March 9 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 9 in Physics History - Births – Physicists born on March 9
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 Mar 1934 - 27 Mar 1968)
He was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first man to travel into space on 12 April 1961 when he was 27 years old. He graduated from the Soviet Air Force and volunteered to become a cosmonaut and joined a group of test pilots for training. He was informed that he had been selected to pilot the Vostok 1 spacecraft three days before the launch. He orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 301 km once in 1 hour 29 minutes. Later, he trained other cosmonauts and toured several other nations. He was killed with another pilot in the crash of a two-seat jet aircraft while on a routine training flight.
Read Also: Top 15 Most Inspiring Yuri Gagarin Quotes
David Fabricius (9 Mar 1564 - 7 May 1617)
He was a German astronomer, who was the first to follow Galileo in telescope observation of the skies. He is best known for a named-eye observation of a star in Aug 1596, the first variable star to be discovered now known as Mira. Its existence with variable brightness contradicted the Aristotelian dogma that the heavens were both perfect and constant. He observed the sun with his son and noted sunspots. They invented the use of a camera obscura for further observations and recorded sun-spot motion indicating the rotation of the Sun. He was killed by a parishioner angered upon being accused by him as a thief.
Walter Kohn (9 Mar 1923 - 19 Apr 2016)
He was an Austrian-American physicist who shared the Noble Prize in chemistry in 1998. His share of the prize was for the development of his density-function theory. This theory revolutionized material science in such a way that it has been said it has been referenced in about half of all publications in quantum chemistry that have followed. He also made contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, catalysis and surface physics.
March 9 in Physics History - Deaths – Physicists died on March 9
Hans Christian Oersted (14 Aug 1777 - 9 Mar 1851)
He was a Danish physicist and chemist whose discovery marks the starting point for the development of electromagnetic theory. He discovered that an electric current in a wire induces a magnetic field around it. His name was adopted for the magnetic field strength in the CGS system of units. He was the first to isolate aluminum as a metal. He made the first accurate determination of the compressibility of water in 1822. He also researched diamagnetism and in his final years, he started writing The Soul in Nature.
Johannes Diderik van der Waals (23 Nov 1837 - 9 Mar 1923)
He was a Dutch physicist who got the Noble Prize for physics in 1910 for his research on the gaseous and liquid states of matter. He originally worked as a teacher and was largely self-taught in science. He introduced into the theory two more constants to develop an equation applied to real gases. The weak electrostatic attractive forces between molecules and between atoms are called van der Waals forces in his honor.
March 9 in Physics History - Events – Physics Events on March 9
Sunspots Observed
Johannes Fabricius, a Dutch astronomer in 1611, observed the rising sun through his telescope and observed many dark spots on it. This was the first time someone observed the sunspots. He called his father to investigate this phenomenon together. Johannes was the first to publish information on such observations in his Narratio de maculis in sole conversione (“Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun”), on 13 Jun 1611.
Artificial Production of Mesons
The University of California at Berkeley and The Atomic Energy Commission officially announced the artificial production of mesons in 1948. They did so with the help of a 184-inch cyclotron at the University’s Radiation Laboratory. In Nature, Mesons had previously been seen as cloud chamber tracks by Carl Anderson, and others had been detected by other scientists in photographic plates at high altitudes. These short-lived particles were generated artificially by Eugene Gardner and C.G.M. Lattes, using a beam of accelerated alpha particles fired at a thin carbon target.
