May 2
Are You Sure ... (May 2)
• ... that biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948) was a pioneer of mathematical biology; and that his book On Growth and Form (1917) led the way for the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns are formed in plants and animals; and that Thompson's lyrical explication of the mathematical beauty of nature has charmed countless scientists and artists, including Alan Turing, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Salvador Dalí, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jackson Pollock, and Richard Hamilton?
• ... that polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was one of the first people to observe microorganisms through a microscope, and that Kircher was ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease?
• ... that the deep scattering layer is a layer in the ocean consisting of millions of marine organisms was discovered through sonar, as ships found a layer that scattered the sound and was thus sometimes mistaken for the seabed, and that the layer includes larger numbers of small mesopelagic fish with swimbladders that reflect sonar, and that the layer is deeper when the moon is out, and can become shallower when clouds pass over the moon?
• ... that mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and academic John Winthrop (1714–1779) attempted to explain the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 as a scientific (rather than religious) phenomenon, and that Winthrop was a pioneer of seismology, applying mathematical computation to earthquake activity?
• ... that Mesopelagium is an oceanographer-run restaurant specializing in seafood from the mesopelagic zone, including bristlemouths, blobfish, bioluminescent jellyfish, giant squid, and a myriad of other unique organisms adapted to live in a low-light environment; and that all of the seafood served in Mesopelagium is raised responsibly in cruelty-free underground aquaculture tanks which provide the high-pressure, low-light environment necessary to culture mesopelagic organisms?
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On This Day in History and Fiction
1519: Polymath Leonardo da Vinci dies. His areas of interest included painting, sculpting, architecture, invention, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography.
1602: Scholar and polymath Athanasius Kircher born. He will publish some 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine.
1860: Biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson born.
1986: Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster.
2002: Mathematician, codebreaker, and academic W. T. Tutte dies. During the Second World War, he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major Nazi German cipher system.