NOTABLE HUMANS
NOTABLE HUMAN for SEPT-OCT
Sci-fi show inspires tribute for James Doohan
Doohan, who portrayed feisty chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the “Star Trek” television series, died in July at age 85. On the program, when Capt. James Kirk ventured off the spaceship Enterprise and faced peril, he would ask Scotty to “beam” his body up to the safety of the ship.
The actual phrase “Beam me up, Scotty,” was not used on the show, but it entered pop culture.
To mark the flight into his final frontier, Doohan’s family will hold a service for fans on a 60-acre site near Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on the day of the launch to pay tribute to him. Some fans are expected to attend in the formal white suit of a Star Fleet commander.
“I can’t think of a more fitting send-off than having some of his fans attend this, his final journey,” his widow, Wende Doohan, said in an open invitation to the service.
The Space Services payload is to be carried aboard a SpaceX Falcon I rocket, along with the primary payload, a TacSat communications satellite for the U.S. military.
Doohan would not be the first “Star Trek” figure to have his remains launched into space. A similar final flight was arranged for the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, after his death in 1991. The capsule containing Roddenberry's remains returned to Earth in 2002, Schonfeld said.
Doohan’s cremated remains will be packed into a special tube that is ejected from the rocket. The tube is expected to orbit Earth for about 50 to 200 years before plunging into the planet’s atmosphere and burning up.
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NOTABLE HUMANS for JULY-AUGUST
Image above: From left, STS-114 astronauts Steve Robinson, Jim Kelly, Andy Thomas, Wendy Lawrence, Charlie Camarda, Eileen Collins and Soichi Noguchi.
The next Space Shuttle Commander, Eileen Collins, prepares to take an unprecedented flight far from the skies that overlook the lush river valley nestled below Harris Hill in upstate New York where she once only dreamed of soaring high.
Although shy and timid, she pursued flight training and dismissed the premise that flying "was a guy thing" at the time. Collins began military pilot training for the Air Force in 1978, the same year that NASA opened the Shuttle program to women.
The elite first class of women pilots who joined the ranks of NASA's Mission Specialist Astronauts inspired Collins to dream bigger. She knew then that her natural love of history, astronomy and geology coupled with her devotion to flight made America's space program the perfect fit for a would-be astronaut such as herself.
Hard work over fate brought her to NASA. She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from Syracuse University in 1978, a master's in operations research from Stanford University in 1986 and a master's in space systems management from Webster University in 1989.
NASA selected Collins to join America's Astronaut Corps in 1990, deeming her an official astronaut the following year.
OUR NOTABLE HUMANS for March and April
Ampère, André Marie (1775-1836):
Ampère, a teacher at Paris, has his permanent place in the history of science because it was his name that was given to the unit by which we measure electrical current. He had, of course, an interest in electricity; in addition, Ampère made similar investigations as did Avogadro into the nature of matter in its gaseous state.
Euclid:
Euclid was a Greek mathematician; he taught in Alexandria, circa 300 BC. There is evidence that he wrote a number of works, but they have been lost to us. His work, Elements, however, was found, the Arabian mathematicians having carefully preserved it for the rest of us, as western man struggled through his dark ages; it was translated from Arabic into Latin, in 1482. The Elements is yet used today in schools, widely so, as a fundamental text book in geometry.
Huygens, Christiaan (1629-93):
The Dutch physicist who was to make, in 1657, on the suggestion of Galileo, the pendulum clock. In 1655, he discovered the ring and fourth satellite of Saturn. Huygens had a particular interest in the nature of light and was to propound a theory that it was undulating, thus striking upon, "wave theory."
Our Notable Human for January 2005!
HYPATIA
Natural Philosopher (355? - 415 CE)
She is one of the more romantic figures in science. She was the daughter of Theon, a mathematician who taught at the great school at the Alexandrine Library. She traveled widely and corresponded with people all over the Mediterranean. We know of her only through her letters.
She taught at the school in Alexandria, Egypt. Letters written and addressed simply to the philosopher were delivered to her. She taught mathematics and natural philosophy. She is credited with the authorship of three major treatises on geometry and algebra and one on astronomy. She invented several tools: an instrument for distilling water, an instrument to measure the specific gravity of water, an astrolabe and a planisphere.
She died violently, a death we will not describe here!!
Our Notable Human for September/October 2004
BURT RUTAN
For more than 20 years, American businessman Burt Rutan has been behind some of the oddest and most innovative planes around.
In the US, he is considered by some experts to be a national treasure, one of the few creative pioneers who has made a real difference to aerospace advancement.
When the US government wanted to test a fairly high-risk engine concept recently, Rutan wanted to be the test pilot.
He was only prevented from doing so because the government did not want to run the risk of losing him. That is how much of a precious commodity he is considered to be.
It is his company - Scaled Composites - which is responsible for SpaceShipOne, the winner of the Ansari X-prize.
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FREDERICK ABEL
Submitted by Marquesa Tramp Pawpette Purr
Frederick Abel was a british chemist who specialized in explosive weapons. He was born in a modern day section of London in 1827. Even back in the 1800's, people still went to college! His alma mater is the Royal College of Chemistry in London. in 1847, the College accepted him as an assistant. In 1852, he advanced his career by taking a position at the Royal Military Academy, which allowed him to become the British War Department's Chief Advisor on explosives. Abel wrote Gun-Cotton (1866) and Electricity Applied to Explosive Purposes (1884). He earned knighthood in 1883 for inventing cordite, and in 1893 he was made a baronet (a British hereditary title of honor reserved for commoners).
His expertise in explosives led to the 1889 development of cordite, a smokeless gunpowder that replaced black powder. It was called cordite after the cordlike shape in which it was molded. Frederick Abel and Sir James Dewar developed cordite out of nitroglycerin, guncotton, and stabilizing chemicals derived from petroleum. This combination was smokeless, unlike black powder, and stable, unlike lone guncotton. He also lent his knowledge to practical situations. He studied explosions in coal mines and developed a mechanism for determining the flash point of petroleum, which is the lowest temperature that petroleum vapor can ignite in air. His life was devoted to the study of explosives, and inventing safer methods to utilize them.
Our Notable Human for August 2004
Hoyle, Sir Fred , 1915–2001, British astrophysicist and mathematician, b. Bingley, Yorkshire. During the years of World War II, Hoyle primarily worked on technical problems related to radar. As a diversion, he discussed astronomy with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, and the three formulated the steady-state cosmology (1948). Best known for his theories concerning the structure of stars and the origin of the chemical elements in stars, Hoyle was also instrumental in founding the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy and in establishing the Anglo-Australian Observatory in central New South Wales. He was a prolific author, not only of technical papers but also of science fiction and popular science. His first novel, The Black Cloud (1957), has become a classic, and his autobiography, Home Is Where the Wind Blows (1994), discusses the controversy and academic disputes he endured during his teaching years at Cambridge (1945–1972). Hoyle was knighted in 1972.
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