

Richard Abegg

Date of Birth: January 9, 1869

Profession: German chemist

Notable Works: Abegg was one of the early researchers of valence theory. His experiments showed a tendency between the maximum and minimum valence levels of elements to differ usually by a value of eight.

Abegg also discovered the principle behind the freezing point depression of solvents. The freezing point is at the transition point between the liquid phase and the solid phase of a liquid. It is determined when the vapor pressures of the liquid and solid phases are equal. Abegg found if a solute was added to the solvent, the freezing point would be depressed to a lower temperature.

Sune K. Bergström

Date of Birth: January 10, 1916

Profession: Swedish biochemist

Notable Works: Bergström shares the 1982 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Bengt Samuelsson and John R. Vane for their discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related substances. Prostaglandins are biochemical compounds that influence physiological phenomena such as blood pressure, body temperature, and allergic reactions.

Roger C Guillemin

Date of Birth: January 11, 1924

Profession: French-American physiologist

Notable Works: Guillemin shares half the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Andrew Schally for their discoveries about peptide hormone production in the brain. He isolated and synthesized three hormones produced in the hypothalamus region of the brain. These hormones control the activities of other hormone-producing glands in the body.

Eric Betzig

Date of Birth: January 13, 1960

Profession: American physicist

Notable Works: Betzig developed fluorescence microscopy. This microscopy method involves exciting chromophores in the observed sample so they fluoresce at a longer wavelength. The incident light is filtered out. Optical microscope resolutions are limited by the wavelength of visible light. Since the fluoresced light has a longer wavelength, the image resolution is higher. Betzig shares the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stefan Hell and William E. Moerner for their discovery of this technique.

William Prout

Date of Birth: January 15, 1785

Profession: English chemist and physician

Notable Works: Prout investigated the chemistry of the stomach and urinary systems. He was the first to show gastric juice was hydrochloric acid. He was most famous for what became known as Prout’s hypothesis. Based on the values of atomic weights of elements of the time, he believed all elements weights were integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen. This led to the idea that all elements were made up of condensed hydrogen atoms.

Anders Gustav Ekeberg

Date of Birth: January 16, 1767

Profession: Swedish chemist

Notable Works: Ekeberg was a who discovered the element tantalum. He isolated the element from the mineral tantalite which was thought to be made up of two elements named after the children of Tantalus: Niobe (niobium) and Pelops (pelopium). He determined that pelopium was comprised of a mixture of niobium and Ekeberg’s new element, tantalum.

Yoichiro Nambu

Date of Birth: January 18, 1921

Profession: Japanese physicist

Notable Works: Mr. Nambu was awarded half the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on spontaneous broken symmetry in particle physics. Early particle physics believed symmetry was inherent in the system. Every particle had an opposite or ‘anti’ version, every left had a right. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be true and these violations could not be explained away. Nambu formulated a mathematical model that allowed for symmetry breaking and helped form a basis to better understand the subatomic world.

Henry Bessemer

Date of Birth: January 19, 1813

Profession:  English inventor

Notable Works: Bessemer developed an inexpensive steel manufacturing process. The Bessemer process involves blowing oxygen through the molten iron to burn off impurities. This process greatly boosted the use of steel in manufacturing and structural engineering.

He was a prolific inventor who held over 100 patents. He also made a substantial amount of money exploiting many of his inventions. 

Konrad Emil Bloch

Date of Birth: January 21, 1912

Profession: German-American biochemist

Notable Works: Bloch shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Feodor Lynen for their discoveries concerning the biosynthesis of fatty acids and cholesterol. Bloch discovered that acetic acid was a major contributor to the natural formation of cholesterol. Both men discovered how the body creates and regulates fatty acids and cholesterol.

Gertrude B Elion

Date of Birth: January 23, 1918

Profession: American biochemist

Notable Works: Elion shares the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine with James Black and George Hitchings for their work in developing drugs for a multitude of diseases and pathogens. Elion and Hitchings designed pharmaceuticals that relied on subtle biochemical differences between healthy cells and the pathogens that affect these cells. The drugs would target the difference and stop or kill the pathogen without harming the healthy cells.

Arvid Carlsson

Date of Birth: January 25, 1923

Profession: Swedish chemist and pharmacologist

Notable Works: Carlsson investigated the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects on people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He found a way to measure dopamine levels in brain tissue. He also found the levels in the area of the brain controlling movement were higher than in other areas of the brain. When he gave the animals a drug to lower dopamine levels, they showed motion control loss similar to the symptoms of Parkinson’s. He could return function to the animals by injecting the dopamine precursor L-dopa. The same treatment helps people alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s. This discovery earned him a third of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Polykarp Kusch

Date of Birth: January 26, 1911

Profession: German-American physicist

Notable Works: Kusch was awarded half the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the nuclear hyperfine structure. He determined that the accurate value of the magnetic moment of an electron was larger than the theoretical value. The electron magnetic moment is the magnetic moment caused by the electron’s spin and electric charge. This precise measurement was important to the further development of the theory of quantum electrodynamics.

Victor Goldschmidt

Date of Birth: January 27, 1888

Profession:  Norwegian mineralogist

Notable Works: Goldschmidt was the founder of modern geochemistry and inorganic crystal chemistry. He determined the crystal structure of over 200 different compounds. He also used values of atomic radii to predict crystal compositions and divided the elements according to their preferred affinity for gaseous or liquid phases known as the Goldschmidt classification.

Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale

Date of Birth: January 28,

Profession:  Irish crystallographer

Notable Works: Lonsdale proved benzene was composed of six carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon. She focused her work on x-ray crystallography of organics and pharmaceutical molecules. Kathleen also created tables of different space groups to make the work of identifying functional groups in molecules easier. She also studied the thermal effects and magnetic anisotropy of crystals.

 Douglas Engelbart

Date of Birth: January 30, 1925

Profession: American engineer and inventor

Notable Works: Engelbart founded the field of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, which resulted in the creation of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart’s law, the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

Rudolf Mössbauer

Date of Birth: January 31, 1929

Profession: German physicist

Notable Works: Mössbauer was awarded half the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on the interactions between gamma rays and matter and the discovery of the Mössbauer effect. the Mössbauer effect describes the recoil-free absorption and transmission of gamma rays by atoms in solids.