Calendar of Science - May

Every month, Pacific Science Center publishes a Calendar of Science, a compendium of science facts to add a little knowledge to your daily routine. So, read on and discover a few things you may not have known. If you have any comments or questions, →please drop us a line. Remember, life's boring without discovery!

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May 1, 1930 - The American astronomer Vesto Slipher officially proposed the name Pluto for the newly discovered ninth planet based on the suggestion of an 11-year-old English schoolgirl named Venetia Burney.
May 2, 1800 - The English chemist William Nicholson performed the first electrolysis of water, separating it into hydrogen and oxygen.
May 3, 1764 - The French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the globular cluster which is now called M3. This started him on a systematic search for nebulous objects which eventually became the Messier catalogue.
May 4, 1825 - Birthday of the English biologist Thomas Huxley, who was the first person to suggest that birds are descended from dinosaurs, and was one of the main supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
May 5, 1961 - Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut to travel into space.
May 6, 1856 - Birthday of the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud, who revolutionized the field of psychotherapy and wrote The Interpretation of Dreams.
May 7, 1909 - Birthday of the American physicist Edwin H. Land, who invented the Polaroid camera, which developed the picture inside the camera in about sixty seconds.
May 8, 1902 - Mount Pelee erupted on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean. It may have been the most powerful volcanic eruption ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
May 9, 1962 - Scientists at MIT successfully bounced a laser beam off the Moon for the first time.
May 10, 1930 - The first planetarium in the US opened to the public, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.
May 11, 1916 - The Swiss physicist Albert Einstein published "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" in which he proposed a new theory of gravity based on the curvature of space.
May 12, 1910 - Birthday of the English chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, who discovered the structure of many important organic compounds, including penicillin, vitamin B-12, and insulin.
May 13, 1857 - Birthday of the English bacteriologist Ronald Ross, who discovered that malaria is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito.
May 14, 1796 - The English physician Edward Jenner performed the first inoculation against smallpox using live cowpox virus.
May 15, 1713 - Birthday of the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, who compiled the first star catalogue of the Southern Hemisphere. He created and named 15 constellations, more than any other person.
May 16, 1960 - The American physicist Theodore Maiman built the first laser, using a ruby crystal.
May 17, 1836 - Birthday of the English astronomer Joseph Lockyer, who identified a new element in the Sun's spectrum, which he named helium.
May 18, 1980 - In Washington state, the long-dormant Mount St. Helens volcano erupted, sending ash 15,000 feet into the air.
May 19, 1910 - The Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet. This is the closest recorded contact the Earth has had with a comet.
May 20, 1978 - NASA launched Pioneer Venus 1, which made the first detailed map of the surface of Venus using radar.
May 21, 1965 - The American physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson announced their discovery of the 3 degree cosmic microwave background radiation, which confirmed the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
May 22, 1783 - Birthday of the English physicist William Sturgeon, who invented the electromagnet.
May 23, 1707 - Birthday of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, who invented the modern system of classifying living organisms.
May 24, 1544 - Birthday of the English physicist William Gilbert, who invented the word electric and who suggested that electricity and magnetism are two aspects of the same force.
May 25, 1860 - Birthday of the American geologist Daniel Barringer, who discovered that the large crater in Arizona was caused by a meteor impact. It is now known as the Great Barringer Meteor Crater.
May 26, 1951 - Birthday of the American astronaut Sally Ride, who was the first American woman to travel into space.
May 27, 1907 - Birthday of the American biologist Rachel Carson, who warned about introducing chemicals into the environment and who wrote the book Silent Spring.
May 28, 1930 - Birthday of the American astronomer Frank Drake, who carried out the first radio search for extraterrestrial life (called Project Ozma).
May 29, 1919 - A team of astronomers led by Arthur Stanley Eddington observed the light from distant stars being bent by the Sun during a total eclipse. The amount of bending confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity.
May 29, 1953 - Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first people to reach the top of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.
May 30, 1423 - Birthday of the Austrian mathematician Georg von Peurbach, who compiled the first trigonometric table of sines using Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals.
May 31, 1903 - The Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published The Exploration of Space by means of Reactive Devices in which he was the first person to propose that people could travel into space using rockets.