We must never forget him and his contributions to our world forever - especially due to circumstances of injustice and the cause he became a martyr for.
10 ways to celebrate Aaron Swartz, who died #OTD in 2013:
-Subscribe to an RSS feed
-Start something online
-Make your online thing RSS friendly
-Learn to write / format in Markdown
-Publish something using a Creative Commons license
-Make a FOI / FOIA request
-Edit a Wikipedia article
-Map your neighborhood on OpenStreetMap
-Read an Open Access paper
-Check in with someone to see how they're doing
Humans are still the dopest thing about the #OpenWeb. Cherish them and all they leave behind.
Today, 15 years ago #OTD the person or group with the fictive name of “Satoshi Nakamoto” created the first cryptocurrency named Bitcoin with the thought of it becoming a secure and fast alternative to fiat currency.
Now it's known as the most wasteful use of electricity, inefficient and limiting capability/functionality, as well as being among the most insecure and de-anonymizing ways to transfer money.
However, what Satoshi Nakamoto probably hasn't expected is how many scam-currencies would come after theirs, and how their invention would create a new breed of the most annoying people known to our species: crypto-bros.
Mathematician, computer scientist, and WWII code breaker Alan Turing, who established the theoretical foundation for just about every modern computing device, was born #OTD in 1912. His work helped make it possible for you to read this.
The British government prosecuted him for being gay, a monstrous act that eventually led to Turing’s death by suicide. Then they waited over 60 years before issuing a pardon.
#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1967, Katherine Switzer becomes the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon as a registered runner, despite the organiser physically trying to stop her.
American physicist and chemist Katharine Burr Blodgett was born #OTD in 1898.
She was the inventor of a technique for making non-reflecting "invisible" glass, a material used in virtually all camera lenses & many other optical devices. She was also responsible for developing an instrument that can measure film thicknesses to within a few angstroms. She did research on methods of removing ice from airplane wings. She is also credited with the development of a new type of smoke screen.
Austrian actress & inventor Hedy Lamarr died #OTD in 2000.
Most of her inventions were not widely used, but in the 1940s she wanted to create something that would help Allied forces fight the Nazis as part of the II WW. She worked with composer George Antheil to develop a new way to steer torpedoes. She had already discovered that radio-signals used to control torpedoes could be jammed by the Nazis, making them miss their targets, & wanted to come up with an unjammable alternative.
Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born #OTD in 1943. As a grad student at Cambridge in 1967, she discovered an entirely new type of celestial object: Pulsars!
Photo: National Science & Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library
Austrian Physicist Lise Meitner was born #OTD in 1878. She was the first to pinpoint the atomic phenomenon now known as the Auger effect, but it was credited to Pierre Auger who independently discovered it months after her. Years later when she made a breakthrough in identifying and understanding nuclear fission, her findings were published only under the name of her collaborator, Otto Hahn, who later also received the Nobel Prize for this discovery. via @IAEA
Yet It took until 1956, 10 years before her retirement, for her to become full professor - because women were barred from becoming full professors at Harvard.
Biochemist Marie Maynard Daly, who studied correlations between heart attacks and cholesterol, and between smoking and lung disease, was born #OTD in 1921.
She was the first Black woman to receive a chemistry PhD in the US.
Physicist Lise Meitner was born #OTD in 1878. She discovered fission in uranium with Otto Frisch, and was the first person to understand both its mechanics and implications.
Per usual, the Nobel Committee awarded a prize to some of her colleagues, but left her off.
Image: Atomic Heritage Foundation (photographer unknown)
#OTD in 1903, Marie Curie defended her doctoral thesis in the physical sciences, entitled "Recherches sur les substances radioactives", before the Faculty of Science at the University of Paris; she was awarded a "very honourable" distinction.
She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. via @Wikipedia
Maria Skłodowska-Curie, ca. 1898. Portrait of Maria Skłodowska-Curie (November 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934), sometime prior to 1907. Curie and her husband Pierre shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Working together, she and her husband isolated Polonium. Pierre died in 1907, but Marie continued her work, namely with Radium, and received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Her death is mainly attributed to excess exposure to radiation. via @wikipedia
“There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas."
Astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born #OTD in 1900. She used quantum mechanics to decode the spectral lines of stars and deduce their elemental composition, concluding they are mostly H and He, and was the first woman to be made full professor and department chair at Harvard.
The Voyager 1 space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral #OTD in 1977, a few weeks after Voyager 2.
Now it's the most distant human-made object – about 14.96 billion miles from Earth, racing away from us at 38,000 miles per hour with respect to the Sun.
Engineer and inventor Frances Hugle was born #OTD in 1927.
She pioneered techniques used in microcircuitry fabrication and obtained patents for many of them, including methods for printing circuits and producing semiconducting films.
British scientist Rosalind Franklin died #OTD in 1958.
Her most famous contribution to science came from her X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, which provided crucial evidence for the double helix structure of DNA. Her photo was shared without her knowledge with J. Watson & F. Crick, who used it as a basis for their model of DNA's structure. Their work overshadowed her contribution, & she was not fully recognized for her role until after her death.
German mathematician Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882.
One of her most significant contributions is Noether's Theorem, which establishes a fundamental connection between symmetries & conservation laws in physics. This theorem has had profound implications in fields such as quantum mechanics, particle physics & field theory. Despite facing discrimination as a woman in academia during her time, Noether persevered & made enduring contributions to mathematics and physics.
A team of computer manufacturers, users, & university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
Throughout her career, Hopper made significant contributions to computer science, including the development of the concept of machine-independent programming languages, which greatly facilitated software development. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers.