George B. Kauffman
California State University Fresno, 93740
March 1, 1954 March 4,1969
March 12, 1953
March 14.1926
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March 16,1954
March 17,1950
I
Selected Dates in American Chemistry March
The United States tests a 15-megaton superbomb near Bikini Atoll. Graduate students and faculty a t American universities and research institutes join in a one-day moratorium on research and debate the uses and abuses of scientific knowledge. In a letter to Max Delhriick a t California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, James D. Watson reveals the double helix structure for deoxyrihonucleic acid (DNA). In a letter to Aueust Piccard. concernina D. C. Miller's discovery of ether drift, A< hert Einstein writes "the whole spook is caused by temperature influences (air)." Twenty-three Japanese fishermen aboard a small fishing boat return home seridusly injured by radioactive white powders which fell on them while they were working near Bikini Atoll on March 1. Glenn T. Seaborg announces the discov-
138 / Journal of Chemical Education
March 18,1896
March 19,1933
March 22,1965 March 28,1941
ery of californium (element 98) a t the University of California, Berkeley. Hamilton Cady publishes "Ammonia Compounds Analogous to Salt Hydrates," describing compounds in which Hz0 has been replaced by NHa. William F. Giaque of the University of California, Berkeley reports cooling from 1.5" to 0.25"K by using Peter J. W. Dehye's suggestion that the principle of adiabatic demagnetization he used as a means of cooling a t the lowest temperatures. The United States confirms supplying South Vietnamese forces with nonlethal gas for use against the Vietcong. Glenn T. Seaborg, e t al. show that plutonium 239 undergoes fission by slow neutrons, leading to the development of the plutonium bomb as a goal of the Manhattan Project.
