George B. Kauffman California State University Fresno. 93740
December 2,1945 December 5,1933 December 7,1888 December 9,1789
Decemher 10,1967
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Decemher 11,1844 December 11, I947 Decemher 13,1938 Decemher 14,1940
December
First self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction takes place under Stagg Field, University of Chicago. Utah, voting as the 36th state, ratifies the 2lst Amendment, repealing the 18th Amendment (prohibition of ethanol). August Kekul6 is elected an honorary member of the American Chemical Society. Benjamin Rush resigns his professorship of chemistry a t the University of the State of Pennsvlvania after beina elected Professor of Medicine a t th;! Colleee of Philadel~hia.This ended his career as a teacher of chemistry in the medical schools of Philadel~hia. Robert Hare, Jr. informs r h k Chemical Societv of Philadel~hiaof his discovery of the ~xy-hydrogenblowpipe, called by him a "hydrostatic blowpipe." Project Gashuggy results in the world's first commercial experiment with nuclear mining by employing a 26-kiloton nuclear explosion 4,240 feet under the New Mexico desert. -- -. --~ The anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide are discovered by Dr. Horace Wells. Vitamin B12 is isolated by Merck, Sharp, and Dohme Researeh Lahoratories. Casein fiber is patented. The first bombardment of uranium oxide with 16-MeV deuterons is performed a t the University of California by Glenn Seahorg, Arthur C. Wahl, and
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Decemher 10,1801
Selected Dates in American Chemistry
December 16,1856
Decemher 23,1947
Decemher 23, 1957
December 24,1936
December 25,1925
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December 28,1944 December 29,1931
December 30,1913
J. W. Kennedy, resulting in the synthesis of element 94, plutonium. Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, Schenectady, New York, announces the completion of a new laboratory "more extensive and richer and more p e r f e c t t h a n any in the United States, and inferior to none--existing anywhere." The transistor effect is discovered by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and W i Shockley at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The three scientists received the Nobel Prize in physics for 1956 for this discovery. The first full-scale nuclear power plant in the U.S., located at Shippingport, Pennsylvania and supplying electricity to Pittsburgh, begins operating a t full capacity. First radioactive isotope is administered as medicine a t University of California, Berkeley (phosphorus-32 for leukemia). D. C. Miller, President of the American Physical Society, announces the discovery of ether drift. Cortisone is synthesized by Lew H. Sarett of Merck, Sharp, and Dohme Research Laboratories. Announcement of the discovery of heavy water (D20) is made a t the Christmas meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Ductile tungsten, for filaments of incandescent bulbs, is patented.
Volume 53. Number 12, December 1976 / 751
