Reducibly Complex

Isaac Asimov was born on this day in 1920. Asimov was an American author and biochemist, who was a prolific writer of science fiction and of science books for the layperson. Born in Petrovichi, Russia, he emigrated with his family to New York City at age three. He entered Columbia University at the age of 15 and at 18 sold his first story to Amazing Stories. After earning a Ph.D., he taught biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine after 1949. By 18 Mar 1941, at the age of 21, Asimov had already written 31 stories, sold 17, and 14 had been published. As an author, lecturer, and broadcaster of astonishing range, he is most admired as a popularizer of science (The Collapsing Universe; 1977) and a science fiction writer (I, Robot;1950).

I am currently reading Darwin’s On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, but Asimov is one of the authors that I feel I have to read next.

On this day in 1896, German scientist, Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of x-rays. He sent copies of his manuscript and some of his x-ray photographs to several renowned physicists and friends, including Lord Kelvin in Glasgow and Henre Poincare in Paris. Four days later, on 5 Jan 1896, Die Presse published the news in a front-page article which described the discovery and suggested new methods of medical diagnoses might be made with this new kind of radiation. One day later, theLondon Standard cabled the news to other countries around the world about the “a light which for the purpose of photography will penetrate wood, flesh, cloth, and most other organic substances.” It printed the first English-language account the next day.

Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays was one of the truly popular scientific discoveries. Because of the availability of the simplicity of the parts he used to create these and the pictures he took using them, people from all over were able to go to hardware stores and for a not-unreasonable amount of money purchase everything they needed to be able to take their own x-ray photos. There is a story of a man whose wife broke her arm, so he subjected her to an x-ray photo session. After exposing her arm to x-rays for 12 hours, he sent his pictures to a doctor to ask for a diagnosis. The next day, he sent another letter asking how he should treat what looked like severe burns on his wife’s arm.

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