1st NovemberToday in 1899 Sir Gavin de

Beer an English zoologist and morphologist was born. He developed the concept of

paedomorphism (the retention of juvenile characteristics of ancestors in mature adults) which helped to explain the sudden changes in the fossil

record which were apparently at odds with Darwin's

gradualist theory of evolution.

2nd NovemberToday in 1955 American investigators

Carlton Schwerdt and F.L. Schaffer crystallised the polio virus. Each virus

crystal is composed of many thousands of virus particles. Virus

preparations pure enough to crystallise usually provide the best

material for chemical studies. This was used to split the polio virus into

infectious and non-infectious parts. Their research laid the groundwork for

the polio vaccine.

3rd NovemberToday in 1664 Robert Hooke’s

‘Micrographia’ was published. It contained spectacular

copperplate engravings of the miniature world. The text

reinforced the power of the new microscope. Hooke famously

describes a plant cell (coining the term for the first time. As they

reminded him of walled Monk’s quarters).

4th NovemberToday marks the death

of the American Physician Howard A. Rusk in 1989. He is considered to be the

founder of rehabilitative medicine,

which he established through efforts to

rehabilitate wounded soldiers during and

5th NovemberToday marks the death of the French scientist Alexis Carrel died in 1944. He received the

1912 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine developing a method of suturing blood vessels.

Techniques developed by Carrel have made possible the

surgical transplantation of blood vessels and body

6th NovemberToday in 1956, the British

colonial government in Rhodesia began the construction of the Kariba High Dam across the

Zambezi river between North and South Rhodesia (now Zambia and

Zimbabwe). Completed in June 1959, it was the largest dam of its time and provides electricity to the region. During construction "Operation Noah" ensured the rescue of over 5,000 animals

comprising 35 different mammal species and thousands of reptiles.

7th November

Today marks the death of the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz in 1903. He was the founder of modern ethnology (the study of animal behaviour by means of

comparative zoological methods). He was known affectionately by his pupils as the "father of the grey geese" which he studied. His ideas revealed how

behavioural patterns may be traced to an evolutionary past, and he was also known for his work on the roots of aggression. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, for developing a unified, evolutionary theory of

animal and human behaviour.

8th NovemberOn this day in 1895, physicist Wilhelm

Conrad Rontgen becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific

advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all

medicine, by making the invisible visible. Rontgen's discovery occurred

accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether

cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He

dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.

9th November

On this day in 1864 the Russian microbiologist Dimitri Iosifovich

Ivanovsky who, from his study of mosaic disease in tobacco, first reported the

characteristics of the organisms that were later called viruses. Ivanovsky had been

commissioned in 1890 to study a mysterious disease that was killing tobacco crops in the Crimea. He

determined that some agent in sap could transfer disease from plant to plant.

Through detailed filtering and microscope work, he concluded that some invisible parasite, much smaller than any known bacterium, was the culprit. In fact, his super-small bacterium was a new life

form - the virus.

10th November

Today marks the death of the Swiss cardiologist Wilhelm His in 1934. He fully described a group of modified muscle fibres (known as the bundle

of His) forming part of the impulse-conducting system of the heart. It runs as a single bundle from the atrioventricular node (between the atria and ventricles) then branches into pathways to the right and left ventricles. It relays an electrical impulse, establishing a single rhythm of contraction

through the heart. He was among the first to recognise that the heartbeat originates in the individual cells of heart muscle.

11th November

Today in 1938 Typhoid Mary died. Mary Mallon was the famous typhoid carrier in the New York City area in the early 20th century. Fifty-one

original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her (countless more were indirectly attributed), although she herself was immune to the typhoid bacillus (Salmonella typhi). The outbreak of

Typhus in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1904 puzzled the scientists of the time because they thought they had wiped out the deadly disease.

Mallon's case showed that a person could be a carrier without showing any outward signs of being sick.

12th NovemberToday in 1935 the first modern surgery on the frontal lobes for

treatment of mental disorders was performed by Egas Moniz at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Moniz injected absolute alcohol into the frontal lobes of a mental patient through two holes drilled in the skull. Moniz later used a

technique that severed neurones and led to the prefrontal lobotomy

techniques of the 1940s. Moniz was later awarded a Nobel Prize

in Physiology or Medicine for 1949.

13th November

Today in 1893 the American biochemist Edward A. Doisy was born. He shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Henrik

Dam) for his isolation and synthesis of vitamin K, a substance that encourages blood clotting used

in medicine and surgery.

14th NovemberToday in 1666 the English physician, Samuel Pepys, made an record in his diary describing Richard Lower making the first documented blood transfusion. "Dr. Croone told me ... there was a pretty experiment of the blood of one dog let out, till he had died, into the body of another on

one side, while all his own run out on the other side. The first died upon the place, and the other very well and likely to do well. This did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop and such like; but, as Dr. Croon says, may, if it

takes, be of mighty use to man's health, for the amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body."  

15th NovemberToday marks the death of the American biochemist Elmer McCollumin in 1967. He originated the letter system of naming vitamins. He discovered

vitamins A, B and worked with others on vitamin D. He performed extensive research work in nutrition and growth. In the 1910's, he

recognised that a healthy diet required certain fats, and he named the essential component "fat-soluble A," as distinct from another he named

"water-soluble B." Although at first he thought each was a single compound, he later showed that they were in fact complexes. He

researched how certain minerals were as important as nutrients, including calcium, phosphorus, fluorine, manganese and zinc.

16th NovemberToday marks the death of in

the Austrian physiologist Maximilian Ruppert Franz

von Frey in 1852. He studied the sense of touch,

providing the first comprehensive information about the cutaneous senses. He confirmed the existence of locations for heat, cold,

pressure, and pain reception. He is credited with developing an early prototype of a heart-lung

17th NovemberToday marks the death of the American zoologist Raymond Pearl in 1940. He was one of the founders of biometry, the application of statistics to biology

and medicine. He pioneered studies in longevity, changes in world population, and genetics.  He reported in the May

1938 Scientific American that "the smoking of tobacco was associated definitely with an impairment of life

duration and the amount or degree of this impairment increased as the

habitual amount of smoking increased." In 1926, he first reported health benefits

of moderate alcohol consumption (as opposed to both abstinence and heavy drinking) in a modern medical light.

18th NovemberNobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling declared on this day in 1970 that large doses of

Vitamin C could ward off the common cold. He proposed that regular intake of vitamin C in amounts far higher than the officially sanctioned RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) could help prevent and shorten the duration of the common cold.

He concluded that the optimal daily intake of vitamin C for most people is 2.3 grams to 10 grams daily. Although the medical establishment immediately voiced

their strong opposition to this idea, many ordinary people believed Dr. Pauling and began taking large amounts of vitamin C. He wrote a book on the subject Vitamin C

and the Common Cold which became a best-seller..

19th NovemberToday marks the death of the American pharmacologist and biochemist Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. in 1915. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 for isolating cyclic adenosine mono-phosphate (cyclic AMP) and demonstrating its

involvement in numerous metabolic processes that occur in animals.

20th November

Today marks the death of James Bertram Collip

the Canadian biochemist in 1892. He co-discovered insulin.

Working with the bovine pancreas, Collip produced insulin in a form which permitted

clinical use.

21st November

Today marks the death of the American geneticist Alfred Henry Sturtevant in 1970. In 1913 developed a technique for mapping the location of specific genes of the chromosomes in the fruit fly Drosophila. Sturtevant's method for "chromosome mapping", relies on the analysis of groups of linked genes. In a classic paper in

genetics (1913), he described the location of six sex-linked genes as deduced by the way in which they associate with each other. Sturtevant later discovered the so-called 'position effect', in which the expression of a gene depends on its position in

relation to other genes. He also demonstrated that crossing over between chromosomes is prevented in regions where a part of the chromosome material is

inserted the wrong way round.

22nd NovemberToday in 1917 the

English physiologist and biophysicist Sir Andrew

Fielding Huxley was born. He who was a co-winner the 1963 Nobel

Peace Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alan Hodgkin in

elucidating the chemical phenomena-

the ‘sodium pump’ mechanism-by which

nerve impulses are transmitted.

23rd NovemberToday in 1553 the Italian physician and botanist Prospero Alpini was

born. He is credited with the introduction to Europe of coffee and

bananas. He made an extensive study of Egyptian and Mediterranean flora. He spent three years in Egypt,

and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of

the Linnaean system.

24th November

Today in 1859 Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ was released. It sold out the same day. The word 'evolution' is used for the first time only in the

sixth edition of the book. The term 'descent with modification' is the forerunner for evolution.

25th NovemberToday marks the death of Nikolai Vavilov the Russian plant geneticist in 1887. He devoted his life to the study and and improvement of wheat, corn and other cereal crops that sustain the global population. While

developing his theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organised a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collected seeds from every corner of the globe, and created in Leningrad the world's

largest collection of plant seeds. This seed-bank was diligently preserved even throughout the 28-month Siege of Leningrad. Despite starvation,

one of Nikolai's assistants starved to death surrounded by edible seeds.

26th November

Today in 1937 the Soviet physician Boris Borisovich

Yegorov was born. He travelled on Voskhod 1 ("Sunrise 1"),

12-13 Oct 1964 the first space flight with a crew of more than one man. He was an expert in

the sense-of-balance mechanism of the inner ear. He collected medical information,

including the effects of radiation, confinement and weightlessness on the crew.

27th November

Today in 2005 the first partial face transplant

was carried out in Amiens, France. In the

controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries

and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor

and attached to the patient's lower face.

28th NovemberToday in 1876 the the

Prussian-Estonian embryologist who discovered

the mammalian egg and notochord was born. He

showed that mammalian eggs were not the follicles of the

ovary but microscopic particles inside the follicles.

He described the development of the embryo

from layers of tissue, which he called germ layers, and

demonstrated similarities in the embryos of different species of vertebrates.

29th NovemberToday in 1627 the English

naturalist John Ray sometimes referred to as the

father of English Natural history died. He contributed significantly to progress in

taxonomy and was the first to classify flowering plants into

monocotyledons and dicotyledons. Ray

established the species as the basic taxonomic unit - his enduring legacy to botany.

30th NovemberToday marks the death of

the German botanist Nathanael Pringsheim in 1893. He was one of the founders of the science

of algology (study of algae).He made

important discoveries in the morphology and physiology of plants,

especially in the fields of reproduction and

evolution.