50 Years Ago

Astrophysics, like many other subjects, is moving forward at a fantastic pace; but in few other subjects have so many fascinating discoveries been made in the past few decades — pulsars were discovered in February 1968, quasars in 1963, the microwave background of the universe in 1965, X-ray astronomy was started in 1962, gamma-ray astronomy in 1966, neutrino astrophysics in 1964 and the grandfather of them all, radio astronomy, only dates back to 1946. Not only have we seen advances in experimental techniques and observational data but theories have kept apace. Thoughts of neutron stars and colliding galaxies are now commonplace, and cosmology, with the competing theories of steady state, big-bang and oscillating universe, has even got the physicists thinking that the conservation of matter might not be one of the fundamental truths. Who can say what other “truths” might be questioned in future decades?

From Nature 22 November 1969

100 Years Ago

The Zoological Park at Edinburgh has had the good fortune to possess … a small group of king penguins … hope was excited that they might breed when two of them were observed to be mating in the autumn of 1915, but nothing further occurred at that time … It was not until 1918 that the paired birds really settled down in earnest, and much interest was aroused when, on July 8 of that year, one of them was found to have an egg … [P]erhaps nothing but the very obvious conflict of desire for simultaneous possession of the egg between the husband and wife, may have been the cause of the misfortune which followed; at any rate, it was disappointing to find, after about two weeks, that the egg had been broken … [O]n September 1, the female of the pair was found to have an egg … As the period of incubation elapsed the result was awaited with some anxiety, and it was in no small degree gratifying to find, on October 22, that the egg was chipped and the chick inside alive … The chick when hatched was comparatively small, and the skin was bare, but in a few days it increased considerably in size … there seems every likelihood that the young bird will be reared. It may be claimed … the chick king penguin has bred outside those islands of the Antarctic seas on which it has its home, and the record is a unique one.

From Nature 20 November 1919