March 30 in Physics History
Physics history will help you to develop a better understanding of the physics world!
birthdays & deaths
Explore all birthdays & deaths of physicists occurred on this day with their short biography!
physics Events
Know all important discoveries made by physicists & events happened on this day with complete information!
March 30 in Physics History - Births – Physicists born on March 30
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (30 Mar 1754 - 15 Jun 1785)
He was a French physicist and aeronaut who became the first man to fly along with Marquis Francois Laurent d’Arlandes. They flew in the hot air balloon made by Montgolfier brothers from La Muettte, Paris. They reached an altitude of around 300-ft. King Louis XVI wanted to send two criminals for the test flight but Rozier wanted to deny criminals the glory of being the first men to fly. Sadly, he was the first man to due in an air crash.
Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt (30 Mar 1879 - 1 Dec 1935)
He was an astronomer and optical instrument maker who devised a new mirror system for reflecting telescopes. It solved the previous problems of aberration of the image. His telescope is now widely used to photograph large sections of the sky due to its wide field of view. While experimenting with explosives as a child, he lost his arm. He spent the last year of his life in a mental hospital.
March 30 in Physics History - Deaths – Physicists died on March 30
Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus (25 Nov 1911 - 30 Mar 1998)
He was a South African-American geophysicist who invented the bathythermograph which is a temperature measuring device. He became the first U.S. ambassador to UNESCO. As a student, he turned an automobile into a sand yacht and sailed it on salt flats.
Auguste Bravais (23 Aug 1811 - 30 Mar 1863)
He was a French mineralogist and physicist who is known for his work on the lattice theory of crystals. He was the one who showed that the crystals could be divided into 14 unit cells. Bravais lattice is named after him. He gave the relationship between the material crystals and the ideal lattice in 1866. After the discovery of X-ray diffraction in 1911, his work gave the mathematical basis to determine the crystal structures.
John Henry Poynting (9 Sep 1852 - 30 Mar 1914)
He was a British physicist who introduced the Poynting vector in his paper on the transfer of energy in the electromagnetic field. It was a theorem that gives a value to the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy. He was the first to suggest the existence of the effect of radiation from the Sun that causes particles in orbit to spiral close. He also determined the Earth’s mean density in 1891 and used accurate torsion balances to determine the gravitational constant.
Stephen Groombridge (7 Jan 1755 - 30 Mar 1832)
He was an English astronomer and merchant who made the Groombridge Catalogue, a catalog of Circumpolar stars. He made observations for 10 years and another 10 years to adjust the data to correct for refraction and clock errors. He was diagnosed with a severe attack of paralysis but never fully recovered. During this period, his work was continued by others. His catalog covered 4,243 stars having apparent magnitudes greater than 9.
Fritz Wolfgang London (7 Mar 1900 - 30 Mar 1954)
He was a German-American physicist who devised the first quantum mechanical treatment of hydrogen molecules with Walter Heitler. They developed a wave equation with the help of which we could calculate approximate values of the molecule’s ionization potential, the heat of dissociation, and other constants. Their approach is later called the valence-bond theory.
Charles Vernon Boys (15 Mar 1855 - 30 Mar 1944)
He was an English physicist and inventor of sensitive instruments who invented the integraph, the machine which could draw the antiderivative of a function. He also invented high-speed cameras and improved the automatic recording calorimeter. He repeated Henry Cavendish’s experiment to improve the measurement of gravitational constant. He retired in 1939 and studied garden weeds.
March 30 in Physics History - Events – Physics Events on March 30
Unified Field Theory By Albert Einstein
On this day, Albert Einstein revised his unified field theory in 1953 which was an attempt to describe all the fundamental forces in form of a single theory. He developed general relativity which was a field theory of gravitation. Later, Einstein and others tried to construct a unified field theory in which gravity and electromagnetism would emerge as a single fundamental field though different but failed.
First Appearance of Halley's Comet
The first appearance of Halley’s comet was recorded by Chinese astronomers in 239 B.C. It has an orbit of 75 years and it travels in the opposite direction from the revolution of planets. When Halley predicted that the comet will reappear after 75 years and the comet did reappear again in 1759, it was named after Halley.
