Wednesday, September 30, 2020

September 30th in stamps Babe Ruth, Hoover Dam, Jean Baptiste Perrin

Here are some events that happened on September 30th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1870 Born: Jean Baptiste Perrin, French-American physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1942)

Jean Baptiste Perrin  (30 September 1870 – 17 April 1942) was a French physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids, verified Albert Einstein’s explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter (sedimentation equilibrium). For this achievement he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926.

In 1895, Perrin showed that cathode rays were of negative electric charge in nature. He determined Avogadro's number (now known as the Avogadro constant) by several methods. He explained solar energy as due to the thermonuclear reactions of hydrogen.

After Albert Einstein published (1905) his theoretical explanation of Brownian motion in terms of atoms, Perrin did the experimental work to test and verify Einstein's predictions, thereby settling the century-long dispute about John Dalton's atomic theory. Carl Benedicks argued Perrin should receive the Nobel Prize in Physics; Perrin received the award in 1926 for this and other work on the discontinuous structure of matter, which put a definite end to the long struggle regarding the question of the physical reality of molecules.

Perrin was the author of a number of books and dissertations. Most notable of his publications were: "Rayons cathodiques et rayons X"; "Les Principes"; "Electrisation de contact"; "Réalité moléculaire"; "Matière et Lumière"; "Lumière et Reaction chimique".

Perrin was also the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Joule Prize of the Royal Society in 1896 and the La Caze Prize of the French Academy of Sciences. He was twice appointed a member of the Solvay Committee at Brussels in 1911 and in 1921. He also held memberships with the Royal Society of London and with the Academies of Sciences of Belgium, Sweden, Turin, Prague, Romania and China. He became a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1926 and was made Commander of the Order of Léopold (Belgium).

In 1919, Perrin proposed that nuclear reactions can provide the source of energy in stars. He realized that the mass of a helium atom is less than that of four atoms of hydrogen, and that the mass-energy equivalence of Einstein implies that the nuclear fusion (4 H → He) could liberate sufficient energy to make stars shine for billions of years. A similar theory was first proposed by American chemist William Draper Harkins in 1915. It remained for Hans Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker to determine the detailed mechanism of stellar nucleosynthesis during the 1930s.

In 1927, he founded the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique together with chemist André Job and physiologist André Mayer. Funding was provided by Edmond James de Rothschild. In 1937, Perrin established the Palais de la Découverte, a science museum in Paris.

Perrin is considered the founding father of the National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)). Following a petition by Perrin signed by over 80 scientists, among them eight Nobel Prize laureates, the French education minister set up the Conseil Supérieur de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Research Council) in April 1933. In 1936, Perrin, now an undersecretary for research, founded the Service Central de la Recherche Scientifique (French Central Agency for Scientific Research). Both institutions were merged under the CNRS umbrella on October 19, 1939.

His notable students include Pierre Victor Auger. Jean Perrin was the father of Francis Perrin, also a physicist.

Stamp issued by Guyana depicting Jean Baptiste Perrin

Guyana 1993, Jean Baptiste Perrin Nobel Prize in Physics 1926


1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.

George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "The Bambino" and "The Sultan of Swat", he began his MLB career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Ruth established many MLB batting (and some pitching) records, including career home runs (714), runs batted in (RBIs) (2,213), bases on balls (2,062), slugging percentage (.690), and on-base plus slugging (OPS) (1.164); the last two still stand as of 2019. Ruth is regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture and is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time. In 1936, Ruth was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" inaugural members.

At age seven, Ruth was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory where he was mentored by Brother Matthias Boutlier of the Xaverian Brothers, the school's disciplinarian and a capable baseball player. In 1914, Ruth was signed to play minor-league baseball for the Baltimore Orioles but was soon sold to the Red Sox. By 1916, he had built a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who sometimes hit long home runs, a feat unusual for any player in the pre-1920 dead-ball era. Although Ruth twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and was a member of three World Series championship teams with the Red Sox, he wanted to play every day and was allowed to convert to an outfielder. With regular playing time, he broke the MLB single-season home run record in 1919.

Babe Ruth 20 c

After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees amid controversy. The trade fueled Boston's subsequent 86-year championship drought and popularized the "Curse of the Bambino" superstition. In his 15 years with the Yankees, Ruth helped the team win seven American League (AL) pennants and four World Series championships. His big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only drew fans to the ballpark and boosted the sport's popularity but also helped usher in baseball's live-ball era, which evolved from a low-scoring game of strategy to a sport where the home run was a major factor. As part of the Yankees' vaunted "Murderers' Row" lineup of 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs, which extended his MLB single-season record by a single home run. Ruth's last season with the Yankees was 1934; he retired from the game the following year, after a short stint with the Boston Braves. During his career, Ruth led the AL in home runs during a season 12 times.

Babe Ruth 32c


During Ruth's career, he was the target of intense press and public attention for his baseball exploits and off-field penchants for drinking and womanizing. After his retirement as a player, he was denied the opportunity to manage a major league club, most likely due to poor behavior during parts of his playing career. In his final years, Ruth made many public appearances, especially in support of American efforts in World War II. In 1946, he became ill with nasopharyngeal cancer and died from the disease two years later. Ruth remains a part of American culture, and in 2018 President Donald Trump posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Babe Ruth 32 c

Babe Ruth FDC


1935 – The Hoover Dam, astride the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated.

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam, for President Herbert Hoover, by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947.

Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume (when it is full). The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.

US stamps depicting the Hoover Dam

US 4269 Express Mail Hoover Dam


US Boulder Hoover Dam


Tuesday, September 29, 2020

September 29th in stamps Servetus, de Cervantes, Enrico Fermi, Diesel, Émile Zola, Lech Wałęsa

Here are some events that happened on September 29th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1511 Born: Michael Servetus, Spanish physician, cartographer, and theologian (d. 1553)

Michael Servetus (Spanish: Miguel Serveto, French: Michel Servet), also known as Miguel Servet, Miguel de Villanueva, Michel Servet, Revés, or Michel de Villeneuve (Tudela, Navarre, 29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553), was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.

He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine. He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later rejected the Trinity doctrine and mainstream Catholic Christology. After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to Calvinist Geneva where he was burnt at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council.

Spanish stamps depicting Servetus

Spain 1977 Miguel Servet, Physician and Theologian

Spain 2011 Miguel Servet, Physician and Theologian



1547 Born: Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright (d. 1616)

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 ) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel, and one of the pinnacles of literature.

Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, many of its details are disputed or unknown, and the bulk of his surviving work was produced in the three years preceding his death. Despite this, his influence and literary contribution are reflected by the fact Spanish is often referred to as "the language of Cervantes".

In 1569, Cervantes was forced to leave Spain and moved to Rome, where he worked in the household of a cardinal. In 1570, he enlisted in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571. He served as a soldier until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates; after five years in captivity, he was ransomed, and returned to Madrid.

His first significant novel, titled La Galatea, was published in 1585, but he continued to work as a purchasing agent, then later a government tax collector. Part One of Don Quixote was published in 1605, Part Two in 1615. Other works include the 12 Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels); a long poem, the Viaje del Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus); and Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (Eight Plays and Eight Entr'actes). Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda), was published posthumously in 1616.

Stamps from various countries depicting Cervantes or his works

1949 - 400th Anniv. of the Birth of Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Chile, Miguel De Cervantes, 1947

Mexico 2005 Don Quijote Cervantes

Romania Cervantes, 1955

Spain 1916. Full Set. Cervantes



1901 Born: Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)

Enrico Fermi (29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

Fermi's first major contribution involved the field of statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli formulated his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he applied the principle to an ideal gas, employing a statistical formulation now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that obey the exclusion principle are called "fermions". Pauli later postulated the existence of an uncharged invisible particle emitted along with an electron during beta decay, to satisfy the law of conservation of energy. Fermi took up this idea, developing a model that incorporated the postulated particle, which he named the "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction and now called weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. Through experiments inducing radioactivity with the recently discovered neutron, Fermi discovered that slow neutrons were more easily captured by atomic nuclei than fast ones, and he developed the Fermi age equation to describe this. After bombarding thorium and uranium with slow neutrons, he concluded that he had created new elements. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, the new elements were later revealed to be nuclear fission products.

Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fermi led the team that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He was on hand when the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, went critical in 1943, and when the B Reactor at the Hanford Site did so the next year. At Los Alamos, he headed F Division, part of which worked on Edward Teller's thermonuclear "Super" bomb. He was present at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, where he used his Fermi method to estimate the bomb's yield.

After the war, Fermi served under J. Robert Oppenheimer on the General Advisory Committee, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear matters. After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds. He was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the 1954 hearing that resulted in the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance. Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons, and he speculated that cosmic rays arose when material was accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space. Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, including the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, and the synthetic element fermium, making him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them.

A great and beloved teacher, Fermi tutored or directly influenced no less than 8 young researchers who went on to win Nobel Prizes.

US stamp depicting Enrico Fermi


1902 Died: Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist (b. 1840)

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902

More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire. Unlike Balzac, who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start, at the age of 28, had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, in the context of Baron Haussman's changing Paris, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family—the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts—for five generations.

As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

He is considered to be a significant influence on those writers that are credited with the creation of the so-called new journalism; Wolfe, Capote, Thompson, Mailer, Didion, Talese and others. Tom Wolfe wrote that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, and Émile Zola.

Emile Zola - L'Assommoir, Germinal, J'Beschuldigt - Paris


France 2002 - Death of Emile Zola, 1840-1902


France Emile Zola


1913 Died: Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the diesel engine (b. 1858)

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the Diesel engine, and for his suspicious death at sea.

In early 1890, Diesel moved to Berlin with his wife and children, Rudolf Jr, Heddy, and Eugen, to assume management of Linde's corporate research and development department and to join several other corporate boards there. As he was not allowed to use the patents he developed while an employee of Linde's for his own purposes, he expanded beyond the field of refrigeration. He first worked with steam, his research into thermal efficiency and fuel efficiency leading him to build a steam engine using ammonia vapour. During tests, however, the engine exploded and almost killed him. His research into high compression cylinder pressures tested the strength of iron and steel cylinder heads. One exploded during a run in. He spent many months in a hospital, followed by health and eyesight problems.

Ever since attending lectures of Carl von Linde, Diesel intended designing an internal combustion engine that could approach the maximum theoretical thermal efficiency of the Carnot cycle. He worked on this idea for several years, and in 1892, he considered his theory to be completed. The same year, Diesel was given the German patent DRP 67207. In 1893, he published a treatise entitled Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine to Replace the Steam Engine and The Combustion Engines Known Today, that he had been working on since early 1892. This treatise formed the basis for his work on and invention of the Diesel engine. By summer 1893, Diesel had realised that his initial theory was erroneous, which led him to file another patent application for the corrected theory in 1893.

Diesel understood thermodynamics and the theoretical and practical constraints on fuel efficiency. He knew that as much as 90% of the energy available in the fuel is wasted in a steam engine. His work in engine design was driven by the goal of much higher efficiency ratios. In his engine, fuel was injected at the end of the compression stroke and was ignited by the high temperature resulting from the compression. From 1893 to 1897, Heinrich von Buz, director of MAN SE in Augsburg, gave Rudolf Diesel the opportunity to test and develop his ideas.

The first successful Diesel engine ran in 1897 and is now on display at the German Technical Museum in Munich.

Rudolf Diesel obtained patents for his design in Germany and other countries, including the United States.

He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1978.

Stamps from Germany and Saarland depicting Diesel

Germany 100 Years Diesel Engine

Saarland Rudolph Diesel


1943 Born: Lech Wałęsa is elected President of Poland.

Lech Wałęsa (born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the first democratically elected president of Poland from 1990 to 1995. A shipyard electrician by trade, he became the leader of Solidarity, and led a successful pro-democratic effort which in 1989 ended the communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.

While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist, for which he was persecuted by the Communist authorities, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He co-founded the Solidarity trade-union movement which membership rose to over ten million people.

After martial law was imposed in Poland and Solidarity was outlawed, Wałęsa was again arrested. Released from custody, he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government.

After winning the Polish presidential election of 1990, Wałęsa became the first President of Poland ever elected in a popular vote. He presided over Poland's successful transition from communism into a free-market liberal democracy, but his active role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election. In 1995, he established the Lech Wałęsa Institute.

Since 1980, Wałęsa has received hundreds of prizes, honors and awards from many countries of the world. He was named the Time Person of the Year (1981) and one of Time's 100 most important people of the 20th century (1999). He has received over forty honorary degrees, including from Harvard University and Columbia University, as well as dozens of the highest state orders, including: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Knight Grand Cross of the British Order of the Bath, and the French Grand Cross of Legion of Honour. In 1989, Wałęsa was the first foreign non-head of state to address the Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress. The Gdansk Lech Wałęsa Airport bears his name since 2004.

Polish stamps as well as an underground stamp depicting Lech Wałęsa

1982 Lech Walesa Poland Solidarity Underground Post Poczta Solidarnosc


Poland 2013 Sheet - 2013 70th Anniversary of Lech Walesa


Poland Lech Walesa 1990

Monday, September 28, 2020

September 28th in stamps Oscar I of Sweden–Norway , Herman Melville, Louis Pasteur, Henri Moissan

 Here are some events that happened on September 28th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1844 – Oscar I of Sweden–Norway is crowned king of Sweden.

The only child of King Charles XIV & III John, Oscar inherited the thrones upon the death of his father. Throughout his reign he would pursue a liberal course in politics in contrast to Charles XIV, instituting reforms and improving ties between Sweden and Norway. In an address to him in 1857, the Riksdag declared that he had promoted the material prosperity of the kingdom more than any of his predecessors.

Norwegian stamps depicting Oscar I

Oscar I Norway


Oscar I Norway


1852 Born: Henri Moissan, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907 )

Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan (28 September 1852 – 20 February 1907) was a French chemist and pharmacist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds. Moissan was one of the original members of the International Atomic Weights Committee.

Moissan was born in Paris on 28 September 1852, the son of a minor officer of the eastern railway company, Francis Ferdinand Moissan, and a seamstress, Joséphine Améraldine (née Mitel). His mother was of Jewish descent, his father wasn't. In 1864 they moved to Meaux, where he attended the local school. In 1870 he left the school without the grade universitaire necessary to attend university. Moissan became a trainee in pharmacy in 1871 and in 1872 he started working for a chemist in Paris, where he was able to save a person poisoned with arsenic. He decided to study chemistry and began first at the laboratory of Edmond Frémy and later at that of Pierre Paul Dehérain. Dehérain persuaded him to pursue an academic career. He passed the baccalauréat, which was necessary to study at university, in 1874 after an earlier failed attempt. He also became qualified as first-class pharmacist at the École Supérieure de Pharmacie in 1879, and received his doctoral degree from the Faculté des Sciences in 1880. During his time in Paris he became a friend of the chemist Alexandre Léon Étard and the botanist Vasque.

He published his first scientific paper, about carbon dioxide and oxygen metabolism in plants, with Dehérain in 1874. He left plant physiology and then turned towards inorganic chemistry; subsequently his research on pyrophoric iron was well received by the two most prominent French inorganic chemists of that time, Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville and Jules Henri Debray. After Moissan received his Ph.D. on cyanogen and its reactions to form cyanures in 1880, his friend Landrine offered him a position at an analytic laboratory. His marriage, to Léonie Lugan, took place in 1882. They had a son in 1885.

During the 1880s, Moissan focused on fluorine chemistry and especially the production of fluorine itself. He had no laboratory of his own, but used several laboratories, for example that of Charles Friedel. There he had access to a strong battery consisting of 90 Bunsen cells which made it possible to observe a gas produced by the electrolysis of molten arsenic trichloride; the gas was reabsorbed by the arsenic trichloride. The electrolysis of hydrogen fluoride yielded fluorine on 26 June 1886. The French academy of science sent three representatives, Marcellin Berthelot, Henri Debray, and Edmond Frémy, to verify the results, but Moissan was unable to reproduce them, owing to the absence from the hydrogen fluoride of traces of potassium fluoride present in the previous experiments. After resolving the problem and demonstrating the production of fluorine several times, he was awarded a prize of 10,000 francs. In subsequent years, until 1891, he focused on the study of fluorine chemistry. He discovered numerous fluorine compounds, such as (together with Paul Lebeau) SF6 in 1901. His research in the production of boron and artificial diamonds and the development of an electrically heated oven capable of reaching 3500 °C using 2200 amperes at 80 volts followed by 1900.

His newly developed arc furnace led to the production of borides and carbides of numerous elements (e.g. silicon boride), another of his research areas.


French stamps depicting Henri Moissan

Henri Moissan, Nobel Chemistry Winner, France 1986


France 2006 - Henri Moissan - Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry


1891 Died: Herman Melville, American author and poet (b. 1819)

Herman Melville (born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.

Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the island. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of a prominent Boston family. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, the work's genre classifications range from late Romantic to early Symbolist. Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.

Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850, and finished 18 months later, a year longer than he had anticipated. Writing was interrupted by his meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne in August 1850, and by the creation of the "Mosses from an Old Manse" essay as a result of that friendship. The book is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius".

The basis for the work is Melville's 1841 whaling voyage aboard the Acushnet. The novel also draws on whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.

In October 1851, the chapter "The Town Ho's Story" was published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The same month, the whole book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London, and under its definitive title in a single-volume edition in New York in November. There are hundreds of differences between the two editions, most slight but some important and illuminating. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change to the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as "Moby Dick", without the hyphen. One factor that led British reviewers to scorn the book was that it seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship: the British edition lacked the Epilogue, which recounts Ishmael's survival. About 3,200 copies were sold during the author's life.

Covers issued by the United States and Romania to commemorate Herman Melville or Moby Dick


1991 H.Melville,Moby Dick The whale book,whaling fishing ship,Romania,


Moby Dick Herman Melville First Day Cover


Moby Dick Whaling Herman Melville First Day Cover



1895 Died: Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist (b. 1822)

Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French biologist, microbiologist, and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of diseases, and his discoveries have saved many lives ever since. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax.

His medical discoveries provided direct support for the germ theory of disease and its application in clinical medicine. He is best known to the general public for his invention of the technique of treating milk and wine to stop bacterial contamination, a process now called pasteurization. He is regarded as one of the three main founders of bacteriology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch, and is popularly known as the "father of microbiology".

Pasteur was responsible for disproving the doctrine of spontaneous generation. He performed experiments that showed that, without contamination, microorganisms could not develop. Under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences, he demonstrated that in sterilized and sealed flasks, nothing ever developed; and, conversely, in sterilized but open flasks, microorganisms could grow. Although Pasteur was not the first to propose the germ theory, his experiments indicated its correctness and convinced most of Europe that it was true.

Today, he is often regarded as one of the fathers of germ theory. Pasteur made significant discoveries in chemistry, most notably on the molecular basis for the asymmetry of certain crystals and racemization. Early in his career, his investigation of tartaric acid resulted in the first resolution of what is now called optical isomers. His work led the way to the current understanding of a fundamental principle in the structure of organic compounds.

He was the director of the Pasteur Institute, established in 1887, until his death, and his body was interred in a vault beneath the institute. Although Pasteur made groundbreaking experiments, his reputation became associated with various controversies. Historical reassessment of his notebook revealed that he practiced deception to overcome his rivals 


Stamps from France, Monaco and Estonia depicting Louis Pasteur


Estonia Chemist Louis Pasteur

France Chemist Louis Pasteur 1.50F

France Chemist Louis Pasteur 1973

France Chemist Louis Pasteur

Monaco Chemist Louis Pasteur


Sunday, September 27, 2020

September 27th in stamps Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Edgar Degas, Constantine I of Greece abdicates

 Here are some events that happened on September 27th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1822 – Jean-François Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

Jean-François Champollion, also known as Champollion le jeune ('the Younger') (23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, and already as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, and spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. During the early 19th-century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801) which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.

Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community.

In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered. In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he traveled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied, and brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again he was given a professorship in Egyptology, but only lectured a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching. He died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously.

During his life as well as long after his death intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists. Some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, and others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. But subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results gradually led to general acceptance of his work. Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted, and has been the basis for all further developments in the field. Consequently, he is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology".

Stamps from Egypt, France, Monaco depicting Champollion or the Rosetta Stone

France Champollion



Egypt Champollion FDC


Egypt Champollion

Monaco Champollion


France Champollion Maxicard


1917 Died: Edgar Degas, French painter and sculptor (b. 1834)

Edgar Degas (born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation

Some stamps depicting Degas and or his artwork

Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator


1922 – King Constantine I of Greece abdicates his throne in favor of his eldest son, George II.

Constantine I (2 August 1868 – 11 January 1923) was King of Greece from 1913 to 1917 and from 1920 to 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece expanded to include Thessaloniki, doubling in area and population. He succeeded to the throne of Greece on 18 March 1913, following his father's assassination.

His disagreement with Eleftherios Venizelos over whether Greece should enter World War I led to the National Schism. Constantine forced Venizelos to resign twice, but in 1917 he left Greece, after threats by the Entente forces to bombard Athens; his second son, Alexander, became king. After Alexander's death, Venizelos' defeat in the 1920 legislative elections, and a plebiscite in favor of his return, Constantine was reinstated. He abdicated the throne for the second and last time in 1922, when Greece lost the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and was succeeded by his eldest son, George II. Constantine died in exile four months later, in Sicily. 

Greek stamps depicting Constantine  I

Greece: Constantine I Mourning stamps with black edges/perforations


Greece. Statue of King Constantine on Horse Year : 1938


George II (Greek: Γεώργιος Βʹ, Geórgios II; 19 July 1890 – 1 April 1947) reigned as King of Greece from 1922 to 1924 and from 1935 to 1947. He was a paternal first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.


Greek stamps depicting George II

Greece: George II  Mourning stamps with black edges/perforations



Saturday, September 26, 2020

September 26th in stamps Jurij Vega, Christian X of Denmark, T. S. Eliot, Miloš Obrenović, Ivan Pavlov

 Here are some events that happened on September 26th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1802 Died: Jurij Vega, Slovene mathematician and physicist (b. 1754)

Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega (also Veha; Latin: Georgius Bartholomaei Vecha; German: Georg Freiherr von Vega; born Vehovec, March 23, 1754 – September 26, 1802) was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer.

Vega published a series of books of logarithm tables. The first one appeared in 1783. Much later, in 1797 it was followed by a second volume that contained a collection of integrals and other useful formulae. His Handbook, which was originally published in 1793, was later translated into several languages and appeared in over 100 issues. His major work was Thesaurus Logarithmorum Completus (Treasury of all Logarithms) that was first published 1794 in Leipzig (its 90th edition was published in 1924). This mathematical table was actually based on Adriaan Vlacq's tables, but corrected a number of errors and extended the logarithms of trigonometric functions for the small angles. An engineer, Franc Allmer, honourable senator of the Graz University of Technology, has found Vega's logarithmic tables with 10 decimal places in the Museum of Carl Friedrich Gauss in Göttingen. Gauss used this work frequently and he has written in it several calculations. Gauss has also found some of Vega's errors in the calculations in the range of numbers, of which there are more than a million. A copy of Vega's Thesaurus belonging to the private collection of the British mathematician and computing pioneer Charles Babbage (1791–1871) is preserved at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

Over the years Vega wrote a four volume textbook Vorlesungen über die Mathematik (Lectures about Mathematics). Volume I appeared in 1782 when he was 28 years old, Volume II in 1784, Volume III in 1788 and Volume IV in 1800. His textbooks also contain interesting tables: for instance, in Volume II one can find closed form expressions for sines of multiples of 3 degrees, written in a form easy to work with.

Vega wrote at least six scientific papers. On August 20, 1789 Vega achieved a world record when he calculated pi to 140 places, of which the first 126 were correct. This calculation he proposed to the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in the booklet V. razprava (The fifth discussion), where he had found with his calculating method an error on the 113th place from the estimation of Thomas Fantet de Lagny (1660–1734) from 1719 of 127 places. Vega retained his record 52 years until 1841 and his method is mentioned still today.

Stamps from Slovenia depicting Jurij Vega

Slovenia 1994, Photo Camera, Astronomy, Europa Cept Vega


Slovenia 1994, Photo Camera, Astronomy, Europa Cept



1849 Born: Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов; 26 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning.

From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with an unusual energy which he referred to as "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which Dmitry Pisarev, a Russian literary critic of the 1860s, and Ivan Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. In 1870, he enrolled in the physics and mathematics department at the University of Saint Petersburg to study natural science.

Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate. A survey in the Review of General Psychology, published in 2002, ranked Pavlov as the 24th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning have been found to operate across a variety of behavior therapies and in experimental and clinical settings, such as educational classrooms and even reducing phobias with systematic desensitization.

Stamps from Hungary,  Romania, Argentina and Russia depicting Ivan Pavlov

Argentina Physiology Congress Ivan Pavlov


Romania 1952 Ivan Pavlov Russian physiologist


Hungary - 1989 - Ivan Petrovich Pavlov - Medical Pioneers


Russia Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Physiologist, 1969


Ivan P. Pavlov Nobel Medicine Winner, Soviet 1991



1860 Died: Miloš Obrenović, Serbian prince (b. 1780)

Prince Miloš Obrenović I of Serbia (18 March 1780 or 1783 – 26 September 1860) born Miloš Teodorović was Prince of Serbia from 1815 to 1839, and again from 1858 to 1860. He participated in the First Serbian uprising, led Serbs in the Second Serbian uprising, and founded the House of Obrenović. Under his rule, Serbia became an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire. Prince Miloš ruled autocratically, consistently refusing to share power, which generated strong domestic opposition. During his rule, Miloš I bought a number of estates and ships from Ottoman Turks and also became a prominent trader. He was the richest man in Serbia and one of the richest in the Balkans, with estates in Vienna, Serbia and Wallachia.


Serbian stamps depicting Miloš Obrenović

Serbia Army 175 Anniversary Ottoman Empire War prince Miloš Obrenović


Serbia 2016 - Definitive Stamp - Miloš Obrenović


1870 Born: Christian X of Denmark (d. 1947)

Christian X (Christian Carl Frederik Albert Alexander Vilhelm; 26 September 1870 – 20 April 1947) was King of Denmark from 1912 to 1947, and the last of the 30 Kings of Iceland (where the name was officially Kristján X) between 1918 and 1944. He was a member of the House of Glücksburg and the first monarch since King Frederick VII that was born into the Danish royal family; both his father and his grandfather were born as princes of a ducal family from Schleswig. Among his siblings was King Haakon VII of Norway.

His character has been described as authoritarian and he strongly stressed the importance of royal dignity and power. His reluctance to fully embrace democracy resulted in the Easter Crisis of 1920, in which he dismissed the democratically elected Social Liberal cabinet with which he disagreed, and installed one of his own choosing. This was in accordance with the letter of the constitution, but the principle of parliamentarianism had been considered a constitutional custom since 1901. Faced with mass demonstrations, a general strike organized by the Social Democrats and the risk of the monarchy being overthrown he was forced to accept that a monarch could not keep a government in office against the will of parliament, as well as his reduced role as a symbolic head of state.

During the German occupation of Denmark, Christian become a popular symbol of resistance, particularly because of the symbolic value of the fact that he rode every day through the streets of Copenhagen unaccompanied by guards. With a reign spanning two world wars, and his role as a rallying symbol for Danish national sentiment during the German occupation, he became one of the most popular Danish monarchs of modern times. King Christian X was known to parade through town on his horse, Jubilee.

Stamps from Iceland, Greenland and Denmark depicting Christian X


Denmark King Christian X


Greenland King Christian X


Iceland King Christian X


1888 Born: T. S. Eliot, English poet, playwright, critic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was an American-born British poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work and marry there. He became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship.

Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".

Stamps from the US and Great Britain depicting T. S. Eliot and his work The Addressing of Cats 


US Literary Arts T S Eliot 22c.jpg

The Addressing of Cats by T.S.Eliot