Today in History - June 25, 1903 - Marie Curie defends her doctoral thesis, then gets Nobel Prize five months later. Did she just procrastinate? Or were thesis standards higher a century ago at the Sorbonne? I haven’t seen a good explanation for the delay, other than she was busy discovering new [...]

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Today in History - June 8, 1940 - The discovery of element 93, neptunium (symbol Np), a decay product of uranium-239, was announced by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson working at the University of California at Berkeley. Neptunium was named after the planet Neptune and, at the time, was the first [...]

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Today in History – May 20, 1899 – the American Physical Society (APS) is founded for the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It was originally formed at Columbia University by 36 scientists from 17 institutions who elected Henry Rowland as their first president and A.A. Michelson as the first vice-president. It [...]

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Today in History – May 16, 1960 – Theodore Maiman develops the first ruby laser, one of the first functional optical laserswhile at the Hughes Aircraft Company. Maiman (left photo) was influenced by an article by Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes, “Infrared and Optical Masers,” which appeared in The Physics Review in [...]

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Today in History - April 20, 1940 - RCA Demonstrates Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The history of the SEM begins in 1928 and RCA’s demonstration in 1940. In 1965 the first SEM was marketed by the Cambridge Instrument Company. The provided link includes an article that details the history of the SEM from 1928 to [...]

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