Famous Inventors Born in March!

Nicolaas Bloembergen

Date of Birth: March 11, 1920

Notable Works: Bloembergen was a Dutch-American physicist who shares half the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Schawlow for the development of laser spectroscopy. Kai Siegbahn’s research into the development of electron spectroscopy earned him the other half of the prize.

Bloembergen also greatly improved the design of masers or microwave lasers and made several contributions to microwave spectroscopy. 

Leo Esaki

Date of Birth: March 12, 1925 

Notable Works: Esaki is a Japanese physicist who was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ivar Giaeverand Brian Josephson for the discovery of electron tunnelling. He also invented the tunneling diode, also known as the Esaki diode, which exploits the tunneling effect.

Electron tunnelling is a phenomenon where electrons are found in places where under classical mechanics, they could not be found. The electron’s wavefunction can be expressed to show the electron ‘tunnelling’ through potential barriers to wind up on the wrong side of the barrier.

Joseph Priestley

Date of Birth: March 13, 1733

Notable Works: Priestley was an English theologian and natural philosopher who is best known for his experimental works with gases or “airs”.

Priestley began his work with gases with a ready supply of phlogisticated air or carbon dioxide. He obtained near limitless supplies from a brewery near his ministry. One of the most notable achievements from this was a process to easily create carbonated water. He discovered he could produce this gas by dissolving chalk in acid and when he added this to water, he found it had a distinctive tangy taste. He called his drink soda water. This invention earned him an invitation to join the French Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society’s Copley Medal.

Albert Einstein

Date of Birth: March 14, 1879

Notable Works: Einstein was a German physicist who was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the photoelectric effect and demonstrating the photon theory of light. He is best known for his general theory of relativity which ties the forces of gravity, electricity, and magnetism together.

Emil Adolf von Behring

Date of Birth: March 15, 1854

Notable Works: Behring was a German physician who earned the first Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1901 for his serum treatments against diphtheria and tetanus. Diptheria was a serious disease for children and his serum was the beginning of a cure. Tetanus or lockjaw was the leading killer of wounded soldiers. von Behring’s serum was the best vaccine to treat the disease until Descombey’s vaccine in 1924.

Luis Ernesto Miramontes

Date of Birth: March 16, 1925

Notable Works: Miramontes was a Mexican chemist who first synthesized the compound norethindrone. Norethindrone would be the basis for progestin, the first oral contraceptive. It can also be used to treat premenstrual and menopausal syndromes. 

Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler

Date of Birth: March 17, 1834

Notable Works: Daimler was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine.

Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1883 they designed a horizontal cylinder layout compressed charge liquid petroleum engine that fulfilled Daimler’s desire for a high speed engine which could be throttled, making it useful in transportation applications. This engine was called Daimler’s Dream.

Daimler is seen as “the father of the motorcycle

Rudolf Diesel

Date of Birth: March 18, 1858

Notable Works: Diesel was a French-German engineer who developed the diesel internal combustion engine. The diesel engine has the highest thermal efficiency of any internal combustion engine. It relies on the heat from the compression stroke to initiate the ignition to burn the fuel. The compressed air has a high enough temperature to ignite the fuel as it is injected into the piston at the end of the compression stroke.

Frédéric Joliot-Curie

Date of Birth: March 19, 1900

Notable Works: Joliot-Curie was a French physicist who shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife, Irene for the discovery of induced radioactivity. They exposed different elements to alpha radiation and found new isotopes of other elements that were normally not radioactive.