Physics, like all other disciplines, has a history. And like all other histories, it is made, shaped, and influenced by people and events. This being January 2022, I figured it’s a good time as any to revisit some key events that happened and helped shape physics as we know it today.
Turns out January is very important to physics history. One of the greatest physicists ever was born in January, and one of the most startling observations about our universe was announced in January. For these and much more, stick around and find out!
January 4th, 1643, Sir Isaac Newton is born
Shortly after mid-midnight on January 4, 16431, Hannah went into labor. She was not expecting this; the baby was coming out two-and-a-half months sooner. Upon delivery, the baby looked too little and fragile, unlikely to survive. In fact, two women who had been sent earlier to seek help from a local gentlewoman stopped to sit down on the way there, as they didn’t think the baby would survive until they return2. Newton’s mother, Hannah, was quoted to have said that the baby was too tiny, he could fit in a quart mug.
That baby survived, however, and was given the name of his father, Isaac, who had died 3 months before his birth.
Isaac grew up to be one of the best minds in physics and mathematics. His most popular scientific publication, the Principia, is regarded by many as the single most important publication in the history of physics. In 1978, Michael Hart named him number 2 in his ultimate list of the most influential people in history. Physics World named him the second greatest physicist of all time, only after Einstein.
Related: The Falling Apple Story: How Sir Isaac Newton Explained Gravity.
Other prominent figures in physics that were born in January include the following:
Stephen Hawking. January 8, 1942.
This is another physicist who had it the hard way early in life. Stephen Hawking was just 21 he was diagnosed with an early-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In theory, this disease was supposed to gradually paralyze him, culminating in a potential respiratory failure within 2 years.
Beating the odds, Hawking lived over 50 years with ALS. During which time he married, had children and grandchildren, and became one of the most renowned theoretical physicist of his time.
He was a recipient of over 20 awards and medals in his lifetime, both scientific and civilian. Notable ones include the Albert Einstein Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom given by the President of the United States. He was appointed the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge between 1979 and 2009, a post once held by Isaac Newton. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and was a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He is the subject of the 2014 film, The Theory of Everything – a good watch!
Daniel Bernoulli: January 29th, 1700.
Daniel Bernoulli came from a truly gifted family. Between 1618 – 1798, the Bernoulli family produced 8 prominent mathematicians or physicists. Many regard this as the most mathematically gifted family in history, and Daniel Bernoulli is arguably the best of all.
His main contribution to physics is in the field of fluid mechanics. He also made notable contributions to thermodynamics, the kinetic theory of gases, and many contributions to mathematics that his Wikipedia page has a separate section on it. Suffice to say, he was among the best mathematicians of his time. Bernoulli’s principle in hydrostatics serves as a tribute to his work of applying mathematics to mechanics.
January 29th, 1697: Newton solves the Branchistochrone Problem.
This is actually more of a fun fact since we are already talking about Bernoulli and Isaac Newton.
At around 4 p.m. on the 29th of January 1697, Isaac Newton arrived home from work to find a letter in his mail with a mathematics problem. Isaac Newton solved the problem and mailed back the answer the following day. Just an ordinary day for Newton of course, but here is what he didn’t know:
In June of the previous year (1696), Johann Bernoulli (father of Daniel Bernoulli) published that mathematics problem in a popular scientific journal at the time, Acta Eruditorium. He urged the brilliant mathematicians at the time to solve the problem and send him their solutions within six months.
At the end of the six months, however, no one had come forth with an answer. Gottfried Leibnitz, a renowned German mathematician, asked for an extension of the deadline, to which Bernoulli complied. It was at this point that Bernoulli took the liberty to mail the question directly to Isaac Newton – who solved it in one night.
Isaac Newton was a genius. Bernoulli himself (who conceived the question), had taken two weeks to solve it.
Related: Three things you didn’t know about Sir Isaac Newton.
Here is an article that recounts this beautiful incident as well as shedding light on the problem itself, written by Marco Tavora Ph.D., The Famous Problem of the Brachistochrone.
January 22nd, 1980, Andrei Sakharov is arrested
Andrei Sakharov was a distinguished Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, and a human activist. Best known for his work in nuclear physics. He was a key figure in the Soviet atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb projects between 1948 and 1961 – eventually earning himself the title Father of the Soviet Hydrogen Bomb.
Sakharov was a prodigy from an early age. His first physics teacher was his own father, Dmitri Sakharov, who taught physics at several Moscow schools and institutes. He took notice of his son’s aptitude for physics and enrolled him in the Moscow State University when Sakharov was only 17 years. World War II briefly interrupted his education, nevertheless, he completed his Ph.D. in 1947 at the age of 26.
With a potential World War III on the horizon and the United States having perfected the Atomic Bomb at the end of World War II, the pressure was on Russia’s elite minds to develop their own nuclear weapon. Sakharov largely participated in the Atomic Bomb project in mid-1948; they completed their research later that year and the bomb was tested in August 1949.
Sakharov went on to develop the first megaton-range Soviet H-Bomb. His design of the H-bomb is still known as Sakharov’s Third Idea in Russia.
As a physicist, Sakharov helped solve the matter-antimatter asymmetry by proposing that they were equally created in the Big Bang but the antimatter decayed leaving only matter3.
Sakharov clashes with the Soviet Government
With his achievements, Sakharov was treated as a hero until he began to criticize the Soviet government. In the late 1950s, he became deeply concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. He came out against nuclear testing in the atmosphere, and nuclear proliferation. He also spoke up against human rights violations in Russia and the Soviet intervention of Afghanistan in 1979.
On January 22nd, 1980, he was arrested by the Soviet Government and exiled in the city of Gorky (which was out of bounds to foreigners) under the pretext that he was old and senile, and isolated for his own good 4. However, Sakharov continued his activism and scientific research in exile. His wife assisted him in smuggling his speeches and research papers out of Gorky. He was a recipient of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, the first Russian to win it.
He died in December 1989, at the age of 68.
January 19, 1894. Scottish chemist and physicist Sir James Dewar produces “solid air”.
By the way, the term “solid air” is just a fancy way of saying solidified air; air that has been cooled below its freezing point.
This incredible feat was accomplished by Professor James Dewar of the University of Cambridge. On Friday, January 19th, 1894, he communicated to the Royal Society that he had succeeded in freezing air into a clear, transparent solid. After years of experimenting with air at very low temperatures, he had succeeded to freeze it.
Freezing air might seem like a minor achievement, but many had tried over years and failed.
Who was James Dewar?
He is one of the most decorated and accomplished Scottish experimental scientists of all time – many regard him as being up there with Michael Faraday. If you have ever used a vacuum flask (or a Thermos as it is also known), he invented those!
(Unfortunately for him, he did not patent his invention. And subsequently lost a court case to a German company (Thermos) that had patented it in due time. Although the vacuum flask went on to have a huge commercial success, Dewar did not benefit from it although he is the inventor)
On the other hand, his scientific accomplishments are legendary.
He was the first to liquefy hydrogen5 in 1898, and proceeded to solidify it. He showed that both oxygen and ozone were affected by a magnetic field and went on to invent the first vacuum flask for the storage of liquefied gases so that he could study their properties longer. The vacuum flask he invented is still commonly known as the “Dewar flask” today among chemists.
With remarkable insight, he improved his methods until he was able to reach temperatures of only 13 degrees above absolute zero. At this temperature, all gases liquefy with the exception of helium (Helium condenses at 5 degrees above absolute temperature). He tried unsuccessfully to liquefy helium. This was later accomplished by Heike Onness who was subsequently awarded a Nobel Prize in 1913.
Dewar suggested seven different structures for benzene (See Dewar Benzene), and studied the heat of formation of compounds, particularly oxides of chlorine. He investigated the atomic volume of solids, the temperature of the Sun, and of the electric spark.
Later in his life, he collaborated with Frederick Abel and together they invented cordite, a smokeless gunpowder. He spent the latter days of his life studying surface tensions in soap bubbles and giving lecture-demonstrations at the Royal Institution in London.
Dewar never won the Noble prize, although he was nominated several times6. He however won many other prizes and medals in his career; he was knighted in 1904.
January 8, 1988: The expansion of the universe is accelerating!
On Friday, January 8th, 1988, Saul Perlmutter, the leader of the International Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) took the stage before reporters and made an unprecedented announcement.
After years of carefully observing distant exploding stars (Supernovas), Perlmutter and his team concluded that the universe appears to accelerate in its expansion rather than slowing down as expected.
Less than two months after his announcement, another independent team of cosmologists led by Brian Schimidt of the Australian National University reported the same result. These results were in direct contradiction to what scientists believed at the time.
Allow me to digress and explain why these results were so shocking.
Isaac Newton’s universe
In the summer of 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published the famed Principia, in which he established his three laws of motion and the law of gravity. Isaac Newton showed that every matter in the universe attracts every other matter by a force of gravitation. (According to Newton, therefore, the universe shouldn’t be expanding – if anything it should be contracting due to the attractiveness of gravity). Newton, however, believed that the universe was static and infinite. He reasoned that the attractive forces due to gravitation in the universe were balanced by the uniform distribution of matter in space.
Newton’s universe was therefore a static, infinite, and equilibrium array of uniformly distributed matter.
Read: Isaac Newton, the falling apple, and gravity (story)
Although Newton’s theory of gravitation was successful at explaining many things in our solar system and beyond, it had a problem: It was an “action-at-a-distance” theory. Newton’s theory declares that bodies that have mass attract one another, but it doesn’t explain why, or how gravity is transmitted in space.
Albert Einstein’s universe
Albert Einstein came along in 1915 and proposed his general theory of relativity. He showed that mass creates a distortion in the fabric of space-time, which manifests itself as gravity. But when he applied his newfound theory to the scale of the universe he found that the curvature of space-time would cause the universe to collapse or expand, but not remain static. However, Einstein believed (as many scientists at the time) that the universe is homogeneous and static.
So Einstein addressed this problem by introducing a cosmological constant. A cosmological constant can be thought of as an imaginary force that pushed space-time apart and prevented the collapse of the universe – forcing it to remain static. In essence, this term assumes that empty space itself possesses energy and pressure (known as vacuum energy) and thus it will balance off the attractive force of gravity contributed by all matter in the universe and prevent it from collapsing – much like trying to squeeze a balloon full of air.
Edwin Hubble’s observation
About 10 years later, after careful observation of light emitted by distant galaxies, Edwin Hubble concluded that the universe is expanding, and not static as initially thought. The implication of this discovery was that the cosmological constant introduced earlier was unnecessary, the curvature of spacetime itself could cause the universe to expand. This led to Einstein’s famous declaration, “my biggest blunder”.
The expanding universe had another consequence: Where is it expanding from?
The “Big Bang Theory” is born
In those days, scientists believed the universe was homogenous, static, and had always existed – that is, no beginning. The discovery of the expanding universe had the logical implication of it being smaller in the past. And if you keep tracking back in time, much like rolling a movie backward, you seem to end up with this crazy idea that at some point in the past, all the matter in the universe was packed together into an extremely dense state.
Perhaps it was this line of reasoning that led the Belgian cosmologist by the name of Georges Lemaitre to propose the Big Bang Theory in 1931. In essence, the Big Bang Theory suggested that the universe began as a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is today. And that it could still be expanding as a consequence of that event.
The Big Bang Theory could explain the observed expansion of the universe – but not for long.
“Dark Energy” comes on scene
By the late 1980s, cosmologists had come to grips with the fact that the universe is expanding. But they believed that the rate of expansion of universe was slowing down because of the force of gravity.
So in 1994, Saul Perlmutter and his colleagues of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set to determine the rate at which the universe was slowing down. They did this by analyzing the red-shift of a particular type of supernovae (type Ia) relative to their home galaxy. Another independent team led by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University began analyzing supernova data as well to determine the rate of the expansion of the universe.
The result was the January 8th, 1998 announcement that the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than slowing down. Furthermore, Permutter results indicated that the universe could continue to expand forever! Perlmutter theorized that Einstein’s cosmological constant could be the reason for such an expansion, later that year Michael Turner coined the name “dark energy” to describe the mysterious force pushing space apart.
To date, this mysterious force is still a topic of debate among cosmologists. It is among the unsolved problems in physics.
Anyway, this concludes my top events in physics history that happened in January. I hope you had fun reading them as I had preparing them. Hope to catch you on my next post soon, until then have a great time.
- Other references put Isaac Newton’s birth on Christmas day (25th December 1642). However, that was an old-style calendar still used in England at the time. According to the modern calendar, Isaac Newton was born on January 4th, 1643.
- Allegedly, Isaac Newton himself told this story to Conduitt
- This matter-antimatter problem is still unsolved in modern physics. However, all searches start with the foundational work of Sakharov
- According to the book Andrei Sakharov: Quarks and the Structure of Matter by Harry J Lipkin
- And later Flourine
- Strangely, though, he was never nominated by any of his fellow countrymen
