Louis Pasteur, 200th birthday
Born in France in December 1822, Louis Pasteur was not a precocious youth. His interests tended toward art, but later some inspiring lectures shifted his attention to chemistry, and he became one of the greatest chemists of all time. And although he received no medical education, he provided the foundation for modern medicine’s ability to fight disease.
Pasteur’s understanding of microorganisms led to the recognition of their capacity to damage human health. His tenacity in conducting rigorous experiments and his pugnacious public promotion of his findings established the germ theory of disease and encouraged new methods of hygiene. He saved the silk industry. He showed how to prevent wine from going sour, and how to make milk safe to drink. He devised vaccines for various diseases, including one to cure rabies. No one person in history is more responsible than Pasteur for preserving human health and preventing unnecessary deaths. He is lucky he was born 200 years ago, though. If he were around today, he’d be getting death threats.
Science News, 100th birthday
In its first year of providing news of science to the world, the organization then known as Science Service transmitted a weekly package of mimeographed pages (labeled Science News Bulletin) to newspapers and other media around the country. But soon other groups (such as libraries) as well as individuals began to request the package, and so Science Service initiated a new strategy with issue No. 50. On March 13, 1922, Science News-Letter was born, with a new masthead offering subscriptions for $5 per year, postpaid. Its first article: an account of a U.S. Department of Commerce report on the allocation of radio wavelengths. The report assured everybody that “widespread use of radio for the broadcasting of public information and other matters of general interest” would be forthcoming. In 1966 the magazine dropped “Letter” and became Science News, providing an excuse for another centennial celebration in 2066.
Insulin treats diabetes, 100th anniversary
In a century of medical miracles, one of the earliest and most dramatic was the discovery of insulin for treating diabetes. Diabetes had been recognized as a serious disease in ancient times. By the 20th century, scientists suspected that the pancreas produced a substance that helped metabolize carbohydrates; a malfunctioning pancreas meant a person could not extract energy from carbohydrates in food, resulting in dangerously high blood sugar levels while depriving the body of needed energy. It was nearly always fatal in children, and adults diagnosed with diabetes could hope for only a few more years of life. A young doctor reported success in treating diabetes with a substance secreted by the pancreas. That doctor, Frederick Banting, had tried the idea with dogs the year before and gave the first insulin injection to a human, a 14-year-old boy, in January 1922. Banting originally used insulin purified from animals; in the decades since, researchers have engineered more sophisticated forms for human use. But even with the animal insulin, success was so dramatic that Banting and his lab director John were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1923.
Pioneer 10, 50th anniversary of launch
Of all the robotic spacecraft launched from Earth into space, Pioneer 10 was truly the pioneer. It was the first craft to fly beyond the orbit of Mars and the first to exceed the distance of the solar system’s outermost planet, Neptune. Launched March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10 mission was to visit Jupiter to take some cool snapshots of the giant planet and a few of its moons. Pioneer’s escape velocity from Earth surpassed 51,000 kilometers per hour (about 32,000 miles per hour), at the time a solar system speed record for any flying machine or bird. After dodging asteroids (most of them anyway) on its journey, Pioneer 10 reached the solar system’s largest planet in late 1973, passing within 131,000 kilometers (about 81,000 miles) on December 4. Pioneer continued transmitting signals back to Earth until 1997, when budget cuts forced NASA to stop listening except for an occasional check-in. The very last signal came on January 23, 2003, from 7.6 billion miles away.
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