Science Quiz™ - April :: Nauka ~ Tehnika ~ Military

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German physicist Johann Wilhelm Hittorf, 45, publishes laws that he has worked out governing the migration of ions (charged atoms or molecules), a significant step toward understanding electrochemical reactions. Hittorf has measured the changes in the concentration of electrolyzed solutions and used these as the basis for computing the relative carrying capacities (transport numbers) of many ions (see Kohlrausch, 1874).

"On the Space-Theory of Matter" by English mathematician-philosopher William K. (Kingdon) Clifford, 25, of Trinity College, Cambridge, posits the idea that matter and energy are simply different types of curvature of space (see Einstein, 1905). Clifford has been influenced by the non-Euclidean geometric thinking of the late Bernhard Riemann and Nikolai Lobachevsky.

The "Tyndall effect" discovered by Irish scientist John Tyndall, 49, ascribes the blueness of the sky to a scattering of the sun's rays (the diffusion of light) by large molecules and dust. The bluish plane polarized by these molecules will be called Tyndall blue. Tyndall will use infrared and scattering-measurement instruments to monitor London's air quality. His lectures will draw large crowds, but he will antagonize clergymen by defending Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and openly opposing what he considers the anti-intellectual, anti-scientific bias of Christianity.

Zoologist Ernst Haeckel coins the word ecology to mean environmental balance (see 1866). Now 35, Haeckel is the first German advocate of Charles Darwin's organic evolution theory, which will be defended in America beginning next year by Massachusetts-born philosopher and mathematician Chauncey Wright, now 39, in a series of articles entitled "The Limits of Natural Selection" for the North American Review (see Huxley, 1870).

"The Lichens as Parasites of Algae" ("Die Clechten als Parasiten der Algen") by Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener, 40, at Basel shows that lichens are a composite algae and fungi (see Reinke, 1894).

Basil-born student Johann Friedrich Miescher, 23, examines pus obtained from open wounds at a surgical clinic and discovers a substance containing both phosphorus and nitrogen in the nuclei of white blood cells. Working under physiologist chemist (Ernst) Felix Hoppe-Seyler, 43, he determines that the substance comes from cell nuclei (see DNA, 1870).

Physiologist-poet Jan Evangeliste Purkinje dies at Prague July 28 at age 81; chemist Thomas Graham at London September 11 at age 63 (he has been master of the mint since 1855); microscope developer Joseph Jackson Lister dies at West Ham, Essex, October 24 at age 83.

Hereditary Genius by English scientist Francis Galton, 47, helps establish the science of eugenics.

Nature begins publication November 4 at London with astronomer Joseph Lockyer as editor. The 40-page "weekly illustrated journal of science" leads off with an essay by T. H. Huxley, now 44, and will gain worldwide circulation and influence.