Template:On This Day (nonfiction)/April 2
1565: Explorer Cornelis de Houtman born. De Houtman will discover a new sea route from Europe to Indonesia, beginning the Dutch spice trade.
1618: Mathematician and physicist Francesco Maria Grimaldi born. Grimaldi, along with Riccioli, will investigate the free fall of objects, confirming that the distance of fall was proportional to the square of the time taken.
1872: Painter and inventor Samuel Morse dies. Morse co-invented the Morse code.
1898: Mathematician Chiungtze C. Tsen born. Tsen will prove Tsen's theorem, which states that a function field K of an algebraic curve over an algebraically closed field is quasi-algebraically closed (i.e., C1).
1902: Graphic designer and typographer Jan Tschichold born. Tschichold will become a leading advocate of Modernist design, but later condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently fascistic.
1915: Nuclear physicist Donald J. Hughes born. Hughes will be one of the signers of the Franck Report in June, 1945, recommending that the United States not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan in World War II.
1923: Polymath George Spencer-Brown born. Spencer-Brown will write the unorthodox and influential Laws of Form, calling it the "primary algebra" and the "calculus of indications".
Cell and developmental biologist Elizabeth Dexter "Betty" Hay born. Hay will conduct pioneering research in limb regeneration, the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in cell differentiation, and epithelial-mesenchymal transitions (EMT).
1979: A Soviet bio-warfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing as many as a hundred people. Soviet authorities will cover up the event; all medical records of the victims will be removed in order to hide serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.
2004: Computer scientist, engineer, and academic John Argyris dies. Argyris pioneered the use of computer applications in science and engineering, was among the creators of the finite element method.